Getting ready for Slackware
 

Well, I am new to this forum; great find I must say! I am also relatively new to Linux in general having finally worked up the courage to say "adios" to Redmond and its bonds :) I used windows one last time to raw write my boot disks which I then used to kill windows completely.

I have SuSE installed on my desktop (233 Mhz 64MB old Gateway with ISA AWE64 and an old Voodoo3 video card) currently and am waiting for my slackware disks (today probably). I have been tinkering with FreeBSD (I know it is not Linux) on my old thinkpad and actually enjoy the tinkering involved. The FreeBSD runs quicker than the SuSE (even stripped down to lightweight WM) but I would rather stick with one distro so I can learn better. It is somewhat confusing to flip back and forth between the BSD and the Linux and I really do not want a distro that does everything for me (I want to learn, I want to configure). As such I have been researching Slackware and decided to give it a shot. SuSE made it easy to leave windows but I discovered I like fiddling with everything myself. I had so much fun configuring X in FreeBSD (what a rush to type startx and have it fire up after working on the file yourself--of course, most of the fun was learning vi at the same time).

Curious, but not critical to decision, does Slack have support for my old ISA AWE 64?

Oh, and I have found the wonderful book on Slackware's site!

Any recommendations on a nice configurable lightweight WM? I have been looking at FVWM2. Good choice?

Is there any way to tell my xterm to always open with a certain bg and fg and font size as a default? I can open them the way I want but have not figured out how to make it a default. Maybe I have not searched the man pages with the right keywords.

Thanks for any suggestions. I am looking forward to joining the slackware community!

John
--Who is sure there will be more questions

Hi John55 and Welcome to LQ,

Whatever the kernel supports, Slack will support as well. I don't think you'll have much problems with it since it's pretty old err... mature I mean :p

Many will recommend fluxbox... personally, I prefer blackbox :)

Hi John55

I have an old AMD K6-233 with an AWE 32 that runs fine with Slack 9.0 and Window Maker.

Hi FVWM is a good choice, but, IMHO, XFCE, fluxbox or blackbox are better. Start the flame wars!! :D

As for your xterm question: yes, it is possible to control very precisely the appearance of the xterm. Check the man pags for "xterm" and for "xwmrc". Most of the time, an xterm is opened by default through this file, and you can enter all the xterm parameters you want in it.

Hope this helps... Welcome to Slackware! :D

Without a doubt, the best compromise between the light X managers and the beasts is Window Maker. It loads quickly,
but has a reasonably sophisticated interface, and can be customized every which way.

LMAO
I loved that comment....brightened an otherwise miserable day