Category: Uncategorized

While I haven’t been active on posting new tidbits recently, I am quite active on keeping up with things over here. While I don’t currently offer a GNOME 43 liveslak, any existing systems should still be getting GNOME updates. Recently, I updated to the 43.8 release and continually upgrade libs and other bits as time allows. I use 43 on -current and the 38 repo on 15.0, so I tend to keep them moving, if I’m the only one using them– well then it’s worth my time 😉

NWG-SHELL – We’re currently completely up-to-date across x86_64 and aarch64, with the latest golang 1.21.1, hyprland 0.29.1, sway 1.8.1, and of course, nwg-shell 0.5.9.

The GNOME 44 liveslak was updated Wednesday, featuring the current 44.4 release, and all the extra modules there are completely up-to-date as well. I’ve also put together a nwg-shell liveslak which operates much the same as the GNOME offering from me. Though, that one needs some updating, I’ll have to save that for next week.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with CRUX, it’s a system I’ve found I actually like quite a lot. No doubt my interest in CRUX stems from all the time I spend making SlackBuilds (as it’s a source based distro), but getting to know the ins-and-outs of the distro has led me down many paths. I’ve ported the complete XFCE4 Desktop to the distro (ok… I’m missing like 2 plugins), and the port collection is a good portion of an entire system in it’s own right. I’d like to eventually get nwg-shell running over there, and work has been done, it’s just not ready for the world yet.

Still, my love for Slackware is strong and using another system makes me appreciate home so much more. My time spent with either of these distros, is time I truly enjoy using my computers. I’m happy with how things are going, and even if I don’t post much news, know that I’m always working on something cool and fun to bring to the table!

Just posting a quick note to inform everyone that there is now a file mirror for the GFS liveslak ISO available at https://slackware.uk/gfs/liveslak/ and also many thanks to Tadgy for hosting it as well as Nate Russell for all the hard work he’s done putting all of our scripts into one big thing that we couldn’t manage to sort out ourselves. He goes above and beyond to make this all happen, and we wouldn’t be able to do all this without him!

Many open source projects have some form of communication with users, who may not necessary need help or have a problem to report. Or whom like interactive experiences, and real people to share things with. Popular services exist like IRC, Discord, Facebook, and more. In the open source world, matrix.org seems to be the go-to (it must be open source 😉 and the author of nwg-shell, Piotr, has opened a matrix “subspace” for nwg-shell. He’s also kindly provided a Slackware room, so users, hackers, abusers of nwg-shell on Slackware machines can share configs, ideas, issues or whatever else with each other in real-time, if they’d like.

I’m in there, and I’d really appreciate any users of any of these tools, apps, repos join if they have a matrix account. The more the merrier I say on a chat program, can’t chat without people in the seats!

https://matrix.to/#/#nwg-shell:matrix.org

Stop in and say hi! Tell us about your nwg-shell experience, and lets create a nice place to talk about it!

Yesterday I uploaded a new GNOME 44 Liveslak (built with the new 1.7.0 release), but I’ve changed some things with the latest ISO. Namely, I’ve removed a lot of things from Slackware proper, that a GNOME desktop just don’t need. These things are listed below:

• d/ – a couple extra gcc packages have been removed
• e/ – removed emacs software
• f/ – removed Linux FAQs & Docs
• k/ – removed the kernel source package
• kde/ – This is a GNOME ISO, we don’t need KDE included!
• t/ – TexLive and friends are gone
• tcl/ – TCL related apps are also removed
• xap/ – here I’ve left some basics, removed most of it but I’ve kept FireFox and a few other essentials
• xfce/ – again, this is a GNOME ISO.
• … and ‘joe’, just because it installs 4 different menu items.

ANY of this software that you might need can be installed with’slackpkg’ as on any Slackware machine, I was just hoping to keep the ISO size a bit slimmer. Along with this change, I’ve split the extra ‘_software’ folder in the GFS repo into a add-on module. Once you’ve written your ISO and the disk is mounted, place the ‘gfs44_software.sxz’ file into add-ons and Liveslak will automatically add the software to the OS when it boots

If you choose not to get the extras, you won’t even know you’re missing anything when using the ISO. But the extra package includes much good GNOME software like fwupd, apostrophe, Deja-dup, and more. The ISO is shipped with the latest 6.1.35 kernel and -current as of yesterday. In the future, I’ll likely update the system when a new kernel is added which should equate to about weekly until 15.1 finally gets here. The add-on module may see more updates, (and software) dependent on how active the team is currently, I haven’t contributed much in months, I’ve been branching out but I’ll get back into the swing soon.

In other repo news, nwg-shell has added hyprland support with v0.5.0 (now at 0.5.6), and boy does that shine on Slackware now. Hyprland support is actively developing so expect more as time goes on, but the x86_64 repo has been updated to reflect that and add hyprland (and deps) to the install. You can still use sway, but now you can use sway or hyprland with the same great environment on -current. Expect the aarch64 repo to lag in this, as I haven’t the time to get that one up to par yet. I’m going to experiment with the ‘slackrepo’ app soon to hopefully manage a singular repo for all my packages on Slackware for all systems, we’ll see how that works out in the end.

For now, we must part… enjoy the goodies.

