Two Slackware users (1, 2) share with us their tips and tricks they use to make Slackware an even better platform.
Tips’n’Tricks with Slackware
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Ive been using Slackware for a good few years. And lately its been nice to see it getting more attention.
Slackware, and OpenBSD are my choice OS’s, theyre so clean, well designed, and dare I say it, sexy.
Slackware goes on my SMP boxes, does databases, webserving.
OpenBSD goes on my edge boxes, doing e-mail, firewalling, and simple load balancing.
viva la slackware!
Now where did I put my German to Engish dictionary 😉
Seriously, I am very tempted by Slackware but the installation has always put me off. I wouldn’t class myself as a noob, but I’m certainly a novice!
John
Surprisingly enough I would class the slackware install as relatively simple. Ok you have to know something about the packages you want, but I am a relative “noob” and had no problem installing, adding a standard user and then configuring XFree to start up automatically.
Try slack on for size, you might just find it fits
Don’t let the “novice feeling” put you off. The installation was simple and straight forward the last time I went through it (7.0). In fact, I credit the simplicity of Slackware with me learning anything about using Linux.
Cheers for the replies guys!
I’ll give it a go again and see what happens. I should really install it anyway as my GFs surname is Slack…perhaps that is what put me off LOL.
John
I really like the slax live cd.
It’s main cool point is that it’s smaller than most live cds.
So you can download it on a modem if you have some patients.
Seriously, I am very tempted by Slackware but the installation has always put me off. I wouldn’t class myself as a noob, but I’m certainly a novice!
It might look a bit archaic. But the advantage is that it is really uncomplex and transparent, so in my huble opinion it is one of the easiest installers around
. Just give it a shot!
The first link is just an extremely terse list of commands and modules for the author’s specific hardware. The second link is slightly better; it still doesn’t give much in the way of performance-improving tweaks, places to get extra packages, and so forth.
Hrm, actually, that gives me an idea for an article…
This distribution can be very powerfull and stable in the hand of an experienced user. It needs a little bit of work after install to suit slackware for your specific needs, it doesn’t do so much for you, but then it gets better. Stability is very good, and speed. All of this is because of the BSD flavored init scripts, and because it packages don’t come with all sorts of patches, most of them are in the same form as the developer provides them. The only times when packages get patches are when there are security problems, or compatibility problems. And slackware doesn’t trade stability and security for features, so for those who don’t use or used it but didn’t like it, I advise them not to expect bells and whistles, and to dig deeper in the distro. I must admit that even do I don’t except the package management ever to get dependency checking, because Patrick doesn’t believe that dep. checking is a good solution, it would be nice if some features like checking if a package is installed before reinstalling it or if files are overwritten during install would be checked.
Otherwise it is the most stable and reliable distro I came across from the whole bunch.
Just my 2 cents…
have to admit .. I thought I would be intimidated by slack too since i tried they install back in the day of the 1.0.0 developer 3 cd set. now it is cake and i love it..
<ad>Slax is a really cool live cd too btw.. it would be nice if he rolled mythtv into it..<ul>hint.. hint</ul>
I must admit that even do I don’t except the package management ever to get dependency checking, because Patrick doesn’t believe that dep. checking is a good solution
I have been using slack for 5 years now and I wish they would get dep checking. Does anyone know why Patrick doesn’t think Dep checking is good? One would think that its a great idea considering it saves time hunting down libs and tools
I think that Patrick HAS added dep info to slack packages for some time ago. The old pkgtools cannot use this info but swaret can.
Swaret has quickly become ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL to maintaining a Slack box. Install that first and everything else through that. 8^)
Checkinstall will help with all the other source items without a slack pack.
I won’t comment on the recent spate of Cookoo-For-Xandros posts over the last couple of weeks, but I wanted to point out that articles like these two (for Slack configuration) are really helpful and very much appreciated. It’d be great if OSNews could keep up this type of article genre on a regular basis.
I think OS News posted this “Installing Slackware Linux” link a few weeks back:
http://www.bitbenderforums.com/vb22/showthread.php?postid=311808
Cheers
I love Slackware. I have tried Red Hat, Mandrake, Gentoo, Lindows, and a few others and keep going back to Slackware. It is stable and with programs like Dropline and Swaret out there updating can be releatively painless.
