So you have still the problem I didn't explicitly included word 'whole' when speaking about another apps rebuilding ? Doesn't it quite obvious from the context ?

See I didn't said it. I just stated the fact. See Slackware's ChangeLog.txt.
I didn't get it what are you trying here. My expression I don't consider desirable to have part of the system built with PAM and other part without has nothing to do if I like or don't like PAM. That's just your false speculation and improper implication.

Slackware is enough secure for a long time. I see no reasons for such external helpers.
Besides shadow and x11 you've probably forgotten gnupg f.E. I consider them as most serious from security aspect. Only DLG replaces them.

You've avoided an answer to my question what's so wrong with su or sudo and their frontends, what's so terrible after some time to enter root password into su dialog or use configured sudo ? Do such drastical changes even pay off ?

Other source for conflicting packages ie. packages contributed by both projects. It's so difficult to understand ? Regardless how much and how fast Dropline team makes sure their packages will work with Slackware release, it is an objective additional complication at keeping distro up-to-date. You have to rely on DLG people in addition. KDE users are spared from that. That's fact.

Once again. DLG is here longer then FRG or Gware though but they don't replace security critical packages (see above). For all that I would rather recommend to GNOME users another distro with full GNOME support.

Once again. Irrespective of similarity of apps to Slackware counterparts, these packages are built by external team with questionable cooperation with Slackware maintainer(s). You have to trust to another entity. That's it.


Dead-end arguments ? What are you talking about ? If I may judge style of your argumentation, you are trying to avoid simple questions by drowning answers in long and leading off sentences.

@eternal

yeah you're right, slack 10.2 has the latest firefox. if i recall it was out darn close to when mozilla announced its release on their site.

Then there's a serious problem with the Slackware package browser at http://www.slackware.org/pb, which was supposed to be keeping up-to-date information. That fairly sucks. :/

To address something else mentioned as a criticism, Slackware's package apparently hit the Changelog on June 3rd, Dropline's on the same day.

that's good to know for the package browser issue.

I have found it quite useful for finding what file is what when doing a minimal install and chasing dependecies.

I like the slapt-get for updates, works really well.

Still, would dropline gnome offer any benefits via Pam if I run in KDE? Any takers? Just wondering.

No, it's not, because your English is terrible (and this indisputable fact, not the ad hominem someone's sure to try to claim it is). It has nothing to do with the word 'whole' being present or not being present. In fact, I was the one who used the idiom 'as a whole'. The meaning remains the same without the idiom. It is not, nor has it ever been that I am aware of, Dropline's goal to make Slackware PAM-aware, or include PAM support in any other apps than it is currently doing, because it is not needed. You are the one who keeps attempting to imply that there's something else going on, and you are clearly wrong.

What kind of crazed argument is this? You "stated the fact" but you didn't actually say it? You didn't mention that you were quoting the Changelog, and it doesn't matter that you didn't mention it, because it's still (practically) only a half thought out thing--it is from an informal comment in a Changelog, not a press release or policy statement, and most importantly it is not the unquestionable word of God, Almighty. It refers to a decision made in the distant past which might actually be changed, and then where will you be? KDE is starting to use more and more things which simply require PAM to function properly, and Pat uses KDE. He's likely going to have to start cutting functionality or grit his teeth and start installing PAM rather soon at the rate things are progressing.

For future reference, if you expect to try to bring an argument to bear against someone, even if you're quoting what someone else said to use, you're expected to be able to defend that argument, not just say "Someone else said it. He's right and this is inarguable."

I saw what was in Slackware's Changelog, and pardon me for not recognizing that you were plagiarizing his text, although I've probably been reading PV's Changelogs for a lot longer than you. Unlike you, I have read the Changelog entries where he commented on his initial decision not to include PAM support in shadow, which is why I have at least a partial idea of what he was thinking when he made that decision, and still clearly a more complete notion of it than you do. At the time actually concured that for the majority of the desktop users, PAM was a waste of time from a developer's standpoint. (It's never been something that users have to do anything about, so it's not extra work for them). However, that was many years ago when the majority of the things PAM facilitates simply did not exist.

Furthermore, if adhering to Slackware's packages is so important to you, it seems to me that you'd be recommending that no one run GNOME at all, since Patrick "intentionally rejected" the idea of further maintaining any GNOME packages.

