Hehe, good one

Yes, that's the distro I want. That's it, I'm wiping Slackware and getting myself some M$ goodness. See y'all.

I think I mentioned in a different thread that I had a dream once where Microsoft managed to get complete rights to a bunch of mainstream distros and they were all bastardized with Windows. Everyone in the world used Linux, but it was no longer Linux. I hear about distros like Red Hat and Turbolinux and it makes me think it has already begun- Microsoft's wonderful "Open Source Strategy".

I appreciate that distros like Ubuntu bring more people to try Linux, but with each new release I wonder if they are taking another step to the dark side.

Rest assured, Slackware users do not have to be concerned about this, as WE DO NOT WANT some of these "features" that Windows has. Rather we want to keep the Slack in Slackware and continue thumbing our noses at those who would attempt to make Slackware what it was never meant to be- those that accept the majority (Windows) just because it is what they have been fed on since birth.

I'll probably be laughing about that all day. :-D

Yup, Slackware Uniqueness Is Manually Configured.
The Concept Of Linux And Opensource.
If Like You Can Install If Not Just Remove.

By The Way, Using First Cd Of Slackware I Cant Mount Reiserfs Then Why There's Option To Format Using It What If Theres Error ? I Think Pat Should Insert Reiserfs Into Kernel, And How About Ext4 Filesystem In Future Release?

To boot first time use huge kernel, not generic one.
Later recompile kernel and add ext4 support.

please, fix l10n for russian users With every new release in our forums appear very much posts a-la "Please, help me russianize my slack!!!!" from newbies =)

What we doing in Russia for UTF locale, as well as for koi8-r (for Russian exist 5 character encoding, but utf and koi8-r most commonly used):

1. take UTF-keymap (e.g. from MOPSLinux. It base on Slackware and maked in Russia) and put in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty

2. paste in /etc/rc.d/rc.font
unicode_start LatArCyrHeb-16
for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6;do
echo -ne "\033%G" >/dev/tty$i
done

3. paste in /etc/rc.d/rc.keymap
if[ -x /usr/bin/loadkeys ]; then
/usr/bin/loadkeys /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/ru-utf.map.gz
fi

4. change in /etc/profile.d/lang.sh and /etc/profile.d/lang.csh export LANG=en_US to export LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8

All it is in our wikibook (mm.. "You cannot post URLs to other sites until you have made at least 1 other post") but beginners do not love use google

In Ubuntu's defense, for about 3/4 of the hardware out there (mainly the newer stuff), there's really no excuse for not auto-configuring a number of things, and this is basically the biggest part of what they've done to their installs. USB and PCI identifiers eliminate the need for probing all but a handful of things, and let you know exactly what hardware you're looking at--and from there it's a simple matter of coding a few directives into place to make the configuration that you know works with that hardware happen. Unlike what was the case ten or fifteen years ago, you can find out darn near everything you could ever possibly want to know about the hardware inside the box, without having to open the darn thing and scan it with your flashlight. While this means more of a headache for someone who is trying to say, install Ubuntu without X to run as their mail server, they knew up front that the thing was geared to install itself as a "typical" desktop machine for a home user. It's not reasonable to blame a screwdriver for being a poor hammer and completely useless at disconnecting the pipes under the bathroom sink.

I think perhaps too many of you write off these automatic configuration measures as "useless" because they don't encompass every possible permutation of hardware and use case under the sun, which while being not only entirely unrealistic, would put a lot of us who do want to be unix gurus out of work. Someone who buys an off-the-shelf machine which is just like millions of others, and who just wants to do some really common things with a computer shouldn't have to learn this stuff because we can impart at least that much "intelligence" into the installation code. These people also commonly aren't the ones posting crazy questions to help forums, either, because what they got actually works for them--so while they're not particularly helping further the state of the art, they're very little to no load on the system. It's the folks who want to use the fish-smelling clone box with the squirrely looking network card, mysteriously unlabeled motherboard, and bizarre transdimensional input widget that they dug up out of a dumpster four years ago and now want to control their homebrew orbital death laser for their consulting gig who should be required by law to take a training course and spend 400 hours reading man pages before bothering anyone else with their little problems. THOSE people are the enemy, not the folks you never hear a peep from because things "just work" for them.

Contrary to popular belief, there is no great and noble benefit to knowing how to run xorgcfg unless you're looking to do something really unique. It's something that is a complete waste of time if you're just looking to browse the web, read your email, and maybe do your C++ homework. Some of you guys seem to forget this. Along this same vein, and with respect to hot-pluggable media, sure it's great if you know how to manually mount filesystems, but... if the system is already capable of doing what you want (namely, showing you the files on your thumbdrive/cdrom so you can do something with them) manually mounting hot-pluggable is another thing that's just a waste of someone's time. How many of you out there have tried running `xorgcfg` and just clicked the "quit" button after seeing the display appear (correctly). The odds are that more than half of you out there would actually get a complete configuration out of that, stupid-simple as it sounds. Why isn't it happening at install time? I can't be 100% sure about Pat's motives, but I suspect it's got something to do with that the while the VESA driver has poor performance, it works "more or less" on just about everything and doesn't get him many nasty emails from people pissed off that it didn't work on their CirrusLogic 3915 video card from 1992. If you want to do things the hard way, then good for you, but stop bashing the idea that some people might not also want to flagellate themselves before pulling up their local weather forecast.

