Hi

I was just reading an article and associated threads on the proposed
discontinuation of GNOME under Slackware, and was struck by the kind of
comments on the difficulty of compiling GNOME from sources for various
distros, with new nuances reportedly creeping into each newer release.

As to myself, I stopped using GNOME early this year after a few years of
using it and shifted back to KDE which has now become a lot more stable
than it used to be. I have never compiled GNOME for myself, but once did
compile KDE for Sun. The question is :

Does the Slackware decision portend more difficult times ahead for GNOME
with other distros ? If so, its a little unfortunate because GNOME is still
a very good window manager. Or would the burden of providing a distro
specific set of packages for GNOME (and KDE perhaps) shift to the
developers of GNOME (and KDE) instead of distribution providers ?

What do you think ?

On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 17:57:43 -0400, spammers-go-here@spam.invalid wrote:

[..]
> Does the Slackware decision portend more difficult times ahead for GNOME
> with other distros ? If so, its a little unfortunate because GNOME is still
> a very good window manager. Or would the burden of providing a distro
> specific set of packages for GNOME (and KDE perhaps) shift to the
> developers of GNOME (and KDE) instead of distribution providers ?

Patrick is considering dropping gnome for technical reasons (these are
from memory, so please correct me if I'm wrong); some of which are:
* The latest GNOME needs(?) Linux 2.6; Patrick is not using Linux 2.6
as the stock Kernel in Slackware just yet.
* GNOME is difficult (or more difficult than it could be) to build into
packages because many of its component packages do not support
installing into a pseudo root (usually done using a 'make' variable
named DESTDIR, TOPDIR or similar). Therefore the way Patrick builds packages
is to do a comparison of the file system before and after the build,
tidy up, Slackwareify the contents then turn it into a package with makepkg.
This is terribly time consuming but for non DESTDIR or similar 'clean' builds
he likes to do it this way.
* A number of other technical problems he's experienced in the past which I can't
recall right now.

Whilst other people do contribute fixes, scripts and other things to Slackware,
it's still Patrick who ultimately builds, tests and packages *everything*.
I have read comments in the past about how all Slackware is is just compiled
source put into a gzipped tar file: whilst that's essentially true, it's much
much more than that. When a new version of a package is released it's not always
a case of just changing the package version number and recompiling; changelogs
need to be read, scripts need to be amended. It really is a long winded and
time consuming process, especially for one person!

--
Stuart Winter
www.interlude.org.uk & www.armedslack.org
| "Washing machines live longer with Calgon"

Stuart Winter wrote:

> Patrick is considering dropping gnome for technical reasons (these are
> from memory, so please correct me if I'm wrong); some of which are:
> * The latest GNOME needs(?) Linux 2.6; Patrick is not using Linux 2.6
> as the stock Kernel in Slackware just yet.
> * GNOME is difficult (or more difficult than it could be) to build into
> packages because many of its component packages do not support
> installing into a pseudo root (usually done using a 'make' variable
> named DESTDIR, TOPDIR or similar). Therefore the way Patrick builds packages
> is to do a comparison of the file system before and after the build,
> tidy up, Slackwareify the contents then turn it into a package with makepkg.
> This is terribly time consuming but for non DESTDIR or similar 'clean' builds
> he likes to do it this way.
> * A number of other technical problems he's experienced in the past which I can't
> recall right now.

There may be more to it than that. I also read in the patch Changelogs
about problems with Galeon (Gnome/mozilla based web browser) which occur
when Patrick updates to the latest Mozilla versions. Dropping
Gnome/Galeon and also Epiphany would allow continued use of up to date
Mozilla builds or even a migration to Firefox/Thunderbird instead of
Mozilla.

--
Regards
Martin Hughes
Linux User #283064
Blessed are those who expect nothing; for they shall not be disappointed.

Every distro I know of except Slackware & Lindows/spire still includes
Gnome. RedHat has it as the default, and SuSe is owned by Ximian. I
don't think Gnome will be seriously hurt by Pat dropping them.

Big Al wrote:
> Every distro I know of except Slackware & Lindows/spire still includes
> Gnome. RedHat has it as the default, and SuSe is owned by Ximian.

Have I missed something? Has not always KDE been the standard of SuSE
and still is?

