I want to do only basic KDE install of Slackware, so that I can select my other applications later. Several question come to my mind:

1. Can I just install A, D, L, N, X and KDE package sets? Will it work all right to start with?

2. Will it have a package manager?

3. Also, how large is AP package set?

4. What will be approximate size of such an installation?

5. What precautions should I take with such an approach?

Thanks for your insight.

First, it is not recommended to do a partial installation of Slackware. It is not supported by the development team and you will run into dependency problems unless you really know what you are doing. Having said that, please check out this blog post.

Once your system is booted with the minimal package sets run:

and you will have a minimal installation + KDE.

1. Based on your posts, Slackware is quite a bit different than what you're experienced with and doesn't seem to be what you're expecting. Slackware is intended to be installed as a full install. Yes, you do have the ability to do a selective install (the installer provides this ability), but for a new user with no experience with the Slackware way of doing things (especially with no dependency tracking, it is much simpler to just do a full install, so all dependencies are met, and you don't have to wonder why a program won't start. There is no official list of what packages are required for other packages to work (although, you can try referencing Salix's list that was provided to you in another thread, however, while Salix is based on Slackware, it may not have identical dependencies). Also, of note, every single package on slackbuilds.org (SBo), and probably many other SlackBuilds and repositories, expect you to have a full Slackware install. They won't mention what official packages are required for compilation, because they assume you already have them installed. This can cause a lot of headaches, both with you in trying to figure out what is wrong, and in the people you may ask, if they also expect you to have a full install. Sometimes it's easy to figure out what dependency you're missing, other times, it can be quite an ordeal.

2. The pkgtool package, which includes everything to install and manage Slackware packages ({install|upgrade|remove|explode|make}pkg and pkgtool are included in the pkgtools package, which is part of the a/ series, so with the package series you mentioned, it will have a package manager.

3. Without either manually checking each package's uncompressed size and adding them up, or installing and see how much it takes, there's no way to know. All the compressed packages take up 1.4GB.

4. Again, you'd need to check after it was installed, but compressed, the packages take up 102MB.

5. What is the reasoning behind doing a selective install? Unless it is to actually save space on a harddrive that has limited space, there is *almost* no reason for it. A full Slackware install will take up a fraction of a standard hard drives available space. Doing a full install can save you and others from dependency headaches. If you do decide to do a selective install, please make sure you mention it if you're posting for help on the forums. We've had a number of posts that were headscratchers until someone realized the person wasn't running a full install.

Personally, my recommendation would be to do a full install, at least until you're more familiar with Slackware and it's package management practices. Once you're more familiar with how things work with Slackware, you'll be more prepared to figure out why an issue might be occuring and what you might need to do to fix it. But either way, we'll be here to help you out

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Do you really need all these localizations (wasting too many space)?
Install only needed one (two, three or more) languages. Also setup has KDEI unchecked to save more space...

rng,
please note slackpkg in the AP.

I personally like being able to view other languages. I know a few. Do you really need all localizations? Probably not. I am making my directions as simple as possible for the OP.

We can say, for ex.
# slackpkg install {calligra,kde}-l10n-ru
or
# mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom; installpkg /mnt/cdrom/slackware*/kdei/*-ru-*t?z
at any time to add only needed localization packages.

Will all your guidance I was able to install a, ap, d, l, n, X and KDE and the system is running well. It is only 5.5 gb as compared to 7.5 gb full version.

When I ran slackpkg update; slackpkg upgrade-all commands on this, there are large number of applications which are shown by slackpkg. I hope these are not other packages sets that I had not installed. I had not give the command install-new. I do not want slackpkg to now download all remaining packages. Please advise.

slackpkg will download the remaining packages only if you tell it to: if, for instance, you have installed slackware64-14.1 and you want to install the full sets of packages of slackware64-14.1 you do it with the command
(this is "slackpkg install slackware" in case of 32bit slackware)

"slackpkg upgrade-all" shows you the available updates to packages already on your system: you can check what's already installed also looking at the directory /var/log/packages.
if you are thinking to "slackpkg install-new" this is a command specific to current, to install the newer packages added to the current tree, but it doesn't apply in your case as you have installed stable.
for any doubt on the syntax of the slackpkg command (but this applies obviously also to the others) have a look at the man page.

let me say that if you later on will build third party stuff on your setup and you ask for help here, please specify that is not a full install (and what you have installed on it in detail), as for SBo's repository, for instance, is mandatory that you got such setup.
specify the nature of your setup also if you report stuff not working because, yet, also Slackware is provided as an all-in-one package.
I don't know if others already pointed to it, but please have a look at this enlightening article about the matter.

I plan to add binary packages (e.g. libreoffice, wine, vlc, openjre etc) from following site, in order of preference:

1. Slackware repository (using slackpkg)
2. http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/
3. Salix repository

Can I use gslapt to search and install from repositories in above order?

for which packages do you need the salix repository?
If I were you I'll stick to slackware's own repository, alien's one for the software you cite, and SlackBuilds.org's one via sbopkg to build the rest of the stuff you need.

still If I were you I'll avoid slapt/gslapt and I'll stick to what the distribution offers.

but in the end you are the administrator of your machines, so do what you prefer under your own responsibility.

Options by tools.

Option 1. Download packages manually to anywhere (say /tmp), run
# upgradepkg --install-new /tmp/*t?z
to install them all.

Option 2. Install slackpkg+ plugin for slackpkg, read /usr/doc/slackpkg+*/README, edit /etc/slackpkg/slackpkgplus.conf. Use
# slackpkg install libreoffice vlc wine
to install these packages. Use
# slackpkg upgrade-all
to update installed.

Option 3. Install slapt-get (gslapt), read docs, edit confs, use slapt-get or gslapt to update packages.

Option 4. Something else to install, read, configure and use.

Options by repos are orthogonal. You can use any repo of your choice. slapt-get has additional power if PACKAGES.TXT has dependency info.

hard way: install Slackware without any DE, install slapt-get, install your favorite KDE packages using http://slackware.org.uk/salix/x86_64/slackware-14.1 repository
simple way: install Salix KDE (the most trimmed down KDE distro with just 930 mb size).

Bear in mid that if you don't install full Slackware you will have many problems to install further packages from third party Slackware repositories because they assume full Slackware installation (Salix repository is a different story).

PS: by reading your earlier posts I think Salix is more suitable for you. Please have a look before posting another question about pruned Slackware installation.

1 members found this post helpful.

Agreed. And this advice have been given already to the OP on 2012, March 08...

1 members found this post helpful.

In my opinion Salix and some distros like debian and Frugalware (something like Slackware + systemd + pacman) are the best choices for people how would like to have minimal stable system. After 1 year everyday use of Slackware I have found that using Slackware is not just a matter of stability.

I think I will try Salix again as I explained at bottom of this page: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...727/page2.html