A few philosophical questions about Slackware
 

Hello, Slackware community.

I have a few questions, and I hope you'll excuse me both for the topics and for being frank.

1. Imagine a world where Slackware was not only the only operating system available, but also it would be able to have a say in how society is structured and technology is made available. In a few words, how would you describe Slackware's approach, especially with respect to non-tech people?

2. What is Slackware's view of Richard Stallman (and FSF) and why don't both parties cooperate on creating better free software?

3. Um, we're not in the '90s anymore. What's wrong with user friendliness in Slackware? Yes, I'm aware it exists for the experts; for them, probably even machine language is friendly enough. I'm asking about beginners.

Hello wishwell,

I am pretty sure it's not among the aims of Patrick Volkerding that this ever happen, so I'll skip this one.

Only Patrick Volkerding can answer this one. Maybe they already cooperate in some way, I really don't know.

Slackware does not pretend to fit everyone's needs (which would not be realistic anyway, even more so given the small number of contributors). But there are no lack of derivatives trying to be easier for beginners.

The below would be MY personal view on the below.


LOL it would be "benevolent dictatorship".

I do not know what is Slackware's view or for that matter i would not know what Patrick's view is on Richard and FSF. I'm not necessarily sure that i want a rms kind of free software. I do believe there is a merit to using "free" but closed sourced programs, drivers. I'm quite happy with nvidia's binary driver.

There is nothing wrong with user friendliness. Here is a question for you: what's wrong with taking a bit of time to learn something? Why does the new generation think they know (or must) know everything and do it well from the start?
This question reminded me of my 6 year old son, who is still impatient in certain things. He thinks he knows everything as well as the adults even if he has not even seen or tried the thing in question and gets very frustrated and upset when he fails.
I think this is the same with user friendliness, sometimes you might just need a little time to familiarize yourself with things before you rush into doing stuff. Watch this: https://youtu.be/hER0Qp6QJNU


Also my personal opinion is that if somebody is not mature and patient enough to get familiar with a tool before he uses it, should suffer the consequences. (go on, click on every banner/link/flashing stuff, like every conspiracy theory on FB, help that Nigerian prince transfer his heritage, etc...)


The above is strictly my personal opinion, and is not reflective of either Patrick V. or the wider Slackware community or the mythical creature know as "Slackware".

Slackware is an operating system curated by one man, not a moral crusade.

Assumes facts not in evidence. People who contribute to Slackware also regularly contribute outside Slackware. See e.g. man modprobe

It's not for you to unilaterally declare on behalf of the planet what user friendliness is, what Slackware is like, and what all beginners are like. All these things have plenty of room for diverse opinions. If you're trying to say "Slackware is too hard for me", that's ok, go on and say it, and then we can all go our separate ways.

Nothing. It's one of the most newbie friendly Linux distributions around... Look at how well commented most of the configuration files are!

Member response
 

Hi,
No excuse necessary!
In your imaginary world then you have set things the way you wish. Why does everybody need to be dictated by a OS or fad. We are talking about computers here. Right! Not world issues or what can happen if that computer mystically takes over your life. You are the one that should be controlling your destiny not us or the computer.
Who?? You talking about rms? Why should anyone participate with a activist that dictates when things do not go his way? It's my ball and I do not like the way you throw it. I'll take it an find someone who will softly pitch it!
Typical turn key that could not find a lock if it was about to secure the door. Help me, I do not know how to tie my shoes but I sure can slip on my slippers. But why do I trip when the slippers slip off? Simplistic views are not something a Slacker should actually pay any attention too. But break things down in terms so one can understand Slackware issues.
Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!
:hattip:

Subgenius would be the official state church, and Grateful Dead the king's royal musicians. All communication with the king would occur through /var/spool/mail and the requests for -current thread. The Changelogs would replace all history books. New laws would get passed, but only "when they are ready."

That's to keep the peons from revolting, of course.

I don't know about the other two questions, but Slackware was friendly in the 90s and it's friendly now, for all types of users. I think you mean to ask "why does everyone think Slackware is so difficult?"

Based on most folks I've seen discussing Slackware's apparent expert-level requirements, it appears that most of these folks who have tried to use Slackware get only as far as step 1 - partitioning your drive - where they get frustrated at this obviously impossible task and decide that this is the sort of thing for experts. Forget the fact that setup is a breeze after that (and to be honest, typing "fdisk /dev/sdX", "n", then pressing enter a bunch of times isn't exactly rocket surgery), and when you're done you have a complete, robust system that will do exactly what you tell it and nothing more.

They also tend to go on about dependency resolution/software repository/etc. - but there are tools for that if that's your sort of thing, just like in other distros.

montagdude, you made my day :)

Not even going to try to answer the first one.

