+1 on that.

Reading through the various PulseAudio-related threads, it looks like there are two types of "conservative" users.

1. Those who trust Slackware as a conservative distribution, e. g. maintained by a team who won't include any half-baked "technology preview" in an otherwise reliable distribution.
2. Those who seem to be opposed to any change, whatever it is, and whose epidermic reaction to the sensible introduction of a new feature is a mere "How can I get rid of $NEWFEATURE"?

[edit: removed]

reported, because I think this is not the way communication in this forum should be

Dugan was not being sarcastic and you completely mis-interpreted that sentence. Unwarranted reply, not befitting this community.

Full moon today or what is it? :confused:

Richard Cranium, that kind of language isn't acceptable at LQ. If you'd like to continue participating here, please refrain from using it in the future. Thanks.

--jeremy

Kudos rworkman,

I am happy to see pulseaudio added to slackware.
It makes indeed my life easier as developer as I was shipping it with the gnome-3.18 + systemd + wayland build
as pulseaudio is activated by dbus, I did not had to recompile it for systemd.

and guess what, my sound still works like before.

next step would be indeed pam

I see what you said. I wasn't being sarcastic, and I find it strange that you took it that way.

Well, that's exactly what makes Slackware a toy distro.

I have nothing against PulseAudio. What bothers me is the decision making process.


Cheers

Slackware's reputation as a stable, reliable distro didn't happen by accident; it was the result of many years of making decisions that have panned out as workable over the long run. Your definition of "toy", as I understand it, is due to some people in the decision-making process including something that you don't consider "professional" for their own benefit. Well, it doesn't impact the overall reliability of the distro. And do you really think that "professional" distros like Red Hat, CentOS, OpenSUSE, and the like just add things for only professional reasons? Do you not think that these people add things to them for their own needs and/or wants?

I have yet to encounter a distro that is as professional as Slackware. In my decade of using it, I have seen nothing about it that makes it a "toy" distro. If, on the other hand, a "toy" is something you define as playing with for fun, then yes, maybe they do, but that's what part of what makes Slackware a fulfilling computing experience, IMHO. And it still doesn't impact the stability. At all.

Happy Slacking!

Regards,

Matt

Toy distros are what I need as a home user.

It's great that you Bluetooth users are happy, but as a non-Bluetooth user it's unthinkable to have PA on my system (surely I'm entitled to an opinion), so I will find another OS where programs like these will never be installed by default. Thanks for Slackware, it was the best Linux distribution while it lasted.

I was hoping you were still rendered speechless.

"Cheers"

So you are a 'trend maker' ? Because you are not interested anymore (which is respectable), you think the 'absolute value' have (will be) changed ?

Of course you are. You're not entitled to force that opinion onto others, though, least of all onto one of the people who voluntarily devotes a significant amount of his spare time to developing Slackware.

If it's unthinkable to you to install PulseAudio, don't install it. There have been countless threads about PulseAudio in this forum since it was added to -current, and most of them (this one in particular) have discussed how you can disable it if you don't want to use it.

Reading some posts here does miracles ;)


Cheers

I still would like to know why you think PA is an unthinkable addition to Slackware. Yes it was created by our pal Lennart. It was a buggy piece of shit at the time. Now it is being developed by other people, and can be considered stable & useable.
The decision was made that adding it to Slackware and thus making the broken Bluetooth sound work again, was a better option than ditching BLuetooth support and leaving lots of people out in the cold.
This is about pragmatism as well as philosophy, and the line connecting the two is very thin. I really wish you could adopt the viewpoint that Slackware is and remains a solid stable and independent distro, making changes only when needed and not on a whim.
Using a distro inherently means trusting its developers to do the right thing. Please have a little bit more faith in Pat and the Slackware team.

If you are still hell-bent on your refusal of the addition of PulseAudio then I am sorry that you came to that decision but I respect you for it. I hope you find a distro that suits your needs and fits better with your viewpoint.

This has become a rather heated discussion.
I'll add my two cents.
I chose slackware to create a personal audio studio for a few reasons.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/slac...?source=navbar
One of the first is the absence of pulseaudio. It doesn't coexist well with JACK.
I haven't delved into trying to connect bluetooth audio into JACK. That would be interesting.
Personally I would like to see/have a backend with gstreamer connected to JACK, but that's besides the point. I also did have to add PAM. It was necessary for some type of advanced POSIX memory locking/control (which I found very little to no information on) for an audio app (I believe it was ardour). The last was a desire to keep processes to a minimum that would interfere and cause JACK latencies. I like PAM. I don't believe it to be a security issue until third party addons/modules are used. I'm torn about PulseA. I do use BTaudio, but there has to be a better solution.

