gnome is to be dropped by patrick
 

http://www.dropline.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3430



This sucks since Ive been a follower of gnome for years :( but its understandable...

Meh... I never liked Gnome anyway.

I see this as positive. Open Source dictates that the duplication of effort is to be avoided -- Letting dropline take over Gnome completely is going to free up lots of time for Pat and the development of the Slackware core.

I've always seen Gnome as slow and buggy; I think KDE is a much better choice. Of course, noone wants to enter the DM wars, since it's mostly a matter of preference. That said, this decision seems to be coming from a standpoint of practicality. I back Pat 100% on this.

--Shade

PS -- I don't think this is an official announcement exactly, more of a pondering... So this may not be the path Pat takes, anyway. Nobody get alarmed!

I mainly use KDE, but I feel that people should have the option of installing GNOME if they want to. If the dropline version is bundled with Slack releases then that would be fair enough, but if there is no GNOME at all I can forsee some dissent from some quarters.

I agree with most of the previous comments.

Keep in mind that Dropline has its own "dropline-installer", which is under 180 KB and installable as a package. This installer allows you to select the components that you want to install and it then downloads and installs them. So, Patrick doesn't need to make the entire Dropline version available. He could just make the latest version of the "dropline-installer" package available (pending technical and legal issues) or slackers could just download the installer from the Dropline website at:
http://www.dropline.net/gnome/download.php

Also note that the full Dropline version of Gnome is GINORMOUS, so including it in Slackware is not likely, unless you want to add a 5th cd, just for this.

Personally, there are aspects of Gnome that I like (it's pretty), but I prefer KDE.

Before installing the Dropline version of Gnome, I recommend that you be prepared to record every component that it installs. My experience with it, although it has been quite a while, was that its uninstaller did not remove all of the components that its installer had installed. It took quite a bit of time and effort to track down all of these items and remove them. Note that this may have been fixed since then.

On the plus side, the Dropline version of Gnome seemed to work great and its installer worked well also. It's just GINORMOUS, and I didn't want to use up that much disk space when I didn't really need to.

So, I don't see any real loss in having to install Gnome through Dropline, rather than having it provided with the distribution. Of course, since I don't really use Gnome ...

Whatever the situation, Patrick will make the right decision.

-Slack

Hmph.. fluxbox anyone?

I guess that would be my next move IF (when) gnome is dropped out of Slackware.

KDE is nice, but it is too Windozey like.

How about IceWM? That seems to fit well into the principle of Slackware - and ROX for file management and desktop. I find this combination terrific - small, fast, simple and highly efficient.

I have a lot of respect for Dropline GNOME, and they've done an excellent job. However, many people prefer just normal, vanilla GNOME, which is less intrusive.

I've never been a fan of KDE, mostly because it's so busy and Windows-like. That being said, I don't really hate any project... there's pros and cons to almost everything that is Linux, which means you can find precisely what you want.

Dropping GNOME and requiring Slackware users to use Dropline is a bad, bad move. GNOME and KDE are the top desktop environments almost without debate, the choice should definitely be there for them both. If I have to compile my whole desktop from source, why even use Slackware at all? Might as well go the extra mile and just build LFS.

Well, okay, maybe not, heh. But still, dropping GNOME and leaving KDE is a harsh blow to GNOME. Slackware newbies get to be introduced to both of them, and make a choice. Having only KDE by default will mean that most newbies never get to learn anything about GNOME at all. I'd rather see Pat just take them both out and have us all responsible for our own desktops, rather than Slackware become a "KDE distribution". Besides, just dropping both environments would free up even more time for Pat to work on the core of Slackware. Let us graphical people fend for ourselves, heh.

I say go for it. If maintaining Gnome is that much of a problem... buh bye.
As for being a kde distro, thats just plain wrong.
Slack comes with many window managers & Desktops.
I use fluxbox & rox. I have no need for gnome.
I'll miss Nautilus because that's a great prog IMO.

As far as dropline, I say whatever is easier on Pat.
The guy has his hands full with a great distro.

I realize that Slack comes with several windows managers and desktops (I use Fluxbox and XFCE quite a bit, myself). However, nobody can really deny that GNOME and KDE are seen as the two largest DE's.

Like I said before... if he's gonna drop GNOME, I say drop both of the big bloated DE's, still send it out with Flux and whatnot, and just focus on the core.

Bad choice
 

The main problem is that Dropline GNOME unfortunately, at least up to ver. 2.6, totally mess up Slackware with PAM support which is excluded by Pat due to possible security risks and replaces so many base system packages which I find unacceptable. If Dropline won't touch standard Slackware packages my thumb would be up.

That's my issue as well. However, to be fair, I'm going to toss my spare HD in the box tonight and do a minimal slack install out of /a, /ap, /d, /n, and then install Dropline, and see what I think. Haven't tried it in awhile.

I had very bad experiences with dropline. I may take a try on the new slackware. If the new version of xfce4 is ok, then it would be ok without gnome "desktop".

My sister's box would be replaced with ubuntu because only gnome has ok i18n support. kde is not an option.

I can see your point. I'm pretty neutral on the whole gnome/kde bit.
Kde is great for new users that are familar with windows though.
I don't think kde should be dropped as a tit for tat, just cause gnome is.
As long as it is easy to maintain, & doesn't cause headaches for Pat I don't see any reason to remove it.

I can understand peoples issue with this.
Enlightenment is really cool, & now its such a pain to run.
I do have it running on one box, and its really great.
Makes it not worth the effort to check it out for most people though.

Honestly, I dont use either, but I prefer gnome over kde.
Other then K3b I do not use a single qt prog. K3b rocks btw.
I would personally like to see KDE dropped, & gnome kept.
Just not at the cost of beating down Pat with more work than he wants.

wait... according to the msg from forum, it's not decided yet. Althoug PV think dropping gnome would be the easier for him, he may choose to release it slower and only build the later release of each 2.X series.

Even though I prefer GNOME over KDE, I wouldn't want to see KDE dropped and GNOME kept, either. I think the two big-bloats of the DE scene should be a both-or-nothing option for a distribution, because so many people use one or the other.

Of course, that's just my personal opinion, which doesn't mean anything, except to me. :p But I think it would be better all around.