It seems to me this statement assumes that dependency resolution is a beneficial change and many of us do not. Even more importantly one of Slackware's major advantages IMHO is that One Man is BDFL instead of the typical design-by-committee. I'll wager a much higher percentage of Slackers prefer that and are quite willing to accept the "cost" of slightly longer release cycles.

Your concerns seem analogous to complaining that electric cars are slow and have extremely limited range but having never driven a Tesla. Use Slackware as your daily driver for 6 months and come back to this discussion maybe.

That's fair.

Having dependency resolution doesn't necessarily break KISS. OpenBSD (known for strictly following the UNIX philosophy and the KISS rule), for instance, has dependency resolution for their ports and their binary package manager.

Well, I don't see how it'd be disadvantegous if it was implemented in a non-intrusive way, I guess that's just me talking.

As I stated in an earlier post (I think?), I used Slackware as my daily driver for 6 months. I wouldn't criticize something that I haven't used.

6 months only? After 6 months you started to criticize. What about after 12 months?

Edit: Ok, what kind of trouble caused you started to think about dependency resolution? Something happened, yeah?

Thanks for your timely and gentlemanly response, ggggg. I have to agree with "non-intrusive". If it's merely optional and causes me no compromise, no skin off my nose. I consider manual dependency resolution a major benefit.

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Daily driver for 6 months, and as my second go-to distro for another 6 months. I personally feel like I have enough experience with Slackware to criticize it, but I guess you can disregard my opinion if you feel like it's not enough; no hard feelings.

Yeah, but why did you start to think Slackware needs something like that? If everything works fine - don't repair which is not broken.

It breaks it for Pat. He would need to start documenting all dependencies, which is no small feat to make sure you don't accidentally compile something with a dependency you don't have documented. That would require a lot of building packages on a clean "core" system. But then it would need to be determined what a "core system" is and determined if dependencies within the core system should be documented as well (since someone is probably always going to have a different idea of what should be in the core system).

It would require compiling software with a specific plan on what should be installed. There have been complaints on the forum when web server components are compiled against libraries in X (which provided additional functionality), which causes that software to fail if the X components aren't installed. Pat doesn't take those things into account and just compiles software as upstream intends on a full install of Slackware.

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Honestly, I want to ask something: you people really hate our BDFL and want him to live on poverty?

Because, apparently, is at toddler's knowledge that the businesses does NOT want to pay training of their employees for several years, just to understand the noble art of Slackware inner dependencies, WHEN they can do the same task with RHEL on several days. OR with SLES/SLED or Ubuntu Enterprise.

So, I will ask you literally: you still will consider that "manual dependency resolution is a major benefit" with the risk of cutting ours BDFL financial gains at least ten times?

Because in the end it is reduced at this: the lack of dependency resolution would be yet another measure to make sure that the businesses would stay away. You know... kubernets, Docker instances, things like this. Minimal installations of not even LAMP.

And there are the moneys today.

Imagine our BDFL earning $30000 OR $300000 monthly after going full way apt-get instead of what he gains today...

Will make you angry or happy?

Have no idea what is it you post @LuckyCyborg, just we all tired. Of this thread of course.

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Over the years I have tried a lot of different Linux distros for a while. You're a six month user of Slackware, so you know how it works.
What completely baffles me is that you don't like or approve of how Slackware functions, that is clear. But you feel compelled to create an account here on LQ and let us know about your displeasure. Well you've ceratainly set us straight! I don't know about you, but, when I stop using an OS I don't haunt the forum of that OS and post snarky comments. That's just weird.

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so, Slackware adopts apt-get, and Patrick's Patreon hits 30-300k/month? Sounds like a deal.

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Thanks, another good sentence to complete my signature. If OP after six months knows how Slackware works then is really good. But why being such competent is asking such silly question?

That's a good rhetorical question. I'll let the OP fill us in.

So I have finally seen the classic "But this OS / Distro has dependency checking." Ok, then go use that system then. As for the 'full' installation - I already know the risks, and slim Slackware down a bit, by opting to not install certain DE/WMs , and yes I have also been refusing to install certain aspects of Plasma5 - Akonadi and so far things have been working great.

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You've insulted Pat's design choices. He can change it if he wants to. Guess what thread title is going to be in the search engines along with "Is Slackware dead?" You could develop the dependency resolution that you desire and maybe Pat will incorporate it. He is offering 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Slackware, getting ready to release a new version of Slackware, and I imagine dependency resolution to help people save a few GB of space in the age of multi-terabyte hard drives wouldn't be high on the to-do list, but I don't think calling his work "horrifically archaic" is going to win him over to your position anyway. If you want to persuade someone, do you start off by insulting their work?

The majority of Slackware users don't seem to mind learning what is a dependency for what. It is a learning experience for them. Slackware is for tinkerers for a reason. It isn't for everyone.

Now on Salix you are trolling. It provides what you want. There is nothing nefarious going on there on that website. You are just looking for things to troll on. Murderers, rapist, and pedophiles have probably contributed to your favorite open source project and may even have supplied code to it. The Linux Kernel had a murderer's code in it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser It has NSA code in it. Do you think that governments don't want bugs in the kernel code that they can exploit? Do you use an Android phone because that NSA code is running on it? You'll have to go to FreeBSD. Oh wait, "FreeBSD developer Kip Macy charged with tenant terror." https://www.theregister.com/2008/04/24/kip_macy_arrest/

"Kip Macy is serving a four-year sentence for two felony counts of residential burglary, one felony count of stalking and one felony count of attempted grand theft at the San Quentin State Prison in California."
https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-...ry?id=20875476 There are other BSDs though but you'll never really know...

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