Why not just disable PA? It's trivial, and has already been described (quick edits to two config files). That seems like a better option than migrating to an inferior distribution (a lot less effort, too).

Well, PulseAudio was fairly easy to add to Slackware (from SBO for example), and to use it only when needed, instead of shipping it by default. I did it when bluez got bumped. I don't need Bluetooth. I was just curious and didn't even think we would see it in Slackware. And because it emulates esound and virtually every player in Slackware has esound support there was no need to recompile any of them.

Lets hope that one day someone of the team gets a new toy, like a fingerprint scanner for example. That same day PAM will be shipped with Slackware because it will be a better option than leaving all those fingerprint scanner users out in the cold.


Cheers

Wow, its like I'm in 4chan!

I do hope you don't actually believe what you are saying there.
What rworkman said in an earlier post in this thread also strongly hints (at least in my opinion) that support for new stuff normally isn't just stuffed in because someone (even in the core team) think it's a novel idea at the time.
Alien Bob says the same thing.
My impression is that core team members do (as many, many other Slackware users) have some software on the side that they maintain packages of themselves. Packages stuff that sometimes (many times) will never go into Slackware proper. Even in the long run.
Also; I find that a fingerprint scanner is a somewhat bad example. It shouldn't be too big a stretch to imagine that there are quite a few more users of sound (and thus sound over bluetooth) than there are users that *need* fingerprint scanners to work.
That said, I do see the point you are trying to make, but it also seems your trust in the integrity of PatV and the core Slackware maintainers may be somewhat lacking.


--
KarlMag

My laptop already has one. It's never worked and here's a list of all the times that's bothered me:





















...

of course it does not work in Slackware, unsolved since nearly 10 years http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ut-pam-595124/

also http://www.slackwiki.com/ThinkPad_X6...erprint_Reader
and the central authentication scenarios ....

lets declare it to a feature that without changing big parts of the system by the user things like this are not possible.

consistency is a wonderful thing ;)

When did you replace your T400?

I'd rather have a "toy" distribution too. Distributions like that are fun, exciting to work with, have great communities, and present a more welcoming atmosphere.

There's a damn good reason I don't use anything but Slackware as my primary Linux distribution. Yeah, I mess with LFS when I get the itch to do so, but Slackware it is and always will be.

If that makes it a "toy" OS, just like BSD, then I'll stick to my toys. Toys are fun, invoke imagination, bring joyfulness, and often educational.

Slackware is like my big bucket of Legos I have from my childhood. I learned a lot from my Legos... Slackware too.

Well I know nothing about PAM issues and reasons behind not integrating it in Slackware. As far as I remember PV once criticized dropline gnome due to using PAM. I respect developer's decisions about new technologies as they try to keep Slackware simple, flexible and stable and these are the parameters which have distinguished Slackware from many Linux distros for long years.
Personally I like Willy's work on Cinnamon desktop so much and if someday I need PAM I will use it (didn't try yet but I guess it support fingerprint scanner too). I am sure all knowledgeable slackers in this forum know how to add different technologies to Slackware if they need them without burden on PV and his team to sacrifice Slackware philosophy.

Borrowed this line from dugan's homepage: "This is Slackware. Do anything you want"

I think the bottom line is it really shouldn't be that difficult for the average Slacker to disable PulseAudio or edit the SlackBuilds and rebuild a few very small packages, get your card using alsa instead of pulse, blacklist in slackpkg, etc. This isn't <insert some GUI based hold your hand distro> and it took me less than fifteen minutes to remove, rebuild and get the sound working with alsa. Some of you should be able to do it in five minutes. I am pulse-free just like in 14.1, mind you I use fluxbox, openbox or some obscure window managers and don't use or install Xfce or KDE.

So strap on a pair, man up, get your hands dirty for a few minutes and stop whinging!


edit addition: Do not remove keybinder if you use Ponce's LXDE. It requires it for the panel (I just installed LXDE for my kids)

That alone deserves a big "Welcome to LQ"! ;)

(Ahem, and we acknowledge the polite indulgence of the many lady Slackers as we boys do as boys will do!)

Strong with the force young padawan is!

Here's one question that may answer why PAM hasn't been included. Is PAM a hard dependency of any package in the main Slackware tree? No.

Pulse is a required dependency/runtime for BlueZ's audio system.

Now please, either follow the advice and fork Slackware, maintain an SBo ad-on package with complete instructions for system integration, etc. otherwise your efforts are like peddling ice to eskimos.

