Sometimes I would like to be a pope. But that lasts only 27'39".

PS. This reminds me what wrote Cioran: "S'il y a quelqu'un qui doit tout à Bach, c'est bien Dieu."

Yes, this is off topic. But is there one?

How does it work out if you reconfigure pulseaudio as a dumb pipe to alsa, as described here:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...b_pipe_to_ALSA
That should give the best of both worlds, with pa-reliant programs running fine, without disrupting sensitive software, like Jack.

If it's one thing that I've learned over the years it's not what you do, but how you do it. I trust Pat and his team to do what is right for Slackware and personally I like pulseaudio.

On that note, one could certainly do worse than Yuja Wang to get one's Pulse going.

hey, there is a problem with central authentication in Slackware, is simply does not work. Not fixed since years.
So no, it is not like that only technical reasons matter.

Did you mean there is a problem with central authentication that doesn't use NIS in Slackware?

NIS :doh: how could I forget about this?

possible because it was ok until lets say more than 1 decade ago and most environment have different requirements today?

Not a bug, rather the lack of a feature. But Pat has clearly stated that this feature will not be provided in Slackware 14.2, so what's the point of asking again now?

You should be more precise in your whining.

:o , I am sorry to hear about your lack of fantasy and that you are not able to think about an environment with multibe apps and computers and users.
imagine for example something common:
Source control management, build servers, wiki, time tracking, the normal file sharing stuff and some other apps, all which need login and also being able to log in on many machines but not all, but one password. change on any system works instance for all apps and systems. an ddifferete OS. now you install a server in this environment so run say trac, you will set this up with NIS?
and than you join for a project in this environment and bring your notebook , what software do you need and do all processional useful distributions provide out of the box? you mean NIS? how many such environments have you build, or worked in with your Slackware workstation? Zero or Null?

How many packages would need to be rebuilt to use Linux-PAM, if it ever got added, and how many packages would require rebuilds each time Linux-PAM was either patched or upgraded to avoid dependency issues?

Now who is going to maintain those packages?

Thanks for the Pulseaudio. Seriously.

I think you missed the part where I said "If he deems that there are insurmountable problems presented by not having PAM, then he is likely to do the same there."

Plenty of people have "problems" by not having certain software shipped in Slackware. I have a "problem" using Slackware as my media center OS because it doesn't include kodi and its dependencies, but it isn't a "problem" in Pat's eyes, so there is no need for him to fix it (and I don't see the need to force my "problem" onto Pat). That means it's on me to get things running as I see fit (which is what Slackware is all about).

Obviously, Pat doesn't have a need to use central authentication, so it isn't a "problem" in his eyes that PAM is not included (which means there's no reason for him to fix it). That means it is left up to the user to tailor Slackware to their needs.

If Pat catered to everyone's "problems", Slackware would cease to be what it is and would probably end up on 20 DVDs and require 1TB of hard drive space to get a full install.

IOW Slackware would be Debian ;)

PS Yes I know that a merge has been considered by Ian and Pat long ago. But I doubt that this will happen now.