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From: His kennyness on 19 Apr 2010 22:50
D Herring wrote:
> On 04/19/2010 02:51 PM, His kennyness wrote:
>
>> ps. Name an Ubuntu screenshotter that Just Works and I'll see what I can
>> do.
>
> Is KSnapshot installed?

It is now, thx. Got the screenshot, now just need Mr. Winkel's
explanation as to why it is needed.

kt
From: D Herring on 19 Apr 2010 23:54
On 04/19/2010 03:46 AM, Erik Winkels wrote:
> On 2010-04-19, His kennyness<kentilton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> The classic OpenGL Gears demo, running really badly, in Common Lisp atop
>> Tcl/Tk:
>
> Screenshots or it didn't happen, Kenny!

I just snapped this off Kenny's screen.
http://libcl.com/tmp/celtk-3d.png

He should use a more secure OS...

Quoth aols:
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".

:)

- Daniel
From: Jorge Gajon on 21 Apr 2010 14:20
On 2010-04-20, His kennyness <kentilton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> D Herring wrote:
>>
>> He should use a more secure OS...
>>
>> Quoth aols:
>> "Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".
>>
>
> Why should Slackware be too hard? Doesn't it install painlessly and then
> let one add/update painlessy like Ubuntu*? Puzzled.
>

(Kenny, I know yours was a rhetorical question, I'm just venting here.)

I use Slackware, and I use it because it is the simplest and easiest
Linux distribution around. Other distributions have this sick tendency
to heavily customize applications so that they are supposedly more
"friendly".

If you want to install a package there's the -tiny version, the -medium
version, the -full version, the version with threading enabled, etc. Oh
and of course the documentation comes in a different package.

Then after you select your package and install it, there's this
`foo-debian-uber-controller` that you must use to configure and launch
the application, which makes all the non-Debian tutorials and the
upstream documentation useless, because now you have to do things the
"Debian way".

It seems to me that to get a package included in their repository, it
must include a clever debian script to do something new and different
with the package, it is not enough to just ship the upstream software as
is.

I picture Debian in my head as a big playground for hackers, which is
not a bad thing per se, I'm sure the Debian developers learn a lot and
acquire a lot of skills in the process; it's just that I wouldn't want
depend on a distribution that is a learning/experimental stage for
others.

Remember the OpenSSL fiasco?

I apologize to everyone for furthering an off-topic sub-thread.

From: His kennyness on 21 Apr 2010 14:43
Jorge Gajon wrote:
> On 2010-04-20, His kennyness <kentilton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> D Herring wrote:
>>> He should use a more secure OS...
>>>
>>> Quoth aols:
>>> "Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".
>>>
>> Why should Slackware be too hard? Doesn't it install painlessly and then
>> let one add/update painlessy like Ubuntu*? Puzzled.
>>
>
> (Kenny, I know yours was a rhetorical question, I'm just venting here.)
>
> I use Slackware, and I use it because it is the simplest and easiest
> Linux distribution around.

Cool. Now that I have seen one approachable Linux distro I'll be happy
to try another and see if it is better.

Other distributions have this sick tendency
> to heavily customize applications so that they are supposedly more
> "friendly".
>
> If you want to install a package there's the -tiny version, the -medium
> version, the -full version, the version with threading enabled, etc. Oh
> and of course the documentation comes in a different package.
>
> Then after you select your package and install it, there's this
> `foo-debian-uber-controller` that you must use to configure and launch
> the application, which makes all the non-Debian tutorials and the
> upstream documentation useless, because now you have to do things the
> "Debian way".
>
> It seems to me that to get a package included in their repository, it
> must include a clever debian script to do something new and different
> with the package, it is not enough to just ship the upstream software as
> is.
>
> I picture Debian in my head as a big playground for hackers, which is
> not a bad thing per se, I'm sure the Debian developers learn a lot and
> acquire a lot of skills in the process; it's just that I wouldn't want
> depend on a distribution that is a learning/experimental stage for
> others.

The above has not been my experience. There is one GUI utility for
searching for and installing software. Sometimes Ubuntu says about a
command "No can do but type this apt-get command in and you should be OK".

