Alien Bob (Eric Hameleers) All the work that is done for us at a cost.
 

Hi,

I am posting this to bring a issue up for my fellow Slackware users.
Eric, I apologize if my taking liberties to post this but I truly feel as Slackware users we should help lessen the burdens.

Alien Bob (Eric Hameleers) has unselfishly produced packages for our use or enhancement for our Slackware but at a personal cost; Please notice the above underlined text.
Personally, in no way do I work for Eric or Slackware. He(Eric) did not solicit me to post, I've done this on my own. All my involvement is to promote a great Gnu/Linux. Eric should not have the burden totally on himself. If you wish to help then go to his blog via ; I am sure that Eric would appreciate any help given. I know what it costs to run servers let alone maintain units.
Hopefully this helps Eric by lessening the burden.

:hattip:

Thanks for posting this. Eric's monumental efforts have been highly valuable in the last few months of my getting to know Slackware. It would have been a harder journey without him. There are a select few individuals who really make the distro what it is and Eric is one of them. Whenever I download a large binary put together by him I think, "God, does this guy never stop?". He deserves whatever help can be given. Truly a pillar of the community.

ok

Shall we donate?

I donated to Eric once a while back.

I have used Eric's work many times and I have just now made a donation, thanks Eric for your dedication!

And I still love it when Eric 'loses it' on these forums :)

Agree. It's usually exactly what I am thinking too.

However, who could blame him for losing it from time to time? It always happens after someone starts asking for more without making any of the effort to contribute back. Open source is meant to be a cyclic process where the users give back. All too often someone complains about something, is vague, and will not do any of the work to help out.

Anyways, thanks to Eric for all his hard work. If I wasn't on a fixed income I would donate monthly to him. I do pay for a Slackware DVD subscription though. Do what you can to keep the Slackware machine churning!

Exactly! I'm a retired school teacher on a pension. I'm happy to have a Slackware subscription, and I buy stuff from the Slackware store from time to time.

The donate page doesn't like me. When the "donate" field appeared, I was unable to enter an amount. Firefox 52.8.0 on Slackware 14.2 with Noscript 5.1.8.4 set to scripts allowed.

Donated.
I have a subscription too. Works out at about £50 per release (another reason, apart from those mentioned in the other thread, to be grateful it's not every six months. :) )

When I entered an amount and logged into Paypal, it showed me the amount and gave me an opportunity to change it.

Perhaps you could try submitting the 0.00 from Eric's page and then changing it to whatever when Paypal prompts you?

Eric's done a magnificent job! Goog for bringing this up.
Of course I'll make a donation.

Thanks alot Eric.

Thanks for bringing this up onebuck!

Member response
 

Hi,

Your Welcome!

In Eric's blog you can find loads of information. I was reading his blog when I noticed his entry for "Having two servers running 24/7 is hurting my wallet because of the electricity bill."

All his work has been and still is very important for the Slackware community and his unselfish work sometimes can bear a burden. He should not have the burden of a monetary sense. That is just taking away from his family's well being.

I am glad to bring this to the attention of the community.

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!
:hattip:

I like that he accepts crypto.... I *wish* PV would.

just sayin'

Member response
 

Hi,

My guess is that http://www.slackware.com/ site does not get much maintenance. The site has been the same for years. Long over due for a upgrade. :)

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!
:hattip:

No, leave that site as it is - in case floppy disks make a comeback, like vinyl for hi-fi.

Exactly. The site is great as it is. No oversized graphics for those blinded by super resolutions, no endless scroll to read a sentence of text, clean, fast, and no fluff. Just what you need and no less and no more. Puns fully intended.

i guess one could say that website is KISS ;)

that's why I like it. I am tired of changes for the sake of the change itself. I do hate the modern trends in web-page design. Information (apart from the "News" section) can be updated, of course.

Yes, I know I sound like a grumpy old man :p

And cassette tapes and digital watches. All tech has nostalgia value. Even Slackware does to an extent, hence... {EDIT: re lower down in this post, now I see the import of this comment}

I'm interested to see your reasoning for this, onebuck. Coming from a lot of other posters I would just discount this as lack of understanding of Slackware's philosophy, but from you, the comment takes on another tinge. Care to elaborate? What kind of an update? Is it not perfectly functional just like the old Slackware installer, which, as far as I can tell, has hardly changed at all since the '90s?

EDIT:

Right, now I get it. The site is in something of a timewarp with regard to the install instructions:

But other parts are right up to date - packages, security advisories etc. I suppose anyone who really wants to get to know Slackware knows what they are in for. Maybe all the talk of floppies is a deterrent.

Member response
 

Hi,

I did not mean to come off as negative with my comment. It's just that the site does and has remained the same format for a long time. Sure most information is up to date but some things are not up to present state of web pages we now see. Also I was referring to the cryptocurrency and the web site still used same monetary exchange methods via PayPal & credit cards. Just was not clear enough. :(

Yes, the clean simplicity of the site does align with the requirements that meet Slackware's philosophy. But comparing to most sites it is still not current web techniques. The site is very linear. So one can get to the required information or access to it.

No offense intended.
Hope this helps.
:hattip:

That is by all means a virtue. The current state of most modern web pages is outright atrocious.

If we are just talking about the design of the site, I have to elaborate on orbea's point. Some sites are horrendously coded these days. I notice this probably more than most since I do my Slackware browsing on a netbook: yes, I am in the minority in doing so, but how many of us - Slackers or otherwise - really care about flashy design? Surely webdesign should be about content before design, and the design should just smooth and facilitate access to that content, whilst looking attractive and appealing. I think that newer payment techniques could be integrated into the new Slack site - and obviously some parts of it do need updating - but overall I think the design should remain the same.

