What inconveniences?

Pardon my ignorance, but don't you have to manually keep track of package dependencies on Slackware?

How exactly do you install (say) Emacs on Slackware?

Because its more of a barebones distro. You add only the parts you need and maybe learn a bit in the process as well. Today I don't think you could even begin to configure Ubuntu using only a text editor. On a normal day do you even use 10% of the bundled programs on Ubuntu?

Some bloat is the price for ease to use. And think Ubuntu runs fine even on lousy hardware (not counting very old hardware, but then you have Xubuntu or Lubuntu).

I used to run Gentoo myself, for the fun and the speed-freakery (although throughput was nothing special; only boot time and load times were smaller than a normal distribution). But then I decided to go back to Ubuntu, to help it achieve critical mass.

The Linux market is already very small, and fragmentation makes it worse.

What advantage does Slackware have that makes up for its inconveniences?

Both users are thrilled! (They are the two remaining developers.)

Actually,

Since the last version, 3.4, approximately 1112 people made about 38302 changes to GNOME. Anyone can get involved in GNOME to help us to improve our software.

Gnome is alive and kicking.

I abandoned Ubuntu after it incorporated Unity. My loss of productivity was too big to continue using it. I was used to a functional desktop with Gnome 2. Gnome 3 is bad enough, but Unity? There is no way in hell I'm sticking with that.

Specifically, what is wrong with Unity?

This is political and religious flamebait to get Slashdot page views (click-whoring). This is not news for nerds and specially not "stuff that matters".

Also see http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3146679&cid=41474071:

Linus made the comment on his google plus feed. He also backtracked and apologized the next day so there is nothing to see here, the story should be marked a flamebait. If you really want to know what Linus thinks and says his Google + page is the best place to start.

If slashdot continues posting this trash, I will boycott it.

To slashdot editors: this can get you page views (and maybe ad clicks) in the short run, but it will scare away thoughtful readers/posters in the long run.

My order was (AFAIK)
Conectiva -> Kurumin -> Debian -> Ubuntu -> Gentoo -> Ubuntu

I went back to Ubuntu because I wanted to reduce fragmentation. Ubuntu works as well as Gentoo, although it is less fun. If every Linux user chooses a different distribution that maximizes his fun, our small community will be hopelessly fragmented.

So I went back to Ubuntu to help it achieve critical mass.

I can't audit it. I can't audit any OS. I can't audit my car, my electricity meters, my gas supply... The only time I will ever know something is up is when it goes catastrophically wrong. Therefore, I won't know if Shuttleworth is being good with my data until I see details only found on my CV being used to serve me adverts. Just like everyone else who isn't a C / Assembly dev.

First, I doubt very much that unity-lens-shopping has assembly code.
Second, even if you can't audit it, there is a big number of people who can. It only takes one to find a privacy-threatening bug.

What has changed recently is technology. Google and the modern web didn't exist 20 years ago, yet blocking Google today is (1) a significant political act, and (2) easily achievable. If we come to a day when all information resides in the cloud, censorship will be so simple as to be invisible. No public book burnings, no jack-booted thugs breaking down doors and confiscating printing presses. No optics of any sort. Just a few mouse clicks, and the offensive work disappears. A few more, and any story that mentions the disappearance itself disappears.

Yes, I fear that too. Dystopian science fiction focuses on self-aware computers (like Skynet, or the machines in The Matrix). I don't fear this, because I think this will take a _long_ time to happen, assuming it _ever_ happens. But I do think that we can design algorithms that partially understand natural language. That seems feasible. Now combine these algorithms with micro UAVs with cameras and microphones. This could make 1984 real.

Not to mention doomsday devices. We already have biological and nuclear weapons. These two could get more potent in the future. And proliferation. Proliferation scares me. The Soviets, as crazy as they were, still had sufficient reason to not start a nuclear war with the USA. But what happens when some rogue terrorist group gets nuclear weapons? Again, this scares me.
And then there is the grey goo scenario.

But what scares me the most is human genetic engineering. Genetic screening is becoming cheaper and safer, and I think people will start to make children with IVF and eugenic selection. After many generations, this could form a race of big, strong, intelligent, powerful beings, who maybe would not even identify as humans.

But there will always be a minority (such as Christians) that will refuse to do this. They would be the naturals. So we would have a Brave New World style of dystopia.
Now, you could object that our society already has separated classes: the rich, and the rest. But the rich are a small minority, and they have few votes. So this attenuates their dominance. But in the scenario I described above, the naturals would be a _minority_, and they would be weaker and less intelligent, and also (presumably) poorer. So they would be completely dominated. And since the non-naturals do not even identify as humans (they consider themselves to be another species), they wouldn't feel much empathy towards us... This scares me. The naturals could be treated as animals.

For example, I didn't know that Vatican II had addressed the issue of government censorship. Mostly I thought it dealt with more basic matters of worship (such as eating meat on Friday, that sort of thing).

I unfortunately have never read the Vatican II documents myself, but I know that they defend religious freedom, they condemn antisemitism, and they recognize the value of other religions. Even imperfect religions like Islam have elements of Truth and can lead (inefficiently) to God. Note that the Catholic Church still teaches (and will always teach) that it is the one true religion, the one Church created by God Himself; but it recognizes the freedom to choose one's religion, the freedom to express one's religion and seek converts, and to practice one's religion in private and in public - assuming that religion does not seriously harm the common good (say, by promoting child sacrifice).

Anyway, whether or not you choose to reply, thanks for the convo.

I like debating too. I like to share my crazy ideas.

I was auditing my Noscript whitelist. For every domain in the whitelist, I checked the Noscript page on it - such as http://noscript.net/about/test.com;test.com.

I am puzzled by the Google Safe Browsing Diagnostic results. It yields worrying results for a lot of domains that are listed as safe by all the other tools.
For example, see http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=gmodules.com

What am I supposed to do? It seems that every other domain (including important domains like gmodules.com) has acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware! Should I block them all (excluding some very essential ones)?

And as long as you don't have flash, java or the pdf plugin, you're a long way towards safety.

I leave the flash plugin disabled, and only enable it for youtube videos that don't work with HTML5 (unless I use youtube-dl).
I never used PDF plugins; I think it is much better to open PDF files with a dedicated viewer (in my case, evince).
I recently disabled Java because of the 0day shenanigans and I only enable it for one (trusted) site that needs it.

By the way, I have realized that I care a lot about computer security, but sometimes I do dangerous things like crossing a street without paying enough attention... If I go on like this, some day I will get killed, but my computers will be clean. O.o

The "ground zero mosque" was neither at ground zero nor a mosque, but "Islamic community center in Manhattan" did not promote the associations that those who created this "controversy" were after, so they made up this "ground zero mosque" crap and were so skillful with their propaganda that most people still believe it.

Please see http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3138413&cid=41441927

And I forgot to mention that part of the outrage was due to the grandiose of the project, its huge price tag, and it being named "Corboba" - that was taken as triumphalism.

Anyway, I don't care too much about the Islamic center itself, I am just explaining the POV of those who do care. Conflating this opposition with Nazi hate is Michael Moore level of sensationalism.

Please see http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3140615&cid=41442941

Finally there's a legitimate concern. I in particular wouldn't care about it, because Amazon isn't interested in the names of my photos; and a big company like Amazon wouldn't sell the data (they would lose far more in brand damage than the petty change they would gain by selling the data).

Anyway, the details are still being worked out; this is the _beta_ stage of a _non-LTS_ release. There is time for Canonical to think and evaluate.
Today, it is already easy to opt out (sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping), and Canonical will possibly make it even easier (or even switch to opt-in).