So, there is PulseAudio... How about to begin investigating adding LinuxPAM to Slackware too?
 

Then, Slackware is no "virgin" anymore, as our resident Purists want, it becoming a "modern, relevant" Linux distro in the Town. ;)

Then, why not to include LinuxPAM, too?

You known, that minimal set, letting the "cancer" to propagate update after update...

Hi Darth Vader, one step at the time please :-) When your target audience is putting the axe into both your legs the chances for tripping over are a lot bigger.

The only reason we have pulseaudio is bluez requiring it. If Patrick could find an alternative to this, I'm going to take a shot in the dark guess, he'd have found it, and used it by now.

Not only an axe into both legs, but sitting on a branch and sawing it off while you sit on it isn't the best of ideas either.

This.

And the very start of the beta is obviously the wrong time to "investigate" adding PAM.

QOTD right there. :-)

And what exactly makes you think Slackware isn't a "virgin" anymore? Just because it added Pulseaudio makes it any more or less of itself? Sorry, but Slackware has always only added dependencies as required by the packages it contains, upgrades, and continues to use as Patrick sees fit.

Xfce 4.10 should have been a clue to this when it pulled back in a lot of Gnome stuff to resolve dependencies for it.

And yes, Slackware 14.2 is at beta so let's focus on helping Patrick in ironing out bugs, not opening cans spilling worms everywhere.

there is no axe in any leg with PA, but things will work better, like putting the notebook to the TV and just switch the sound, as it works with any other distro since long time now out of the box.
and with PAM would be the same, most would not even notice it, and some will make a short cry and eventually repeating some technical nonsense.

Please .. that ship sailed with the transition from libc5 to glibc ;-)

Exactly the same phrase was used by the systemd proponents in the Debian project. It's a slippery slope once you start on it.

And you keep repeating this. I am sure that Pat and team are well aware of what it takes to incorporate PAM into the system. And I'm sure they are aware of how it will act on a system.

Just let them develop the OS as they see fit. The question about PAM was already presented, and Eric even implied that it might be on the horizon ("one step at a time"). For those wanting PAM, they should take the pulseaudio addition as a sign that Pat will do what he thinks necessary, whether or not people are clamoring for it, to make sure Slackware works with its software.

Here's the opinion of someone whose opinion is influential in Slackware circles:

Given that these threads always end with people on both sides of the argument drinking too much, saying horrible things they don't really mean to each other, and then getting the party shut down by the LQ police, it seems that the best thing you can do if you want PAM considered for inclusion in Slackware is not publicly discuss the inclusion of PAM in Slackware.

"begin investigating"? LOL

Don't expect to see that in the 14.2 development cycle.

It should have bee added 4 or 5 years ago!

See one of Pat's earlier posts in the forum. Not to mention an entire thread on it, with this post from him.

Bluez does not pull in pulseaudio in Gentoo. I wonder why the dependency in Slackware?

I don't know what Gentoo's doing, but Mario's post describes the situation.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ml#post5468844

From https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Bluetooth_Headset#BlueZ_5

All this talk about pulseaudio and bluez made me curious. I have been doing a bit of searching b/c half of what you guys are talking about is over my head. In general there does not seem to be much love for either application... but all the threads and articles I found seem to come back around to the idea that there are no other options. I guess that is where we are...

Perhaps not, but what worked before was broken, so we fixed that.

If there's something else that worked before that's broken now, let us know and we'll take a look.

Honestly, I doubt I would even notice the changes if it weren't for all the threads. I have complete faith in the development of Slackware... I am sure no stone was left unturned in trying to sort this out. I am looking forward to 14.2 :)

like others repeat their opinion, so what, or do you mean that just want to read what fits to your opinion? sound like that.

those who need PAM have to have to use a different distro there where they need it until then.
you are not in this situation so you do not care

No, but if you've ever heard of the term, "beating the dead horse", this is the equivalent. Not to mention that Robby said that every time people start clamoring for PAM, it makes them want to not touch it for a while.

You don't have to use another distro. There's several projects out there that bring PAM to Slackware.

Personally, I don't care if PAM gets added (if you're correct that most won't notice), but constantly repeating the same thing trying to get Pat to change his mind does get annoying. It seems like almost every thread on PAM, you have to come in and state that people won't notice. You won't convince Pat that it needs to be added. He will add it when he feels like Slackware needs it.

thanks for your advice,bassmadrigal, just that you have some context, not that I expect that facts matter for you, but I was not the person who was talking about an axe in the leg, so re-mentioning the non-noticeable op PAM seemed ok for me, but of course you don't need context, feel free to practice selective reading and giving advice to people what the should or possible should not post in your point of view.

a4z, you should listen to bassmadrigal, this conversation is "been there, done that". All points worth considering have been considered and there is no new information, you should refrain from speaking on this again until the day Slackware actually has the bad taste to add pam/kereberos. The only thing you are doing successfully now is sabotaging your own interests.

