I'm still waiting for an answer ...

No, look... veeall joined!

In that first thread about the logo I expressed my opinion that although I find the new logo a smart, creative piece of art I'm in favor of keeping the current one. But I'm sure all the leading Slackware developers and PV himself are by now well aware of the fuss going on over this issue. That is, I think they got the message and it wouldn't make much difference if we now make a poll or not. Besides, Pat seems to like the new logo very much, so I'd rather accept the situation than upset Pat by (being part of a crowd) insisting that he gives up something he likes. It's just a logo after all, let The Man enjoy what he did.

I believe the answer is a combination of human nature and mob mentality. I put up the poll it was locked. So I got pissed that it was locked and put up a second one (probably shouldn't have)... then XavierP I believe was too bitter at that point with me for challenging his mod authority to add the poll to this thread... honestly he has NEVER answered the very question you posted... imho b/c there is no sensible answer. I can admit I was wrong for posting the second thread and getting upset... is anyone else man enough to do the right thing is the question.

I have been using Slackware for about eight years now. But the one thing that has always annoyed me is the lack of packages for scientific studies and mathematics. And now recently I have been pleased to find Slacky.eu (easily enabled and maintained with slapt-get). They have many packages which aren't available in the main package tree. It recently kept me from installing Gentoo (using x86), which I had been doing development on (in amd64) while running it in a chroot within Slamd64.

I am now getting ready to purchase another 64bit motherboard. I am at this moment running Slackware-12.1(current) in 32bit. But I have decided to install Gentoo-Amd64 on that new system, since 64bit support doesn't officially exist from Slackware. Personally, I find that situation intolerable. Especially when you consider that you pretty much can't buy a new system/computer that's not 64bit. And don't bother giving the limited examples of "new" 32bit systems, since they mostly exist only for specialty markets. The general standard in the industry now, is 64bit. And for Slackware to not have official support for that architecture is the best example of what I can see as a closed and archaic system. So rather than beat my head against a largely parochial attitude, I'm moving on to what I need. I simply can't afford to limit myself to the "Pat is God" faith. As long as Pat is held with iconic reverence, no change of logos will have any affect on the global functionality of Slackware.

Here's a simple suggestion that could be easily implemented, but likely won't be. For the sake of security, RAID1 should be a default option for the installation of Slackware (and every other Linux distribution for the matter). I had just brought a brand new Seagate 500GB harddrive to replace a very old and failing drive for my old system. The Seagate was dead six days after I got it. Taking with it all of the data I had transferred to the new drive. It was that which finally convinced me to never run another system again, on anything other than RAID1. And ironically, I understood all too perfectly well a motd I received shortly after all of this occurred. "There are only two types of computer users. Those who do backups, and those who don't! So I now have gone to the extreme, and installed this running system on a Samsung F1 1TB RAID1. I expect nothing but security from this point on. So I would like to hear all of the futile arguements for why RAID1 shouldn't be considered as a standard feature at installation. And then you can tell us how Slackware isn't closed (and unduly regressive).

Those who are content to build their own packages for Slackware, may find src2pkg very useful as a build tool. You can find it here in this forum. And I personally can attest to the openness of it's developer.

Shingoshi

Slackware is one of the oldest Linux distribution, you can criticize Pat as you want but he succeeded where others failed
So let see at long term, an operating system should not be build for the processor du jour imho

RAID1 IS NOT A BACKUP SOLUTION! It's an availability solution.

What happens if you accidentally rm -rf / as root or if you get some non-recoverable filesystem corruption? Both disks are lost because they're identical mirrors of each other. If I had only 2 disks to work with then I wouldn't RAID1 them, I'd use one to make point in time backups of the other, updated at appropriate intervals. A RAID Array is still a single point of failure. You still have all your eggs in one basket.

How's that for a "futile argument"?

I'm sorry you lost your data, but its not the installers fault and if you want to use a raid with slackware all you have to do is work through the README_RAID.TXT document on the install media.


I kind of agree with you about 64 bit though. Most people still don't have 4GB of RAM, but even laptops are starting to ship with 4GB now. Slackware will need to have a 64bit option before too long, and sonner rather than later would be best.

