Slackware This Forum is for the discussion of Slackware Linux.
|
Notices |
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
Are you new to LinuxQuestions.org? Visit the following links:
Site Howto |
Site FAQ |
Sitemap |
Register Now
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
|
|
|
02-21-2014, 06:36 PM
|
#46
|
Moderator
Registered: Oct 2008
Distribution: Slackware [64]-X.{0|1|2|37|-current} ::12<=X<=15, FreeBSD_12{.0|.1}
Posts: 6,306
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pixxt
|
At this rate, they will be running Linux as a "plugin" on their systemd OS before long.
Everyt time I think there might be a way forward with it, I see something like this and repeat: not on my machines!
Last edited by astrogeek; 02-21-2014 at 06:39 PM.
|
|
|
02-21-2014, 08:31 PM
|
#47
|
Senior Member
Registered: Nov 2013
Location: Brazil
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 1,223
Rep:
|
Ok, why in the hell are people adopting this monster
|
|
|
02-21-2014, 09:11 PM
|
#48
|
Member
Registered: Sep 2011
Posts: 925
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Darth Vader
Now, please enlight me, how droping the "desktop" crap will grow the Slackware reliability advantage as a server OS?
|
Simple: Remove all that buggy, unreliable and abandoned code (i. e. systemd/udev, ConsoleKit, HALd etc.), which is only required for running soon to be stale freedesktop.org stuff, but nothing else. Just look at BSD. Linux doesn't need that code, because the "free desktop" won't happen anyway. Red Hat and Canonical only need that illusion to keep developers volunteering code to them for free.
|
|
4 members found this post helpful.
|
02-21-2014, 11:58 PM
|
#49
|
LQ Addict
Registered: Nov 2008
Location: Paris, France
Distribution: Slint64-15.0
Posts: 11,261
Rep:
|
Maybe we could go a little farther and get a desktop without that stuff. For instance it's easy to display (and type, with a proper IM) CJK characters in a tty with just vga or a frame buffer with fbterm + fontconfig + a true type font like wqy.{zen,micro}hei plus web browser relying on it and lib{ungif,jpeg,png}.
So we could try two opposite paths:
- integrate systemd in Slackware as BartGymnast tries to do,
- only use vga or frame buffer drivers and don't create devices on the fly. I'm not sure it'd be easy to watch videos then, but who needs to do that on a {lap,desk}top nowadays anyway?
Last edited by Didier Spaier; 02-22-2014 at 03:33 AM.
Reason: s/farer/farther/
|
|
1 members found this post helpful.
|
02-22-2014, 01:51 AM
|
#50
|
Senior Member
Registered: May 2012
Location: Sebastopol, CA
Distribution: Slackware64
Posts: 1,038
|
Agreeing with jstn, to an extent. Reducing the number of dependent parts in a system makes the system more reliable, and there's cruft in the system which just isn't needed.
Quote:
Now, please enlight me, how droping the "desktop" crap will grow the Slackware reliability advantage as a server OS?
|
Consider: Any task a system needs to perform requires that some set of subtasks be performed.
If each subtask has a probability of performing its role correctly, then the probability that the entire task will be performed correctly is the product of these probabilities.
So, if we suppose P (for some value between 0 and 1) is the probability that any given subtask performs correctly, let's look at the probability of tasks of differing complexities being performed correctly:
Task of 1 subtask: P
Task of 2 subtasks: P * P (both subtasks have to perform correctly)
Task of 3 subtasks: P * P * P (all three subtasks have to perform correctly)
As you can see, the probability of performing a task of N subtasks correctly is proportional to P**N. The probability of success goes down exponentially with complexity.
To illustrate, let's hang a high chance of success on a subtask performing correctly, 0.99 (so 99% likely to perform correctly).
Task of 1 subtask: P**1 = 0.99**1 = 0.99
Task of 3 subtasks: P**3 = 0.99**3 = 0.970
Task of 5 subtasks: P**5 = 0.99**5 = 0.951
Task of 15 subtasks: P**15 = 0.99**15 = 0.860
Task of 30 subtasks: P**30 = 0.99**30 = 0.740
Task of 45 subtasks: P**45 = 0.99**45 = 0.636 only 63.6% chance of success! 36.4% chance of FAILURE!
This is admittedly a simplification, as real-life subcomponents have complex failure modes and not just a simple probability of failure, but it illustrates a simple truth: The fewer components a system has, the fewer opportunities it has to fail. This is why following the KISS Principle produces more robust systems.
So, clear out the unnecessary components, or replace them with simpler equivalents, and the robustness of the system improves.
