"Dropline also seems have improved greatly since the last time I used it. I am impressed. Not impressed enough to switch to GNOME , but still impressed."

You said that Dropline has improved greatly since the last time that you used it. Just out of curiosity, what did you not like about it before?

All software usually improves over time.

However, at least _I_ remember that the only problems that _I_ ever had with Gnome, including back when Todd was in charge, was simply that I didn't like gnome. There was never _anything_ wrong with Dropline, at least to the end user.

I was a KDE user since Mandrake 7.2. But over the years, my tastes changed, and I realized that Gnome was _always_ the first to incorporate new and interesting features, and simply that I liked the way it looked and ran.

I always used to use Debian's gnome, because as far as I knew, it was the best and most complete gnome. Eventually when I switched to slackware, I found that Pat's gnome did not have _any_ of those "new and interesting" features I wanted, so I installed dropline, because that was there.

Since then, Dropline has changed dramatically, and now it is arguably one of the best Gnome distros around, up there with Fedora's and Ubuntu's offerings, but unfortunately, some users around here like to pretend it's still 2002(in more ways than one...), and can't get over the _obviously_ outdated criticisms of dropline, and just blindly follow Pat.

Anybody who has used Dropline will tell you, that as long as you like gnome, you will like Dropline, pretty much guaranteed, and will not question ANY of Dropline's policies, because we just want a Gnome desktop to work perfectly, and that is exactly what dropline provides.

However, those who do not like gnome will not like Dropline no matter what it does, simply because they do not like gnome in the first place.


And there you go. "Dropline tampers with your original system."... And maybe it does. It converts a Slackware install into a Slackware install with a perfectly working gnome. And that's what Dropline users want, have always wanted, and probably will always want, because there is no point in having a partially working desktop.


See, if you read over your problems, you'll see that they are very specific, and probably would only affect either ONLY you, or maybe .03% of Gnome users. And see, you could have easily fixed them. Instead of trying to fix your problems logically, you post the SAME message, EIGHT times, not only doing something illogical, but also breaking the rules of this forum, just to tell people "don't use dropline", because it "caused" you very specific, dropline-unrelated problems, in a setup that VERY few users are actually using.

See, you WANTED dropline to fail, because you WANTED to say bad things about it. You could have very easily asked for help on the Dropline forums, where you woudl have promplty recieved it. But since you did not even attempt to ask for help from the dropline devs, it's quite obvious that you only wanted to fail so that you could say that dropline sucks, despite the fact that if you had asked for help, you probably would have gotten it.

I believe that this post is a good indicator of what may be the issue here:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...=1#post2329170

It's interesting to see a thread started with a question about installing Gnome on Slackware in general to be so DLG specific...

Back to the original issue at hand, and my own personal observations. A coworker has installed Ubuntu on a lab machine (not Slackware + Gnome, obviously, but certainly a Gnome-centered DE). The things I don't like about it are due to changes in Gnome, not specifically to any particular Gnome install.

For example, I was dismayed to see that XScreensaver has been replaced by gnome-screensaver, which seems to have adopted the same ass-backward interface that I dislike in KDE (not being able to select which hacks are enabled). I imagine since Slack comes with XScreensaver you'll have the choice of either once some flavour of Gnome is installed, but it steers me further away from Gnome.

The changes to the gnome-games is another example. To be honest, they're one of the only components of Gnome that I use regularly (other than GThumb). Maybe it's just that I was used to the older artwork, but GTali was better with the pumpkins.

Anyway, I think it's funny hearing the DLG people talk about the other "Gnome for Slack" (GfS) developers as if they're small niche fillers, when I see them much the same way. I mean, what draws people to Slackware? Probably not having things "just work" out of the box, which of course is nice, but rather customizability, the ability to see the inner workings, and choice. Just about all of the GfS projects seem to defy this, to my mind.

The comment by zborgerd "Telling all users that they should type silly mount commands when they pop in a CD or USB disk is, frankly, absurd" is very telling to me...

If I were installing a system tomorrow, I'd probably go with Slack-current and check out customizing GARNOME or JHBuild for Gnome stuff. I mean, if I wanted everything done for me I would have chosen a different distro. Call me crazy.

I think that mentality is crazy though. It's not 1998 anymore, and automounting is the future, and I GUARNATEE that by 2008 every single operating system, every single distro, adn every single windowmanager will offer it, and people won't even remember why they didn't want it in the first place.

I regularly plug in multiple devices, and regularly transfer data between them. Sometimes there are as many as 6 USB thumb drives in my computer at a time, and it is literally a bitch to have to create mountpoints for all six of them, and then mount them, then move data, then unmount them, and then remove the mount points(because I already have 8 things in /mnt anyway, I don't need to have a /mnt/usb1 /mnt/usb2 /mnt/usb3 /mnt/usb4 /mnt/usb5 /mnt/usb6 on there too. With automounting, I can simply plug the device in, and have it create a mountpoint and then mount it automatically, and then I can simply copy data to it and remove it, and the mount point is automatically removed too.

