Slackware pre- and post-installation routine...

Slackware is a great Linux distribution. It is fast, stable, and easily maintained. It is also easy to customize to users' tastes, which is a good thing because a certain amount of customization is necessary for a fully useful installation.

That's not because Slackware is somehow "incomplete," its maintainers simply refuse to monkey (much) with the upstream products that go into the distribution. So, for example, there's a bug in the coreutils utility that results in the info command not pointing correctly to some apps' info pages. The fix is relatively simple, but Slackware doesn't patch it, relying instead on coreutils's maintainers to address the problem if they choose.

So those who use Slackware develop a number of pre- and post-installation routines every time they install a new version of Slackware.

This blog post is an outgrowth of this thread where Slackware users post their post-installation routines. My intention is to collect the best of those posts and organize them here. I will revise this post over time with new/updated information.

For now, here are the categories of steps:

Pre-install backups and tasks

1. Back up my users' folders.
2. Back up the /root folder
3. back up the /etc folder
4. Save and annotate any special configuration files -- my wireless configuration files, fstab, Bash profiles, .emacs, etc. Some of these I make sure get in the right place in the new installation, some of these I simply refer to when working with the new configuration files.
5. Back up my custom keymap and rc.keymap script for command line usage. It makes the Caps Lock key a Control key and makes the right Alt key behave like the left Alt key.

Post install

Configuration

1. Create an initrd so I can boot from my JFS-formatted drives with the generic-smp kernel and then reconfigure lilo. I usually have the huge-smp kernel as a "safe" boot option.
2. Run xorgconfig. I printed out my monitor's and video card's specs so I can fill in the information.
3. modify xorg.conf for a scroll mouse
4. Backup nv-based xorgconfig
5. alsaconf, alsamixer, alsactl store
6. Create new users (when needed after a new installation).
7. Copy essential files from my backed-up copies of /etc /root/ and /home directories (e.g. .emacs, .bashrc, Thunderbird profiles, startup stuff from /etc, and a custom keymap I use).
8. Something new this time: download and install the proprietary Nvidia drivers and get them working.
9. Set up an IPtables-based firewall.

Software Installation

Compile and install (via slackbuilds/Sbopkg and src2pkg):

1. src2pkg
2. sbopkg
3. Install flashplayer plugin, flashblock, adblock and for Firefox
4. OpenOffice
5. Kaffein
6. Mplayer
7. Frozen Bubble
8. Moria