.:Slackel - Hellenic Linux Distribution::.

I want to share some thoughts.

Looking back in the beginning and how slackel is today i have to admit it needed a lot of effort to make it easy to maintain as it is today.
There are of course salix tools but there are so many small and big details in system scripts under the background user cannot see which took hours or days to find in different editions. And others which are specific with the desktop is used. There are a lot in openbox packages, in KDE and the last edition MATE compiled and build from scripts where a lot of packages were patched to give the look which fits to slackel, disable or change links in the code etc. Otherwise system would be not well looked.
The big job has been done over the years so now it is easy for me or someone to just run the scripts and create a iso for openbox, kde or mate.
The difficult work is now to watch every day the packages which exist on repos and always update them immediately so slackel to remain stable.

Looking in the source code of slackel gui installer (which includes code aka salix tools written in c now and not in python) i even cannot believe i have written all this code working for a couple of months. I mean that i use salix tools in python which have changed to work with slackel, but tools included in Slackel live installer was written in c, can be used in the future if for any reason the python version will not exist or not maintained. They are there as an alternative.
Also gui usb installer and multiboot gui installer use the aka salix tools in c included in SLI.

Sometimes reading the reviews of slackel in distrowatch i see people which write nonsense about slackel like i cannot install it, or last version is not good while previous was better etc. I am sure they write all these just to tease. Of course the votes they took are zero.

Or a user make a video review of latest slackel kde 7.3 who after install it in hard disk he started to install kde plasma. He had to first remove all old kde packages. Change user scripts etc. Install elogind, wayland etc What he has done was to mix kde plasma and old kde remained packages.
Of course system broke. Someone not familiar will watch this review will say slackel is not good. It is not good for the reputation of slackel.

To make a slackellive plasma kde need a different approach. I have done it in the previous past. It need another repo and since slackware not yet includes plasma in official repos i will not make it public. Too much work to maintain another repository. Kde packages included in slackel taken from slackware repository but openbox and mate, build for slackel, do not exist on slackware official repos. There are over 1000 packages for 64 bit and other 1000 for 32 bit different than slackware repos.

I want to say that is annoying when someone just make criticism just for fun without knowing the work needed for creating a usable product.
There was a period in the past, for three years before joined salix, i had stopped make new releases of slackel because of all these. i was tired psychologically and i was not in the mood to continue. I used it for my personal use only. But then i thought it is not good for other users who will find slackel useful.

Believe me, all this work is noticeable for those who really use Slackel in real life (and not for stupid distro-hopping reviews).

More often than not, the hard work is hidden from the end user. As a programmer myself, I guess I have a vague idea of the hard work needed to maintain Slackel. At least I know that it is very common for a simple update to have no visible changes to the end user, and yet it required a lot of work behind the scenes. I never maintained an operating system myself, so I'm sure in reality it is much harder than I think it is.

Now imagine what a "distro hopper" will think... And if gets even worse if said distro hopper is not exactly the nicest person in the world. It is very easy to criticize from the safety of ignorance. Some people love to criticize for the sake of criticizing, or because, for some reason, they like to be annoying, or just because of plain stupidity. It is very easy to login as root, mess up your system then blame the developer for your own faults. Such things are unavoidable on the Internet and ignoring is the only way to deal with them. Although, I admit, it's not always easy to do so when their nonsense can harm the reputation of your hard work.

An aphorism usually accredited to A.Einstein says "Two things are infinite, the Universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the former". It might be an interpretation of a discussion overheard by someone near him, or it might not be related to Einstein at all. I do not know who said that but, whoever it was, he/she was right.

djemos,
Thank-you very much for slackel and all the work you do to keep it updated and available to all.
Though I am retired and live on what is called in US, social security, I have, before now, sent donation to you.

Thank you bsd4me for the donation. The donations are shown on the front page
The anonymous is not anonymous but he told me to not write his name.
What is very good and helpful is that i have met you and papasot and juliusse who all of you are really good friends.

Thanks for sharing your journey Djemos and Papasot.