What do you think about including Mate desktop in Slackware?
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Yes, in theory, assuming you are alone developer/scientist locked up in basement.
Most projects use some form of version control (like git). The distro, or even OS, being used does not matter as long as they support that version control system. The whole open-source ecosystem is based on collaboration and people from any distro are able to collaborate. Many Slackware users have contributed to projects over the years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by I.G.O.R
If you need to colaborate with people, then safe choise is not to use Slackware in order to avoid unneeded surprises/obstacles leading to time loss.
If you really want to throw this out there, should people even be using Linux? Most of the world runs on Windows, so you wouldn't want those pesky Linux users leading to surprises/obstacles. If you're developing software for Linux, it is good to test a wide array of distros to ensure compatibility. This is why web developers test with multiple browsers.
Now, if you're working at a company, there's a good chance that the corporate IT has specified certain OSes or distros that can be used on company hardware. That has nothing to do with that OS or distro's ability to develop, but what IT is willing to support.
I would also like to echo solarfields question of asking if you have anything to back your statements up? What unneeded surprises/obstacles have led to time loss?
The stock packages on a Slackware system provide a good base to develop on. The developing stack is fairly wide, supporting a lot of different languages out of the box. It takes less time to start developing on Slackware than a lot of other distros since most or all of what you need is already installed (if you do the recommended full install).
Yes, in theory, assuming you are alone developer/scientist locked up in basement.
If you need to collaborate with people, then safe choice is not to use Slackware in order to avoid unneeded surprises/obstacles leading to time loss.
In my opinion this thread is largely an exercise in trolling, but just for the record, nearly our entire lab runs Linux. On the server side that's 100% (8 machines or so), on the user side mostly Ubuntu (although I'm on Slackware because it's uber-reliable and I know exactly what it's doing), with a few others on Mac and a couple on Windows. We collaborate just fine, often using Overleaf, Google Docs, and sometimes git. Everyone can run R, Python, and whatever other academic stuff they need regardless of the platform, but Linux is often the easiest to deal with. If Windows programs are required (MS Office from time to time, or perhaps some weird proprietary analysis/testing software, maybe Acrobat [but PDF Studio is great!]), I can fire up Windows 8 in a VM.
Could you elaborate a bit more on that? You know that how? Are you a developer, where in your work you were forced to not use Slackware? Any scientific papers you have published, for which you were forced not to use Slackware? Could you tell something more to the point than arguing for the sake of argument?
No one can force you to use any special OS for development. But if you need to install quickly some basic software, it's faster to do that in RHEL than in Slackware. Standard Slackware doesn't provide a lot of needed things, postgres for example. Will I go to build it from SBo if I need it quickly? No.
If some of your collegues ask you for help, or you ask them, it would be easier when you all have relatively similar environments.
P.S. A lot of enterprise software are intended for RHEL line. Would I be writing SB scripts to repackage it to txz and dealing with differences in initialization systems? No. Not at work.
No one can force you to use any special OS for development. But if you need to install quickly some basic software, it's faster to do that in RHEL than in Slackware. Standard Slackware doesn't provide a lot of needed things, postgres for example. Will I go to build it from SBo if I need it quickly? No.
If some of your collegues ask you for help, or you ask them, it would be easier when you have relatively similar systems.
P.S. A lot of enterprise software are intended for RHEL line. Whould I be writing SB scripts to repackage it to txz and dealing with differences in initialization systems? No. Not at work.
This is what you would not do.
I, on the contrary, do exactly this. If I need software that is not on SBo, I make a SlackBuild and share it with the community. Believe it or not, there are cases when I need software not found as an rpm or deb. For me, if I have to do something the hard way (like compiling from source and creating a package), it is much easier to do it on Slackware than any other distribution.
You are right that Slackware can be a hobby or a learning tool. I have definitely learned from it. But for me, it is not just using, using, using. It is also giving something back.
And you did not answer the question. Tell us a concrete case where Slackware held you back.
What do you think about including Mate desktop in Slackware?
^ I use Slackware in my business. There are 3 servers, 2 physical and 1 vm. The services I needed were already installed and took minutes to configure. I use Slackware precisely because it was quick to deploy... it was able to hit the ground running and has never failed me.
No one can force you to use any special OS for development. But if you need to install quickly some basic software, it's faster to do that in RHEL than in Slackware. Standard Slackware doesn't provide a lot of needed things, postgres for example. Will I go to build it from SBo if I need it quickly? No.
