From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Mark H Weaver Subject: Re: let's talk about SLIM Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2017 16:08:42 -0400 Message-ID: <87pobgkc39.fsf@netris.org> References: <20170826213253.qxyveyztlhao22bu@abyayala> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:59706) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dm3rv-0003eL-OD for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 27 Aug 2017 16:09:16 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dm3rs-00064H-E4 for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 27 Aug 2017 16:09:15 -0400 Received: from world.peace.net ([50.252.239.5]:41719) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dm3rs-0005zB-9l for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 27 Aug 2017 16:09:12 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20170826213253.qxyveyztlhao22bu@abyayala> (ng0@infotropique.org's message of "Sat, 26 Aug 2017 21:32:53 +0000") List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: guix-devel@gnu.org ng0 writes: > It seems to me as if SLIM can be dropped once we > have something else in place. Would you agree? It would be good to keep a display manager service that is lightweight in terms of both resource usage, runtime-dependency closure, and build-dependency closure. I'm not attached to SLiM, but I would not consider the existence of a GDM service to be sufficient grounds for removal of SLiM. Apart from the needs of those on older hardware, or those who wish to build everything locally from source code, I'm not sure if we've ever successfully built GDM on a non-Intel system. GDM depends on mozjs-17, which I've never managed to build on mips64el-linux, and it fails on armhf-linux too. Fixing mozjs on mips64el-linux is probably not trivial, and yet I'm happily using SLiM on my Yeeloong, which is still the only non-Intel GuixSD system as far as I know. > The big pro for this is that it is dormant for a > considerable long time now. It's a mistake to assume that software that doesn't see frequent releases is problematic. If a program or library does its job well and doesn't have a pile of unfixed bugs, there may not be a need for more releases. qmail's last release was in 1998, and yet I would trust in its security and correctness more than just about anything else. TeX's last release was in January 2014, and it obviously works extremely well. Personally, I'd be much happier with a working system that could be audited and not have the audit become stale before its completion. The amount of code churn in my systems is so great that it's infeasible for me to audit all of the changes coming down the pipe. I find that very uncomfortable. Mark