It's 900% more efficient, more elegant, and less "hacky". Not to mention that when doing manually, when copying around data I have to remember, "Ok, did I mount the PNY 128MB as /mnt/usb3 or /mnt/usb6?" when going to unmount it. Using gnome, I don't have to remember which mountpoints the USB thumb drives are on.

It also greatly helps and speeds up GREATLY different operations, such as if I insert a blank/audio cd or a DVD, I can automatically set a program to open up and save time, or even when inserting a Digital Camera or a Printer/Scanner, I can set a command to automatically run when I do that. Or if I am inserting an unlabled CD, I can quickly find out what it is without having to type any commands, and if it is not what I wanted I can remove it and insert another quickly, again no commands necessary.

Not to mention I can simply disable this if I want to pretend it's still 1985 and do it the inefficient, confusing, and potentially damaging manual way.

We actually feel the same way. We use Xscreensaver in DLG. I don't much care for Gnome Screensaver... At least at this point.

I tend to refer to the other projects that way because I don't want to single out any other project specifically. I can speak for the project that I am a part of, but I try to be careful about commenting on another team's work. It really has nothing to do with whether or not they are niche projects or not. Like you indicate, we are probably all niche projects to some degree. Slackware, while popular for what it is, is still a niche distribution as well.

I don't believe that any of the projects defy customizability. Adding onto Slackware is, in itself, customization. I don't think that anyone wants to take choice away. If that's the impression that anyone gets because we attempt to make things more user-friendly in some respects, then I believe that they are simply getting the wrong impression.


Well, to follow-up with what I mentioned above... There are only so many times that you have to manually mount a CDROM, USB disk, camera, mp3 player, or run a script to detect a wifi access point, before it gets stupid. If you like to do that, then there is nothing wrong with that. Some folks have other things that they'd rather do though (like wasting all of their free time building GNOME for less than peanuts).

In this case I would have /mnt/pny128 just for that device. But that's me

One of the things that bugs me about Windows is the autorun feature - sometimes I'll insert a device and actually not want to use it right away. I also don't always want to do the same thing with the device each time. But again, that's me.

Well I'd rather have it disabled by default, and enable it if I want. Like I said before, if I wanted that choice automatically made for me I probably wouldn't have chosen Slackware.

WHAT!?!! You don't use Gnome Screensaver? DLG isn't a proper Gnome then! DISBAND THE PROJECT!!!

Linux is a niche OS, for that matter

There are obviously perfectly legitimate reasons why people choose DLG for Gnome with Slackware, but I often wonder if the other choices are being drowned out. Now having proponents does speak something for itself, and having a developer actively participating in external forums even more so, but from what I've seen it's very difficult for anyone to discuss alternatives to DLG without the thread ultimately discussing the merits of DLG (and the mildly derisive comments regarding the other choices doesn't sit well with me).

I couldn't agree more. In fact, it seems like _any_ general gnome thread always turns into a DLG advocacy campaign... I'd like to believe that's not intentional but in some cases I'm not entirely sure.

Concerning the 1985 "mentality", I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but that's why alot of people use Slackware. If I wanted all the bells and whistle's that were just recently stated, I'd use Windows... But that's just me. When you make an OS "user friendly" what you often end up doing 9x out of 10 is hide the OS from the user. Soon, we''ll have a new generation of incompentent Linux users who have no idea what a terminal is. We will have people installing a 300Mb "XYZ Linux Service pack 2" just to get a JVM when all they had to do was google for 'java'.... You guys ever browse the MS forums? It can be downright amazing at how a "user friendly" OS can suck every last ounce of brains from a person...

I couldn't agree more. Isn't that why we all switched. To be able to gain control and give the OS back truly to the user. Hell I find myself daily sittin at work trying to find ways I can make Windows more like linux instead of trying to make linux more like windows. If windows is so user friendly then why do people have so much trouble out of it.

Well I on the other hand spend most of my time doing actual work. I don't care if Windows acts like Windows or Linux, when I sit on the PC, I want to Do My Work(tm).

Sure, I still _know_ that I _could_ mount my devices manually, and that I could run a Gnome with features disabled, but at the same time, I would rather actually do REAL work than do that stuff.

Me and 98% of all other people out there.

Besides it's not like dropline users are dumb, and it's not like automounting makes users dumb either. Linux is still linux. If you are advanced enough to mount devices manually, and if you want to waste the time to do it too, then you are certainly smart enough, and certainly could afford to take the few seconds to simply disable automounting.

But you are in the minority, and I guarantee you will use automounting eventually, because Slackware itself is not against automounting. Eventually KDE/Gnome are going to make Hal/dbus/2.6 required. And then when they do, you will see that in Slackware, and you probably will see how much more efficient it really is.