Is there any word (recently) on that from PV or the team? I think the Slamd64 project has done most of the necessary work and perhaps it could be incorporated into the official project, like the official S390 port (BTW, that port seems to be stalled at version 10.0 but interestingly there is a "64-bit version coming" message from 2007).

I don't know much about RAID, and never had the need for it but it seems to me that picking out the right drive for such an operation is very important. As far as I'm concerned, in my opinion Seagate and Maxtor drives are OUT. I have never had very good luck with these drives, but have this really old 12GB Western Digital drive, and it is still ticking, after many formats, and uses, and now is the primary drive in my 9 year old system. I am going out on a limb here, but for more intensive and or long period operations one might want to look at WD.

As far as 64-bit is concerned; even though there are notebooks out there that ship with 4+ GB of memory now, the problem is that lets say an average user buys the notebook and is running Vista, I would venture to guess that they may still be running Vista-32 and not 64. In that case, PAE is necessary to even handle that amount of ram in a 32-bit os, but the problem is; how much further can PAE be pushed? It is more or less a hack for 32-bit sys. to access such high amount of memory, and I question it's reliability in accessing memory more than 2GB, (PAE is needed to access anything about 1GB usually). That does give a valid reason for 64-bit, but I like many other slackers are quite content with older hardware. If it still works, and does what we need it to, why change?


Going back to the logo: Even though I don't feel it represents the spirit of the simplicity of Slackware, I do prefer the original logo, I am still sticking with Slackware, because I know that it is a solid distro, and does not hinder me in any way.

Typing this from a P3-800 I'd agree with you. I wouldn't want to see Slackware 32bit discontinued, but a 64bit option will be needed. Is the problem that Pat wouldn't have time to maintain both?

That may very well be the issue. I don't know how to maintain a distro, and so I would imagine that a lot of work goes into maintaining one, and so if suddenly a 64-bit Slackware did come along, I would imagine then the 32-bit version would either be discontinued, or go the way of GNOME and be maintained by third parties. I don't see Pat deciding to maintain two forms of Slackware. I would think when he feels comfortable switching to purely 64-bit he will, but until that that Slackware will be 32-bit for the foreseeable future.

Goodness - I've just returned from a week's holiday in the Scottish highlands (it rained) and this thread is still going strong after two weeks.

As the OP and having reread all posts, I would like to make the following points.

1. I still dislike the new logo, GIMP bug or not.

2. I am heartened to read that many forum members, including such experienced Slackers as Tinkster agree, that on balance the new logo is not an improvement.

3. I didn't start this thread with a poll because to my mind there is little point served by them. We can after all write and thus express ourselves. I think the moderators do an excellent job of keeping this place in order, especially when feelings run high. So thanks to XavierP and his team.

4. Finally, I would like to express my thanks to PV and all his fellow contributors (Robbie, Eric et al.) for producing, what I feel to be the most flexible, stable and workable Linux distribution. My criticism of the logo design is not in any way a criticism of the distribution, I just think it's a terrible mistake.

Regards to all,

dkpw

I really like the new logo.

I think it's original and looks better than the old logo.

The reason it looks out of place on the Slackware website is because the site layout is so square, which fit with the old logo. The new logo is all curvy so it looks a bit out of place. But the logo itself is great in my opinion.

As for the 64-bit option... well it really doesn't matter to me. I would prefer to use a 32-bit OS even if 64-bit becomes available, because stability is my primary concern. I prefer the stability of 32-bit.

Well, just to heat things up a little bit, the T-shirts with the new logo that I had ordered, have indeed arrived (yes, it took a lot of time)!

And besides the magnificent new logo, the new T-shirts also come in a variety of colours, so they can better match personal style. And I, being a bit on the greenish side, took full advantage of that. Thumbs up for Pat.

OT: I would also mention a nice, regulary updated unofficial x86_64 port of Slackware - BlueWhite64. Running on two of our boxes and reliable as official Slack so far.

I also don't like the new logo. Although I found ambigrams interesting, using them as logos representing some product is not too suitable, so much more if it's hardly recognizable and not enough 'aestethically smart'. I find the old logo sufficient and more expressing the philosophy behind Slackware. Hope this issue does not signal some other changes of working and time-proven concepts. If it does mean Slackware goes more commercial, and updating logos is a business practice, I'm worried this was the most fortunate attempt.