Things That Have Gone South WIth Recent Updates.
 

Thunderbird (from "current"):
Since the recent updates to "current" Thunderbird has ceased to function properly. I've deleted ~/.thunderbird and ran "upgradepkg --reinstall --install-new" on the latest Thunderbird package three times and each time is the same.
It will launch, let you set up an account, retrieve mail and then crash and disappear.
If started from a prompt the error message is,

BTW, that smilie is suppose to be a colon and the letter, p.

SeaMonkey Mail runs just fine. In fact, I've been so impressed with the latest version of the SeaMonkey Suite, I decided to use it for all my mail and browsing needs and fully "retire" both Thunderbird and Opera. I've been using Opera since the whole thing fit on one, 1.44 meg. floppy, but its recent problems pushed me to try other browsers and SeaMonkey is a more than adequate replacement (and faster too).


WINE (from AlienBob):
Neither WINE 1.4 or 1.5.4 will install ms-office 2003, Compton's Talking Dictionary or The American Heritage Electronic Dictionary (32 bit and 16 bit, respectively). I've used WINE 1.2.1 to install them and once done, 1.4 will run them, but 1.5.4 will NOT run them. Period. After the last try I re-installed 1.2.1. It does the job.


Xfce 4.10 (from Ralvex):
On a positive note, Xfce 4.10 is running fine. A major improvement over 4.8.x. There are, every now and then, minor video problems that don't occur in KDE, but, overall, the developers got it right this time. Now if it only had a Xfce specific menu editor. Someday? Maybe?
:)

Thunderbird - works just fine for me.

Opera - Is not part of Slackware. I agree that SeaMonkey is underrated.

WINE - I have given up. A virtual machine in qemu-kvm is a much better solution.

Xfce - Your view on KDE is well known, but it is my preferred DE.

I'm still using Opera (haven't had any of the problems you've alluded too), but a quick test of thunderbird seems to show it working just fine too. (64-current May 23rd).

Thunderbird working fine in both 32 and 64 bit for me.
Don't know about Opera, I am not using it, but if there are problems it would be best to contact ruario about that.
Wine is not part of Slackware. Question number one would be: Is this the case on any distro? If not it would be best to contact AlienBob about that. If yes, report that bug to Wine.
XFCE 4.10 is not part of Slackware yet, so what can we do? Question here would also be if that is a Slackware or a XFCE bug.

Also, keep in mind that you are using -current, so it is known that bugs may occur and it is very appreciated if you report those bugs so that they can be fixed.

Rather than being so negative, how about describing what has improved. That would make such a refreshing change :)

@TobiSGD: Actually he did start a thread on the Opera forums about hangs and freezes he was encountering but it was never something I could reproduce nor was I finding other users reporting the same issues. There was one other person in his thread who also talked of hangs and freezes on some sites but it wasn't yet clear if both of them were actually hitting the same bug or not.

I hate to give excuses but in this case I will. Around the time of cwizardone starting his thread on his issues with Opera my personal life went into upheaval with the birth of my daughter and the serious complications my wife encountered. As a side note I wrote a blog post about the issues (though if you want to comment on that subject please reply on my blog to avoid derailing this thread [I allow anonymous comments]). Anyway, suffice to say I forgot all about cwizardone's problems.

@cwizardone: I would be happy to look into your issues again if you want. Though I ounderstand if you would like to pursue Seamonkey for a while. Off course I would love everyone to use Opera but I am a realist and appreciate that when people encounter the kinds off issues you had they will look elsewhere. The issues you had will no doubt hit someone else at some point so I will probably get another chance to investigate in any case.

If you are still happy to help I remember I asked for was for a freeze log. If you sent me one already please tell where you sent it and on what date or perhaps you could send it to me again?

P.S. We released a development build of Opera 12.00 today, with a number of fixes including perfomance improvements, mail fixes and some crash fixes. If you want to give it a go there are some Slackware binary packages here. There is even a chance we might even have another development build tomorrow as we have some plugin fixes lined up that should soon be ready to test publically.

fwiw, thunderbird-current64 is running fine here on three installations for four users

But Wine 1.4 was the first version to run Serious Sam Second Encounter properly. ;)

The trouble with you fanboys is you immediately go on the defensive. :) "Can't see the forest for the trees" and all that.

The thread was listing general problems due to recent changes, not necessarily related to "current," which is why each problem was separated by two lines spaces and given individual headers.

And, yes, I know WINE is not part of Slackware. Ditto, Opera and Xfce 4.10, but Xfce 4.10 will make it into "current" one of these days. :)

@allend, I was a big fan of KDE from its earliest days (around 1996?) until the release of 4.0, one of the biggest acts of chicanery pulled on the computing public since mickeysoft and the release of winblows. It has taken the KDE developers what, about 4 years to getting 4.whatever anywhere near as useable as 3.5.10?

@ruario, I'll probably go back to Opera. Always do. :) I've never understood how Opera, who has been the leader in browser innovation since the earliest days of the Internet (as the public knows it) never became a major player. There is a software reviewer for the WSJ who never ever mentions Opera when he reviews the other browsers. I've e-mailed him about it, but it appears to have been a waste of electrons. :-)
Perhaps someday Opera will get the recognition it deserves.
Congratulations on the birth of your daughter! I hope the wife has made a total recovery? You never know with kids. My oldest was overdue, but so small at birth he was in an incubator for most of his first two weeks. He is now 6' 2" tall. :)

Maybe the latest Wine doesn't run Office 2003, but what's the matter with this old thing anyway? Office 2007 and 2010 are running fine. You should consider an upgrade of old software from time to time. Or if it costs too much, there are many free, open source alternatives out there you can use instead.

I hope, you have checked the AppDB also. http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManage...rsion&iId=2735

The thing with a native riched20.dll is also needed on Office 2007 and 2010. But it works afterwards.

Everything in my -current64 works great. No breakage here.

Pidgin

I know this is somewhat unrelated as I run 32 bit Slackware-current, but, I can report that Thunderbird runs just fine with -current fully updated. Good luck with figuring out the T Bird issue.

1st of all, I'm not a 'fanboy'. As can be seen from my sig, I also run Mepis on the wifes lappy, and I have to say it's an excellent distro, and if I were not running Slackware that is the one I would choose as an alternative.

Apart from that, I have my own fair share of problems with Slackware, and if you were to search these forums, my fair share of constructive criticisms to. The difference between you and I, is that the majority of my posts are asking for help, whilst the majority of yours are just a feeble excuse for bashing the distro because things don't go your way.

So once again, how about some constructive rather than destructive comments.

I had a similar problem with Firefox recently, didn't try Thunderbird before I already had decided to install from scratch. My problem arose from an unclean upgrade process - had blacklisted glibc and some other stuff in slackpkg config file and also my root filesystem ran out of space. After that with a clean install absolutely no problem in that direction (not that there is any other). So my best guess is that your upgrade went south somewhere.

Clear out /tmp & /var/tmp and create a new user, test in the new user. If works then, could be cruft causing issues.

d