What facts am I misunderstanding? There was a PAM thread, you then came in and repeated the same thing you always do in PAM threads... that no one would even notice if PAM was added. That is what I was commenting on... so maybe you should work on your comprehension, since there was no "selective reading" on my part. I read and understood the whole thread.

I have no issue with PAM, but it is frustrating seeing the same things spouted every time a PAM thread comes up. Pat and team know what they're doing, and I'd imagine they are well aware of how the inclusion of PAM would/wouldn't affect users. I don't think you need to remind them in every PAM thread that most users won't notice it being added. But, if you feel that desire, then that's up to you. I'm sharing my opinion, just as you are sharing yours.

You seem to think I am attacking you. I am not. I'm just mentioning that you are always repeating the same thing in these threads, and that it probably doesn't need to be done since the powers that be are already aware. But if you really want to continue repeating yourself, then by all means... continue :)

ok for you, certainly. But, when you post on a public forum, the question you ask should be: is it ok for your readers?

well, the most noise comes not from me but, as usual, from the 'die hard don not metion PAM' fraction.
its always the same, start some FUD, like axes in a feet, then I mention that this is not the case, and then the self declared guards of what is OK to say and not make noise and nothing to the topic.

well, enough for me for now in this thread, reality is, if Slackware does not work in most of the environments I work than I can not use it there, and this is no problem for me, if fact it's a great experience.
so in real I do not care, if Slackware does not want me to use most of my time it it's OK for me. But that does PAM nor, as proven now, PA still not make an ax somewhere in somebody's body, and if I read such a mess I will also comment it also in future.

Here's the question I have for people who start (and discuss) these kinds of topics. Why is this even an issue? Slackware has always stood for stability and reliability, as well as being "modern and relevant". I have been using Slackware for about 10 years now, and if there were even a hint that Slackware was about adding things just for kicks, then I would have abandoned it years ago. All you need to know about the inclusion of Pulseaudio is explained in the ChangeLog. The ramifications of it are explained in Alien BOB's blog entry. I'm going to be frank here: if some people here would know how to read and to reason well, these threads would not exist. Period. The addition of Pulseaudio is a non-issue, for reasons stated by Pat V. himself, and PAM is a topic best left for later discussion, if indeed circumstances warrant it.

Agreed. I've occasionally argued for the inclusion of PAM in Slackware, but PV + co have a better grip on the needs of the distribution as a whole, and where to prioritize their own limited time and energy.

PAM is on their radar. They're aware of it. They know why you and I and some other folks want it. If it is ever made part of Slackware, it will be when they decide it is right.

Until then, I fiddle with alternatives and don't bitch about it here (just as I don't bitch about PA; even though it's not my own personal ideal solution, they have all of the Slackware users to think about, not just me me me).

+1 on that.

Same thing here... I understand there are resources limitations and it's better to have a more robust and reliable "less" than a clumsy, control-less unstable and buggy "all-inclusive".

I'll be happy if it comes, it'll remove an argument for the "anti-slackers", but until then I appreciate Slackware as it is, as I appreciated it and was fascinated in my teenage years in the 90s... Not meaning it hasn't evolved, but I still can have the same "magic feeling" I had in those years, whereas all other OSes removed "the fun out from computing" in me (to steal distrowatch tagline).

PS/ "An-inclusive" often means EVERYTHING is included, even bugs :).

I think if someone has an intelligent comment ( a statement based on some newish information everyone may not already know) to make on any subject it ought to be welcomed.

I would also point out that despite a lot of crying and nonsense that we had a productive thread recently. We did answer a number of important questions. We pretty well established what can and can't be done around centralized authentication beyond NIS without PAM. We defined the complexities of adding PAM as an end user. We pointed out even adding PAM without kerberos packages would be helpful. We got a lot of good input form people who have integrated Slackware into larger environments and people who have built packages and done some real testing. Which not everyone can do because not everybody has an ADS domain they are free to join member servers into. Pat commented; its message sent and received. In summary the answer was not now, but maybe not never either. This all took place in the current development cycle before things started settling into pre-beta. This was a much more reasonable time to be lobbying for something to be done.

This thread on the other hand was basically a troll. It began with some snark about puleaudio which is essentially unrelated and added exactly nothing new to the PAM discussion. In a small way wasting Pat and Eric's time with this type of stuff is perhaps one of the reasons those of us that want PAM can't get it.

Seriously if you have something to add start a thread. It would be helpful I think if it was specific like:
PAM would enable us to...
Built some PAM packages discovered...
... can't be built without PAM support.

