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Old 08-14-2006, 01:25 AM   #1
vharishankar
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Slackware is anti-GNU?


This is more a question rather than an accusation, but I've been trying to seriously research into this subject. Do Slackware users tend to be anti-GNU/FSF and pro-BSD? Or does the community really have no particular preference. Google hasn't been of much help since I've not found any articles or essays on the subject.

I'd also be interested in what Pat Volkerding thinks about this and any essays/articles/interviews on this subject would be very useful to me as I'm academically interesting in learning more about how these philosophical differences came about in the FOSS community.

This is not meant to be a flame or anything as I'm asking this out of academic interest and analyzing without taking sides...

Last edited by vharishankar; 08-14-2006 at 01:29 AM.
 
Old 08-14-2006, 02:01 AM   #2
davidsrsb
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I always felt that Slackware was neutral on the GNU/BSD debate, certaily not focussed on the politics in the way that Debian is.
The removal of Gnome desktop was because following it took too much of Pats time.
 
Old 08-14-2006, 02:04 AM   #3
vharishankar
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Ah I see. At the same time, I do think that *some* politics is good for a distro because it at least tells its users what it stands for.

I was always kind of curious on this issue. The reason for my question was that Slackware seems more lenient on what is "Free" and "Non-Free" while Debian does clearly differentiate between the two and you *do* have a choice to install non-Free software if you so wish (provided its license allows distribution of course).

For instance, I found pico installed in Slackware 10 while nano is the preferred cousin in debian. It's very interesting on the choice of software used by the two systems.
 
Old 08-14-2006, 03:40 AM   #4
XavierP
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I think that Pat is concerned with what works well, rather than the free/non-free issue. Of course, pat is just one man, whereas Debian is a foundation (IIRC), so they can think more about these things.

I don't think Pat is anti GNU though.
 
Old 08-14-2006, 04:05 AM   #5
Tinkster
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I second that, specially in light of the fact that the vast majority
of tools bundled ARE GPLed.



Cheers,
Tink
 
Old 08-14-2006, 10:29 AM   #6
dive
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Quote:
Originally Posted by davidsrsb
The removal of Gnome desktop was because following it took too much of Pats time.
Don't flame me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure I read on this forum that Gnome was taken out because it was getting too over-simplified in it's configuration, and hiding many more options from users than say kde.
 
Old 08-14-2006, 10:46 AM   #7
reddazz
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dive
Don't flame me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure I read on this forum that Gnome was taken out because it was getting too over-simplified in it's configuration, and hiding many more options from users than say kde.
This is not right. GNOME was removed because its a pain in the back side to build and maintain. Try compiling it from source and you will know what I mean.
 
Old 08-14-2006, 10:57 AM   #8
vharishankar
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Ah I see. i wish Pat would include nano as the default text editor though. I always like simple text editors and it cannot get simpler than pico/nano.

Another instance of the subtle differences I find: vim is a very user-friendly text editor once you know the basic shortcuts, but I find the default vi compatibility mode annoying to say the least. Other distros have the normal vim mode but Slackware keeps the vi compatibility mode by default. To be fair, I think it was something the vim developers changed by default if I'm not mistaken and Slackware likes the "pristine" configuration rather than customized setups.

Yes so even in subtle issues, I find Slackware closer to BSD both in style and philosophy, but I guess it cannot be taken to be an anti-GNU expression by any stretch of the imagination. Just curious about how regular Slackware users viewed this.
 
Old 08-14-2006, 11:06 AM   #9
Randux
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Harishankar
Ah I see. i wish Pat would include nano as the default text editor though. I always like simple text editors and it cannot get simpler than pico/nano.

Another instance of the subtle differences I find: vim is a very user-friendly text editor once you know the basic shortcuts, but I find the default vi compatibility mode annoying to say the least. Other distros have the normal vim mode but Slackware keeps the vi compatibility mode by default. To be fair, I think it was something the vim developers changed by default if I'm not mistaken and Slackware likes the "pristine" configuration rather than customized setups.

Yes so even in subtle issues, I find Slackware closer to BSD both in style and philosophy, but I guess it cannot be taken to be an anti-GNU expression by any stretch of the imagination. Just curious about how regular Slackware users viewed this.
There is no "default" anything in Slackware- you install what you want, that's the beauty of Slackware. Pine (PICO) and probably 10 or more other editors are all included in the distribution images.

http://slackware.it/en/pb/search.php...&t=1&q=%2Bpine

What's the merit of GNU? And why should anyone not be anti?
 
Old 08-14-2006, 11:12 AM   #10
vharishankar
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Quote:
There is no "default" anything in Slackware
Nearly all applications have a default configuration file. Other distros make their own "defaults" while Slackware probably leaves it pristine as the original developers intended it.
 
Old 08-14-2006, 11:17 AM   #11
raska
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Randux
...What's the merit of GNU?...
well, there are a bunch of tools that were developed under the GNU proyect, some time before Linus's kernel came around. Linus's kernel just came for fill the gap that the GNU proyect had in the low level applications.
Have you ever used bash, make, emacs, cpio, tar, grep, gzip, chown, chmod, cp, dd, df, ln, ls, mkdir, mv, rm, et cetera ad nauseam? Those came thanks to GNU, and made linux as we know it now.
 
