The download site for transcode seems to be broken.
Ubuntu doesn't seem to have a deb for it, but packages
that seem to be dependent on it.

Does anyone know of an alternative way of downloading it?

Ekkume

You can find a .tgz here:
http://linuxpackages.net/
Slackware packages can be installed on any Linux distro.

They can? I've never tried. But I imagine you could just tar -xvzf if and put the files where they should be.

I don't know if that would overwrite anything though.

You have to put the package in / and then run the command tar (i don't remember exactly the switches but you can find this easily).

I did get the tarball and I have been trying to compile it, but it keeps complaining that different
stuff is missing, like some Freetype fonts, and fails when I try to configure it. I would really have preferred to get a package which trys to take care of the dependencies for me.

So Slackware doesn't use a package manager? Slackware is the most posted-about distro in the distro section. Either there are a lot of Slackware users, or then the users need to ask a lot of questions.


Ekkume

I did get the tarball and I have been trying to compile it, but it keeps complaining that different
stuff is missing, like some Freetype fonts, and fails when I try to configure it. I would really have preferred to get a package which trys to take care of the dependencies for me.

So Slackware doesn't use a package manager? Slackware is the most posted-about distro in the distro section. Either there are a lot of Slackware users, or then the users need to ask a lot of questions.


Ekkume

don't expect it to hold your hand, it ( or Patrick rather) assumes you know what you are doing.

from the INSTALL file from the transcode source:

****************************************************************

Transcode compiles even if you do not have all additional libs
installed. You do not *need* to have a "yes" on every configure check.
Transcode comes with some of the libraries included. That is libmpeg2
for decoding MPEG-2 files, libdvdread for reading DVDs, a library to
read AVI files.

You will need to have libavcodec (also known as ffmpeg libraries)
installed somewhere on your computer. Without libavcodec transcode
doesn't compile. The best way to accomplish this is to get ffmpeg from
cvs (www.ffmpeg.org), configure it with at least --enable-shared,
compile and install it. A package of some kind that includes
libavcodec.so and the headers will do as well. If the files are
installed in a non-default location (transcode assumes prefix: /usr),
then you will need to tell transcode where they live. Very important:
you _need_ both the header files _and_ libavcodec.so files. The
libavcodec.a file won't do!

It is recommended, that you have a recent nasm installed (>=0.98.35) if
you are on an x86 based platform. A recent version of lame is a good
thing to have installed, too. Depending on what you want to do with
transcode you may need additional packages installed.

Now do "./configure --help" to find out which packages transcode can use
(see the --enable-$$$ and --with-$$$ flags). ONLY PACKAGES THAT ARE
ENABLED EXPLICITLY USING CONFIGURE ARE ACTUALLY USED TO BUILD MODULES.

If you have any optimisations your C compiler supports and you want to
use, put them in the environment variable CFLAGS. Recommended for
newbies: export CFLAGS="-O3". It pays off to study all the optimisation
flags your C compiler offers and hand them to transcode. For instance,
add "-march=pentium4" if you're going to run transcode on pentium 4.

If you're using gcc and get errors about "can't find a register in class
`GENERAL_REGS'" add -fomit-frame-pointer to CFLAGS.

The file tcconfig has some example (!) optimisations you might want to use.

Then do "./configure" with all the relevant --enable-$$$ and --with-$$$
options.

*******************************************************************

do you meet these requirements?

Slackware packages @linuxpackages.net are not sources. You just have to install it the way i can't remember.
Yes, Slackware uses a package manager. The best ever because the simpliest ever.
About the dependencies, it's not really a problem, because there's usually not many. (ex.: 1 for aMule).

Are you referring to just downloading the slackware tgz file, sticking it in root, and then running tar -xvzf filenameofpackage.tgz?

Oh, and maybe checking to see what any install scripts are there are and what they do?

Yes it should be that. Install scripts usually do nothing. The only one "active" i know is webmin.

Why not use installpkg pkgname.tgz ?

I really don't know anything about Slackware. I come across the name a lot when doing
googles about video and Linux, which is what I am interested in. I have promised to convert
some instructional videos to DVD format for one organisation. So far, I have had pretty good luck with
DivX and XVid in Ubuntu using Acidrip using a Pinnacle PCTV Pro card.

One Debian guru friend of mine has stated that they don't try to make anything easy for the
user in Slackware.

There have been over 130,000 posts in the Slackware distro forum, and Mandriva comes in 2nd with 57000,
then Fedora with 34K and Debian with 32K. Very interesting. Slackware must be quite popular.

Jesus Christ is the original owner of the title: the Way, Truth and the Light.
I wonder which distro Jesus would use? Probably Ubuntu is my guess.
I don't think he would use Damn Small Linux. :-) or FreeBSD ;-)

Slackware is still quite a popular distro.


Ekkume

Because Ekkume uses Ubuntu.

Alien is a Debian tool which converts non-Debian packages into Debian .deb. Take a look at it.
Slack provides everything you need. Not less, not more.