@astrogeek Thanks for the welcome!! I've been using Slackware since March 1995. I prefer to sit back and read the threads and absorb the knowledge rather than chime in with my unimportant opinion. Pat always puts out a solid release and we're usually able to fix, remove, or add whatever we want to customise Slackware to our liking. That's why I've stuck with it. For some reason today I got irked because it's such a simple fix that takes a minimal amount of time and effort and I see unnecessary whining. And Eric gave an alternative on his blog and this thread to disable it.

For the ladies, I apologise if I appeared not to include you. It was not my intention. I am definitely not PC and come from a time when "man" or "mankind" could refer to men or women or "guys" could used to refer to a mixed group of men and women and not just a group of men. Somehow I think it would sound funny "to strap on a pair and person up" ;-)

I've been using pulseaudio since 14th Jan'16. I just upgraded it with the last Sunday changelog. It has been doing its job pretty well, just like ALSA did before it: to handle audio through many analog/digital inputs and outputs seen on any modern computer.

Being an hifi audio enthusiast myself, I don't count on my computer systems to provide any sort of audiophile quality stream, so either PA or ALSA are fine enough for my computer audio needs. I tend to believe these are the audio expectations of any user base majority: listen to compressed audio through analog (line out) or digital (e.g. HDMI) outputs, play some games and get input to a voice/video call (mic being the typical example).

Of course, PA poses a challenge for the ones in need of a low latency, near real time system. I also tend to believe that the pro-audio setup is an edge case among the Linux community. Anyway, the people looking for this kind of setup are experienced enough to handle that in Slackware or any other PA based distro out there with things like jackd, ALSA plugins and their friends. Their work and knowledge are huge to improve our daily basis expectations, but their use case aren't.

That being said and after I have read this topic and others related to it, my general feeling about all this can be expressed as:

• PA introduction: an existing functionality (audio from/to bluetooth devices) broke after the new bluetooth server (BlueZ 5). This renders a standard Slackware functionality, available on any modern system with Bluetooh hardware, into an unavailable feature, hence the decision towards PA.
• PAM issue: a central auth layer that was never a functionality on Slackware. People looking for centralized auth should look elsewhere or being able to add the functionality by themselves on their Slackware. By not being a Slackware feature, this is not supported by the Slackware maintainers.
• PA vs PAM: they have nothing to do with each other, except by the fact that some people are trying to push the later using as an excuse the introduction of the prior.
• PAM4Slackware defenders: people looking to be 'one of a kind' among their IT departments and colleagues by playing the victim role to pressure Slackware maintainers to provide PAM as an standard feature. What they really want in the end of the day is to say this out loud: 'Hey! You, bellow the average [put the distro here] admin! I'm better than you because I run Slackware in an enterprise environment.'

I run Slackware on my own cloud enterprise systems. I've been forced to PAM very few times. When I do, I go for another distro. No drama. I don't know if this is to 'SysAdmin'. All that I know is that this has been working with an incredible success rate for ages. Someone may argue: 'but it could work with Slackware if it had PAM.' How, my dear Oompa Loompa? Slackware doesn't have PAM now.

Now I think the time to shut my mouth up for another year has arrived...

EDIT: please note that my understanding is that audio is the key feature of Slackware, while low latency audio is not. This was a side effect of a pure ALSA system, but not something advertised as a feature. As such, PA still provides audio as before, although not being low latency anymore.

Pat's record speaks for itself. Solid, reliable and stable. As a person who works for a big global company and has to deal with roadblocks due to our various linux distributions being buggy and fragile - Slackware stands out as the one distro that just works.


Thanks, Pat & Team!

I love this! Pretty much spot on, another tactic at from sPAMmers (SCAMmers?) at this point: playing the victim card while juxtaposing it with illusory superiority.

Keyboard warring aside, let's just agree that we'll get bacon (in the form of systemd first) before sPAM. :D /ducks

You do notice the irony of your own statement?

Mods please close this thread it was never anything but trolling and now its just bickering and name calling. Its only doing the community harm at this point.

If there is any doubt this was a troll the fact that the OP has not come pack to post in 6 pages, should prove it.

Sure I do! IF it was just like you've quoted. That's why I made it complete.

You know what, @kikinovak, the original post version I wrote was:

But I thought it was against LQ rules, so I refrain myself to mention names. ;)

+1 for this.

