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Comment by gmrs | Hacker News Reader

I'm a bit skeptical about the word "modern" these days. slackpkg is a good package manager and does everything you need to keep your system up-to-date. From the slackware website:

"Slackware is designed around the idea that the system should be a complete installation kept updated with any official patches. This avoids the mess of dependencies that some other Linux based GNU systems face."

Why remake the website? The website is clear enough, has links to the Slackware Book and to a mailing list.

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It's not adequate sorry. I am not happy with mailing lists for community building. And I know of Linuxquestions.com forums, but that's not adequate either. Seriously, it would take 60 minutes to get this sorted, and 30 bucks yearly of hosting these forums.

What are mailing lists and forums missing for you? What killer features do you think that the Slackware team need to implement beyond what they currently have? I ask in all sincerity because you haven't mentioned it in your post.

The community. As a user and potential contributor, I need that.

Also I am sounding like a downer... I'm sorry about that. My strong opinions can often be too much, and I get that because they might sound negative. I am saying the things as a long time Slack user that gave up.

But what is 'the community' to you? To many Slackware users it's precisely the mailing list, the LinuxQuestions forum, the subreddit (/r/slackware), things like slackbuilds.org and docs.slackware.com.

So what is missing from what Slackware currently offers that would make have 'the community' to you?

Based on what I have seen elsewhere (other distros and other major software projects), I am saying it would benefit greatly from a better approach.

Okay, you're talking in circles.

What would you like them to do differently in their approach? What could they do differently that would engage you better?

Yeah I am going to end the philology here. My advice and concerns above is more than enough.

So do it.

No way. The NIH is strong.

So I go down the thread from above, asking you what you would do, and your response is "nothing, don't bother trying to bring me into the fold, I'm just going to complain"?

I'd appreciate it if next time just you would just say "I'm just complaining" so I know not to waste my time.

Using Slackware and expecting modern frills is a bit like buying an old hot rod or turbo import from the old Soviet Union and then complaining it doesn't have a factory warranty or a customer support line. You don't buy it because it's going to be easy to drive and maintain.

There is an owner's manual and a community of other enthusiasts. If you want more convenience, your best bet is to try a different make and model.

But... slackpkg is not part of Slackware, its a third party tool.

So? Large majority code running in any distro was developed by third parties. This means nothing. It's a part of Slackware.

It was announced in Tue Sep 16 11:20:30 PDT 2003 that it's a part of 'extra' repository. So, not installed by default, but it's there.

Announcent on Fri Nov 21 13:51:57 CST 2008 says it was moved from extra/ to ap/, meaning installed by default on all except the most stripped down installs.

Also, there's nothing special in using third party tools as package managers, they all use slackwares pkg tools under the hood. Think (apt<->slackpkg, dpkg -i <-> installpkg, dpkg -r <-> removepkg, etc etc etc).

slackpkg ships as part of the default slackware installation. Are you thinking of sbopkg which is used to build packages from slackbuilds.org?

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