Patrick (probably) dropped GNOME

I just copy posting from linuxquestions.org, you know that dropline.net account has been suspended so you can't access their forum to get the _real_ talk between Troy and Patrick Volkerding (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/240451).

Troy McFerron
to volkerdi
Oct 6 (1 day ago)

I have been using Slackware 10.0 for about a month now and having
switched from Redhat based distros, I am really enjoying it.

My only issue is that Gnome 2.8 has been released for some time now
and there aren't any Slackware packages available to allow me a clean
upgrade path. I could install it from source (with a lot of hair
pulling), but would prefer official packages. 2.8 is a signifigant
release for the GNOME project, and I think a lot of people would be
happy to see it go into -current, so we could upgrade.

I hope this is something that is close to happening and I am bothering
you for no reason, but its something that Ubuntu has by default and
most other distros have easy to install packages for.

Thanks,

Troy McFerron
--
On Wed, 6 Oct 2004, Troy McFerron wrote:
> I hope this is something that is close to happening and I am bothering
> you for no reason, but its something that Ubuntu has by default and
> most other distros have easy to install packages for.

GNOME 2.8? I'm not aware of too many distributions that contain that.

Anyway, suffice to say the jury is still out. Since GNOME 1.4 I've felt
that GNOME is going in a direction that doesn't fit well with Slackware's goals, and for at least as long I've considered removing it completely and taking whatever flames I get for that decision. Right now, I think removing it would be the best thing for Slackware as it's become a maintainance nightmare (unlike nearly every other ./configure'ed source, GNOME doesn't build into packages easily with DESTDIR).

Not what you wanted to hear, I'm sure, but I do believe it would be best
to let Dropline produce Slackware's GNOME and quit wasting my own time with it. Probably 1/3 of developement time here is used maintaining GNOME, and *most* of the bug reports I get have something to do with GNOME (and aren't bugs I caused, or can fix). KDE, on the other hand, tends to build using the existing build scripts with no changes at all. I can start the build and come back to finished packages in a few hours. A GNOME update usually takes at least a week of manual labor, and another week of cleaning up broken things. It's been a long time (like I said, around GNOME 1.4), since I've felt the effort was worth the return.

Sincerely,

Pat

Related links:
http://www.linuxcompatible.org/story35043.html
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/233848
http://linux-universe.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=3208
http://www.icewalkers.com/Linux/Software/517010/Dropline-GNOME.html