I have one issue with Slackware. It will probably get a slew of “but it’s so simple” replies. It irks me that I have to manually enter in the info to X86Config to get the scroll working on my wheel mouse. Every post/ help article / etc out on the web lists the same changes to the config. Why not just add it in by default?
Thanks for posting these helpful articles.
Well, basically, dependencies are all good and well if you only use software packaged with your distro, for your distro, and from the current release of your distro. Slack is intended for users who want to build up an installation the way they see fit; ie compiling various bits and additions from source.
That’s when dependencies can become a nightmare, as anyone who’s used RPM based distros (particularly in the old days) will attest. Slack assumes that you know what component requires what (usually only an ‘ldd’ away), and leaves you to it.
As others have pointed out, if you really want dependency checking on Slackware then just use Swaret. Best of both worlds!
Hey all!
Personally, I’m sticking with Slackware for ever! I’ve also tried out Redhat, Mandrake, and even tried Debian!
None seems to fit my needs better than Slack!
Has for the dependency checking, well personally, I’d rather NOT HAVE ANY! I hate RPM’s for that…. It’s a pain! The only thing I would suggest (I think it already is like this) is for pkgtool to WARNs you: “By the way, you want to install abc, you’ll probably need to download and install xyz for it to work properly!”… hit OK and just untar the damn thing! If the program doesn’t work, well you were warned to install xyz! That simple!
Finally, I was tired of gathering little bits and pieces here and there for howtos, etc. so I started to compile my own!
Check it out: http://pages.infinit.net/proy/
It’s not finished yet (I’m finishing off the KDE-
Compile howto…), but do go back to get updates…
DISCLAIMER: I don’t garentee anything with theses howtos! I presume you know what you’re doing! 8p
Cya! Raven.
I’ve been running Slackware 9.1 for a few weeks now. I found it easy to install, but that is partially because I selected the full install to avoid any dependency issues. I also run Debian Stable, which I like because all the software is on the CDs, and updates are infrequent. (I have a very slow dialup connection.)
If I want to install a new Slackware package, what is the easiest way to find its dependencies?
Also, has anyone had experience upgrading via CDROM? Because of the slow dialup connection, I was planning on just upgrading via CD every few versions or so.
Thanks,
Mark
I think that Patrick HAS added dep info to slack packages for some time ago. The old pkgtools cannot use this info but swaret can.
That is absolutely false. Patrick HAS NOT added dependency info to Slackware pages. Swaret just ldd’s binaries and libraries to see what other libraries are required and uses MANIFEST to look which packages contain these libraries. But the packages do not contain dependency information.
There is now a quasi-standard which slapt-get supports for dependencies, but only some packages on linuxpackages.net have dependency information.
If I want to install a new Slackware package, what is the easiest way to find its dependencies?
I usually use ldd to find out which libraries a program needs, and install them.
Also, has anyone had experience upgrading via CDROM? Because of the slow dialup connection, I was planning on just upgrading via CD every few versions or so.
There is an upgrading file on every official Slackware CD, but often you can just do a:
cd /mnt/cdrom/slackware
upgradepkg */*.tgz
(Only if there are some radical changes, like major glibc updates, the procedure is a bit longer)
Swaret is a tool with a feel very similar to APT that allows slackware users to do dependency checking before installing packages in the repository. It’s a third party add-on, but I personally feel that it makes Slackware package management a breeze.
.. a lenghty, in-depth article about Slackware in desktop usage. Not a typical “distro review”, rather a in-detail explanation of configuring slackware to desktop dream
Will submit it to OSNews when it’s ready
I’ve been on Slackware 9.1 for about close to a week now and love. It is so much more stable than I’m used to (from RH9 and Fedora Core 1). I don’t use swaret much because the pkgs I wish to update are sometimes out of date on there, or only slightly older than ones i can get a LinuxPackages.net or by rolling my own (with checkinstall).
The one tool I cannot live without is Dropline GNOME. Their site seems to be down, but it is the best way of updating GNOME packages that I know of.
