Hm, did you look at the page that you linked to?

HP has the best Linux printer support (Brother is OK too), so it makes sense to me to ship it.

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I have just checked: The dependency of Vim on Perl and Python was introduced with Slackware 14.0 (Vim 7.3). Slackware 13.37 (also Vim 7.3) did not have these dependencies. The Slackware development changelog of the time does not document this change.

IMHO a package in the AP series should not have an hard dependency on packages in the D series. Perhaps it would be a good idea to move vim to the D series and provide a leaner vim in the A series (even as a "required" package like Elvis, because of UTF-8 in the new default locale).

Package series are not a dependency system.

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Are you suggesting that he revert the UTF8 support in -current?

My major request for 15.0 is that the setup utility should offer the option to set up full disk encryption i.e. including /.
I'm trying to set this up manually (I'm using slackware64-current) and it is quite tedious.

My secondary request is for EFI support to "just work". I wasn't able to install Slackware 14.2 on either the Macbook Pro or the Thinkpad T480. It runs fine on legacy-BIOS-only PCs but those are rapidly disappearing.

My tertiary request is that there ought to be a slackware64 for the Raspberry pi 4.

I have a T480. -current installed using nvme and EFI with no manual effort. I had to partition the /boot partition correctly, set up LUKS etc with gdisk/lvm/cryptsetup as you would any normal encryption install.
It's all in the txt file included with current already.

For the raspberry Pi 4 there's Slackware arm that you can easily install with the courtesy of http://sarpi.fatdog.eu/index.php?p=installer

I don't know if Slackware-arm works on the Raspi4 but at least we know that current has support for the PineBook.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...ook-Benchmarks

Either this or by providing an UTF-8 aware default editor. The problem is not the UTF-8 support itself, but the default locale and other issues like the character set of the configuration files (is the character set of the configuration files officially defined in Slackware?)

I will try to explain the issue: it is a bug and can lead to corruption of system configuration files.

As an example, imagine a line in /etc/passwd containing non ASCII characters in UTF-8:

If you open /etc/passwd using Elvis and a non UTF-8 aware terminal emulator like xterm, the result might not be pretty, but is safe to edit as long as you do not change the accented characters:

Now, if you use an UTF-8 aware terminal emulator like urxvt (rxvt-unicode) in combination with Elvis, things become very dangerous. The accented characters are properly presented (thanks to the terminal emulator), but Elvis does not know that 2 bytes can be presented as one single character. At the beginning the file looks perfectly fine in Elvis:

You can move the cursor to the beginning of the string /bin/bash and change it to /bin/zsh. Again, the result looks fine:

But if you save the file and reopen it, you suddenly have this:

You now have a corrupted configuration file, which does not even contain the correct number of fields! This can not happen in non UTF-8 aware GUI editors or in Windows. It can only happen on the CLI using an UTF-8 aware terminal emulator like urxvt in combination with an editor like Elvis.

Note that this is a constructive suggestion for improving Slackware, I personally can live with it, I even regularly use Elvis in UTF-8 based environments, but I know what I am doing! But it should not be the default in a well tested distribution, which may be used by Newbies.

I also do not want to hear that "I use it wrong", that I should not edit /etc/passwd directly, or that I should use chsh to change the shell. I know all this, it is only provided as an example of a problem.

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Using an "legacy free" laptop and am quite happy with how rEFInd serves me - no config or re-config needed to boot or after kernel upgrade - it auto configures at boot time like the old grub did - and goes even past that in some regards.

I'd consider checking if rEFInd could be added to 15.0 as an option

I've played with eEFInd, and it is a great piece of software. However, it doesn't seem to be an easily packaged one or we'd have seen it in -current already.

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are you aware that nano supports UTF-8, right?
I'm not saying that nano has to be the default editor, eh, just that it's there as an option for people that "likes it minimal".
after all it's just the matter of exporting an environment variable...

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Yes, good point! But today Elvis is located in the A series, tagged as a REQUIRED package and is the default vi editor (vim is optional). All the other editors except ed and including nano are optional and located in the AP series.

A Debian user knowing vim and migrating to Slackware may not be aware of the issue, and may corrupt files unintentionally (and unknowingly since he does not see the corruption immediately).

Yes, everybody can change the default settings themselves on their systems.

Any thoughts on this?
https://www.archlinux.org/news/now-u...e-compression/

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