Add components, or replace them with more complex equivalents, and the robustness of the system suffers.
I wouldn't abandon hope of keeping Slackware useful as a desktop, though. There's a chance that eudev is a suitable replacement for udev (haven't checked it out myself yet, but I hope someone on the Slackware dev team is), and might enable Slackware to continue providing its server and desktop features without systemd.
Last edited by ttk; 02-22-2014 at 01:52 AM.
|
|
2 members found this post helpful.
|
02-22-2014, 02:02 AM
|
#51
|
Member
Registered: Sep 2011
Posts: 925
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Didier Spaier
integrate systemd in Slackware as BartGymnast tries to do,
|
The main concern is that Slackware won't run various "desktop stuff" in the future, if it doesn't adopt Systemd. But my expectation is that exactly that stuff will be abandoned by upstream in a few years anyway. The end result will be a bunch of LennarX distributions with Systemd, running XTerms inside Fluxbox and FVWM. Once Mozilla has abandoned the Linux desktop as tier-1 platform, if will be hard to even get a web browser running.
So trashing Slackware to just have some short-lived fancy bling-bling isn't worth it. Slackware already has an advantage by not requiring a GUI installer, so it doesn't even depend on a display server. We need to keep the stuff working, that makes Slackware a great, reliable and stable experience.
Quote:
I'm not sure it'd be easy to watch videos then, but who needs to do that on a {lap,desk}top nowadays anyway?
|
You can have a perfect Linux appliance for that: http://openelec.tv/ That's exactly how Linux is used by the end-user nowadays.
|
|
1 members found this post helpful.
|
02-22-2014, 03:41 AM
|
#52
|
LQ Guru
Registered: Jul 2011
Location: California
Distribution: Slackware64-15.0 Multilib
Posts: 6,564
|
DirectFB is about the only alternative to X and Wayland for desktops but I have no idea how well it would work for a generalized desktop.
|
|
|
02-22-2014, 05:50 AM
|
#53
|
Senior Member
Registered: May 2008
Location: Romania
Distribution: DARKSTAR Linux 2008.1
Posts: 2,727
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by ReaperX7
DirectFB is about the only alternative to X and Wayland for desktops but I have no idea how well it would work for a generalized desktop.
|
Someone can write a nice desktop environment using Qt, running directly on the top of KMS framebuffer...
You can even have (E)GL and even a nice web browser built in the top of (Qt)Webkit.
But, the people will want more, and slowly, your super-nice and simple Qt Desktop Environment will gain Plasma and other Qute Things, and will become a second KDE. But without X... :P
|
|
|
02-22-2014, 05:57 AM
|
#54
|
Senior Member
Registered: May 2008
Location: Romania
Distribution: DARKSTAR Linux 2008.1
Posts: 2,727
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtsn
Simple: Remove all that buggy, unreliable and abandoned code (i. e. systemd/udev, ConsoleKit, HALd etc.), which is only required for running soon to be stale freedesktop.org stuff, but nothing else. Just look at BSD. Linux doesn't need that code, because the "free desktop" won't happen anyway. Red Hat and Canonical only need that illusion to keep developers volunteering code to them for free.
|
I.e, I look at NetBSD and I see a very simple platform (, but with very poor hardware support, compared to Linux,) which can be emulated by stripping down your Slackware installation to cca. 100 packages.
Then, I see its very nice ports system, having around of 12000 packages (three frakking times of SBo!), with a nice dependency tracking system and all the bells...
Same we go with FreeBSD. But there we have around 40000 packages in the ports.
Last edited by Darth Vader; 02-22-2014 at 05:59 AM.
|
|
|
02-22-2014, 06:18 AM
|
#55
|
Member
Registered: Sep 2011
Posts: 925
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Darth Vader
Someone can write a nice desktop environment using Qt, running directly on the top of KMS framebuffer...
|
Linux desktop environments are a thing of the past.
Quote:
You can even have (E)GL and even a nice web browser built in the top of (Qt)Webkit.
|
But the point of having a computer is not running a web browser. Everything with a LCD can browse the web nowadays.
Slackware has strengths in serving web applications, databases and files, routing and filtering traffic, being a great development workstation and so on. Don't let fancy bling-bling must-boot-faster get in the way of that.