Well, considering Slackware isn't running completely free software as the FSF sees them (see https://freeslack.net), I don't think Pat's view is nearly as "intense" as Richard Stallman's. Also, for the most part, Slackware doesn't create free software, it just packages it into a distribution, so I'm not sure how they could "cooperate" except to cripple Slackware by removing non-free (as it speech) software and/or firmware.

You can't throw this out there and then not substantiate it with anything. Most people think Slackware is "hard" because it doesn't have a partitioner available in the installer and the installer is text-based. Is this your reasons for calling it hard? cfdisk is graphical enough for most users, but otherwise, the text-based installer is just aesthetic and have nothing to do with the difficulty of the installer. Just hit enter several times, select Full and let it do its thing.

If you're calling the actual OS not user friendly, then again, tell us why. I find Slackware extremely user friendly. My mom has even ran it without issue (other than finding where things are at in the "start menu"). If you're referring to why Slackware doesn't create graphical tools to manage the extremely well-commented conf files, well, that's somewhere we can agree to disagree. Pat's goal is to provide software in Slackware as close to the way the original developers intended it. That means he doesn't create random tools to manage those when the developers don't do it themselves. conf files are not difficult to edit and you can even do it with graphical text editors.

If a beginner is willing to read the ample documentation that is freely available then Slackware is a simple, straight forward distribution. Expecting a new Slackware user to be able to read documentation is not unreasonable. I doubt that Mr. Volkerding will make Slackware more user friendly(pointy-clicky). I like Slackware just the way it is. We Slackware users appreciate the elegant simplicity of our operating system.

Wishwell, what do you mean by user-friendly: 1) a torch swinging backwards and forwards -endlessly- with some comment that your friend is searching for what you're looking for or 2) the plain message 'sorry' in a terminal (because it cannot be done what you're after)?

For me the latter beats all torches as it illuminates.....it's a pointer that you should change/learn something. And that is very user-friendly; it does not treat you, the user, as someone stupid...

We can't answer for Richard Stallman. But I do know the following:

1. Stallman's organization, the FSF, has already chosen a distro to be involved with (Debian)

2. Slackware has always been more free about including technically-less-free-software than some other distros, such as Debian. For example, It's always been able to to play MP3s out of the box.

@ bassmadrigal and those who asked what I mean by “user friendly”;

This basically illustrates what I’ve meant by “user friendliness” (don’t know why people just jump so fast to conclusions sometimes…):

https://fossbytes.com/linus-torvalds...-linux-debian/

Richard Stallman also uses Trisquel, although there are other blob free distros that he could employ. Maybe because, although a technical person, prefers to save a few hours of extra installing and post install configuring?

If these two free software titans prefer things done the simple way, there must be wisdom in that.

@ brobr;

By "user friendly" I mean a torch that sets on fire the terminal “sorry” (because there should be nothing to be sorry about anymore) and with it the old gate of the rusty past, thus opening the way to Alice’s wonderland – clear blue sky above the hills, cute flowers, funny mushrooms, happy bees and unicorns...

So, you link to an article about Debain being difficult to install 10 years ago? Why couldn't you simply say you thought the Slackware installer is not user friendly? You wouldn't even need to link to anything (especially when that doesn't even discuss Slackware).

Yes, you are expected to partition your own drive, but you can do that using the semi-graphical cfdisk (it uses curses). Yes, the installer doesn't have fancy click through screens, but it still provides you a "wizard" and walks you through the install. If it wasn't user friendly, you'd have to install those packages manually, using installpkg.

People had to "jump to conclusions" because you didn't provide any context. We can't read your mind and could only guess why you consider Slackware to not be user friendly.

The "simple" way is NOT to run blob-free. Blob-free makes things quite a bit more difficult, but you have the advantage to run something completely free (as FSF defines it). I'd be quite amused if you consider running blob free to be "user friendly", because it would actually put a lot more work on the user to ensure they get hardware that can function as they need it to without blobs. Most users who would boot a blob-free distro would find many things didn't work (wifi, video acceleration, etc) because of the lack of blobs. That is not user friendly.

So, you want a completely graphical experience. That's great and may be perfect for you. But it is not something I desire. I almost always have a shell open (usually two or more konsole windows with several tabs in each). There is no single distro that is perfect for everyone. *I* consider Slackware to be user friendly, just as *I* consider Windows 10 to be anti-user friendly (anything that forces a reboot to update the program without user intervention is far from user friendly in my book -- I can't tell you how much I've lost because of that).

I'd much rather Pat and team put their work into making a stable distro than to create graphical programs to change conf files when I can easily do that myself. Creating those programs would take time and I'd rather they put that time into making sure all the packages work together as they should.

If Slackware's "difficult" installer and use of conf files is too difficult for you, then jump on the fedora, ubuntu, or debian trains. There's a reason those distros are popular, just as there's a reason that Slackware is the oldest surviving Linux distro. Bottom line, use what's best for you.