Member response
 

Hi,

I am not talking about flashy designs but methods to bring the site to the 21 century. Integration techniques would do the site a great service and provide clean service to everyone.

Just my opinion.

Hope this helps.
:hattip:

Can you elaborate on what you mean by this? Specific examples? Integration techniques seems like a very loose and vague goalpost without any clearly defined benefits.

Member response
 

Hi,

Integration the formation of support for the site so that things can be easily managed. You can find several Website integration techniques that enhance the web site product and flow for information and design so data is collectively thus allow better web design.

We are getting off topic here so my suggestion is to DuckDuckGo for 'Web integration' and you can find several examples of the use.

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!
:hattip:

You're the one that brought it up...but if you don't want to answer my question you can just say so. In case you didn't understand the question, it was what specific integration techniques could be an improvement to slackware.com and in which ways? Or in other words what things need to be more easily managed?

As far as I can tell slackware.com is a simple, fast and easy to read site. Besides some minor updates to content I don't see how it could improve.

Member response
 

Hi,

I know that original statement was made by me. I think integration would help the Slackware site. Just my opinion. I suggested too you to do a search.

I believe that answer was provided and will not continue to take this thread off topic.

No further discussion by me on this off topic subject.

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!
:hattip:

onebuck, have you sent PV a PM with any of those ideas?

PS: I like the classic website, and I am a fan of simple web design is the best web design. Ideally, one should not even realize they are reading/viewing a website, as simple as holding a piece of paper or reading a book.

An hour spent on the website is an hour not spent making Slackware better.

Do we want that?

Hi,
Just donated via the little button on Eric's blog .. no problems. paypal did its thing very nicely ... I use vivaldi on 14.2 if that matters.

Modern website design??? .. UUUGGHH .. all that yellow text on an orange background! ... or some such malarky.
For those of us who are a "certain age" whose eyesight is not what it used to be, Slackware's simple, easy to read, FAMILIAR website is just right.

cheers
pete

pete hilton
saruman@ruvolo-hilton.org

Well-known Old Fart and Curmudgeon

Alien Bob (Eric Hameleers) All the work that is done for us at a cost.
 

I really appreciate the fact that Slackware.com can be viewed with Firefox just as easily as Links, ELinks, or any other text based browsers. K.I.S.S. The rest of the Linux world has lost sight of simplicity.

Slackware.com needs a link to https://docs.slackware.com/ on its main page.

It's got one. Look again.

Made a modest non-recurring donation as I use a good range of alienbob's builds.

Edit: electricity cost is estimated at 50 euros per month per server according to a comment on alienbob's blog.

Maybe it is something to be considered. Has anyone actually tried to use the Slackware site? Try to follow links in the FAQ for instance. Look at the questions and see if they are a good fit for modern computers and the latest release of Slackware. Are they a good fit? What would a newcomer think?

I like the fact that the Slackware site is accessible with any type of web browser, even a text based browser like lynx. A newcomer going to Slackware.com will know that we're not a pointy-clicky distro. Research and reading is required.

I just followed every link provided on the slackware.com front page, and several of the links on the pages they linked.

All of them were relevant and up to date, and there is no shortage of quality content.

If I were to criticize at all, it's that there's an awkward functional overlap between the FAQ and the slackbook. The FAQ is incomplete (as a FAQ should be), but contains things that one would expect to find in the slackbook, and someone browsing the FAQ should be made aware that more help is available in the slackbook.

So perhaps the FAQ could be re-implemented as deep links into the slackbook (and the answers moved to the slackbook when not already there), or decorated with "for more on this subject" links to the slackbook.

This is a minor quibble, though, and I stand by my previous position -- the website is good enough as-is, and given a choice between working on it for an hour and working on Slackware for an hour, I'd vote for the latter (if I got a vote, which I don't, which is fine).

Frequently Asked Questions - In this day and age how many questions get asked concerning floppy disk installation? FREQUENTLY asked questions should be just that!

Slackware General FAQ
http://www.slackware.com/faq/do_faq.php?faq=general

Questions are numbered Q0, Q1, Q2, etc. while the answers are numbered Q, Q, Q, etc. I find this odd and it makes it hard to find the correct answer for each question given that some questions are anchored to the wrong answers and some questions even lack an anchor altogether. It would make more sense for A1 to be the answer for Q1.

Q0 - This question actually is rather dated. The question and the answer make not much sense in a world where we are waiting for Slackware 15 to be released.

Q2 is anchored to answer Q. The content of this answer is correctly related to the question however the answer should no longer include Alpha and SPARC systems but rather should include the S/390, S/390x, and ARM systems but they are mentioned on the page http://www.slackware.com/ports so maybe this question is not needed at all.

Q3 has no anchor.

Q4 is anchored to the answer for Q3.

Q5 is anchored to the answer for Q4.

Q6 - This question itself is actually rather dated. It implies that Slackware is still stuck in the days of floppy disks and that iso releases will be sometime in the future. It is anchored to the answer for Q5. Newcomers to Slackware are sure to be confused by this question.

Q7 has no anchor.

I did not notice any issues with the Slackware site, but also a long time Linux user and habitual distro hopper at times. So I do not know what a newcomer expects. When I was new too Linux (2000) I expected to learn and adopt in accordance to what the veterans expected. Call me old fashioned but I would expect the same of newcomers today.

George you know what to do. If the FAQ and documentation is not to your liking, roll up the sleeves and write and contribute. :-)

The only "issue" may perhaps be the removal of the old 13.37 gif of the Slackware logo (the one that changes to 1337sp34k every now and then. :D