I voted no.

I have my preferences, and my vote reflects them.

Regrettably this poll reflects only one aspect of this article. The other contributions, Darrel gave elsewhere are simply omitted. Yet I was somehow disappointed by the article. It basically says that Slack sucks sometimes but there is nothing better.

I was particularly worried about the small community argument. Here you find some knowledgeable Linux Users that are not to be underestimated. The average Slacker is a much respected “UNIX Head”, so I didn’t quite understand this point.

Chris

When I saw the headline, the first thing I thought of was this thread:

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/10/1...I-and-Shove-It

The disadavantages of GUI tools are well documented even in Sysadmin Linux Training Material, so I am slightly surprised that this article is being discussed here.

I think that we may safely assume that:

CLI is better for servers and for sys-admins.
GUI is better for desktops and for non priviliged users.

The question then is: "What desktop GUI tools are really needed by non-priviliged users?" I believe that KDE already provides them all.

Chris

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these little boxes on our desks are intended to make life easier, so it makes sense to have config tools that make life easier, hence my vote. i would like to see more GUI config tools, but keep the ability to do the CLI level stuff if needed. one conflict between GUI tools i will bring up, KDE's GUI network config tool tends to break things, and wicd's GUI tool works well only when rc.inetd.conf isn't broken or modified from the original plain vanilla install. and wicd cannot be config'ed from CLI. i'm glad slack includes mc (midnight commander), which while not really a GUI tool, does save me a lot of time in the config process.

I was put on slackware in my teens by a friend who has worked with UNIX since it basically was created. He chose slack for me because it was rough, and would force me to really learn how linux works. If I want system-config-samba, for example, I'll get Fedora. That kind of tool is good, but you don't really learn how to configure Samba with it. If you end up working on a non-Fedora system, you'll be pretty lost.

I've worked with Red Hat, SuSe, and Mandrake professionally, and despite not having had experience with those, I adapted very quickly simply from being exposed to the command line and raw config files from day one. Those don't change significantly from distro to distro. Imagine learning on Fedora then being dropped into a slackware environment.

It is my feeling that this is exactly what slackware is supposed to be about. Like someone else said, if you want graphical tools, you can install them, but you'll have to learn linux to do it. If slack lost that, it would lose the essence of what it now is.

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I voted no because I think that other distros more than cater for the user that needs GUIs.
Are fdisk/cfdisk GUIs? If they are then that is good. Not sure how one would partition a disk without them though.

Definitely no for me. As an admin I am fully satisfied with all the tools Slackware is providing. I am also planning to deploy Slackware on my parents machine. They both have absolutely no clue about computers and with Slackware running KDE I can be absolutely sure they won't break anything because they wouldn't even try to install stuff. And if they actually manage to break something then I would have to fix it anyways, Slackware or not.

For the Console Jedi's...

You have this partitioning layout on a 200G harddisk:

/dev/sda1 (C:) an 100G NTFS partition, used 47% as free space.
/dev/sda2 (E:) an 100G NTFS partition, used 98% as free space.

Problem:

You should resize /dev/sda1 and move down /dev/sda2, to create (room for) a 40G Linux (/dev/sda3) and its 2G swap companion /dev/sda4.

Please, use only the console tools (i.e. cfdisk, ntfsprogs, dd), excluding the graphical partitioning tools like GParted, KDE Partition Manager or DARKSTAR's Disk Manager.

Thanks.

Myself I voted no on the poll question.

Offering a "hands free" setup similar to ubuntu would indeed get many more at least trying slackware, and those who had the initiative would actually learn much more about how to use *nix than those installing ubuntu. I say this because someone installing ubuntu can compare the installation to windows in reference to ease. Once the installation completes the user can log right into a gui gnome and apt-get or package manager intall virtually anything just like clicking on a setup or install.exe file in windows.

Slackware on the other hand, although not as graphically pretty as ubuntu in setup, offers the same features outside of fdisk or cfdisk during the process. If one is still learing about fdisk or cfdisk, is it possible that just because they eased into a hands free installation that once installed, they may not even be able to configure or start the gui? Of course with a new and (improved?) gui installation the system may default to a runlevel other than 3, but even if you do log in, what then? If the new and improved setup process includes bloating up a little more with scripts that do exactly what the others do like red hat or ubuntu would that not take away from what slackware is and was meant to be?

Please do not take this wrong, I encourage everyone to use slackware. Slackware however, as a starting OS, is a learning process quite unlike most other distros, but sticking with it, and reading a LOT will be very rewarding.

I do emplore the powers that be however to not "dumb down" slackware for lack of a better term, (and I mean that totally non-offensively) ever, rather, continue making people "step up" to use it.

Just my opinion.

Wouldn't that rather go against the philosophy that Slack was built on? (I didn't vote either way)

I have not voted because I didn't find the "I wouldn't use but really don't care as long as GUIs are designed as simple front-ends for CLIs - pretty much like nmapfe and nmap - and they don't mess with my configuration files" option.

NO!
I like "The Mighty Slack" the way it is.
I think time spent learning to use a GUI do do something is better spent learning to do it from the CLI.

nobody knows they are there

IF the configuration file is known and it's in plan text it's much faster and one hell of a lot easier to edit it than walking the trees in a GUI configuration editor to find the setting you want to change

Why don't you just let people choose the tools they want to use? Nevermind that what you are trying to inflict is a strange and dangerous case for both command line and "graphical".

Regardless, it's kind of easy to do it using command line tools:
1 - use netfsresize to shrink the filesystem in /dev/sda1
2 - use sfdisk, fdisk, cfdisk or whatever to resize /dev/sda1
3 - create the new partitions
4 - format /dev/sda3 and /dev/sda4 accordingly

There's also parted, gparted is just a graphical front-end that uses the same libparted...

Now imagine doing this crazy thing on 40-50 computers, would you click through or automatize and use a script? I'd use a script, the computers are supposed to work for me, not the other way around. :P