Slackware GUI Administration
I mentioned that I like the simplicity Slackware provides but Slackware lacks graphical user interface (GUI) admin tools. What is missing?
My definition here of GUI ix X only and excludes anything in a terminal or console.
While some desktop environments provide some GUI admin tools, there is no universal coverage in Slackware.
A GUI package manager. The only one available is gslapt. A few people use this tool, such as the Salix folks. While I have not tinkered with gslapt in a long time, to my knowledge gslapt works just fine. The app can be configured to check for dependencies and support non stock Slackware repositories. The main caveat with gslapt and the underlying slapt-get is no support for slackpkg, which is the official Slackware package manager. Perhaps that is not a big deal because slackpkg itself is a wrapper to the base Slackware package management tools.
Along with a GUI package manager, a GUI tool is missing that manages *.new files. Most distros lack a similar GUI tool. For example, in Red Hat distros no GUI tool is provided to review and manage *.rpmsave and *.rpmnew files. Likewise with Slackware *.new files.
A GUI tool for managing system services.
A GUI tool to manage user startup apps.
A GUI firewall manager. Few computer savvy users venture deep into the world of iptables, let alone non technical users. The Red Hat folks have tried to solve this with a firewalld GUI and the Debian folks with gufw. While ufw is available at slackbuilds.org, gufw is not.
A GUI manager for system date and time.
Probably not needed by many users, but a GUI front-end to manage the GRUB boot loader would be nice.
A GUI bluetooth manager.
The Salix folks seem to have some of these tools. Perhaps a Salix test run is due. Yet one challenge with Salix is, like the parent Slackware, once released software packages are not updated other than security and serious bug patches. That means desktop environments and other user apps grow stale.
Posted: Category: Usability Tagged: General, Slackware
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