Believe me, I've done both, I've had to manually mount my devicies for at least 10 years, and I have only had automounting for about 2, and I can safely say I VASTLY prefer automounting. And I certainly am smart enough to "do it manually" if I wanted to.

But see, Slackware makes TONS of choices for you. All distros and DE/WMs have defaults set, well, by default. The way that Gnome does it is if you are smart and able enough to actually disable something, then you can easily disable it, but if you are too dumb to do that yourself, then you probably don't want it disabled anyway.

And besides Freerock also has Gnome automounting by default now, as do Gentoo/Arch/Debian/Crux.(All what I would consider targeting the ADvanced user) Infact, the ONLY gnome distro that doesn't, as far as I know off the top of my head, is FreeBSD, and they are VERY actively working on making a Hal type program for FreeBSD that could enable automounting on that platform too, and I consider FreeBSD to be a much more "nothing automatically for you" OS than slackware, and even they can see that Automounting is good.

Think about it. Slackware has Cron jobs set by default. That is NO different from having automounting set by default. I guess you should search for another distro then. Unless for some reason you don't care about cron jobs being set by default and yet do for automounting...

Also, automatic tools exist everywhere in linux. Think about it. I bet you are using Hotplug right now. But when it was first introduced, people like people in this thread HATED the idea of hotplug, but now I bet that you ARE using hotplug. Even though it IS automatic, and MUCH more "intrusive" than automounting.

Also, what about tools like "alsaconf", are they not automatic too? Don't they automatically set volume levels and also which modules to be loaded? The slackware way, according to you, would be to manually edit /etc/modprobe.conf, and then insert every module you need manually. But I bet you used alsaconf to set your soundcard, didn't you? Or maybe even scarier, Hotplug probably automatically detected it for you....


Can't you see? Automatic tools are everywhere, and often times the only people who speak against them are the people who have never even used them, and when they do use them, they quickly shut up and realize that Hotplug is good, and such.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Then God said, "Let there be automounting" and there was automounting. God saw that automounting was good and it was so....

I'm not sure why 'what everyone else is doing' has anything to do with it tho... That's not the first time you've said that. I hope everyone doesn't start jumping off bridges cause' you'll be in a world of hurt.

I can also 'guarantee' that I won't be using automounting. Most of my _work_ is done from a terminal. It's not overly strenous to type 'mount /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom"... If I had multiple devices, which I don't, I'd make a script with arguements. "mymount flash" "mymount cdrom"... That's about as automated as this guy likes to get..

I'm not sure why liquid, but I find it very inticing to argue with you... Let's create a LinuxQuestions.org Debate Team... We can have weekly debates about applications, features and a whole slew of stuff...

I do have multiple devices though, and ultimately, if there was no automounting now, I would probably create scripts that would allow me to type in, "automount floppy" or "automount pny128". But eventually, i'd probably set it so that those scripts ran automatically when I inserted the devices. >_>

Then, essentially I have automounting all over again.



It's not so much "Automounting rocks, and everyone should use it." (even though it does and they should >_>), but it's more of a, "Automated tools exist, are used by slackware, and are usually equal to their manual counterparts."

I like hotplug for example. I like plugging in a PCI device, turning my PC on, and then having my OS detect and configure it, with minimal interference by me.

I LIKE it when if I plug in a USB headset, Rhythmbox will automatically start to play sound through it, because opening up a terminal and doing that stuff manually takes time, and by the time I type in the commands I need, I could have already listened to the song that I wanted to if it was automatic.


I want to have things happen automatically if they are simple, but if they are too complicated, I want to do them manually.

Automounting is a simple thing that can happen automatically, because you'd have to be doing something VERY, VERY complicated for an automount to screw up.

I always configure things manually, and I always install software manually, and upgrade manually, and create my packages manually, because those things have a high chance of screwing up if not done perfectly, but other things like automounting, or autoconnecting to Wireless APs when they are in range(if on a laptop) are relatively fool-proof and save a lot of time.

Just out of curiosity, what are these mildly derisive comments that you speak of in regards to the other choices? On the contrary, I believe that most folks (except for blatant trolls and the misinformed) are quite supportive of all of the GNOME options for Slackware.

i for one have tried freerock before using dlg and i can say that its a good package of gnome for slackware. the only reason for me in shifting to dlg is that they [dlg] offer the latest gnome stable version. other than that, they [all gnome packers for slackware] all do a great job of giving slackers choices.

Yes, I've also used Freerock and found it to be an exceptional choice for Gnome (slackware). I also like dlg for having the latest release of Gnome; and the update, package-management features. My preference is dlg, but, in my opinion I feel there is no best desktop environment.
Use Gnome, KDE, Flux, XFce, what ever works:-)