Rant

[Derek A. Neighbors]

>
>
>Over time, I have noticed (as did everybody else, no doubt) that when 
>checking for compatibility / requirements for most of the software out there 
>(Notably, StarOffice), they support RedHat, SuSE, Debian, Mandrake, and even 
>YellowDog, and of course, Solaris.  But they do not support Slackware, even 
>though they provide a tarball binary (so it isn't because of any package 
>management).  This really irritates me, and I worry about future releases of 
>my programs will no longer work on a Slackware system.  I don't want to have 
>to change to one of the above distributions just because of some major 
>oversight of one of the first - and ongoing - distributions of Linux.
>
>Any comments, rants, verifications, discredits, etc.?
>

Only note, is I think you are dreaming. :)  You list 'and of course 
Solaris'.  The joke in the Solaris/BSD/Other Unix communities is that 
when free software folks say runs on 'unix', they really mean runs on 
GNU/Linux (notably red hat based / debian based distro's).  So why I 
cant speak to slackware issues, I can say slackware is not ALONE. :)

I will note that most software is developed on and for red hat and 
debian based systems.  So if it doesnt work on the system you use, be 
kind and submit the developers a patch that fixes the situation.  Im 
sure they would appreciate it. :)


-Derek Neighbors