Hi,

I'm a chronic lurker finally making words. Current 'box' is an old Dell Optiplex 780 running an obscure Systemd Free Arch Distro, Obarun S6.

However, I've discovered something hugely distasteful about Arch (In general). The SOFTWARE works okay, but...

:-/

Questions about Slackware, I have!

I've a great respect for the Distro's history, most especially for NOT resorting to the un-neccessary systemd mess.

But I know nothing about the community surrounding Slackware, except that there appears to be a greater appreciation of absurdity, humor, etc than my present distro.

Are they welcoming and supportive, or (cough) otherwise?

I greatly value the standard of keeping the code pure, but how open is the community to users who, (because "things I gotta get done") must do -- UN-Linux-ish things to their system?

In short, my son (21) is a Windows7 gamer, often needs me to un-FubaR his system. I set a boundary when it came to helping his friends (HE can do that, if/when able) THAT box is a nice new monster with the infernal EFI bios to contend with in addition to a fundamentally flawed OS. But he's my kid, ya know?

Sometimes I can bail him out via "Wine" based interventions (presently I cant get Wine to load) Sometimes I have to "dual boot" (groan) to accomplish this. Needless to say son has forced Mom to become rather accomplished in forensic matters.

How amenable is Slackware to meeting my needs (can Wine be loaded? Without systemd?) I would "assume" dual booting works, but confirmation wouldn't hurt.

Above all, how available is help in the event I manage to hoze something with all this silly business?

Thank you in advance -- All input is welcome

S.

Slowride,

Welcome aboard!

For the most part, the posters in the Slackware forum here on LQ are welcoming and supportive.

Unlike some other distros, Slackware makes it easy to use the proprietary Nvidia or AMD graphics card drivers if you need to use them, via buildscripts from the https://slackbuilds.org site. Many other packages that are not part of the official Slackware repository can be built from source using the scripts from the SlackBuilds site.

As long as Patrick Volkderding, our BDFL, has his way, Slackware will remain free of systemd and its detritus. With resepct to WINE, AlienBob, aka Eric Hameleers, one of the core members of the Slackware development team, has packages for WINE available in his repository. I highly recommend his blog at https://alien.slackbook.org/blog to learn about his WINE packages, as well as the other excellent packages he builds for Slackware.

Quite a bit of help is available between this forum and the Slackware documentation that is online.

Cheers,
John

2 members found this post helpful.

We try to be welcoming, but there's always those few who can make life difficult.

Slackware is a framework. You're free to tinker to your hearts desire. There's no dependency management to get in the way. This means you're free to break the X system by removing the xserver package and pkgtools/removepkg won't try to stop you. Because of this, you're able to tailor Slackware to whatever you need your system to be. However, it can sometimes be difficult to provide support if you've done substantial "tinkering" with the base Slackware install (either due to removing a lot of stock packages or recompiling them to add/remove features). Some people have even gone through the work of adding pam and systemd into Slackware. It is certainly capable of doing what you need it to.

Dual booting works fine. By default, it uses lilo (on BIOS or "legacy") or elilo (on UEFI systems), however it comes with grub2 pre-installed, but you won't be prompted to use it. You'd need to do it manually. After the initial hurdle of learning UEFI, I found it not much different than using regular BIOS systems. As JohnB316 mentioned, wine works fine. You can get it from Eric Hameleers (aka Alien Bob, who is a core Slackware team member) or on https://slackbuilds.org (commonly called SBo and is similar to Arch's AUR). Depending on the maintainer, packages may be compiled from source or repackaging binaries.

We have many forum regulars who provide assistance at all hours of the day. However, depending on what your issue is, it can take some time for a decent response because it might require specific knowledge that many may not have. But we have a vast wealth of knowledge from the many people who frequent the forum, so most times, you'll find someone who will hopefully be able to help you.

1 members found this post helpful.

Welcome to our forum! Prior to installation I suggest that you read all available documentation to ensure a successful install. I suggest that you do a full install of Slackware as that will work out of the box with all dependencies met. Generally we prefer to support full installations of Slackware. Have fun!

1 members found this post helpful.

i have 2 optiplex 780s 1 runs 14.2 and 1 -current and a 755 running 14.2... alot of people say dell this and dell that but they run slackware so nicely

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi and welcome to the subforum.

Read the fine manual at https://docs.slackware.com/start, you must . Seriously, it'll convince you that you're making the right choice.