Quote:
I.e, I look at NetBSD and I see a very simple platform (, but with very poor hardware support, compared to Linux,) which can be emulated by stripping down your Slackware installation to cca. 100 packages.
|
Well no, even by stripping down Slackware you won't get the small footprint of NetBSD. Just compare the size of glibc with NetBSD's POSIX-conformant libc. And of course, once you have systemd in the system, you wont get anything that even remotely resembles a BSD UNIX...
|
|
|
02-22-2014, 07:51 AM
|
#56
|
Senior Member
Registered: May 2008
Location: Romania
Distribution: DARKSTAR Linux 2008.1
Posts: 2,727
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtsn
Linux desktop environments are a thing of the past.
|
Well, the Real Life demonstrate that you are epic wrong. Because for every lonely GNU/Linux user, there are 5000 frakking Android users. Whis is (esentialy) a Linux desktop environment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtsn
But the point of having a computer is not running a web browser.
|
Sorry, but I don't give a crap for a (personal) computer unable to run a web browser. Sure, I work with servers and I earn a meal from them, but them are NOT my frakking computers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtsn
Everything with a LCD can browse the web nowadays.
|
Sure, using a Linux desktop environment known also as Android...
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtsn
Slackware has strengths in serving web applications, databases and files, routing and filtering traffic, being a great development workstation and so on. Don't let fancy bling-bling must-boot-faster get in the way of that.
|
Sure, you see Slackware's future just as a web server, nothing more. Or as a appliance?
BUT, again, I don't give a crap for a great development workstation unable to run a web browser. Because I need a web brouser for reading documentation, news, even to post there. Or you think that I post there using netcat and I read LQ using wget?
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtsn
Well no, even by stripping down Slackware you won't get the small footprint of NetBSD. Just compare the size of glibc with NetBSD's POSIX-conformant libc.
|
Yet again, I don't give a crap about small memory footprints on my computers. The lamest of them have "only" 8GB RAM. So, what's the point to care?
Also I suggest you to finally dump your techno-crap and buy a modern computer...
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtsn
And of course, once you have systemd in the system, you wont get anything that even remotely resembles a BSD UNIX...
|
Of course, you don't have. But there is no law which force Linux to resemble BSD UNIX or to die...
|
|
|
02-22-2014, 03:35 PM
|
#57
|
LQ Guru
Registered: Jul 2011
Location: California
Distribution: Slackware64-15.0 Multilib
Posts: 6,564
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Darth Vader
Someone can write a nice desktop environment using Qt, running directly on the top of KMS framebuffer...
You can even have (E)GL and even a nice web browser built in the top of (Qt)Webkit.
But, the people will want more, and slowly, your super-nice and simple Qt Desktop Environment will gain Plasma and other Qute Things, and will become a second KDE. But without X... :P
|
Doesn't DirectFB have X-compatible extensions (XDirectFB?) to support X application and DEs like Xfce?
|
|
|
02-22-2014, 11:06 PM
|
#58
|
Member
Registered: Sep 2011
Posts: 925
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Darth Vader
BUT, again, I don't give a crap for a great development workstation unable to run a web browser. Because I need a web brouser for reading documentation, news, even to post there.
|
You can still be logged on a Linux development workstation while browsing the web and reading documentation on a different (most likely Linux-based) device. Remember the times, where these "man pages" came along as a printed book? Unix was created in those days.
Quote:
Or you think that I post there using netcat and I read LQ using wget?
|
That's the point of the discussion. Making reading LQ and watching YouTube the main purpose of Slackware Linux and sacrificing everything else for this is not the right way. We need reliable Unix for tasks, which can't be accomplished with anything else.
Last edited by jtsn; 02-23-2014 at 02:42 AM.
|
|
|
02-22-2014, 11:39 PM
|
#59
|
Senior Member
Registered: Apr 2009
Location: McKinney, Texas
Distribution: Slackware64 15.0
Posts: 3,860
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Darth Vader
Because I need a web brouser for reading documentation, news, even to post there. Or you think that I post there using netcat and I read LQ using wget?
|
Well, whatever lets you live up to your LQ username but you could use links instead. Which comes with slackware.
|
|
|
02-23-2014, 02:47 AM
|
#60
|
LQ Guru
Registered: Jul 2011
Location: California
Distribution: Slackware64-15.0 Multilib
Posts: 6,564
|
I often wonder if the fact that GNU/Linux has no absolutes as far as standards go it's ultimate weakness to all this infiltration being made against UNIX and other UNIX-like standards that have such clear defined standards? It would seem to me, and I'm sorry if this next phrase incurs the wrath of every GNU/Linux user, maintainer, and distributor, all this pride of openness to freedom, liberalistic values and ideas, and willingness to accept chance without merit has done nothing good for GNU/Linux period in the long term, only the short , temporary, and fleeting? And I wonder if this lack of foundation will be the downfall and destruction of GNU/Linux?
|
|
|
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 02:49 PM.
|
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.
|
Latest Threads
LQ News
|
|