I can't help but think that this article is terribly misleading, ill-informed, bad advice and just bad "journalism".

http://news.softpedia.com/news/linux...s-501870.shtml

I have never really liked "Softpedia", but I think that this one has pushed me to the limit.

Is it just me? Does this article have any merit?

Well, I am a bit surprised that just compiling a kernel be a so daunting task that it deserves an article... Maybe some readers will find it useful, I don't know.

Other than that it took me a few minutes to find this related website: http://slackex.exton.net/

I see that Arne Exton also provides other ISOs based on other distributions.

That's all I know.

I don't know the guy, though I have noticed him post to the LQ 'blogs' section about such things. I personally wouldn't use a kernel from a 3rd party (unless they were very well known to me) and I'm inclined to agree that softpedia shouldn't be promoting its use.

If I had hosting space, I could make my own updated kernels available (and unlike Arne's mine will sit alongside the stock kernels without causing issues), but I don't for the same reason I mention above: why should anyone trust me!

Agreed and agreed. I would assume that a Slacker would know or at least be able to figure out how to compile a kernel fairly easily. Even if I didn't know how to, or couldn't figure it out I still wouldn't use a 3rd party kernel.

In the website about SlackEX slackpkg and GSlapt are presented as at least relatively new "Now we have the Application Managers Slackpkg and GSlapt - a GTK version of slapt-get." But slackpkg was first released in Jan 2003 and GSlapt has been available since more that ten years...

I don't think the article is terrible. I do think it should have made a clearer distinction between Slackware and SlackEx.

The author talks down to the reader quite a bit, and makes a "news article" out of what should be an ordinary LQ post, but it otherwise seems okay.

Maybe for me it's just because it is "Softpedia". I don't know. I never thought that they put out any real credible "articles". But it was linked from Techrights, and while I'm not that big of a fan of Techrights either, I didn't think to check the link out before I clicked it. I thought that Techrights was better than to link to just any ol' nonsense.

I have noticed more and more that "Tech News" is literally just copy/paste lately. Not that I have seen another article like that one, it just seems to me to be a growing trend of tech news going downhill.

Gotta quote "Happy Hero" by Negativland (a great band):

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