What I've seen here is Darth raise points. I don't agree with all of them, but he has put together a distro himself, so I like to hear what he has to say. And when it comes to the kind of bullying he's been on the end of for a long time here now I don't agree with any of it. This forum is here to allow people give their opinions about Slackware. Anybody not happy with people giving opinions at odds with theirs would probably be better off setting up a forum where everybody sings from the same hymn sheet.

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You're moving the goalposts. I thought we were talking about users incessantly harping on their own preferences. I am more than happy to hear Darth's opinion (and I even said as much in response to one of your earlier posts), as I think it provides a valuable counterpoint to the "mainstream" opinion. What I am not happy about is reading the same thing every day in multiple threads over a period of weeks or months, often being off-topic and derailing the actual purpose of the thread, and often consisting of more than 50% unsubstantiated FUD surrounding the nugget of truth.

Anyway, speaking of off-topic, this whole Qt5 discussion is just that, so I will end my comments with this post.

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There are users who don't like polluting their disks with software they don't want, whether or not it's just sitting there on the disk doing nothing. If they don't want it then it's not exactly "useful" to them. Nor does one user have to explain or clarify his position to another user, since both users are just that - users of Slackware, and no more. There should be no hierarchy here of self-appointed spokespersons, no self-appointed arbiters of taste. Nobody speaks for Darth here, other than Darth. He has his opinions about what should be included and if it wasn't for some people wading in to denounce him whenever he opens his mouth none of these threads would ever end up as flamewars.

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If you consider FUD the claim that "Plasma5 is still broken" when many asks again and again to be included even in the requests thread, permit me to confirm from my own experience that it is really still broken.

And I like to thanks him for the efforts on debugging the graphical artifacts on Plasma5 with certain graphics cards, one which happend to own too.

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What points did he raise? The only one I noticed was that including qt5 would "pollute" Slackware 15.0. I wanted to know why he considers it pollution considering the prevalence of qt-based software out there.

I've agreed with Darth on certain things in the past (it's not common, but it does happen), but he loves to throw controversial things out usually without presenting solid reasons for the proposed changes (like this one). There's even been times when forum members (me included) suggested better ways to present his ideas that would make people more receptive to listening, but he refuses to change.

Then, as montagdude mentioned, he will consistently bring up his points in other threads, usually derailing those. This thread was a prime example. We were discussing whether or not Plasma5 was ready to be in Slackware. Then Darth says that we should not include qt5, which wasn't the point of the topic.

But who raised the point to still include Qt5 in Slackware, speaking of this thread? Him?

Neither Darth nor I needs to explain anything to you. Preposterous as it might sound we have opinions of our own which do not need your blessing before we voice them. Darth ran Plasma 5 for 6 months and produced criticisms at the end of that period that I was glad to read. Poprocks was here recently demanding we all move to Plasma 5 yet today he's back saying he made a mistake, given the number of bugs in it. But for some reason you have fixated on what Darth says, while giving Poprocks a free pass to demand what he likes?

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I think maybe its a good time to give this topic a rest. All our views are clearly expressed & heard. There is a enough stress going on now that there doesn't need to be anymore. I'll accept whatever our BDFL decides to do moving forward.

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OK, just to restate my answer to the topic question:

Yes. Plasma 5 it's ready to be included in Slackware, and I would like very much to see it included.
Personally, I think it's high time for such an inclusion.
This is without detriment to anything else in the distribution, save the current KDE4 series.
And I think this is the sentiment of many people here who might not be as vocal as others.

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Better ways, according to you? The best way for him to express his own opinion is for him to express his own opinion. He doesn't need it filtered and approved by anybody beforehand, nor does he need to translate it into the Queen's English just because his broken English seems to wind other people up. What he says is perfectly intelligible, so he doesn't need another Slackware user to "improve" it.

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You know...
The GTK and Qt libraries are orthogonally different, and if you are a fan of the one, you are likely not a fan of the other. Therefore it is only sane and also for the sake of its users, that Slackware offers both GTK and Qt based desktop environments.

I dislike the looks of GTK widget sets, and I am pretty much opposed to the architectural views (hide all complexity from the stupid end user) of the GNOME folk. I like the looks of Qt widget sets and my work flow fits with the design decisions (don't hide technical complexity from the user because she should be at the helm of her own system) of the KDE folk.

Hence, I am a proponent of including a Qt based desktop environment. And not just for the DE, but also to be able to easily add Qt based applications to my desktop - not KDE based per se... just using Qt5 as the GUI widget set. I use Calibre, QBittorrent, VLC etc daily and they all offer a Qt5 based GUI and have no dependency on KDE at all.

The difference with Darth is that I do not demand incessantly that all traces of GTK software be removed from SLackware. I think both sides of the graphical divide should feel comfortable with Slackware. Therefore none should be excluded by force.

Having stated this, if Pat were to remove all traces of Qt from Slackware (not just KDE4 or Plasma5 but also Qt5 and its supporting libraries), I would stop providing a Plasma 5 repository because that would mark an orthogonal change in Slackware's design philosophy. Heck, I would most likely end my Slackware team membership and move to another distro like Arch Linux.

But I am confident that Slackware will remain a sane distro, caring for its users whatever their preferences, even if it will not adopt Plasma5.

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So, should apache be removed from Slackware because it is polluting the harddrive for those who don't want a webserver? I don't know where to draw the line, but it seems that one of two major toolkits should remain in Slackware because it is so prevalent in so many different projects.

And I do understand that one doesn't need to explain or clarify their requests, but when the person consistently requests the same thing with little to no clarification when people ask, then we get to where we are. I've requested a few things in Slackware, but I don't consistently request them. I may bring it up 6 months later if I was never acknowledged or if circumstances have changed, but it benefits no one to put that request multiple times on many different threads all within a short period of time.

But this isn't talking about Plasma5, it's talking about qt5. So, Plasma5 being in whatever state it is in should have no bearing on whether qt should remain in the distro.

By all means use removepkg and the slackpkg blacklist if it makes you happier. Other people do not have to cater to your whims when all the power to customize your own install is already available.

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That is a good description of the difference between a request and forcing one's preferences on others.

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Quite. You'll notice I wasn't advocating the removal of Qt4, or protesting against the inclusion of Qt5. But this was about Darth's right to express his opinion without having the same people jump down his throat over and over again, demanding that he justify his position. Pat Volkerding and Eric Hameleers can lock horns with him all they like, since they have a vested interest in whether or not Qt5 makes it to the next release. But for some it now seems to be a personal grudge, and that is not on.

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