I admit it. I am not great with starting threads if i dont have any specific problem.
I was bored so i thought id start this one.

Please dont write about packages everyone else uses but you. :-)

My list would certainly start with most. I think its useless cause the only benefit i see in compare to less is color which can be achieved easily with some TERMCAP entries.
Followed by amp, aumix and probably some more packages from ap/ like editors and multimedia players.
Last but not least from xap/ blackbox, gqview, and probably some of the x* packages in the same tree.
I think those packages have close to none usage. Am i wrong?

You are. I'm using gqview. Constantly. It's actually within 10 most used application in my system. And there are probably a lot of folks that use blackbox.

I think that no packages need to be removed, because distribution is already compact enough, so distribution provides good flexibility and source for everything, which is good.

This thread is boring since you only mention packages you don't use. Admitted, one rarely sees such a useless post.

Eric

LOL thats cruel.
Actually i dont use hundreds of packages more than that. eg. KDE
but i didnt add it to my list.. Seriously there are packages noone really uses and they take space from packages probably almost everyone does. But im not gonna go into what should be included. I dont care.
But i dont see the reason some apps are included today, even though i understand they were added for a reason.

Packages you've mentioned are tiny (except blackbox, maybe) so what's the reason for excluding them? If you don't like some software, don't install it. Removing software from distribution, IMO, requires some serious arguments - like criticial security flaw, corruption of system data or legal issues.

Thanks Erv for mentionning gqview I did not know it, look nice

Hey!... Get yer stinkin' hands off of 'amp'. It's been my mp3 player of choice for around 12 years now!

If it gets removed... well, think up some menacing threat and pretend I said it!

I'd rather create a thread about new packages Slackware should also include...

feel free to abuse this one

Exactly my thought.

Sure there are many packages in Slackware I do not use.
Some packages I might need on one system and never use on another (like php, mysql, etc.), but drives are so large now I simply do full installs without bothering to select each package.
Once in a while I discover a utility that was always there but never needed it. An example is ImageMagick.

If you feel some package is really bothering you, you can always try removepkg... But be careful and do read the info before trying this.

By the way, I use GQview a lot and would not be pleased if it were removed. Others might feel the same about other packages.

Oh, my! Where to begin? Look at slackbuilds.org or slacky.eu for an idea of what the stock Slackware could contain.

I use most of those as well

I'd like to see some of the Xfce Goodies included by default. But I can understand why they aren't. They are not part of the official Xfce tree, and some could be of questionable quality. And we will always have those that complain that goodie X was included but not Y.

To oblige the OP, I have absolutely no use for Audacious nor GXine. Neither app functions correctly for me. GXine crashes, while Xine and Kaffeine work without any trouble. Xmms is far better than Audacious (IMO ). The Audacious devs took a huge step back with 1.5, BMP was also far better than this 1.5 release. They have a new version coming out soon, or so they say. I hope they fix what they broke.

Noatun should be renamed, maybe playsNOTHINGat_all

Not to say this isn't true, but I think it's a better choice to include those small apps that someone will use.

There's nothing more I hated when using another distro, then having to download a mountain of packages just to get a usable system after boot up. With Slackware, 90% of what I need is included, and only a handful (less than 30) need to be installed after wards. Now the crap I have installed on my play PC is another story

Noatun is only included because Pat builds KDE in groups instead of 3 million small packages, and so noatun is necessarily included. It is an absolute piece of crap IMO -- it opens in the status bar and pops up an error on 90% of the media I have tried. GXine isn't my favourite either. I think xv is rather useless now -- but there are some who are still clinging to it (whether it's 'free' or not), and since it's small there is no reason to remove it. Someone probably uses every application (excluding noatun...), and I don't think that anything is so annoying that it bothers me to have it included. Why remove packages? Is that extra 1MB really going to do anything? Why not just uninstall it (or just don't install it in the first place)?

Removing packages, that are used by fewer people, from the core install of Slackware and moving them to an /extras repository (which should be maintained by someone other than PV), would then allow PV to add in packages that people are asking for without increasing his already substantial workload.

This in my opinion would improve Slackware without compromising it's integrity. For example the majority of users of Slackware use KDE, Gnome, or Xfce, should PV compile every other desktop environment for an ever decreasing number of users, this task would be better delegated.

I would guess that more than half of users prefer OpenOffice yet we have Koffice as the default install. This could be changed by freeing up space and reducing the number of duplicate applications on the install CD/DVD.

The only way to be able to do this would be to have a massive number of polls on all types of software that have been historically included, and then use the results to only have one or two pieces of software per category, with the remainder going to a separate package repository.

My tuppence worth.

samac

My rule of thumb would be including at least 2 "winner" alternatives, for each "common" subcategory:

Example:

- Office suite: OpenOffice, KOffice

- Media player: mplayer, xine/gxine, ...

- MTA: exim, sendmail

- database: mysql, ...

- web server: apache, ...

I think just adding about 15 commonly used packages, to cover primary needs, would be enough. From there, each one could look for his/her own vices.

We all more or less know, but a hint for choosing that list could be obtained by asking slackbuilds.org, alienbob, linuxpackages, slacky, etc., the statistics for their downloads. In many cases it would be only a matter of reviewing and modifying existing slackbuilds (and include them in /extra if you like).