a good package manager, and a GUI one would be more popular. The business users should want to be well supported, but a few libs and softwares can't be found from the repos

Nothing, it's fine the way it is and the way it's always come out. Screw the gui-for-everything/everyone-and-their-pet-poodle. If someone can't use the command line for an extremely simple 'installpkg', 'upgradepkg', 'removepkg'...they need to go back to that waste-of-air non-conforming Ubuntu crap.

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Hmmm ... there's always room for improvements. Only Luddites stay in the past. I'd love to see LibreOffice become a standard. And multi-lib to become a permanent fixture in the standard 64bit release too.

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There is a gui front end for package management in slacbuilds, for those slackers that want one. See this link

-->http://qtgzmanager.wordpress.com/

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what irgunII said

and been using pure 64 haven't needed multilib, don't want it merged

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What ^ said.

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Slackware is a conservative distro that provides the end user with a great stability and efficient tools.

Most users here would qualify the "bells and whistles" provided on other distro as "bloat".

And it's a feeling that I agree with too.

I went to Slackware mainly because I was tired of all the crappy GUI wrapper that sell you dreams but ends up wrecking havoc on your system.

There's plenty of distro that ships with the tools you are requesting.

On a more general side note : You can't design a "one size fits all" distro.

If Slackware was using the same approach as the so called "mainstream" distro, then Slackware would lose its identity.

And no one will benefit from that at all.

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Slackware already has a great package manager.

And, funny: the regulars just had a thread about what they'd see in Slackware in the future:

Suggestion: include MATE in official Slackware

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Why do you believe that pkgtools/slackpkg are not good? They seem pretty decent to me and I have a fair amount of experience with rpm (including front ends such as yum, urmpi, zypper), dpkg/apt, pacman, etc.

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There is no sense in improvement for improvement's sake. It's the consumer driven society we live in which has everyone brainwashed to believe that everything needs to be continually improved and that anyone who wants to stick to something tried and tested is somehow hampering progress or afraid of change. If something works, then it works and doesn't need to be fixed. You can polish and improve how something already works, without the "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" approach we've been seeing in recent times.

There are good improvements - e.g. adding a useful option that people will use and others will not use, as they see fit, to a command line tool.

There are bad "improvements" - e.g. adding a GUI to something which does not need a GUI, adding code complexity, removing options, removing ease of configuration and creating something which is in fact worse than it's predecessor, but to many is "progress" simply because it's graphical.

If some people want one click installs and automagic setup of packages with dependency resolution - there are other distros which provide that in abundance. Why reinvent the wheel? Not every distro needs to compete in the same market - "user friendly desktop for dummies".

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No way should multilib be installed by default. It could maybe be in extra/ or something. But who wants the hassle of having to blacklist stuff and be careful of upgrades when they may not even be using it?

I do use multilib on two boxes, but I wouldn't have it hoisted on people by default.

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Such as?

There is nothing stopping you making a slackbuild and submitting it to slackbuilds,org.

xine-1.2.xx instead of xine-lib-1.1.21

I don't see the need for any deep changes at all. I used to install Dropline Gnome just to resolve some GTK app dependency issues with basically one fell stroke but since the growth of Slackpacks by the time I do the next fresh install (this one is 5 upgrades deep) unless there is some new wifi-like hardware support problem requiring the latest kernel, it looks all calm seas and sunny skies to me.

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I am perfectly fine with what Slackware ships

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