What we don't need at least not leading up to a new relase where things are already mostly settled is another "Slackware should have PAM thread".

inconsistency is wonderful, take this,
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ml#post5479724
and replace bluetooth/sound with central authentication.

so what intelligent discussion should there be, there are some project that show which packages would need to be changed/maintaned, but there is no trustable solution for Slackware, not now and very possible not within years.
so it's clear that the userbase of Slackware does not need PAM because everyone that needs PAM has moved to different distribution. and those who will need it in future will have to do the same because the statements and release cycles do no make it look like there will be a solution before several years!

Slackware's upgrade to BlueZ 5 broke bluetooth sound. Slackware had to add PulseAudio in order to fix something which worked before and was suddenly broken.
Regarding PAM - Slackware never had PAM, so adding it won't fix something that worked before and suddenly got broken. Slackware documentation does not mention anywhere that central authentication should work. If some functionality in Slackware suddenly breaks as a result of a future package update and adding PAM would fix this, then who knows - you could see PAM getting added to Slackware.

I fail to see the inconsistency.

Well, I guess I'll dig up a post by PV that everybody loves to through at PAM proponents:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...2/#post4182564
I know that patching BlueZ in order for it to work without PulseAudio may not be a trivial task... but it suggests that for some things the "hammer it till it fits" approach is used while for others the "change it because it doesn't fit anymore" approach is preferred.

Try harder? :)

PS: I know that PAM is a big deal and adds to the already huge PV's workload and I'm happy to keep solving my problems by myself.
I'm a pragmatic guy and I believe in the "use the right tool for the job" philosophy (I even use windows(tm) for some jobs)
:)

You can't wait and want Slackware with PAM right now? Easy:

1. Fork Slackware
2. Add PAM
3. Change the name. I suggest PAMSlack or SlackPAM
4. Release

:o

to create on more non trust able solution?
lame attemt to be original Didier.
Look, I am not one of the persons that can not boot into a different runlevel just because I have to deal with a different distribution.
So the consequences for me are clear, Slackware will be on a notebook at home, sometimes on weekends as hobbies, main work continues as in the last >18 months on a different distribution.
I do not have the time nor the will to fix the technical debts Slackware has created for itself in the last decade. The only active thing I can do is donating, and this happens to the project I actual use for the reason that I am permanently reminded of them through the usage.
See, I follow the kiss principle.

We can't always get what would like. That's life.

To me, Slackware is a tool.
My preferred tool.
It is like a swiss army knife that doesn't have a corkscrew.
When I want to open a bottle of wine I'll chose another tool: screwdriver with a corkscrew, hammer with a corkscrew, or just a one use tool like a corkscrew.

Sure, I wished Slackware had a corkscrew... but it is easier for me to simply use another tool than to redesign my preferred one.

Trying to fit a squared peg into a round hole is very time consuming :(

Slackware is the least annoying distro (for me) and it actually tries to get out of my way when I'm doing stuff.
It allows me to do things the way I want to, instead of the way someone else thinks things should be done.
It doesn't try to hide things from me like being able to login as root and bork my system.
It is MY system after-all :)
That being said, if it doesn't do what I need I'll use something else for that task.

You cut out an important part of that quote. Software that has non-PAM code is running into problems because it is not well tested. They've had to fix a few bugs with patches because of it not working as it should.

These are two very different things: 1. adding PAM because software completely removed support for non-PAM setups. 2. support exists for non-PAM setups, but it's buggy.

As far as I know, they haven't run into any software dealing with #1 that doesn't have a decent alternative (in fact, I don't know if they've even run into a program that removed support for non-PAM setups... the changelog for 14.1 and -current don't seem to imply it).

The difference is in how many people put their word to their mouth and actually stepped up doing something about it. We had users (not core team members, mind you) develop everything from small patches to huge features in order to keep shadow support going (iirc). *Nobody* cared about pulseaudio. There was plenty of time. Lot's of people must've seen it coming and if they had cared enough, they would have submitted patches upstream to keep alsa support going. Not only to bluez, but also to xfce, plasma 5 and whatever the next thing is that will drop plain alsa support. That didn't happen, that's why pulseaudio is in the tree.

When someone says "sooner or later we will not be able to avoid $this", it's *your* cue to step up your game and do something about it. If you don't, you forfeit your right to complain when the inevitable happens.

I will preface this with saying that I don't really care about PAM, if it comes to Slackware, I will trust that it was the right decision. I trust Pat's decisions on what a distro needs.

For once though, I would like to see a PAM thread that started with, "I tested so-and-so's PAM build" and I have this working. It added these awesome features, here's what broke, here's what didn't break ... et cetera. I don't see enough people requesting PAM putting *any* effort toward testing it. It seems pretty obvious that it is a significant undertaking.