As bassmadrigal said, Slackware is a framework which allows limitless tinkering. The only downside I've found is the need to keep a diary of tinkerings for each computer so that I know where I am - some changes can have drastic effects on behaviour (I have five different flavours of 14.2 on five computers, not ideal but it seemed a good idea at the time).

Wine runs well, you will need to load 32bit compatibility packages (https://docs.slackware.com/slackware:multilib) if you're running Slackware64. I've not found any problems with dual booting (I still need to run two bits of windows-only-not-wine software).

Just make sure that for your first "plain vanilla" version you install everything - that's the standard.

Edit: You may also notice that some of us are quite... enthusiastic about Slackware.

2 members found this post helpful.

Holy holing my hat in my hand, batman!

I didn't expect such a prompt (or so many) replies. That definitely answers question 'A'.

I hope y'all don't mind if I move a bit slow -- not the most brilliant geek. Very determined but a little autistic. For years people have brought me broken boxes and when it was fixed I couldn't tell them how (to help prevent them breaking it again).

I'll begin with the suggested 'destructions'.

Daddy used to say that Ford would never let him to preface Factory Service Manuals with a blank page saying "Now that you've completely buggered it up ... "

---<SniP>-------

Golly. I've always wondered: Is the "Pam" necessary? Lo and Behold! That's a nice easter egg. Since it appeared to be security related, and myself a total stranger, I never dared to ask.

I remember LILO from way back when I first installed Suse' 6, Sometime near the "beginning of time" alluded to in the manual. My brother bought it for me on floppy disks with a nice manual in the box... (internet access really was that slow). Initially scanning the manual (and etc.) answered alot of questions. It has the aura of "Do it righteous, and don't sell out". That works for me!

Getting a basic install accomplished will take some time, I'm still backing up the remains of a hammered hard drive. I will let you all know how it goes.

THANK YOU SO MUCH

S.

I've managed to survive nicely without PAM. From what I've been able to understand, PAM is only necessary for things like fingerprint authentication (on laptops with fingerprint sensors). As I don't mess with that stuff, I have not had to mess with it. YMMV.

LILO is, IMO, far easier to understand and customize than is grub. I don't use UEFI on my system, so LILO works well for my needs. As long as it continues to do its job, LILO will stay on my MBR.

I hope you're able to get it installed without too much trouble. I think you'll find that Slackware puts the joy back in computing. Of course, that means doing a bit of reading available docs, but as long as you're willing to learn and experiment, and not be afraid to bork things up a few times as you go along, Slackware will be right up your alley.

Happy Slacking!

well, there is the one or other additional use case ... , but maybe not for you ;-)

OP, if you want something that just works for your son, that is not Windows, the truth is that Ubuntu might give you want you want since it is this what is most tested for steam and gog gaming

If you want something for you that is true something, whatever you mean, and you want to use Slackware, use it.

If you wan to fulfil both goals with one installation, this will not work. Use the right tool for the job, is seems there are 2 jobs for you

Are you suggesting there's an anointed clique here, to which some members do not belong?

[solved] ll!

Didn't sound that way to me. I think he meant we as a whole try to be welcoming, but there are always going to be exceptions to that rule.

2 members found this post helpful.

Rather that we have problematic people who can make things difficult on the forum (incite flamewars, not provide enough details, neglect to mention it's a partial install, derailing threads, etc). This goes both for regulars and first time posters (and at some point, I imagine everyone has been a problem... I know I have). I debated removing that line, but I think it's pretty common to not have a perfect community, so I didn't want to try and hide the fact that we aren't always productive on this forum and thread quality can vary widely.

1 members found this post helpful.

If we had to share the same computer -- there would be NO peace in this house!

I have just barely gotten my hard-head kid to even try using desktop gui Linux, and that only because I fell asleep backing the files up off his old HD into his shiny new game-gear box. However, he did not complain or have to drag me outa the sack for help. The big objection for him I think is playing one particular game, where all of his friends gather and socialize. He says there's a Linux version but it uses different servers.

Once I get my old work-horse reloaded I might look to see what Steam has to offer -- it might help if he saw a GAME running on Linux. That's for another day.

This back up business is tedious. The needed files are coming off a damaged volume and its one ... at ... a ... time... check. delete, next.

Wish I could figure out how to automate it - I don't have the drive space to just dd the whole image and sort them out later :-(

S.

Welcome slowride
You are among friends here at the Slackware Forum. Take your time and back up everything because after you start the install is too late for a facepalm moment (but you knew that).
Good luck to you