~Mik

--
Top-Bottom Programming never gets you where you wanted to go.
Bottom-Top Programming gets you where you never wanted to go.

while not life:
sleep((sleep.normal_time - 5h)); eat(mode=fast); pc_mainloop()

On 2004-10-14, Mario Berger <no_damned_spam@nospam.no> espoused the following:
> Big Al wrote:
>> Every distro I know of except Slackware & Lindows/spire still includes
>> Gnome. RedHat has it as the default, and SuSe is owned by Ximian.
>
> Have I missed something? Has not always KDE been the standard of SuSE
> and still is?
>
> ~Mik
>

KDE is the default. This is from the SuSe website:

"or the benefit of users who cringe at the thought of changing their
habits, SUSE LINUX Personal is shipped with a graphical desktop
environment in which Windows users will immediately feel at home: KDE, the
comfortable desktop for Linux."

Secondly SuSe is not owned by Ximian. Novell bought Ximian, then Novell
bought SuSe.

Scott
--
Only trust pipesmoking penguins.

Thanks for the correction on ownership. However the people who own
SuSe have a strong interest in Gnome. It may not be SuSe's default,
but I doubt that SuSe will drop it.

On Thu, 14 Oct 2004 09:28:50 +0000, Stuart Winter wrote:

> * The latest GNOME needs(?) Linux 2.6; Patrick is not using Linux 2.6
> as the stock Kernel in Slackware just yet.

Gnome 2.8 does not require kernel 2.6.
Gnome over the years has become a nightmare to compile and install but one
reason of dropping gnome is the excellent work done by the dropline
project which is what most people should be using if they anyways want
gnome on slackware.

-- Sharninder

In <736af730.0410140359.65dbe53a@posting.google.com >, on 10/14/2004
at 04:59 AM, apeak_2000@yahoo.com (Big Al) said:

>Every distro I know of except Slackware & Lindows/spire still
>includes Gnome. RedHat has it as the default, and SuSe is owned by
>Ximian.

ITYM SuSE is owned by Novell. Ownership may be transitive but it's not
reflexive.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>

Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to spamtrap@library.lspace.org

On 10-14-2004, in alt.os.linux.slackware,
Stuart Winter <use.reply.to@interlude.org.uk> wrote:

> On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 17:57:43 -0400, spammers-go-here@spam.invalid
> wrote:
>
> [..]
>> Does the Slackware decision portend more difficult times ahead
>> for GNOME with other distros ? If so, its a little unfortunate
>> because GNOME is still a very good window manager. Or would the
>> burden of providing a distro specific set of packages for GNOME
>> (and KDE perhaps) shift to the developers of GNOME (and KDE)
>> instead of distribution providers ?
>
> * GNOME is difficult (or more difficult than it could be) to
> build into packages because many of its component packages do not
> support installing into a pseudo root (usually done using a
> 'make' variable named DESTDIR, TOPDIR or similar). Therefore the
> way Patrick builds packages is to do a comparison of the file
> system before and after the build, tidy up, Slackwareify the
> contents then turn it into a package with makepkg. This is
> terribly time consuming but for non DESTDIR or similar 'clean'
> builds he likes to do it this way.

Excuse me if I show my stupidity here, buy why don't the DEVS just
do this sort of thing by default?. What's so wrong with including
$(DESTDIR) in the make files. Since you mentioned it, is there ever
a time when software *can't* be installed without a
$(DESTDIR)$(PREFIX)$(BLAH) construct? Curious is all...

> Whilst other people do contribute fixes, scripts and other things
> to Slackware, it's still Patrick who ultimately builds, tests and
> packages *everything*. I have read comments in the past about how
> all Slackware is is just compiled source put into a gzipped tar
> file: whilst that's essentially true, it's much much more than
> that. When a new version of a package is released it's not always
> a case of just changing the package version number and
> recompiling; changelogs need to be read, scripts need to be
> amended. It really is a long winded and time consuming process,
> especially for one person!

Indeed. Probably safe to assume it'd be a long winded process for
*more* then one person. All hail PV and Slackware!.

Oh, I'm one who could care less about ?nome. I don't see the loss
(if Patrick should do it!) as a hit on the distro. Slack is too good
a ship to sink so quickly.

Max

--
I am thoroughly convinced that Dependencies are a boogie-man
concocted by those that would sell you a solution to them. I have
used Slackware for four years, and have never met this mythical
monster. --Jeffery (AOLS)