These distributions are not "Microsofting" Linux. They're eliminating the bullsh*t that a rather sizable number of users should not have to deal with because those problems are now easily solvable for a much larger portion of the population than ever before, with just a bit of coding. Musicians and artists shouldn't have to become unix gurus in order to produce music and art, just because there's a computer involved, dig? If they bought mass-market hardware and are using mass-market connectivity solutions (like cablemodems) then it should be more than just a little possible for them to simply pop in a CD and just run with it. ...and I'm not saying they shouldn't have to deal with these problems because it's some "right" they have. N00bs have no rights, IMHO, but... some of these problems are really, really, embarrassingly trivial now, and trying to force people to learn how to solve them on their own isn't helping anyone. It's a computer. We invented them to eliminate trivially boring tasks like adding up 400 numbers, and now we're well into the point where a whole new class of tasks should be considered "stupidly trivial".

Hello everybody,

I haven't read the entire thread yet (will finish soon) but i did search and couldn't find them. I think these would be good included on the official disks.

1. FWBuilder. I find it a good firewall config thingy

2. Grsync. GTK rsync GUI

3. MySQL Administrator GUI tools

Yes i know they are all GUIs for stuff that can already be done by commandline.

I'm fine with Ubuntu and similar distros. Like you said they have many uses and as you said sometimes you just need something that works without a lot of tweaking. I think this is particularly true for live cds where you have a specific task in mind.

Even though I came off like I have a beef with a bunch of people about this I really don't. I find that most people throw out some really nice computers because they just don't seem fast enough for their auto-configured machines with all the auto-updates for every piece of software on it. I like free computers.

I do get a little annoyed when you have some wannabe linux-admin who thinks they know everything but can't even add a user without a GUI.

But back to original question...I think it would be nice to add ratpoison and/or Ion to the list of WMs. Yes, I know they are super easy to install, but they would not take up much room on the ISO either. I think having them on the cd would perhaps strike someones curiosity enough to try them.

I can say with some certainty that that's kind of inviting trouble when it's an app that (relatively) no one is interested in. There'll be the initial bundle of "problems" reported by people who are new to the tool and don't know anything about it (so they'll try to do not-so-sane things with it), as well as the folks who are new to Linux and are just fumbling around trying everything, whether it makes sense for them or not.

Better to stick with a few things ya know people want and do them well than to get spread thin over a bunch of apps that maybe five people will care about.

then why keep twm? It just as confusing to newbies.

EXACTLY!! Very well said!
Excellent post, evilDagmar.

The only problem there is the last part of the last sentence... Most users new to Slackware are about as restrained in what they do to the filesystem and package inventory as a bunch of five-year-olds left overnight in the Louvre with a bunch of crayons and Hawaiian Punch (the old kind with Yellow Number Five in it--the "good stuff").

Even in Windows there is no way to magically add users. Every administrator must determine who is allowed to do what and then add the user name to the appropriate groups. With that said, KDE arguably has one of the most straightforward GUI tools to address adding users called kuser.

EvilDagmar: I agree with your sentiments. Slackware means minimalism. Minimalism certainly means stability, but also means much more manual tinkering under the hood. I don't mind tinkering under the hood, but I wish there was better support in the basics of auto configuration. Reading the forums reveals that the various xorg configuration tools result in a mixed bag of success. Some people never have issues, some seldom experience success. Manually editing config files is acceptable and even relaxing or fun for computer tinkers, but not for the typical user.

The same is true for other tools and gadgets too. For example, I maintain my pickup truck with most minor maintenance such as changing engine oil, filters, etc., but I definitely am not a Saturday "motorhead." I do what I do but otherwise spend no time fussing with my truck. Many people are the same with computers. They don't mind "changing the oil," but they do not expect to overhaul the brakes or transmission. Slackware likely never will contain an abundant number of auto configuration tools, but I wish better support was available in some areas. Developers of some of the Slackware derivative distros, such as Zenwalk, are trying to add those tools.

The lack of such tools does not stop me from using Slackware. After many years I have Slack configured the way I want and I don't have to fiddle much anymore with the basics. But I remember my early days with Slack and GNU/Linux in general and I empathize with typical computer users. As a technical writer for more than two decades, I probably have more insight into the types of problems end-users might or will experience with tools and devices. Computers are complicated tools, and the typical end-user is not interested in playing the equivalent of Saturday "motorhead" with computers. They probably should not use Slackware, but that does not mean Slackware could not benefit from some straightforward tweaks to improve usability. For example, the setup scripts could be modified to ask end-users whether they want a command line or GUI login and then modify /etc/inittab accordingly. In another thread I mentioned adding a pkgtool setup script to only modify the box hostname. I don't think such tweaks are asking much. Such tweaks will not discourage typical Slackers from tinkering under the hood, but could encourage more people to use Slackware.

I don't agree. Knowing how the stuff works helps you to fix when it doesn't (and this happens too often). Buggy hardware parts, buggy drivers, buggy soft. What you are talking about will work in ideal world, but not in this, where 99% specs are closed, chinese parts are identified all the same and linux is not the perfect kernel. What autoconfiguration is possible when each laptop model need it's own snd-hda-intel modprobe option? You forgot tweaking. Why do you think gentoo has such a huge user community? If we took a benchmark, I doubt that Ubuntu would be at the top.