Robby Workman Answers a Few Questions on the Occasion of Slackware-13.37 Release
Published: May 13, 2011
Dear fellow Slackers! We are happy to publish another interview with Robby Workman, a Slackware developer and one of the leading mainainers of the SlackBuilds.org project, he has kindly given us on the occasion of the Slackware-13.37 release. Enjoy!
It seems it was a long and winding road from Slackware 13.1 to Slackware 13.37, with a series of massive updates of the -current branch. What was the most hard work on the road? What didn't satisfy you all the time?
Off the top of my head, I don't recall anything being particularly difficult (it's all relative, of course) from an implementation standpoint; the difficulty was in deciding which versions of various components to use as a target (e.g. kernel, kde, xfce, xorg)—any change to any of these has potentially far-reaching effects on the remainder of the distribution.
There were quite a lot of diverse packages added to Slackware this time, for example, xaos, yasm, moc (a killer, IMHO! :-), ddrescue, and lxc to mention a few. How do new apps find their way to Slackware? Is there some generic way or each new app has its own way?
As you've surmised from following development over the years, any attempt to fit stuff into nice neat little boxes will likely fail. ;-) In other words, I don't think there's anything close to a magic incantation that gets something added to Slackware. If an app/library looks broadly useful or just tweaks enough interest with one of the team, it might get lucky.
What do you think are the most remarkable changes in this release besides `just' updates of software like compilers, browsers, KDE, etc.?
Kernel mode setting for graphics is now on by default (and required for Xorg) for both Intel and ATI chipsets, but I don't know how "remarkable" that really is. The only other thing that "jumps out" at me is the inclusion (by upstream) of the formerly patented BCI in freetype, but that's not such a big deal in my opinion.
There are more than a thousand packages included in the release. Some projects maintain mailing lists or RSS feeds but some do not. How do you solve the problem of tracking changes that take place with the programs and libraries that ship with Slackware?
Lots of emails from mailing lists, various rss feeds, manual checks in response to bug reports and/or user queries, random chance, and probably lots of others that escape me now…
This time, Slackware includes a number of kernels of different versions: the 2.6.37.6 kernel as the main one, the 2.6.38.4 kernel in the /testing directory, and even configs for kernels 2.6.35.12 and 2.6.39-rc4. With the kernel releases appearing more often than seasons change, how do you decide which kernel to choose for the release (besides making a cute name for the release :-)?
Ideally, the one that works the best for the most people is the one that gets chosen. Is there really any other way? ;-)
A question by Douglas Mayne, an AOLS regular: I am interested in hearing about cgroup process scheduling that are available for the first time in the default kernel. I would like some general information about it. Perhaps, some benchmarks could be generated for a similar group of desktop applications running on 13.1 vs. 13.37.
Sorry, I don't know enough about this stuff to comment.
How do you personally update/patch your Slackware systems and what do you think is the recommended way of doing this for rank-and-file Slackers? Is it slackpkg, a combination of crond and rsync or what?
The right way to do it is the intersection of "how do you want to do it?" and "this works correctly." There are multiple intersections, of course, so pick one. I use slackpkg, for what that's worth.
Are there any chances of bringing back GNOME into stock Slackware releases?
String theory says yes.
What are the nearest plans for the next development cycle? Do you plan to update openssl, xfce, anything else? Are there any definite plans for the next release or does much depend on the upstream developers?
Yes. ;-)
Thank you very much, Robby! Have the best of luck in all your activities!
http://slackworld.berlios.de/2011/robby-workman-on-slackware-13.37.html