I have been setting up a new laptop (HP Compaq 8510W). In the course of trying Arch and Slackware, I have discovered many tricks of setting up wireless, and I have also seen many benefits of these 2 "back to basics" distros.

One configuration that is attractive is Arch + KDEMOD. The latter (http://kdemod.ath.cx/) is a version of KDE that has been optimised for Arch. It is significantly faster than other KDE setups I have used.

The question: Is there an equivalent on Slackware? More generally, what is the fastest DE that will also have the "switch user" functionality of KDE? ("switch user" is one of the main things that stops me when setting up XFCE).

Side note: I was pleasantly surprised that Slackware 12.1 worked with wireless "out of the box". It even included the (iwl4965) firmware. (Only distro I have seen that did that....)

I don't know of anything like KDEMOD for slackware. I asked about this before because there are a lot of kde software that I don't use and a modular kde would allow me to remove those bits. I think the general response I received from that query is that KDE is intentionally not modular so that it is easier to maintain (unlike GNOME, for instance).

As far as the "switch user" functionality, I have never used it. It sounds like it would be controlled by the session manager, though, so you would think there would be a way to make it work in other DE/WMs like Xfce and Openbox.

There's a project for slackware, xfware, that provides a beefed up Xfce. It might be worth keeping an eye on and checking out.

Thanks for the info....

With 2 regular users, + 1 occasional, the equivalent of KDE's "switch user" functionality is important. I have tried GDM, which is not as good. I did not find a simple way of getting KDM without a bunch of other junk.

Im not sure if this is what you are asking for but "slim" is a nice graphical login mgr. You can find it at "slackbuilds". I'm gonna have to check out this "switch user" feature you speak of. This is a single user machine and good old startx works just dandy. I usually gut KDE, just leaving the base and libs. I get the modularized idea of KDE, but that sounds like a side project.

Looks abandoned-----Beta-1 9/11/07, Beta2 9/30/07

Windows has an easy to use switch user function for years now;
seems like some programmer could figure it out for Slackware ...

Could be...maybe you should Contact the author to find out.

Even if it is still somewhat active behind the scenes it probably isn't active enough to warrant use on the newest slackware version for a stable machine.