I've always preferred mplayer as my backend, so I use smplayer from SBo as a nice GUI frontend. It has just as good of playback from VLC (that I've noticed) and since mplayer is already included with Slackware, it's just a matter of compiling this GUI for it. It has no dependencies that aren't already met in a full install.

The GUI frontend is simple and easy to but gets really powerful within the options and the menu (including applying filters to videos).

(You do need to pass QT5=yes to the SlackBuild if building on -current as it still defaults to QT4 from the 14.2 version.) Never mind, qt5 on -current takes over the default qmake and lrelease binaries, so this build will default to whatever qt is default on the system (which is qt5 on -current and soon-to-be 15.0).

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I'm going to have to look into this smplayer now. Thanks.

While on 14.2, I've been perfectly content using VLC. It's just the player I had been familiar with from back in the dark times--i.e., back when I used Linuxes that weren't Slackware. In fact, parsing through and getting my head around Eric's VLC SlackBuild was a great education in package-building, (and I'm grateful for the lesson.)

Anyway, moving forward with a fresh install of 15.0 soon, I'm thinking this would be an ideal time to simplify a bit. That is to say, I wouldn't mind utilizing more of the stuff already in Slackware, and cutting down on the number of SBo and Alien builds. Switching to MPlayer fits that category... Thanks, again.

Create /etc/rc.d/rc.hwclock.

Reason #1: rc.0, rc.6, and rc.S all have a similar code block for setting/retrieving the system time to/from the hardware clock. Moving everything into rc.hwclock reduces code copying and creates a common place for any needed updates (not that this code will need much maintenance).

Reason #2: Advanced users may want to set up a cron job to periodically save the system time to the hardware clock. Being able to simply call rc.hwclock simplifies this greatly and guarantees the cron job calls exactly the same code that rc.0/rc.6 calls. Why? Unclean shutdowns happen (power outage being a common example). If the machine has a long uptime and then gets an unclean shutdown the hardware clock could have drifted considerably. Updating it once a week (or once a day) from cron minimizes this potential drift.

I actually had an unclean shutdown today and while looking at the logs trying to figure out why I noticed time seemingly move backward (the first entry after reboot had an earlier timestamp than the last entry before reboot). Maybe I have a really bad hardware clock?

I have not researched what a reasonable limit is on setting the hardware clock, but I imagine they are designed to support daily reboots, so updating the hardware clock once a day using cron should be fine.

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I've used mplayer as well, but I prefer gstreamer as my backend and usually dragon as my player. But in general I find that VLC plays pretty much everything perfect, also things that gstreamer and mplayer don't play or don't play well for whatever reason.

It's not something I'm terribly passionate about, but VLC is a pretty solid allround player, in case one has to make a choice. But I guess they all are actually, so it might just be a matter of preference rather than functionality. And I don't want to use popularity as reasoning either, but it is at least worth mentioning, and I thought it was worth mentioning VLC in general.

It was more something I just threw out there and when I said it seems like a PITA to compile, I only meant that BDFL is the best at such things, and do that alot.

Perhaps have a look into SMtube as well at the same time, might be worth it if you ever watch stuff on youtube. "A YouTube browser for SMPlayer"

It would take a little more effort but SMPlayer can also use mpv as a back end and this has been my go-to media combination for some years now.

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The default was changed upstream in OpenSSH 7.0 released on 2015-08-11.
Given that only a trivial edit in /etc/ssh/sshd_config is required, that can be conducted at the completion of the install, and is only relevant to a minority of users, perhaps a simple note in CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT would suffice.

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That's not quite true
The setup program doesn't prompt for the creation
But you can easily create one before rebooting :

exit
=> shell
$ chroot /mnt
$ useradd -m toto
$ passwd toto

But I agree, it would be nice to have it during the setup process ;-)

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You should run ntpd. It keeps time and it also turns on the kernel "11-minute mode", which writes the system time to the hardware clock every 11 minutes. (Without ntpd, how do you know which time is better, one of the the system clock or the hardware clock?)

If you run ntpd, don't run hwclock, as it turns off the 11-minute mode.

I have seen a time problem like yours when the cmos battery is dying.

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I have noticed that the setup program of Slackware Live (it's called "setup2hd" there) guides you through several dialogs to create a user account and to set the root password.

For the next version of Slackware (prior to 15.0), I would wish to:

- Remove wqy-zenhei-font-ttf as there is a better alternative available: noto-cjk-fonts-ttf.
- Add fcitx5 as an update to fcitx4. It includes better wayland and xwayland support, among other improvements.

I do run ntpd (I use the us pool servers). I wasn't aware it called hwclock itself.

... but if it does, I wonder why I saw time roll back when I rebooted? The hardware clock should have been (mostly) correct. The computer is only a few years old. Anyway, we're straying off topic here.

I don't think 11-minute mode is enabled in Slackware:

https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/lat...tc/Kconfig#L53

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And while we're looking at RTC config options:

I am not qualified to answer the question "do we really need it?"

Interesting. The default is y. Why would anyone not want to set it?