How about backward compatibility up to 90's?
Agree, the necessary "bloat" may fool some newbies into using old,unmaintained applications.
However, it should be a corner/minor issue.
To think anyone would eager to touch any application which is far from "modern",
he/she must have some knowledge on behalf.
User-friendliness shouldn't be a problem, it is just marketing fail.
Maybe i miss something but tetex->texlive is the only one i can think of.
I guess that the policy(if any) of the official package tree is to add the general purpose applications only.
If you want "modern" but profession-specific tools,
say,if you want CAD,Blender,Sage..etc. These can be done in slackbuilds.org.
The official tree seems to provide something like DE,emacs,*nix-ish tools,
common setup of mail/http/ftp server and such,that is,general purpose.
On software development,it shouldn't be lacking.
First of all,it is the most friendly source distro you can have.
Secondly,cant we see the trend today?
python->pip, ruby->gems, Common lisp->quicklisp, Haskell->Cabal, Emacs lisp->ELPA ...etc.
Jeez,doesn't a package manager become far more friendly for rigorous development/testing if it is more "barebone"?
At the end of the day, Slackware maybe a perfect solution for modern development.
Package manager like Nix, the complete opposite, while trying hard on consistency,
not only complicate the management even further, but may also show add more constraint or unnecessity.

Yet, cant agree more with that,
On the marketing point of view, completeness is crucial.
Regardless, it is so uncool to keep bringing up this matter...
Squeezing out as much good,slackware-ish applications as we can, seems to be the best strategy?

Edit: grammar

You can't blame her for that thread. Slackers went into meltdown for nothing over that. It was quite entertaining to watch actually.

Haters gonna hate.

So more people installing Ubuntu makes it better than slackware? Cool.

"Distro to watch" is akin to saying one song is better than another because it is higher up on the top 40.

I have no sarcastic 90's meme to close this post, sadly.

Just because there is not a release version since 1995 doesn't mean the version you run in Slackware is from 1995, in fact it is patched by patches sourced from other distros. So if other distros have it then shouldn't we have it also?

Gnome can stay dead, along with anything from Pottering.

I have to agree. The over 30 page thread may have some entertainment value.
However, it was also uplifting.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ml#post4692445

But I liked the 1990s. :( Well, at least when I was a kid.

With the improvements in auto-detection of hardware and the auto-configuring of X, Slackware really isn't that difficult to use. I remember when I first used it and I had to edit /etc/fstab to mount a USB drive. Nowadays, Slackware with KDE pretty much auto-detects everything.

The original source is still from 1995 no matter how many patches you apply to it.
Have you tried using xxgdb by any chance? When i execute it, from a terminal because desktop files weren't used back then get an error message about 'no available ptys' or similar.

Your argument is very logical but lets not forget that the other distros you are referring to are offering other options along with xxgdb. In Slackware it is the only one. And its ugly, old and featureless comparing to modern alternatives.

Slackware is missing more than just GNOME.
Come to think of it the most exciting thing that happened during the 13.37 -> 14.0 release cycle was the inclusion of NetworkManager and GTK+3 which are both GNOME technologies, maybe along with the XFCE split.

edit: Talking about press coverage i just bumped into this: http://igurublog.files.wordpress.com.../mag-cover.jpg
, the cover of the next issue of a linux magazine in the UK.
It doesnt even have the Slackware logo on it while theres some derivatives there in those ~30 distributions.

I'm impressed with how well Kikinovac and Caitlyn's discussion is going. Keep it up, both of you.

LOL

More of Kiki delivering well written comments and then been labeled a fanboy because the other side disagrees.

This isn't the first time such a discussion between those two has gone down this path, I'm surprised Kiki hasn't given up on her yet.

I give up. Lesson learned. :redface:

:) im almost 60 and i love slackware. As far as being stuck in the 90's it was a good decade for linux, lots of possibilities and tools that allowed you to use linux the way you wanted to and to build it into something personal that fit your needs. And slackware still has that, along with the latest and greatest available in the linux world. I guess all that flexibility just confuses some of these younguns.
Imo slackware needs more cartoony icons as an aid to youngsters with limited attention spans.

EDIT: geez, thinking about it, maybe slackware is the codger distro, maybe i should switch to ubuntu and start lying about my age.

Meanwhile Slackware quietly sits at the #10 spot on distrowatch.

It's not scientific, but it's also not meaningless. There is a reason it's sitting up there in the top 10.

There is a patch (blogspot.com) to correct the issue. Anyway I think it is a nice decent small X front end to gdb for c programing :)
Not sure how good it is for other languages though.

John

@kikinovak: Is the illustration on the cover of "Linux aux petits oignons" by Ayo73? :) He has pretty recognizable style. I used to use his wallpapers extensively in 2005/2006. :)

@all: sorry for offtopic.

No, it has KDE.