Is Slackware as slick?

kt


>
> Remember the OpenSSL fiasco?
>
> I apologize to everyone for furthering an off-topic sub-thread.
>
From: Jorge Gajon on 21 Apr 2010 21:23
On 2010-04-21, His kennyness <kentilton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Jorge Gajon wrote:
>> On 2010-04-20, His kennyness <kentilton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>> D Herring wrote:
>>>> He should use a more secure OS...
>>>>
>>>> Quoth aols:
>>>> "Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".
>>>>
>>> Why should Slackware be too hard? Doesn't it install painlessly and then
>>> let one add/update painlessy like Ubuntu*? Puzzled.
>>>
>>
>> (Kenny, I know yours was a rhetorical question, I'm just venting here.)
>>
>> I use Slackware, and I use it because it is the simplest and easiest
>> Linux distribution around.
>
> Cool. Now that I have seen one approachable Linux distro I'll be happy
> to try another and see if it is better.
>
> Other distributions have this sick tendency
>> to heavily customize applications so that they are supposedly more
>> "friendly".
>>
>> If you want to install a package there's the -tiny version, the -medium
>> version, the -full version, the version with threading enabled, etc. Oh
>> and of course the documentation comes in a different package.
>>
>> Then after you select your package and install it, there's this
>> `foo-debian-uber-controller` that you must use to configure and launch
>> the application, which makes all the non-Debian tutorials and the
>> upstream documentation useless, because now you have to do things the
>> "Debian way".
>>
>> It seems to me that to get a package included in their repository, it
>> must include a clever debian script to do something new and different
>> with the package, it is not enough to just ship the upstream software as
>> is.
>>
>> I picture Debian in my head as a big playground for hackers, which is
>> not a bad thing per se, I'm sure the Debian developers learn a lot and
>> acquire a lot of skills in the process; it's just that I wouldn't want
>> depend on a distribution that is a learning/experimental stage for
>> others.
>
> The above has not been my experience. There is one GUI utility for
> searching for and installing software. Sometimes Ubuntu says about a
> command "No can do but type this apt-get command in and you should be OK".
>
> Is Slackware as slick?
>

(People, this is off-topic, you can move on if you are not interested in
these things.)

It depends on what one considers 'slick'.

I don't care about a huge repository of applications and a system like
apt-get, I rarely install software, and in fact I use just a few
applications, and I don't do fancy stuff with my computer.

I don't use GNOME or KDE, instead I use a simple and straightforward
window manager (called Ion) which does just that, manages windows,
there's no 'desktop environment', and therefore I don't have to hunt for
pretty widgets.

I know that having apt-get and a repository with thousands of packages
wouldn't hurt me either.

What I didn't like about distributions like Debian is that they heavily
customize applications, and many times change the way you configure and
start them.

I once had a problem with Ubuntu when it wouldn't correctly recognize
the screen resolution, and fiddling with the xorg.conf file wouldn't
make any difference. They did something "else" that would "magically"
detect your resolution. The problem is when that "magic" doesn't work.

With Slackware you don't have any of that, you just set your resolution
in the xorg.conf and be done with it. If you screwed up because your
monitor can't handle that resolution, or you mistyped it, at least you
know where to fix the problem.

That may not be 'slick', but it is simple and transparent.

I recently got a new wireless HP printer, and the version of the 'hplip'
package that is bundled with the latest Slackware release is not recent
enough to support this printer.

So I just went to the hp.com web page, downloaded the most recent
release of their hplip software, then got the slackbuild that was used
to create the package for the latest release of Slackware, edited it to
reflect the newer version number of hplip and ran the script, and viol�,
you get a Slackware package to upgrade your hplip installation.

The thing is that this is extremely straightforward, literally you just
update the version number on the script and that's all. This is because
Slackware does not make any changes at all to upstreams sources.

With Debian it is more probable that you would need to do more work,
because you would have to port their patches to the newer version of the
upstream software and hope they apply cleanly.

Again, simple and transparent, no magic or weird 'controllers' or
scripts to do something the 'Debian way'.

Another example, I wanted to install SBCL, which is not included as a
Slackware package. I just downloaded the latest release of SBCL from its
web site, and used a very simple slackbuild to turn it into an
installable Slackware package (thanks Paul Wisehart).

I could have installed SBCL without the slackbuild, the only benefit is
that with it I can easily upgrade or remove it later from my system. But
it is completely optional.

Again, the thing here is simplicity and transparency.


So I guess it depends on your approach to computer usage. I don't want
to fight with my computer and complicated systems. I don't watch movies
on my computer, I don't play games on my computer, I don't use fancy
software, I just want an editor, a compiler for my language and a
browser. And I manually 'mount' my usb flash drive, which is once every
week or so.

Anything that introduces unnecessary layers or complications causes me
stress.

If I ever need something fancy I have a virtualized Windows with Virtual
Box, and use that for any specific task that arises; but that is very
rare.



But anyway, there is something close to what you describe above, about
a tool to search and install packages.

There's a very popular site http://slackbuilds.org where you can get
slackbuilds for lots of applications. And there's also a tool called
`sbopkg` which is basically a browser for packages available from
slackbuilds.org, with which you can also install, remove, upgrade any
package from there by just 'clicking a button'.

That would be close to the GUI thing you mentioned.

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