I prefer whiskey. I hope that's ok...*points to Slackware t-shirts & case sticker*

In my travels I've found in many parts of the world "Whisky" is Scotch and in the U.S. "Whiskey" is Bourbon.

From the American Heritage Electronic Dictionary:

AppAmor seems to be less of a burden and MUCH easier to use than SELINUX, but it can't replace it. So, depending on the environment and purpose of your system, you might have a need for one of them. If you don't, all the better. Good thing about Slackware: If you don't need SELINUX, you don't have to have it.

Regarding the patent protection "assurance": This has been disputed so much, but I still wonder what problem anyone has with that. The agreement between Novell and Microsoft can, by its nature, never do any harm to any user of Linux. Of course, users of other distros than SUSE have no particular advantage or benefit, either, but that just means, that their situation hasn't changed in any way.

On the other hand, the deal includes joint development activities for better interoperability between Microsoft and Linux based products, which is what many large enterprises demand. One part of the overall agreement between Novell/SUSE and Microsoft was that MS would sell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server licenses. So Microsoft became sort of a Linux reseller --- which went very well, as they quickly sold out the first stack of licenses.

So, the deal

• helps to improve the interoperability of Microsoft and Linux based products; I am not sure, but wouldn't be surprised, if the contributions of SUSE developers to LibreOffice were protected by this agreeement, while otherwise they could be possibly sued for reverse engineering of MS Office without Microsoft permitting it (I am mainly referring to file format compatibility between ODF and .docx, .xlsx, .ppptx etc.).
• has apparently helped to convince large Microsoft customers to use SLES on some of their servers, as they got the same sort of contract for support as for MS Windows based server systems from the same vendor as before, now
• includes an insurance regarding potential patent "friction" for the fraction of Linux users that use SUSE products (BTW, I am by no means sure, that it covers users of OpenSUSE, at all)
• doesn't mean or change a thing for anyone else

I always wonder, what problem some people have with this deal, as it doesn't do any harm to anyone. On the other hand, only SUSE and Microsoft users share the benefits, but as I said: This only means that the deal makes no difference for the rest of us.

Did I miss something?

gargamel

I use Slackware for my own reasons; basically that means I get my business done quickly and efficiently. I feel that I am in no way qualified to judge another for his reasons to leave, although, personally, I find it a bit disheartening. But after all, vdemuth *is* qualified to make his own decisions about what he will and will not run on his own machines. He paid for the hardware, and the software is free. Let him go, and don't give him grief over his decision. It will be paid back in earnest when it is you who decides to change things up and someone else declines to take you to task over it, because they respect your right to make your own decisions.

In short: Live and let live, guys!

Boy, ain't *that* the truth!

People who have a clue what's really going on in any given issue seems to be in short supply nowadays...

I believe you used your clue stick as a hammer and nailed the issue right there.

Handling dependencies in Slackware isn't for the faint of heart unfortunately; especially when compiling third party packages from source. Wish you the best with Suse.

Usually when I bootstrap a Slackware install (recompile-reinstall every package in three passes), my system is already running. This allows me not to worry since it happens in the background (using root framebuffer console) as I use the workstation; don't have to stress out this way. If a particular package errors out, I just re-do ls /var/log/packages/*x86_64* | tee -a build_list. Then I just execute the list with one of my scripts to build all those packages missed. Once I have no more *x86_64* packages left (*x86_64* becomes *whateverIoptimizedfor1*), I do the next pass (which usually completes more successfully since first pass takes care of most obstacles; which takes a lot of time to resolve on a new Slackware update). First pass can take weeks to resolve problematic slackbuilds (or months), but I'm always using my computer and installing new packages I'm interested in at the same time; without worrying about it. Eventually I get to the point where I can just bootstrap as many times as I want without errors.

Yeah, lots.

For a start, we had gone round this whole loop the first time with SCO and HP and the "Linux needs end-user indemnity from your vendor" scam.

In the head of your typical suit-wearing golf-playing male bimbo, the MS-Novell agreement established the presumptive validity of the shadowy patents which MS were using against Linux. For reasons we can all infer, those patents were hidden from the public (until the Barnes and Noble litigation), so when Novell (who had seen them) signed up, it turned a scam into a business.

This led directly to the ludicrous situation today where MS is making orders of magnitude more money from licensing Wizard of Oz patents to Android vendors than it does from Windows Phone. If ever there was the essence of harming Linux end users, this is it: extorting money from them, for no benefit, even in jurisdictions where the VFAT and EXFAT patents do not and can not exist, and using it to keep MS afloat. Oh, yeah, and preventing interoperability with devices that use EXFAT.

For Linux end users, that joint development agreement -- which probably got its memetic essence from the notorious JDAs at issue in the SCO case -- led to Moonlight, which was obviously intended to further the MS agenda of subverting the W3C with Silverlight, but never even shipped a single up-to-date release and has been dead upstream for years. Hence Pipelight (thanks Eric!). And there was Mono, with its own shadowy patent encumbrances, like OOXML. The game was to get Mono irretrievably entangled in Gnome, and then get other Linux vendors to pay MS for the patents -- putting SuSE at a competitive advantage.

Today, it seems, the only stuff that MS-SuSE produces is virtualisation and cloud stuff. It might benefit the world by giving VMware and Amazon a competitor, but it's not interoperability that couldn't be achieved in other ways.

Today's reality of MS's interoperability commitment is THIS. The comments are lulzworthy

2 members found this post helpful.

Where's Van Helsing when you need him???

I suppose it would be easier if people just didn't leave...

For me it is not about the leaving. It is the public announcement.

It would be as if we all lived in an apartment complex and had a block party every now and then and a neighbor one day announced to the whole group that although he was keeping an apartment or two for his mistresses, he was moving to another complex because it has elevators instead of stairs and apparently fewer cockroaches, and he was erecting a billboard to that effect.

Who would do that? and why?

1 members found this post helpful.

After 10+ years with a community you have made social networks; you feel a sense of belonging. I can understand the need to say goodbye. That is why I wish people well if they leave. Then I can welcome them back if they return. Open source is all about freedom, choice.

2 members found this post helpful.

Of course I understand that but he didn't leave! Both you and I (and many here) have multiple distros listed in out Profile blocks on the left of each post. Did you announce you were leaving when you installed a new one? No, because you still have your hand in play. So does OP. He stated he will still use Slackware on his servers iirc.

While I realize that as we get older our priorities change and hoops we gladly jumped through as youths no longer always seem worthwhile, it seems to me the OP complained about dependency resolution. IMHO if you have used Slackware for 10 years, and tried other systems as so many do, you know that even though it has improved it is still not a better way. Either that or you never really were part of the community.

I have to figure that a 10 year veteran knows that there isn't some magical 15% performance gain to be had by simply switching distros, so to say so smacks of FUD to me and made me suspicious as to the real intent of OP. It just felt like fuel to the fire of the "Slackware is old and slow" mindset.

So I have to ask. Does anyone know if he was really a 10 year Slackware user? and is his name really Abraham Lincoln?

This thread is like a break-up drama! Who left whom, why, when...

Regards.

Does anyone know when the next Slackware is being released? And will it be 14.2 or 15.0 or something more leet like slackroflmfao?

cheers,