Perhaps if Slackware were redesigned to be a bit more user-friendly?

GREAT NEWS!!! I finally got MuseScore to recognize my USB MIDI keyboard! It turnes out that in order to do that, I Had to start MuseScore and then open Portmidi (while still in MuseScore).

If you think user-friendlyness should be the defining factor of this distro, then perhaps you are in the wrong place.

...and then also what he meant by "user-friendly", as Slackware is very friendly towards me and I don't think I'm an isolated case...

Well, just as some of AlienBob's posts may mislead you to believe that he's unfriendly and unhelpful (while, in fact, the opposite is true), it would be wrong to think about slackware as not user-friendly. It won't give you an 'easy' plug-and-play system, but true friendship is about more than just being easygoing. It's also about challenges and resolving them.
Admittedly there will be surprises now and then, but hardly ever nasty ones (there are other OSs that might give you those).

We may have different views of 'user-friendly' perhaps. Like ponce and kgha said, the Slackware OS is friendly to its user in the sense that it does not hide its internals and you will always be able to find out and understand when something does not work or is not working as you expected.
But that requires an investigative mindset and a willingness to learn.
User-friendly is often the phrase used to describe OS-es like MS Windows, OS-X or Ubuntu, Mint etc - but then it means that 'everything just works' and the user can be as computer-illiterate as you want, things work regardless. The user does not have to understand what happens under the hood to make all of this computer stuff work so seemingly effortless.
The watershed moment comes when something does not work or stops working - and then this user will be lost.
I do admire your persistence TheNutCase. You'll get there.

Ah...
Do *not* confuse "user-friendly" with "beginner-friendly".
They *may* be two quite different things.


Thanks
--
KarlMag

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Permit me to clarify what I meant when I said "user friendly" - I meant, for example that it would help users such as myself if the documentation were presented in layman's terms (wheerever possible), rather than what seems like "technical mumbo-jumbo".

Your statement was "Perhaps if Slackware were redesigned to be a bit more user-friendly?". That did not make me think about the documentation but rather about the way the distro presents itself to its user.

This is Slackware - it is not fit for everybody and it will not be 're-designed' to try and get more people on board.
If the documentation at https://docs.slackware.com/ is too technical and difficult to follow, feel free to contribute your knowledge. After all this documentation wiki is a community project. Specifically, if you ran into issues you feel could have been resolved by (better) documentation, please share your views here.

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Maybe something like the attached glossary could help fill the gap? My take on this is that using technical terms in the documentation is unavoidable, but presenting them in layman's term could help folks with no technical background understand them.

Attached Files

Glossary.txt (3.8 KB, 12 views)

I think the specific problems Musescore may have are not the fault of the Slackware distribution.

Also we can have those sort of problems with other distributions. It may be even easier to do mistakes on others.

I also discovered that the way to get MuseScore to recognize a USB MIDI keyboard is to first start MuseScore, then open portmidi (while still in MuseScore), and set your USB MIDI keyboard as the default input device, in that way you can then go the "Preferences" menu, click on the I/O tab, and click the box beside the "portaudio" section, and you should then be able to select your input device.

May be Musescore has to be tested more. I had some problems with Musescore and some .mxl files for examples. It is sensible to errors in those files (or things Musescore though about errors). In those cases it segfaults.

I think there is some areas of Musescore which are not well tested.

I don't think Slackware is really faulty here. I don't see how it could but ?
Maybe you could ask to Musescore folks in case your problem is reproducible.

I also have trouble with Musescore routinely, its JACK integration seems spotty and janky. Not Slackwares fault. My other JACK tools work perfectly fine.