Why isn't xfce 4.8 in slackware yet? It's been out for quite some time. Are there any bugs or security problems with it?

I don't know if you meant this rhetorically, but the question has an answer. It wasn't in 13.37 because it was simply released too late (Pat needs time to test stuff before announcing the feature freeze). It's not in -current because Pat decided to take a break after the 13.37 release.

If you want it now, you can get it from Robby Workman's repository.

We've had several Xfce 4.8 threads (search this forum for threads with "xfce" in their titles). Those threads did indeed have people complaining about bugs.

My personal experiences with it have been positive.

Regardless, it (xfce 4.8) and kde 4.8.0 probably should have been included in current, don't you think? Sticking with the older releases of those two DE's in this big update didn't make any sense to me.

It's not that big of a deal though, since both of them can be upgraded in about 15 minutes. It's still a minor pain in the ass though, when compared to 'slackpkg upgrade-all'.


Speaking of which - I've always been a little curious about this but it didn't seem new-thread-worthy.

Why do you have to log out of X when running rsync with Alien Bob's repos?

You don't have to logout of X to rsync my packages. You must not be running X when upgrading to my packages.

Eric

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First things first....
Usually basic toolchain have high priorities because this will be the foundation of all packages built next, so once the basic toolchain has been setup, the rest of the packages can go through smoothly. Usually after basic toolchain, basic (system) packages will go next, and then libraries, and finally Xorg will come last. It's based on previous releases

remember that adding XFCE and KDE 4.8 requires another dependencies and Pat tried to minimize adding more packages as it will add more burden to maintain the package. It will come out in -Current soon enough, i'm pretty sure after a long testing phase by Robby and Eric and other people running it.

Ah, got it, thanks. I suspected that, but didn't want to risk it in case there was something I was unaware of.

I didn't realize that. KDE's my main squeeze, but out of curiosity I had upgraded xfce 4.8 once when running stable, and it worked fine (as far as I could tell).

It seems that -current is a dependency of kde 4.8, rather than the other way around. It's the reason I originally switched to current, when 4.7.4 came with a strong recommendation to go to -current if using it.

Admittedly, you seem much more familiar with the release process than me, so I'll take your word. There's probably some risks I'm not taking into account, and I was just commenting idly from the Peanut Gallery anyway.

You can have a look on AlienBOB's work on KDE 4.8.0 for more information http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/kde-4-8-0-arrives/

-Current is not a dependency of KDE 4.8, but KDE 4.8 was built against packages in -Current, so it's advised to switch to -Current if you wanted to test 4.7.4 or even 4.8.0