So don't do a full Slackware install. You can get away with a lot less than that.

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You really believe that someone has the will to spend the rest of his/her life to discover the runtime dependencies in Slackware?

Life is nice, why someone should spend it on (re)discovering something what Slackware devs keeps secret like the countries their ballistic missiles?

Well, unless this particular someone considers discovering the Slackware dependencies some kind of puzzle game.

Heck, at least if the packages tree would be better organized...

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Don't be so grumpy! What's got into you this morning? I started installing Slackware-15 when the alpha version was announced and by release date, I had an almost full (by my criteria) working system. Of course it helped that I had done the same thing earlier with Slackware-14.

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We have "Slackware - ARM", why not something like "Slackware - Derivatives" as a sub-forum of the main Slackware Forum ?

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I also would be interested in a thread about Slackware-base distros

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It is true that I have mentioned OpenBSD here on the LQ Slackware forum within other threads. I'll cop to that(and I'll stop doing that). It is not true that I have been the original poster of multiple threads about OpenBSD. I wanted to clarify that.
I have great respect for the contributions of the Slint maintainer; Didier does excellent work for the Slackware community. I thank him for his continued contributions and service to Slackware. My original post was aimed at Slackware derivatives(no distribution was named). I kept my criticism specific and respectful; it was aimed at Slackware derivatives in general. My observation has led to ad hominem attacks. I hope that Didier continues to post here on the LQ Slackware forum.
Any way I hope that you all have a good day. It's a good day to be a member of the LQ Slackware community.

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I think the rule is an absurdity. Are people no longer allowed to mention Slackware Live, which is surely a derivative? Eric adds software to his Live ISOs that is not in Slackware default. So we're now going to censor posts by Eric?

If people want to notify the forum that their post is specific to a derivative, then let them do it the way the groff mailing list do it, or at least did it : just mention the derivative in square brackets.

[neatroff] topic 1 ...
[n-t-roff] topic 2 ...
[groff] topic 3 ...

And so on. Then people don't have to look at it. But the branches of roff have enough in common that it makes sense to bundle them into one mailing list. Same with Slackware : if the derivatives are sufficiently close to the original, let people post here about them. If the moderators aren't happy with that, then it's up to the moderators to lay down the law for the rest of us.

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Adding my noise to the conversation....

I see Slackware as a distro is in the same weight class as projects like Debian and Arch in that projects will use it as a jumping off point. The Slackware community includes all of these Slackware derived projects in much the same way the Debian community includes all of its derivatives.

The subject of creating a Slackware-based distribution is always on-topic since it will involve working with Slackware. At some point the child may become self-sufficient and the parent will kick it out of the house. That's a discussion every linux distro community has to have on a per-child basis.

A large Slackware-based project should have it's own forum or community in much the same way Ubuntu has forums independent of Daddy Debian. But it still has to start somewhere.

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Do you really think they're keeping them secret? I think they don't (rightfully) care. Build apache or ffmpeg against whatever is already installed and see what happens to get linked. I don't think they're willfully keeping dependency lists from us.

I think it comes back to KISS. But many mistake that KISS should be for the end-users, but in reality, it's for Pat and team. Keep things as upstream intended (provided they compile), minimize complexity, and recommend a full install so they don't have to document dependencies. It's really a win for Slackware developers.

Luckily, there's a decent amount of endusers that enjoy how KISS applies to Slackware and we keep using (and some contributing to) it.

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I've been thinking about this lately. To me, the relations between packages in Slackware are not transparent at all. Whether it's on purpose or not, is irrelevant. It's just the way Slackware is and I am fine with that.

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My 2cent,

For me, this is a non-issue. I've never really noticed people posting about derivatives let alone felt put out by it.

As to Didier's slint, I've always thought of it as slackware with extended accessibility. I guess this is partly due to Didier's excellent and relevant contributions on this forum.

4 members found this post helpful.

Just out of interest, what is it exactly that compelled you to make this request? I'm trying to figure it out... maybe I'm missing something.

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The problem with that is, if like me you run headless servers, no X no kde no useless desktop stuff... you end up recompiling a lot of stuff from source, or playing the dependancy wack-a-mole game because so much of the packages Pat builds unlike R.H. etc, is on a full system, this pulls in X libs and related deps you have to install, or things dont work.

On my desktop I care nothing, because it is kde with full install and thats fine. But you dont install anything and everything on servers, as the OP pointed out, each additional package or library is an additional risk factor in a server world you don't take.

1 members found this post helpful.

Meh. I keep it simple. Headless servers get: A, AP, D, L & N series... no whack-a-mole necessary. I've been known to leave the D series out if resources are super skinny.

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Good question. Back in 2015 I was reprimanded by the LQ Admin team for posting off-topic content here on the LQ Slackware forum. I have a non-expiring warning associated with my account. That is, if I post more off-topic content I may be banned. I've tried to be on topic here(acknowledging my OpenBSD posts within threads).
So I suppose I've tried to abide by the LQ rule set here. I guess if we allow all derivative posts here then there's no need for the Vector, Zenwalk, etc, sub-forums. Those distributions are fine operating systems, but, they're not entirely Slackware anymore. If we get questions here about those distributions can we speak with authority about partitioning, package management, etc? I can't. Gerald Lally makes a very compelling argument for Eric's Slackware Live distribution.
Anyway it's just a request and I appreciate the fact that I'm permitted to defend my point of view without being clobbered by moderators. I acknowledge and respect the fact that my point of view is not shared by the community for the most part. I accept that. I really enjoy rational discourse (minus the personal attacks, haha). I've enjoyed this debate a lot. Marking this topic as solved.