Old 08-14-2006, 11:25 AM   #12
vharishankar
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Quote:
What's the merit of GNU? And why should anyone not be anti?
Read the history of the GNU project... wikipedia is a great source. It's probably fair to say that without GNU, Linux would have remained an obscure hobby project. It's fashionable to bash anything GNU these days without understanding its importance.

I think today's generation of Linux users in general tend to look on Linux as Free Lunch without even caring an iota about the hard work of GNU and the freedoms that they fought for tooth and nail in ensuring your and my ability to run Linux today and meet on this forum. Disagreeing with their goals is one thing, but abusing the movement without understanding it is another.

And this post - it's not targetted at you, Randux - just something I felt I must express as a general comment.

Anyway, that's a whole new subject.

Last edited by vharishankar; 08-14-2006 at 11:27 AM.
 
Old 08-14-2006, 11:30 AM   #13
Randux
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Raska, you are right amigo, I didn't ask the question properly, as I was responding to the way it was phrased before in the thread.

What's the merit of GPL? This is like a bunch of poor people with nothing to eat shouting how great communism has been for them. The guys writing GPL software are working at companies making a lot of money, and the little guy writing Linux apps for himself or for the open source community on his own time is getting nothing. I think it's a little stupid to say that GPL is great.

Sure it's nice to have tools and lots of stuff available. But this has also happened without and before GPL. BSD license and other forms of license don't restrict what you can do with your code (but you can't distribute only binaries and not source if you use a piece of GPL software to create a "derived work" etc.) If programming is someone's hobby then this is not important to him one way or the other, and all he cares about is what he can do without paying. But if someone is programming for a living, he doesn't mind paying for tools (sure, free is nice but we pay for what we need) and he expects that the hundreds or thousands of hours he spends developing something doesn't automatically become free to the world and he gets nothing.

I come from the world of proprietary (closed-source) software that we sell for big money (of course the company keeps most of it) and I don't believe in socialism
 
Old 08-14-2006, 11:37 AM   #14
Randux
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Harishankar
Read the history of the GNU project... wikipedia is a great source. It's probably fair to say that without GNU, Linux would have remained an obscure hobby project. It's fashionable to bash anything GNU these days without understanding its importance.

I think today's generation of Linux users in general tend to look on Linux as Free Lunch without even caring an iota about the hard work of GNU and the freedoms that they fought for tooth and nail in ensuring your and my ability to run Linux today and meet on this forum. Disagreeing with their goals is one thing, but abusing the movement without understanding it is another.

And this post - it's not targetted at you, Randux - just something I felt I must express as a general comment.

Anyway, that's a whole new subject.
This whole issue is nothing but politics and activism. I am talking here about GPL (which is related to but not identical with GNU) and not GNU itself. First of all, Linux is great but the world can live without GPL. If you can't run Linux you can run OpenBSD, or the other BSDs with BSD-style licenses that don't taint everything downstream.

Second of all, nobody held a gun to the heads of those guys and forced them to give anything away. In case you didn't realize it, they make a lot of money. When someone has a salary to write GPL software it's not like a hobbyist sitting at home not getting paid. You think Stallman and Torvalds are begging for food on the street corner? Where did the money come from? If those guys didn't want to give their utilities away, they didn't have to. That doesn't mean we don't appreciate all the work- of course all of that stuff is a big help to people and everybody who uses it should be grateful. But how far does it go? Even Torvalds has come out and said that he thinks the GPL is going too far. It's beyond what makes sense, now it's about activism. And activism and software are not good companions.

If you want to get paid, sell it. If you don't want to get paid, and you give it away, then we say thank you, and what more do you want? I would rather pay and not hear the whining than to not pay and hear whining

I just think all of the people shouting "viva el software libre!!!" don't have a clue what a big business this is and what the effects of GPL are to them. They are just happy to get something for nothing, and don't care what happens after that.

Last edited by Randux; 08-14-2006 at 11:57 AM.
 
Old 08-14-2006, 11:42 AM   #15
marnold
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For me the main contribution of the GNU project is the compilers and glibc (although I do wish they would have a few less "Hey, let's change something fundamental in glibc and break everything" moments). I wish I would have had access to that stuff when I was in college many moons ago before the dawn of the Internet, etc. Having said that, when I first started getting into Linux seriously, development of the GNU compilers had slowed to a crawl. I wonder if anything would have happened if Red Hat had not added their own "improvements" to it and forced the issue.

I guess I disagree with your basic premise that there has to be any politics involved in a choice of OS/distro. While I think that many of the "freedoms" that Stallman and co. fight for are very noble, I also believe that he carries everything way too far a lot of times. Choice of OS is not religion. Choice of distro is not an absolute. It will be interesting to see in this regard how the GPL v3 turns out. If it is as restrictive as some of the drafts have been, I wonder how many projects will just stick with v2. In this regard, I find Linus Torvalds to be a kindred spirit. He is far more pragmatic than idealistic.

To get back to the original point, I use Slackware because it is stable and just gets out of my way. I stopped using Windows because I was sick of paying the Microsoft tax for products that just got in my way more and more. And yes, I have purchased Slackware in the past and will most likely buy 11.0 when it comes out.

Last edited by marnold; 08-14-2006 at 11:45 AM.
 
  


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