Go forth and test:

http://www.slackware.com/~vbatts/pam/
https://github.com/Dlackware/systemd...er/systemd/pam
http://www.bisdesign.ca/ivandi/slackware/SlackMATE/pam/

If you want PAM, test and help these projects or start your own, don't just ask for handouts. VirtualBox is only a download away, you don't even need to bork your current install. ;^)

As someone who does not use bluez, kde or xfce I have not noticed any programs remove alsa support and if they did I would instantly bring it up with their upstream developers assuming I could not fix it myself. Nevertheless I did what I could for myself and blacklisted pulseaudio before it was installed. I am willing to recompile/remove any packages that causes problems with that and anyone else with similar complaints should do similar. Though now that my system is pulse free and working reliably as always I will not hold back in sharing my honesty that this is a really poor decision and I can not emphasize my disappointment in the slackware maintainers strongly enough. The only result from this is to fix some obscure feature most people here have no need for and a forum full of pulseaudio bugs, complaints and arguments.

Also, even though I do not have any bluetooth hardware, devices or interest in getting either I will and am bringing this up with the bluez upstream, others should join in.

They have #bluez @ freenode and this mailing list.
http://www.bluez.org/development/lists/

Just because you don't use bluetooth and have no interest in getting it anytime soon, doesn't mean that those who do use bluetooth should be left out in the cold just because you don't happen to like pulseaudio. And do you actually know for a fact that "most people here have no need for" bluetooth audio? Really, that statement borders on arrogance. Nowhere have I seen you poll people here to see if they use bluetooth. Just because you see a few posts of people complaining about problems with bluetooth/pulseaudio configuration problems doesn't mean that they constitute the majority of Slackware users.

I don't have bluetooth hardware, but I respect Pat V.'s decision to include pulseaudio because he has to consider the broader aspect of Slackware usage, not just a few, like you and I. I don't know what problems you have had with pulseaudio, but I have no such issues. Sound continues to work like it always has.

Finally, if you want to complain upstream, feel free to do so, but don't assume everyone should be as aggrieved as you are, and take similar action. Complaining isn't likely to change the situation, although it might make you feel a little better.

Just my :twocents:

Regards,

Matt

The dark orange part is easily dealt with (every "how do I disable Pulseaudio" thread got an instant answer), and the red part isn't Pat's fault.

The bluez-5.x stuff came from Dugan (primarily) and me, and I've been working on new blueman-2.x for over a year (even contributing to it upstream a bit), and the combination of bluez-5.x and blueman-2.x is a huge improvement for me. I'm sure it's nice for many other Slackware users too, but understand that *I* put forth the effort on it because *I* needed it. For the first time in literally years, bluetooth devices work reliably - every time I need them. My experience there along with Pat and other Slackware team members' testing is why bluez-5.x went into -current. If we had known then that pulseaudio would be needed, then I can't say for sure what the decision would have been, but given the positive reception and results from bluez-5, it seemed reasonable to see how pulseaudio would play with Slackware before reverting bluez-5.x.

After experimenting with pulseaudio, primarily from mario's suggestions and testing of what was mostly ppr:kut's work originally, we were pleasantly surprised to find that PA worked well with very few hiccups. As he said in an earlier post somewhere, Pat did a lot of reading and researching on what bothered people most about PA and made sure those issues were solved before it ever hit the -current tree. Even better, it was added in such a way that *not* using it doesn't even require recompiling things - there's absolutely no reason to get all bent out of shape about it being there. If you don't want to use it, then do a bit of research to figure out how to turn it off; otherwise, use it and enjoy it - it just works.

Ultimately, this "most people have no need for it" banter is a bit disheartening. *I* need it. pprkut needs it. Probably other devel team members need it, or at the very least, they recognize that it makes some parts of what they do easier, which certainly approaches "need" as far as I can tell. This sounds a lot like what pprkut already said, but basically, the people doing the actual work on making Slackware decided that pulseaudio was the best way forward for the distribution as a whole. We've *never* made seat-of-the-pants judgments about things of this nature before, and we didn't this time, and we don't intend to start, so this closeted implication of that is pretty damned insulting. Give it a rest or go find another distribution that's more suitable.

Oops - double post...

I like PA in that it now lets me seamlessly throw audio from one device to another in near-real time, as opposed to manually maintaining an ~/.asoundrc . It also now makes some tweaking much easier to do (e.g. parametric equalizer with PA and LADSPA) than previously (I'm aware of alsaequal, but I prefer parametric over fixed-band graphic eqs.)

Kudos to @rworkman and team for making sure PA "just works"(TM)

I certainly needed bluez-5.x to support my heart rate monitor via dbus. I'm glad that it was added.

Wow, I would definitely call that an example of mission critical software.