Slackware and the community would not lose me. I will keep on using Slackware, on my servers, and provide packages like vlc, libreoffice, chromium. I run XFCE 24/7 on my server at home inside a VNC server. It is the desktop environment which is always there for me, wherever I am in the world.
I doubt I would keep Slackware on my laptop though.

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I build my own VLC directly modeled on your SlackBuild, but I make the individual packages for all the dependencies (and non-static), and I build my own Qt5 directly after yours.

As someone that builds my own personal SlackBuilds modeled after your SlackBuilds, Thank you.

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+1. Thanks Eric!

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Thanks especially AlienBob for the helpful reply.

Ktown Plasma5 is amazing and I use it on two of my machines, every day.

I personally don't care either way if Pat keeps KDE or drops it. If he does, I'll just continue to happily use ktown as I have for ages.

I do think Slackware would be missing out on a plethora of useful applications without KDE though: Okular is a must-have on all of my machines, for instance. Kdenlive is ... amazing, to say the least, and including it in a full install of Slackware would be way cool.

He has to include qt5 at a minimum though. It is the stable version of a very major widget toolkit, and even if people don't want or need KDE, more and more non-KDE applications are going to start depending on qt5. I'm surprised it's not more of an issue already, to be honest.

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I spent a long time distro and desktop environment hopping when I finally broke away from Apple. Slackware was my #1 before and now again, and ktown was my top priority after installing -current. As Alien Bob wrote, I'd probably have to move to whatever I decide the least worst option is for Plasma 5 elsewhere.

Slackware-current + KDE 5 is my ideal combination. I've made and planned more donations to Patrick, Eric, and KDE with the hope that I can continue to have it all.

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I think that those "demands" are in fact generated by the monolithic ecosystem from Slackware and its build system.

You people love to compare Slackware with BSD. So, did you know how the BSDs do the things?

Look at NetBSD: it have a small monolithic core, containing the kernel, libc, shell, system utilities and the X server.

But there are no DEs, no FTP or web servers, not even Emacs. They all are on Ports - so named "pkgsrc" and there are also XFCE, KDE4, Plasma5 and Gnome.

So, I disagree with you. He does not have to must include Qt5 or whatever KDE4, Plasma5 or Gnome dependencies. Cough, cough...

http://pkgsrc.se/wip/plasma-desktop

Like you see, nobody asks nice at the gun's blank the NetBSD developers to must include Qt5 in the core system.

What is really needed today, in my humble opinion, is to finally adopt an infrastructure like others do in the Year 2020 .

And if you are so proud about that BSD feel, maybe this is the right idea: a small monolithic core and a fully fledged Ports system, like NetBSD or FreeBSD have.

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Eric and people like Eric rock... This really is a great community

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At one time, I was thinking of compiling all that stuff to see if I could improve it with CPU specific optimizations, but then I saw somewhere that you were impressed that you got it done in "2 days" and I thought, umm, no, I don't think I will :-)

Definitely the work you put into this (and other things like libreoffice... I use your package for that and I know what getting that to build on Slackware is like) needs more acknowledgement. I appreciate you filling in the gaps with Slackware.

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I wonder if I should farm out my Zen2 3600 process cycles for things like big slackware compiles when necessary

Thank you for the reassurance. I recall in the past you mentioned otherwise, glad that's changed.

I think there should be serious consideration of qt5 and dependencies at this point. I can't remember the last time I built something with a GUI that didn't require them, regardless of KDE usage.

I don't believe I've ever made that comparison. I've called Slackware UNIX-like. I think there is a comparison to be made to the BSDs when it comes to certain philosophies. I really don't use BSD and am not active enough in those communities to have an opinion on that.

Don't be silly. That comparison is not valid. Slackware has never branded itself or positioned itself as a minimalist distribution, with the bulk of the applications being pushed to (the Slackware equivalent of) ports (SBo).

Slackware is a full-featured Linux distro that gives a user everything that is needed for a full computing experience. It is neither a desktop distro nor a server distro; it is a combination of both.

Ah, there it is. You want Slackware to become something it is not: a minimalist distro. Guess what? If qt5 and its deps are included in 15.0, you don't have to install them! The same way you don't have to install anything but the packages or package groups you want to install, now.

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I can understand what ZhaoLin1457 is saying. In Debian there's a minimalist install that will get you just enough to boot the system with all drivers necessary and then get you to the point you can add whatever else you need through packages and package management. It sounds like BSD is similar in that you can do the 'base' install and add the other packages through ports you need. This has some merit for server admins.

As you said Poprocks, Slackware tries to give you a complete installation by selecting all packages by default. If Slackware had one more menu item which was 'minimum' install then it could meet the Debian criteria and possibly the BSD criteria through SBo etc
This is something I wouldn't mind....

Linode did a 'custom' Slackware install in their standard image by assuming a VPS wouldn't need X etc etc etc... It's actually pretty good.

If PV made a 'minimum' install option during the install I'm pretty sure it would meet a server install AND/OR a pedantic arch type user who just wanted to install any packages they needed after that.

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If you don't like KDE, you don't have to use it.

I don't use the desktop environment often (mostly because I'm addicted to the convenience of Fluxbox's right-click menu--if KDE had that, I'd use it more often), but I find the KDE/Plasma suite of applications (konsole, kate, gwenview, kolourpaint, okular, k3b, etc.) generally superior to those bundled with other DEs.

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I do not install KDE, so I suppose this is a moot point, however I was merely speculating that perhaps KDE might have been getting bigger and perhaps more difficult to maintain, but that does not appear to be the case. As for Pasma v. KDE4 I will now throw my in now, and perhaps say it is time that Slackware moves on to that. I would give Plasma a chance, but immediately what I run into and just do not like, is Akonadi. I wonder if there is a way to run without it.