I haven’t checked in on GNOME in some time, but there hasn’t been a new point release yet, so I think I’m good for now. But I have been keeping up with nwg-shell which has had a ton of updates the past weeks adding support for hyprland. I’ve now updated both the x86_64 and aarch64 -current repos with all the latest nwg-shell packages except for adding hyprland. The actual integration with the configs and such just released today, and since 15.0 is limited in that it only runs an year old release of hyprland, I’ve skipped it for the moment. But yes, hyprland does build and run on -current, I just haven’t had the opportunity to see if I need to patch anything first. I’ll look at that next week for users of the bin repos, but for now I’ve tried to get both arches in sync, stay tuned for the addition of hyprland early next week.

https://slackware.lngn.net/pub/aarch64/slackwareaarch64-current/nwg-shell/

https://slackware.lngn.net/pub/x86_64/slackware64-current/nwg-shell/

Silence is golden they say. While I’ve been quiet, I haven’t been still. I’ve been slowly cleaning up scripts, packages, and doing testing for aarch64 things as well. Buried in my /staging dirs is a partially up-to-date GNOME 43 for aarch64 Slackware, once 43.6 goes officially live, I will likely put up the repo. I’ve been holding off sorting things into subdirs locally, trying to give it the feel of dependency tracking without actually having dependency tracking. Not sure if I’ve succeeded or not, or if that will transpose into the repo. gcs43- x86_64 is currently up-to-date, (except for webkit) and I’ve added “Shotwell” – the photo album organizer, which I swore was already here, but wasn’t. I’ve also added the VoIP dialer, “gnome-calls”. This is mainly for the mobile focused OS, but I figure, it should be packaged, as surely someone would find it useful.

I’ve been playing with some other distros, primarily ones with alternate init systems. Artix with OpenRC (from Gentoo), and I plan to try a Void install out as well. I had a less than successful attempt with Crux, which runs perfectly in VMs but I’m having issues getting it to go on baremetal. I really want to get into Crux a bit, as it looks really appealing to me, so hopefully I can work it out. I hate walking away defeated. Anyway, trying all these systems out, I get homesick very quickly, and always breathe a sign of relief when I boot back into Slackware, where everything is sane and perfect.

Tomorrow I’ll try and push out new GNOME 43 & 44 ISOs, I really should automate this, but I never do. Automation creates mistakes that go unnoticed, and I hate fixing things 😉

Turns out there is a script on SBo for hyprland (only it’s old and outdated) but there is none of the other software, but since it’s likely held up by Wayland updates (coming in 15.1) I’m not going to bother submitting anything for it, yet. I reached out for help with wtf to do with my jacked-up gtklock script and Urchlay came to the rescue with some sed magic that sure beats my symlinking all the libs into it’s include dir. Going to do some review of my scripts for the modules, and I hope to have gtklock and the rest uploaded next week on SBo. So that will then round out any missing software needed by nwg-shell.

Some updates coming for the x86_64 and aarch64 nwg-shell repos, likely today. New foot, updated google-go-lang and nwg-bar, off the top of my head. Felt like writing something so there’s this, I’m out!

Been a hot minute since an update from me! I’ve been doing a bit of hopping around working on other things, I’ve finally made my way back home to Slackware! I’ve pushed a few small updates to the gcs43 repo, unfortunately it seems we need a patch for another Slackware package to fix LibreOffice, I’m going to hold off on that for now hoping it will come soon. If you’re not running the LLVM 16.0 updates yet, I’d stay away until fixes get pushed from upstream.

Outside of that, I’ll be pushing some nwg-shell updates here and to SBo shortly. Recently, some support was added for hyprland on nwg-shell, but Slackware doesn’t have hyprland yet. I’ve cobbled together some WIP SlackBuilds. A few leeched from SBo and a few (for hyprland) I wrote. I’ve gotten it to run, and haven’t really touched it again. If you want bleeding edge WMs, this be the place for them! Not all scripts function last I recall, but hyprland runs, that’s all that matters, I guess.

Oh, and I updated the GNOME 44 ISO with the latest packages from @N4T3R and the latest -current changes.

I’ve pushed another iso update today to include the OpenSSL 3.0 upgrade as well as a patch to grub which fixes grub from reading ext file systems created with the newer e2fsprogs versions I’d you use the iso as a rescue disk, you want the grub patch. Trust me.

Nothing much new this week (yet). I’ve updated the iso with the latest -current and kernel 6.1.9. I haven’t added anything new, but I am considering to remove some Slackware shipped X11 apps. Things like thunderbird, xmms, and other things covered by the GNOME desktop, I may remove to shrink the iso a bit, as it seems to keep growing. Maybe next revision.

I’ve been working on getting scripts for nwg-shell SBo-ready. Which means they have to build on 15.0 and comply with their guidelines. In the end, I’m going to have a way for users to build it locally, a SBo install option will exist, and I’ll have a package repo available as well. This way one can do as they wish to get the software. I know many users want a simple solution, and SBo works for that, so hopefully I’ll finish that work soon. And within the week nwg-shell should be available there as well.

Nothing else cookin’ this week. I need to do my taxes and other fun adult stuff, but I’ll keep doing this and avoid it all, like a seasoned vet 😉