... unless you were to connect your computer to a different network, or temporarily lose your connection.

It certainly makes life easier on a laptop with Wifi.

Wow. If only there was a way to hold a computer in your hand that had access to the internet. Almost like a smartphone.

Or a way to use something slightly bigger. Like a laptop.

(That's not aimed at you, @bassmadrigal; it's aimed at the people who think those restrictions do much other than screw over people who cannot afford a smart phone or a spare computer.)

Yep. My desktop uses the /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 to connect.

My laptops use NetworkManager for wifi connections. You never know where you are going to be.

Different strokes for different folks, as the saying used to go.

Yeah, that's why some instructors (or maybe the governing bodies of the accreditation... I don't know how far up the requirements are decided) require the webcam to be active. The software will record the testing session and if it detects anything out of the ordinary (maybe it tracks eye movement, I don't know), then it can flag it for the instructor to review.

Either way, it's a pain to reboot my computer just to take a test, but I guess it's the price I pay to get my degree and prep me for when I leave the military.

Quote:
Posted by FTIO
Or maybe they're just tired of fighting with it (pulseaudio and trying to get rid of the thing like it was an untreatable new STD off their systems (I've tried every way that's been on this forum and none work for long without things screwing up and the system getting unstable and my having to re-install)) and fighting those who put them down for saying it's garbage. <shrug>

\Not really anything at all that I am "starting to accept it" nor like it nor reluctanly keep using it. Check out under my name...I've gone backwards (which IMHO is *ahead* of 14.2) to 14.1 32 bit. My next step will be a BSD, more than likely, so long as alsa is still being used on it, which saddens me greatly as Slackware was the one distro I'd hoped to finally be able to settle on for the rest of my days since it's so darn easy to install/uninstall packages and no dependency hell like rpm distro's (and easier to create packages for my system too over the rpm distro's). Oh well, life in the woods I suppose, heh.

"autospawn = no" in /etc/pulse/client.conf

and

$ pulseaudio --kill

works for me. Outside of modern browsers dropping alsa support, there's really not much (that is open source) that "requires" pulse to work. But there are a lot of things configured for pulseaudio by default. If you really want to keep avoiding pulse there's libapulse I suppose. And alsaloop if you want to use alsa, but keep pulse in the loop. When a $60 computer has 4 cores, 2GB ram, and gigabit ethernet, it's a little hard not to dedicate a device for audio and have everything else be clients (via pulseaudio). All for less Watts than your grandpas light bulb.

My only advice would be to keep it patched up to date and it will continue to serve you well.

Your computer must do what you want, otherwise what's the point? And if it's perfectly capable as-is, then why must you have the latest software? As long as you continue to apply the latest security patches for it, then you'll be right.
Yes, well, unfortunately for you, none of the BSDs use ALSA. The "L" in that little acronym stands for Linux. Each of the "main" BSDs use their own sound system.

I understand, accept (and even empathise with) your apparent beliefs on this issue... but after much experimenting, my experience is that none of the BSDs are anywhere near as flexible as Slackware Linux. If you want to see just one example of this, take a look at filesystem support. There's no XFS support in the latest versions. That renders those OSes useless to me. The next hurdle is hardware support. They're very limited in this area, particularly if you want to use them on a laptop younger than 3 years.

What we have with Slackware is a flexible and capable system. In the hands of an experienced operator it can be used to do anything which can be done with a computer. What more can you ask for? And it continues to go from strength-to-strength. The next version will have ffmpeg, lame and subpixel hinting by default. Slackware is miles in front of every other operating system on the market.

As for PulseAudio, if you don't like it there have been 3 or 4 posts throughout this thread which demonstrate how to disable it. Once you take those steps, 14.2 will behave the same way as 14.1.

2 members found this post helpful.

I believe Dragonfly uses alsa.

I just got to looking at things BSD and see your point about file system support. Why is it the BSD's support windows garbage (the FAT's) moreso than Linux? Strange. It'll make dual-booting a BSD and my Slackware a real PITA, if I'll be able to at all.