What I am "trying" is to point out you denying what you've said several times now. You said you didn't like PAM in the system because not everything is using PAM, then you said you didn't say it. I, on the other hand, have been repeatedly saying your complaint is baseless because it doesn't matter whether or not the other applications are using PAM because they don't need to. I've said why this is, and you don't seem to be able to understand it, so I'll spell it out for you. It does not matter one bit that sendmail isn't using PAM because you're never going to be logging in at the console using sendmail. What you seem to imply you'd rather have if PAM is around at all would dramatically increase the code exposure to include every network-accessible service. This would be increased risk for no gain which is usually referred to as "very bad security decision-making".

No, I didn't "forget". It would actually be nearly impossible for me to forget this. Again you ignore something that's been explained to you in order to create the facade of a counter-argument. Why do you insist on repeating the same questions over again and claiming they were never answered? Dropline moved to the newer gnupg branch in order to take advantage of a feature it had which Slackware didn't have any use for. It didn't make as much sense for Slackware to change over then since it didn't have GNOME anymore, but neither did it make sense for Dropline to eschew this new utility. It's now and has ever been trivially simple for someone to simply not install the Dropline-packaged gnupg if they want to be as paranoid as this. The same goes for the shadow and PAM packages, although they'll lose all the functionality these things provide.

You can consider this "most serious" all you like. You're just proving that you're falling back on dogma and paranoia to justify your otherwise baseless declarations. For it to be a "bad" thing (since I suppose you might later claim that you didn't actually mean you were implying that it was bad) instead of just a "serious" thing you would have to imply that there was some misdeed being attempted by the replacement of gnupg. Are you implying that they're up to something or are you just saying "I fear the things I don't understand" like it appears to me that you are?

I did no such thing as you claim. I said very clearly that using these involves extra steps which are needless. I also hinted that it might allow lazy users to continue executing things as root, rather than exit that subshell immediately. Again you have apparently deliberately overlooked part of a response in order to make a false counter-argument.

To go further towards destroying your argument, sudo properly configured and used will likely purge environment variables that will prevent the user from being able to launch any X applications. I'm not convinced you've even bothered to think through whether or not what you're saying should be done will even work.

*sigh* I really begin to think you're just wasting my time on purpose. The few packages which both projects provide don't conflict in any way the end user has to worry about. The Dropline packages simply have to replace them. I'll say this one last time... It is not possible to run a bug-free GNOME 2.14 and keep all of Pat's packages installed. While it might actualy be a fact that it is "additional complication", the updater reduces this to an absolute mininum. You are, to use an expression, 'making a mountain out of a molehill' because it's probably more work for people to change their root password on a regular basis. It is actually less work for someone to update Dropline packages than it is for them to update the base Slackware packages.

So in other words, you would rather people just use Mandriva or RedHat than use Slackware with GNOME. So is your purpose here to annoy everyone and drive them away from Slackware or what?

Dropline's co-operation with PV can not be considered "questionable" by anyone who knows a thing about it. Dropline sends him bug reports, which he usually seems to ignore, and that's about the extent of it. The two projects don't exactly need to work together to quite peacefully co-exist.

Long and leading off sentences? No, these are called direct, detailed and explicit answers. I'm truly sorry if all the reading is hurting your eyes or something, but you're the one who's been espousing the slanderous statements and mistruths.

This last response of yours has proven to me that you are either simply FUDing and wasting everyone's time with your dogma, or you're simply looking to start some kind of pointless fight with strangers. At the very least I figure enough has been said by now for anyone stumbling across this thread with a search engine or otherwise to know beyond a doubt which one of us is talking through their hat.

That depends but it's doubtful. Most of the "magic" happens due to symlinks pointing to consolehelper and a few other details which need to be provided for, and some of the packages would have to be built knowing that PAM was going to be present at run-time. Some of the "magic" happens via pam_console, although if you logged in with the PAM-aware GDM instead of the default KDM, those (automatic console device chownership) would happen properly. It seems a bit overkill to install the whole of Dropline just to get that functionality. (If PAM weren't such a pain in the neck I'd say just get a PAM package and recompile KDM and maybe KDE with support for it.)

LOL.

I remember I read once: "Linux is the only operating system which allows you to have fights with people running the same operating system." or something along those lines.

You people have too much free time.

hihihi, agreed, but what about us reading this?

You're probably getting more technical detail than you ever wanted to know about how modern systems are put together.