Slax author's Blog (RSS)

What about ratings and flags?
Registered users (who downloaded it before?) would rate the modules from 1 to 5. Also, some flags could be set (eg. 'fake', 'does not work', 'fully working').
These may help the maintenance, whether the module has volunteers or you stay alone.

Hi, I took lot of effort in making driver modules
i think if they are deleted that would be oufully demoralising :( (at least for me)
well whatever, it appears people more like thoose eye candy
stuff, i guess it's unimportant for them to conect to internet.

IMHO post #3 is right, its better to choose from unverified modules than seeing nothing...

for me is very dificult to convice people to
try out linux. on they crap computers thae have crap xp
that is like crap on 256 MB
and then go and mhsf modem works out of box on live cd ,no swap usage ,and still they wining
so go let them scrue them selfves !!!!!
wthfuck theay are alll spoiled like bratz!
and this filosofy abouit dependencies and build script
makes me even harder ,so then changes thing and their driver not work and they go wining again !!!!!!

I do think that the module system does need major work, but I do not think that it is the best approach to simply toss it out.

I do think that it would be good if the module system was modified to incorporate: (all suggestions)
*Three Sections of modules:
-All Slackware packages from Slackware current (converted on your server to lzm format if possible (with rsync to keep track of updates if you decide to get fancy)) (you could have the users responsible for the creation of the icon and screenshot)
-All approved Slackware Packages from Slackbuilds (again as lzms)
-User uploaded modules
*A ticket based system for users to post suggested improvements to user uploaded modules
*A method of downloading the slaxbuild script outside of the lzm (you could make it so that the server rejects a module if the user does not upload a slaxbuild script for new modules)
*A timestamp of when the module was last edited
*A team of Slax users who can approve new modules
(I do volunteer for this team if it is created)

I do think that users like the fact that you can get the Slax modules from the official site, which should be kept.
If the Slackware packages were added to the module system in Slax ready format, most user's needs will be met.

The majority of the module system should be kept, but some changes do need to be made to improve the quality.
(Thank you, Tomas for bringing up this issue, so that it may be resolved)

On a side note: is there anything setup for formating for posts to the blog (ie. bold, italic, code, etc...)

In the few modules that I have, I know that several of them might/should be removed. I wish I could convince Tomas and other module evaluators, that the module works, but I cannot get the menu entry to work. I believe and can confirm that converting the equivalent Slackware packages through tgz2lzm and then activating them still does not produce the menu entries. The gkrellm module creates the menu entry, but the executable is empty. Suggestions/Advice/Comments both good/bad are welcome.

tonio,
After reading through several different pieces of documentation on the .desktop file, I think I might have a solution to the issue.
After I confirm the solution on another module of my own, I should be able to describe the solution and document it.

Thanks fundamental,

If you can share what you find, it will hopefully guide me to improve at least two of my modules that I do not want to be deleted. As for the winmodem ones(martian-full-20080625.lzm and slmodem-2.9.11-20080817.lzm for Slax 6.0.9), I know that they work and know what problems the user encounters, the wvdial and wvstreams modules I feel are strong. I know I need a bit of help with gkrellm and gnuplot module. The ImageMagick module, I wish to update to latest but at home I am on dialup and it is not worth uploading through it. Also xine-lib can update it to latest, but xine-ui menu issue as well. Thank you for all the work you do with slax. I hope I can contribute some more. I have installed Slackware 12.2 on an old machine and I can see the basis of Slax. I am a Fedora user more than anything and now I can appreciate Slackware which is the root/mother distro of Slax. I still use Fedora both at work and at home, but now Slackware also and I am happy using it.

I think the 3 sections Base/Slackbuild/others is a good idea. I have built 10 modules with slaxbuild, but I am afraid it was waste of energy as they duplicate Slackware packages and slackbuild aaaaand I am unsure the benefits.
The big problem is dependency. Perhaps a solution is in using a source/binary package management system. There are out there many distribution agnostic package management system, for instance derived from NetBSD. I have a very good experience with OpenBSD and MacPorts : working with them is very very easy.

I agree that the modules section is a mess, and couple of things I noticed could be done to reduce the confusion when there are half a dozen different modules for the same program. One would be to add some manditory fields to the web page to include version number and language. This information is often included, but in many cases you have do first download the module to find out. Additionally, it would be nice to strongly encourage uploaders to include additional information about what makes this verision different then all of the other versions of the same program that already exist as slax modules. Finally, some sort of rating and/or comment system for the modules would also be very helpful in separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.