When I mentioned I went back/forward to 14.1, I meant that I'll be patching and upgrading things for as long as possible on it to be able to keep using it, since it hasn't once screwed up on me. I only tried 14.2 64 bit just to , well, try it. 64 bit still hasn't impressed me in any way. Also I buy the newest versions because I want to support Slackware as it's been my go to distro for so long and 'Just Works' (until now with 14.2 of course) for me.

As I also mentioned, I've tried most all the ways posted except these latest on this thread. They were a PITA and *all* of them created an unstable system. The way I've read in this thread is even more of a PITA to carry off, so I'm just gonna ignore it and not even try anymore. One shouldn't have to do *that* much to have a system one wants. If I wanted to go through all the jumping of hoops like that, I'll just go with LFS and fuggedaboutit, heh.

Devuan is starting to look good except that it's a rolling release distro. That's fine for folks who have super fast internet and it doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I unfortunately have no alternative except dial-up or satellite and satellite isn't as fast as it advertises (but still a million times better than dial-up!) and the price for it eats a goodly sized chunk of my disability check each month, so rolling release distro's aren't the best for my particular situation.

Unless there were a way to know how many folks *truly* used Slackware, then take a poll and hope that *all* of them answered it *honestly*, to try and find out who does or doesn't use bluetooth, and then fix it so that, say bluetooth users are the actual minority, so that the people who want the bluetooth capabilities have to jump through these hoops to get it working on their systems - then I could see fair and staying with Slackware. Heck, it might even be simpler getting bluetooth setup on ones system than it is trying to get rid of the STD known as pulseaudio off ones system.

Speaking about XFS... Who needs to use on Linux a file system intended for IRIX

And FAT is not garbage at all. It just has obviously less features than more recent file systems, but is convenient enough if you use it in its scope.

Oh, and it's the only file system whose support is mandatory for the EFI System Partitions according the the UEFI specification. Which is good as writing a driver for FAT needs certainly less work than for, say, ZFS or BTRFS, or even ext4

2 members found this post helpful.

xfs is from IRIX. ext borrowed heavily from BSD's FFS. zfs was grafted onto Linux from Sun/FreeBSD. The only so-called enterprise-grade filesystem native to Linux is btrfs, which is still not recommended for production use. So much for Linux being ahead. DragonFly's Hammer was developed by one man yet it's light years ahead.

Don't overlook the dark horse NetBSD when you are looking at the BSDs. It's quite obviously an engineered system, as opposed to the cobbled-together Linux mish-mash where every latest hare-brained idea is welcomed as soon as the venture capitalists want it included. NetBSD 8 beta has just been branched, and it includes in-kernel audio mixing. No big fuss; just get it done and move on. Hardware support is excellent, though not on a par with Linux, but at least driver quality is consistent. Veriexec is one of the jewels in the crown. So too pkgsrc and Xen. FFS is old but stable and reliable, having been around since the 80s. It's the ancestor of ext2/3/4 so NetBSD has nothing whatsoever to be ashamed of when it comes to filesystems.

1 members found this post helpful.

Really?

I don't like or trust pulseaudio, so none of my systems are running it.

I don't like or trust networkmanager, so none of my systems are running it.

I don't like or trust dbus, so none of my systems are running it.

When I don't like or trust some software package, I figure out a way to make my system work without. This has been a winning approach for me, and I don't foresee that changing.

My systems, my standards, my decisions.

Slackware is great -- it -mostly- offers solutions that make me happy, and when it doesn't, it's simple and open enough to make figuring out alternative solutions easy.

4 members found this post helpful.

There, fixed it for ya.

3 members found this post helpful.

:-D you're right, of course. Sometimes problems are a bitch to figure out, but they're easier under Slackware than they would be under a distribution which was more opaque and entangled.

2 members found this post helpful.

Wow. Having seen your narrative, I thank God that my school, while it uses primarily Windows, does not force one to use it if one prefers an alternative system (Linux). I have been able, with little to no trouble, to log in to the network using Linux, and to do my business using it. Of course, I don't do my classes online, so such measures as you detail are not in place for me. Freedom of choice is paramount for me, as it should be, IMHO.