I’ve been trying out Emerde lately (a Slack port of Gentoo’s Portage), but I’m not all too happy with it yet.
Hi
Whats the trick to get the modules to load with the 2.6 kernels . #depmod -a dosn’t help. None of 12 or so modules from the 2.4 kernel get loaded. After make modules && make modules_install & reboot the new kernel and depmod -a .
I’ve got a boot partition /boot/slack/linux2.6.2/vmlinuz-2.6.2 with System.map linked to System.map-2.6.2 in the same folder.
Does this require the new module-init tools, or just a symbolic link ?
I’ve tried many different distros, and I, too, keep coming back to slackware. I had a friend of mine mail me a slack 9.0 cd when it came out, as downloading it on a dialup takes a long time. Since then, I’ve used swaret to upgrade to 9.1. Just a few packages a day, when I have time, and even going at a slow pace it only took me a few weeks on dialup.
I did have a few problems upgrading to the new 2.6 kernel, but I figured them all out easy enough. (If I’d read more about it first, I probably wouldn’t have had such a hard time but that’s my own fault.) None of it was slackware’s fault.
And Hi, you need the new module-init tools for the 2.6 kernel to get any modules to load (one of the things I didn’t read about and found out the hard way…). They will replace the current depmod, lsmod, etc. but keep the old versions and call them automatically just in case you run a pre-2.6 kernel sometime later . If all goes like it should, you’ll be able to go from a 2.4 kernel to a 2.6 kernel and maybe even back again if you desire with no problems loading modules at all.
Can anyone tell me exactly in what ways sw 9.1 is kernel 2.6 ready? I’m kinda looking for specific examples. What is it that has been done to sw to make it compatible w/ 2.4 and 2.6 (not only compatible, but I’m assuming that it functions rather smoothly…)
Thanks,
Charles
…but the people in the Slackware newsgroup were so mean, I switched to a distro that had a friendlier community – Gentoo. After spending weeks of recompiling my system, I wished I could find a distro like Slackware – but with a friendly community.
And I did – Arch Linux.
If the members of the Slackware community did not coddle the resident sociopaths, they would have a growing base of users. Instead they cling to the “I had to pay my dues, so you will too!” mentality. Quite sad considering how nice Slackware + Swaret runs.
Hi
Whats the trick to get the modules to load with the 2.6 kernels . #depmod -a dosn’t help. None of 12 or so modules from the 2.4 kernel get loaded. After make modules && make modules_install & reboot the new kernel and depmod -a .
I’ve got a boot partition /boot/slack/linux2.6.2/vmlinuz-2.6.2 with System.map linked to System.map-2.6.2 in the same folder.
Does this require the new module-init tools, or just a symbolic link ?
Let me guess, this happened to Slack9.1 that upgrade from Slack9.0 via swaret?
You must install the new module-init-tools. Remember to remove the old modulutil package before doing this.
The slackware newsgroup is a little elitist, the Slackware linuxquestions.org forum is where you want to go if you want friendly advice, the freenode IRC #slackware channel is pretty friendly too. Don’t judge the distro by an alt newsgroup.
Let me guess, this happened to Slack9.1 that upgrade from Slack9.0 via swaret?
Nope Clean install of 9.1
A recent OSnews article comparing 2.4 and 2.6 kernels mentioned something about a newer module init tools for 2.6. Maybe this dosn’t apply to 9.1 as it’s 2.6 ready?
Thanks
@Hi
Have a quick peek in /sbin – if you’ve got depmod.old as one of the files there (as well as depmod) then you should be OK with the module init tools.
You can try running /sbin/generate-modprobe.conf /etc/modprobe.conf (after backing up the current modprobe.conf of course) – this helped fix a few issues for me.
Cheers
DanO
My first distro was Mandrake 9.1. It was pretty good, but it was hard compiling stuff from source. urpmi was a step in the right direction, but Mandrake overall was too slow and bloated for me. I switched to Slackware and haven’t looked back(except for Debian Sid…I’m still eyeing that one). Everything on Slackware is so simple, and I’ve learnt a lot about administrating a Slackware system. =D
Whoops, meant to say Linux system. :-p