Not too terribly long ago - I found a good deal on a T430 (used). The T400 is still here and in use though :-)

for me it's OK if you do this,
your over the screen and internet expert analysis tells me how serious I have to take your posts, namely as serious as the quality of your prediction
which then for was about 5 minutes or so :p

:hattip:

My last post on the subject dates back to early last summer. I've already made my point with too much emphasis at the time, and I don't wish to rehash this all over again. Just to be clear: I'm happy with Slackware as it is, and I'll happily see what the future brings. The post above was a mere smiling wink at the involuntary irony of your post and had nothing to do with the technical debate, if one may call it that.

I thought wayland was bacon? We however do not need stinky foot cheese. ;)

I knew I forgot something burning! Wayland it is! :D /thumbsup

I consider both LinuxPAM and PulseAudio being rather Political Issues, more than some show-stoppers. Both being Industrial Standards, right now.

You known, The Devil Works, Inc., we dare to be different, and so on...

Still, after a massive change to Pulse Audio, who have supposed risk to leave billions of Slackware End-Users without sound, wasn't as the prophecy about The End of World.

In the mean time, looks that the little Slackware community programmers are busy to patch things and develop even bigger ones, just to support Pride-Full No-PAM, while even Our Dear Leader hearth-fully agree that today, into A.D. 2016, the non-PAM code is much less tested and much more prone to bugs. And is about essentials components of the Operating Systems.

That thing alone is well enough to justify well the integration of LinuxPAM into Slackware. Because is supposed us to use the best quality code into.

I would remark that even our friend R.Workman do not use his finger-print sensor available into his computer, the irony do that the Companies use to massive use that thing. And that PAM lack is show-stopper, even for a Linux-friendly Company, trying to install Slackware in some portable computer junkies, used as adjacent items. Is it not useful to talk yet again about integration of some Slackware computers for Real Work, in a Company.

Let's be honest, the Slackware is very unfriendly to Companies!

And that's bad. We can be happy about some notice into a questionable Linux News website, while actively we refuse to offer even a chance to a massive adoption of our beloved Distribution. For what for?

It is about a number of freaking four packages to insert into...

All the best!

You are hard to understand, with those rattling noises and the heavy breathing. I suggest you move on to Empire Linux or another distro that is more friendly to you. It's not like Pat was an Emperor who is forcing you to use his distro.
All the best to you!

P.S.: Yoda wanted me to add that "Social skills that Darth Vader has to learn. Annoying and complaining no good way is, other people's good will to get".
P.S.S.: So if it's only four packages to compile, go on and stop whining about things the universe hasn't promised you, neither has done Pat.

@titopoquito

I do not whine about anything, I just say the crude reality.

And I know well, some times a well grounded opinion can be well annoying for those still dreaming in a Crystal Dome. :hattip:

Also, if you do not known, I made lobby about porting Slackware to i586, from optimization reasons, eventually to i686, long before the Team to adopt the actually i586 ARCH by default. That was another crude reality. ;)

Industry standard is a misleading term. The "industry" thinks it knows best, but honestly going above and beyond industry standards to determine what is best for the audience is what Patrick has done.

Nothing already in Slackware requires any implementation of PAM to build. Things like PAM are critical for things, but only a small spectrum of usage requires it, which means it's audience is small and limited.

Yes, using Slackware in Corporate IT without secondary setup is a dream, but you have options that include rsyncing sources, rebuilding packages using internal standards to the site and network, and maintaining an in-house standardization fit for your business. Slackware's entire source is free to download, change, redeploy, and maintain for private and public usage.

I don't understand why everything must be done by the distribution? SBo requires you build packages, and if you want extended functionality in the main Slackware packages, you must rebuild them. Even Gentoo/Funtoo are classed as industry standard, but you have to often use a lot of masking of packages to get anything to build if you want certain things. That really makes it no different than Slackware but people don't whine about it.

You cannot differentiate between what you call "reality" and what is your opinion. And no, just because you have a thought it does not necessarily mean it resembles reality. And no, neither does stating that it was reality make it more real.

everything vs PAM, we had this more than once, you got it explained from many persons here ...

I know that you are somehow resistant against facts, but the whining about that people whine is to whine so why don't you stop whine :D

ps : Gentoo/Funtoo are classed as industry standard :confused: wow ... could it be that you missed that all the cool kids with rolling release classed industry standard distributions are nowadays on arch :)

And what make you to be so sure that you can differentiate between what you call "reality" and what is your opinion? :hattip:

BTW, happens to earn my food by maintaining a PAMified fork of Slackware, needed by a Company for some internal applications, so is no need to invite me to use PAM sine-die, like as you arrogant purposed. Please, use arguments to, instead. ;)