If some of your collegues ask you for help, or you ask them, it would be easier when you all have relatively similar environments.
P.S. A lot of enterprise software are intended for RHEL line. Would I be writing SB scripts to repackage it to txz and dealing with differences in initialization systems? No. Not at work.
I think most of us will just build it from SBo. It's really not that hard. Most of us have some program that can easily interact with it, like sbopkg or sbotools. postgresql is a little more effort because it requires you to setup a user and group, but the commands are included in the README and the SlackBuild. It is SBo policy to not allow SlackBuild scripts to add users or groups to the system (which is a good policy).
It took a total of 1 minute 17 seconds to download, compile, and package postgresql on my system (granted, it is a relatively high end system).
I think you're vastly overstating how frequently postgresql is needed. SBo only requires it for 20 programs, but if you know your project has a requirement of postgresql, you would be wise to install it beforehand.
But if you want to talk about standard Linux developing, Slackware is MUCH better off than Ubuntu. If you want to compile qt5 on 14.2, you simply need 4 programs to be able to build it: ninja, python3, meson, and libxkbcommon. You can do that easily with sbopkg/sqg without even knowing the dependencies:
Code:
sqg -p qt5
sbopkg -kBi qt5.sqf
If you want to do it manually without sqg knowing the dependencies:
^ I use Slackware in my business. There are 3 servers, 2 physical and 1 vm. The services I needed were already installed and took minutes to configure. I use Slackware precisely because it was quick to deploy... it was able to hit the ground running and has never failed me.
The proof is in the pudding.
It's all good. And how many people are involved in the infrastructure? I guess 1.5
I, on the contrary, do exactly this. If I need software that is not on SBo, I make a SlackBuild and share it with the community. Believe it or not, there are cases when I need software not found as an rpm or deb. For me, if I have to do something the hard way (like compiling from source and creating a package), it is much easier to do it on Slackware than any other distribution.
You are right that Slackware can be a hobby or a learning tool. I have definitely learned from it. But for me, it is not just using, using, using. It is also giving something back.
And you did not answer the question. Tell us a concrete case where Slackware held you back.
I agree with that. However, you would not want to use it when you need to colaborate with other people. It's too much unneeded efforts at work.
I have and I am collaborating with other people. As long as we all have the required software installed, it doe snot matter whether it is Slackware, Redhat or Ubuntu.
I think you're vastly overstating how frequently postgresql is needed. SBo only requires it for 20 programs
Sure, one of the best and popular open source RDMS with a lot of extensions. Loads of big companies use it by mistake. A lot of middle size projects switch from MySQL (MariaDB) to PostgresSQL. But the most important for "intended" slackware user is how many programs on SBo require it!
I have and I am collaborating with other people. As long as we all have the required software installed, it doe snot matter whether it is Slackware, Redhat or Ubuntu.
With Slackware it will be a lot of "as long as" during working hours.
With Slackware it will be a lot of "as long as" during working hours.
Sometimes it is the other way around, actually. For example, I have used the meme-suite for motif discovery. I have used it to predict novel transcription factor binding sites (TFBS). Here it is for Slackware at SBo:
But if you want to talk about standard Linux developing, Slackware is MUCH better off than Ubuntu. If you want to compile qt5 on 14.2, you simply need 4 programs to be able to build it: ninja, python3, meson, and libxkbcommon. You can do that easily with sbopkg/sqg without even knowing the dependencies:
Oh, do you want to talk about qt5? :-)
I don't want to build qt5 ever. I did it many many times even before qt5 first official release, when I worked in the company which actually developed it. I had to do it because it was custom qt5 code for one of the company's local projects, otherwise I would install standard RPMs.
And here what we have now with Slackware:
- Qt5 was released about 8 or 9 years ago. Slackware 14.2 doesn't have it in base repo
- Qt5 was added to -current this year. In 2020!
- Qt6 is coming soon, possibly this year. In 2020!
Compare that to this website's instructions on Ubuntu (I'm using tags instead of [code][/code] to show just how big the list is:
What do X libraries have to do with qt5? I'm pretty sure there are ubuntu users who like you prefer to install everything, and they wouldn't care that long list.
You know there's a pre-compiled package by AlienBob, right? For the record, I build QT5 on a VM where I prepare my own repository of packages, built from SBo. It is not such big of a hassle.
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