Another week, and a day off!

[Launfal]

OK, so I get to start the week with a holiday, courtesy of the US government. It's the last one til May, so I better party it up.

Been playing around with other distros lately. Alpine was good until I tried to install X, then it locked up tight. And that was after I realized that their setup-repositories script didn't actually write the correct mirror into the file. Good times, but that was a loser.

The new Slackware is using pulseaudio. Meh. I'm sure when it comes out, they'll be a how-to on how to disable it. Or not. It could just be my imagination, but they seem to be morphing into a more DE-oriented distro, and the WM/TTY users are either moving on or just don't say much when stuff like this happens. More importantly is that something in their build of hplip is broken. I thought it was the new version, but 3.15.11 in Debian works after you install the plugins manually. [Shrug] Something else they'll figure out, or not.

Anybody on Jessie and wants some cool packages, check out the mx-15 repo. I had a spin with it the other day, and I was able to install the new mplayer 1.2, the original one that still plays in the framebuffer. Of course, I forgot to pin the repo, so it also installed a new hplip, which is how I found out that the problem isn't with the program but with the distro when it doesn't work. Got to learn something cool about apt-pinning and downgrading, and fun was had by all (of me).

I saw the poll about what I'd do with no Debian. HellifIknow. Probably Arch, but that depends on my attitude about Slack 14.2 when it comes out. Crux and those cousins are still too far outside my technical abilities. I'm watching guixsd, too, and when it hits 1.0, I'll give that a spin. I have a soft spot for FSF endorsed stuff.

The fact that most of it is either outdated, crap, or both is beside the point. It's the thought that counts.

I've got a feeling that FSF distros' days are numbered, anyway. Hardware is getting less and less free, locked down harder and harder, and unless they invent something like a FHF for hardware, those freedom guys are going to be running last generation hardware till the end of time. Nothing wrong with that, but eventually, someday, that stuff will break and there won't be anymore. Not tomorrow or next year, but eventually. I just built my rig last year, and at least it's upgradable. I'm gonna run it til the wheels fall off.

Browsers, meh. They all suck, but at least they all suck differently.

Well, that's about all I got for now. This book ain't gonna write itself, so I better use some of this free time and make some magic, so

Keep the beer cold and The Grill hot,
Launfal

[archvortex]

I never installed bluetooth or pulse in the new Slack beta install the other day so I used the rebuilt alsa-lib and alsa-plugins packages with no link to libpulse I had already created for my Slackware-Current for the upgrade changes on Jan 13th. I then had to add an asoundrc to replace the asound.conf of pulse to get alsa working again without pointing to pulse. You can leave pulse in and keep Alsa as the output handler by following the Arch Wiki instructions for Use Alsa for output instead of PoetteringAudio. I figure the new Slack will stay beta for at least another month. Too many little things like the hplip you mentioned, icon-cache acting up on some of the daily beta installs, etc.