What features/changes would you like to see in future Slackware?

For most of us, I imagine we would like to see updates of all that is the current goodness of Slackware (if it's not broken, why fix it?).

However, I'm sure some Slack users have some things in mind and I am curious as to what those things are.

For me, personally, I would like to see the option of a modular KDE similar to Arch Linux's KDEmod project. This would be really handy if you only wanted certain KDE apps installed instead of having everything installed in large chunks.

And end up like the dependency nightmare that is Gnome? Let alone the extra work required by Pat to keep this up and maintain it.

This is definitely something I don't want to see.

As for things I would like to see - NetworkManager (with KNetworkManager frontend). Slackware is fine for a 'fixed' network, but for a laptop with a changing network, it doesn't really cut it (Kwifimanager is out of date, and doesn't handle WPA, and the rc.* scripts and wpa_supplicanf.conf are a PITA to work with for just connecting to a wireless network).

I would mainly like to see fewer packages. I do not use any command line mp3 players; nor do I need the plethora of news readers, chat programs. or mail programs. Don't get the idea that I am advocating eliminating these programs (as soon as something is completely deleted, I would have a great need for it & have to package it myself!), but to my mind, moving a bunch of packages to 'extra', or some new directory, would be a good idea.
Regards,
Bill

Updated Slackbook with not only tiny bash/mail/etc manual. I'd prefer some sort of Slackware Bible (like Ubuntu Bible) or smth. One book of slackbook + slackbasics + slackersbible + more. Now everything is thrown around in lots of places (those previously mentioned books, Alien Bob's dokuwiki, slackwiki and more, more, more places).

very good point. It would probably only work if it was maintained as a separate project (similar to dropline GNOME or GNOME SlackBuild).

On desktops I use bootsplash (I know, but I like it). I can't see recommending it for inclusion in slackware because of the kernel mods, but maybe as an add-on package. I also use grub vs. lilo, but again that's a personal preference. Both of those things are very easy to implement post-install.

I use slackware for so many different things that I can't really come up with any ideas for general inclusion except maybe mplayer. I prefer mplayer over xine, and they seem to co-exist peacefully.

Not really a slackware-specific thing but I would like to see a dbus policy manager with more convenient interface. I'm just lazy, I suppose.

Patrick and the rest of the team have done such a wonderful job of creating this distribution that it is hard to find any faults with it, imo. I really appreciate the approach of emphasizing stability over including bleeding-edge software.

If Slack was missing anything I wouldn't use it.
Now go guess why I use it?

Lots of info could be gathered from this forum too and added to the book (like these bios or hal things).

I think I agree with the earlier post re mplayer, maybe even smplayer (the excellent graphical mplayer plugin) if the dependencies can be resolved easily, I'm not certain about the codecs and licencing though.

I'd like:
- Official ports for other architectures.
- A more open development.
- A difference between non-free (like Java) and free softwares (i.e a /non-free directory).
- Firefox compiled from source.

Technically it's perfect.

Slackware is just fine the way it is.
But an update of the Slackbook or something similar, as Alien Hominid suggested, is not a bad idea at all.


greetings,

Eddy

Like many others, I don't find Slackware lacking any really important feature, so there aren't many software packages that I'd really like to see added. Probably NetworkManager and KNetworkManager, which were already mentioned, provide really good features for people with laptops that move in varied environments (for the rest of us, a handful of shell scripts than run the needed commands can be incredibly effective). Also, I'd like to see resume from suspend-to-disk support added to the initrd. I already have it working here and sent a "howto" by email to PV, but he hasn't replied since then.

What I find lacking at this moment is what other people already mentioned. There are a lot of good guides, howtos, books, forums, tutorials, etc, about Slackware all over the Internet, but they are not official in any way and there is not a central place to tie them all together. The Slackware official site could have an RSS feed of the different changelogs, links and descriptions to the sites of the different people who have an account at slackware.com (like rworkman) and news not only issued when a new release is made, but every now and then to comment on the decisions and progress made on -current. Maybe polls so we could provide feeback to PV about decisions. An official wiki could be handy too, or at least a link to SlackWiki, that would merge a lot of information from the SlackBook, tutorials, HOWTOs, etc. You know, a more "Web 2.0" site (I personally hate those words), where PV could spend some minutes a day reading the opinions and feedback from his users, and interact with us.

I think Slackware could leave KDE behind like it did with GNOME and leave KDE to other people.
Aehm yes I like Fluxbox *lol*, no but really there would be more time and energy for basic stuff.

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Just give us good Compiz HOWTO =)

Hey, I was thinking the same thing