Distros, installing programs and security.
 

I'm new to Linux. In windows I frequently run windowsupdate to patch the OS and some related components. Now I have no idea how this works on Linux.

Is there some similar system to keep the OS updated for security? If so, is it distro dependent?

What about the programs that was installed with the distro? I don't even know all the stuff that got installed :o.

What a bout programs I have installed afterwards?
Is there a difference if the program was installed by some kind of packet management system, or from a "tgz" file ?

1) its distro dependent.

it used to be you had to do it all yourself, but with programs that install software for you, they keep track of what is install, what version, and update it all for you.

weather or not they have i difference from packages you install vs ones that it installed/system programs, that depends on the package manager.

the only downside is that it can only manage programs it installed.

EDIT: you have to tell the package manager to update your system tho, you can always make a cron-job to update weekly

As you're using Slack, things work a little differently. Slack does not depend on a package manager for updates.

In /extras the only package manager included is slackpkg. There are 3rd party package managers available: swaret, slapt, and others, but Pat doesn't give them an official nod for use.

While many people use them to update their systems and claim to not haave any problems, I have seen MANY MANY posts where people have borked their systems using these tools.

Slack's official recommended way to update your system is to do it manually. You read the changelog to see what packages have been updated/changed. This tells you which ones you need and in what order to install them.

You download the new packages and install them using upgradepkg.

This is the OFFICAL Slackware method and it does prevent a lot of problems if you do it this way. You must remember that Slackware is not an "automatic" type distro.

Whenever you update your system, pay close attention to any config file changes. Slack won't overwite your config files automatically, instead the new config file is saved as "*.new". You should examine the new config file to see what changes are made, if any and decide whether to overwrite your old config file, edit changes into existing config file, or disregard new config file completely.

Doing this will (should) ensure total stability in your system. While this may seem like a lot of work and trouble, it's actually pretty straight forward and prevents a lot of problems.

And, if your system gets borked, you know YOU borked it, not some tools making unknown changes. Makes it easier to undo whatever was done because you know what you did.

Far be it for me to suggest that anyone changes distro ;), but as you are new to linux, Slackware may not be the best distro to start with, because as masonm points out, you have to update manually.

I used to use SuSE 9.2, which has a nice little app called 'SuSE Watcher' which sits in the system tray/notification area and changes colour to indicate whether there are updates available. Green means all is okay, yellow means there are non-security related updates, and red means there are security updates. This is pretty similar to the Windows XP update manager. You just click on it, and it comes up with a list of available updates. Then you choose which you want and they are installed automatically. Works very well.

Thank You for your anwsers :)

This is a jungle, and yes I am over my head with SlackWare im sure.

Today I have installed Mandriva and after a few hours I installed Ubuntu.

I must say SlackWare seemed faster than Mandriva, and it did install Java and Flash out of the box, that was nice :)

But im sure I will try a few other distros before the end of the day ;)

So, you say SuSE 9.2 is good for a newbie ?

Yes, I would recommend SuSE 9.2 for a newbie. It has an excellent configuration tool (YaST), so no mucking around editing text files manually, like in other distros. Out of all the distros I've tried, it also did the best job of detecting my hardware automatically (including a wireless mouse, and a wifi pc-card). You can get a live CD version of SuSE if you want to try it out. The only reason I'm not using it anymore is that I've converted to Gentoo, which for my purposes is much nicer (but not newbie friendly).

Other good choices are Mepis (which I have recently recommended for my 13 year old niece), and Ubuntu, which you've already tried.

Yes I'm still on Ubuntu.

Is it just me, or is it realy difficult to get Internet multimedia to work on Linux?
Has any of the distros been able to play all videos and flash animations?

Has M$ allready taken over the Internet :confused:

I finlay got one .wmv file to work on Ubuntu, and when I tried the next one I get the picture, but the sound does not work doh :(

Its a M$ format, and the net is full of it :(

It's silly, because watching videos is not what I do all days long, but this just starts to anoye me :rolleyes:
The video that has no sound is this on:
http://www.crapville.com/videos/mime.asp
It is very funy btw. (When you hear the sound, that is :))

I like to use my Linux time learning Linux, not trying to get the multimedia working.
But I dont want to dual boot to XP, then I just end up playing :rolleyes:

I guess this is not a distro problem, but rather M$ world domination :jawa:

But if im wrong here, and it IS possible to get this to work, please tell me :)

just watched it yep pretty funny ....try installing mplayer and the w32 codecs add this line to your apt sources list
deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ testing main
than install the mplayer plugin for mozilla/firefox

Thank You :)

I app-get the mplayer and with that I can hear the sound ok.

I thought that xine and mplayer is just front end using same codec.