Hi, everybody!

Sax2 is SuSE's X11 configuration tool. It does a lot more than xorg.cfg, xorgconfig and xorgsetup, and it does it much more user friendly. I'd appreciate to see this tool being ported to Slack. But what do you think?


Background/motivation: I just had a really bad time due to the stupidity of the X11 configuration tools included. In fact, I was unable to get OpenOffice.org working because of a 3D configuration error, that with Sax2 would never have happened.

gargamel

It is a long time ago since I last used SuSE, but is SaX not a X application? This would reduce its value as you would first of all have to set up X in order to start SaX to configure X.

cccc828

Yes and no: SaX2 is an X app in the same sense that xorgsetup is an X app. So it has a GUI, but you don't have to setup X before you use to set up X. ;-)

gargamel

Pat only wants the essential things for Slackware... and I HAVE to agree.

If you have any problems with xorg.conf... theres a LOT of documentation on the net, and if you cant find it, use this forum, I hope i dont see any SuSE-like utility in Slack, it would lose its "mystical" flavor.


And personally, i dont like SuSE, its just so automatic, and it does things to your system after installing, that you just cant choose!!! , like putting a chameleon in your KDE!!, allright, i know I have suse, but maybe i just like the plain old classic kde... right?

And its FULL of USELESS things such as... "choose the encryptation method of your password" and if you choose the wrong one, your password gets CUTTED-OFF to only 6 characters... THATS STUPID, the simplicity is the key, slack is the key, get slack.

Me too. But it's probably a most personal decision, what you think is essential and what not. To me it's not essential to know every detail of the X11 configuration for a specific graphics board. KISS. The Xorg tools may be stupid, but they aren't certainly simple, from a user's perspective. Which makes them useless and superfluos, so I guess they will be dropped by Pat, according to you. I wouldn't mind.

Let me make it clear that I *don't* want to see Slackware becoming another SuSE. I just think that X11 configuration is cumbersome, tedious, complicated and not very instructive. It is time consuming and distracts me from learning more interesting aspects of Linux/Unix ant Internet technology. Having a tool like SaX2 at hand would help me to focus on more important things, but noone would be forced to actually use it! If you don't want it, just ignore it. Like you don't use slackpkg or checkinstall, as they aren't essential, too. You don't need them to install software in Slack, but they make the task easier.

Regarding your remarks on SuSE: You can switch off most of the automaticism and configure everything by hand, and you can install KDE manually, like you can install OpenOffice.org or RPM on Slackware by hand.

A last word on what's 'essential': How many editors do you really need? How many browsers? And how many window managers? Why is there not just FVWM, but also WindowMaker and Fluxbox and KDE and Gnome? Are they all essential? Do you really need VI *and* EMACS *and* all the other text editors?

Obviously Pat leaves the choice up to the user, and *I agree with him*. 8-)

gargamel

I tend to agree with both the crowd and the folks that build slackware. It's up to Pat to decide, and he likes it stripped down and bare bones.

That shouldn't keep you from working on porting it to your own system and then packaging it up. If you do so, and distribute it yourself, you might get enough critical mass to get it included as an optional package in the future.

Well exactly, because when I switched to Gentoo on my laptop the installtion procedure and the init scripts are very very complicated (like Mandrake) so i need to consult Gentoo's handbook for almost everything i want to change. Like emerging a package takes hours too (go to bed and it's done...)

and on Slack everything is just so light and simple (just comment/uncomment lines xx-xx) except installation dependency checking which I really think is missing from Slack, also packages are precompiled for i486 (therefore nearly 80% of linux users use i586 / i686 etc) - i have in fact ran slackware on a 486

Also I prefer xorgcfg to xorgconfig (all distros) becaues its graphical and the xorg.conf it makes is very clean to edit. No SuSE stuff please!

I will never part with Slack.