Hi folks,
I realise that this is an old thread, and that the OP has probably not looking anymore, but I have been trying and google still makes finding such difficult. Hence I am posting here as this post was easy to find.

I found it good by sidestepping the problem and forgetting 'slackpkg' for 'slapt-get'. This package manager can be used from a GUI fron end called 'GSlapt'.


'slapt-get' can be downloaded from http://software.jaos.org/ Just click on the link to the version you want to download it. Then change to the directory it was downloaded to.

As root or su:-
bash# installpkg slapt-get-[version].tgz ;To install 'slapt-get'
bash# slapt-get -u ;To update the package list.
bash# slapt-get -i gslapt ;To install the GUI.

You will then find 'GSlapt' in you desktops System menu.

I hope this will save many from running away from a lovely distro because they are don't like CLIs. Slackware is a lovely, simple & very robust distro that has managed to remain lightweight even while running a very powerful Desktop. It is unfortunately fading into the background and we mustn't let super-geeks scare us away from it, there is no need. I can use a CLI but have come into the 21st century and realise that GUI tools allow all the functionality most users need but are much easier to get to grips with. A distro doesn't need to be bloated and flimsy to be easy to use.

I am not saying you don't have a point, not at all; to each user his or her own. But you could also have them copy-and-paste something into the root prompt. Besides starting an elevated X terminal, that's double-click to copy, single click to paste, and enter, 4 clicks total. If you make sure your bash line does not ask for any input, many users may actually find it better than screwing around with yet another system management tool, GUI or not. Even if it's more involved, you will find it much easier to give step-by-step instructions, no screenshots required.

And just for the sake of being technically correct, konsole is as GUI as it gets.

Edit: more info, formatting.

We used to have a GUI front end that used pkgtools as a backend with KDE-3.x, but that utility has since been discontinued in support of pkgtools. Gslapt is your best bet honestly, but Gslapt works best if you have a depedency listing added into the packages like SalixOS or Slacky uses.

No. Gslapt doesn't care if you have a dependency list or not. It will use it if it's there, otherwise it will work exactly like slackpkg.

I never said it was required. I said it works best if you have it in the packages so it has more functionality, otherwise it simply duplicates existing functionality. In some situations this can be useful, like sbotools uses the info files for dependency listings to incorporate, but again it's a beneficial extra that's optional.

True, but in this case we're talking about functionality that slackpkg lacks anyway, so it doesn't matter. Gslapt is the GUI that the OP is looking for. It works just fine with the slackware repos that have no dependency information.

2 members found this post helpful.

I'm not suggesting it be done, but even if slackpkg doesn't support dependency resolution natively, adding the extra text file to list dependencies in native Slackware packages would be mildly interesting to see, as well as serve as a low level guidebook to people rebuilding packages or minimalist installs that want to expand from a core custom system, outwards. Natively it would just be a "you need to install this first", while with gslapt and slapt-get it could serve to help pull in requirement packages as needed.

It probably won't happen, but its a thought nonetheless.

Hum... maybe you didn't have a look here yet

Oh, and just in case you didn't know that already, gapan aka George Vlahavas is Salix maintainer, and as such knows more about package management in general and package management tools in particular than you (probably) and me (certainly).

He is also the author of maybe more Slackware compatible packages than anyone but Patrick Volkerding.

4 members found this post helpful.

Very true.

Right now I'm trying to get Samba to work between two Slackware boxes and would give my right arm for a really good GUI with parameter checking. I've spent days on the CLI, wearing out google, tweaking this, then trying that, and screaming at my PC. Something that MS-Windows, with it's really good GUI, makes simple and painless.

When trying to get your head around doing something unfamiliar a GUI is the way to go. Whereas, when trying to give instruction to someone who can't see the same screen as you, then the CLI is much better. That is one of the real beauties of Linux, the choice of options to suit the situation. Hmmmm... except for *?&**ng Samba .

Also, I often find a GUI useful to get something working, then use the CLI for fine tuning too delicate for the GUI.

Hi gapan,
I find that 'slackpkg' and 'slapt-get' each have differing advantages and would like to be able to use both. However, I have broken the package management on many systems in my time, so I am now very wary of using 'slackpkg' now that I have migrated my boxes to 'slapt-get'. Is it possible to get them to share the same setup and data files so that each is aware of changes made by, or to, the other?

Thanks in advance, Kimdino

A gooey - sorry, GUI - front-end for slackpkg!?!? Sacrilege!!! Get thee to Ubuntu!
What next? Talking paperclips? This ain't no user-friendly highway, this is the road to hell.

1 members found this post helpful.

this is

chuckle But I've got a lot of respect for Ubuntu users. I once heard Slackware described as admin-friendly as a rattlesnake, following that line Ubuntu is a hippopotamus. Taking into account that a rattlesnake is only dangerous when it feels threatened, which would you rather have to deal with?

But here's a little story for the many CLI fanatics out there.

; *** String data ***
0000: Slackwar ........................ 53 6C 61 63 6B 77 61 72
0008: e is for ........................... 65 20 68 73 20 66 6F 72
0010: wimps. ........................... 20 77 69 6D 70 73 2E

0017: LXI B, 0x17 .................... 01 17 00 .. ;Init BC as byte counter
001A: LXI D, [FORUM_POST] . 11 ?? ?? .. ;Point DE to output
001D: LXI H, 0x0000 ................ 21 00 00 .. ;Point HL to data source (String data)
; *** Loop point ***
002A: MOV M,A ...................... 77 ............ ;Copy byte pointed to by HL into Accumulator
002B: STAX D ......................... 12 ............ ;Copy accumulator contents to output
002C INX D ............................ 13 ............ ;Point DE to byte o/p point
002D INX H ............................ 23 ............ ;Point HL to next byte to be o/p
002E: DCX B .......................... OB ........... ;Decrement byte counter
002F: JR NZ, -5 ...................... 20 FA ....... ;If BC != 0 jump to Loop point
0031: RET .............................. C9 ........... ;else, all done.

Them were the days, when programmers were big (only fingers & brain got any exercise) and hairy (no time to shave). But was I ever glad to be able to move from an 8080 to a Z80 system as the clearer instruction set + extra instructions made coding so much simpler and easier to understand. Maybe I lost some big, hairy programmer cred but I got more done with less mistakes.

Now I've got an articial brain of power way beyond imagination compared to the days when I had to assemble by pencil. Why not let it do the grunt work of the thinking for me. After all, the point is to get the job done, not work out how to do it.

We're getting off-topic, but I see nobody else cares so...

First of all, there's no real reason you should use both.

Anyway, if you only use slapt-get with official slackware repositories, there shouldn't be a problem and you could use both. You would still have to edit their respective settings files separately so you use the same repos and specify the same excludes/blacklists, and run "slackpkg update" and "slapt-get --update" separately, but that's about it. They both share the same package database so there shouldn't be any problems.

Add extra repos to slapt-get and that becomes a different story though. slackpkg is not able to cope with that as it was not written with extra repos in mind. slackpkg is a wonderful tool that does exactly what it was designed for, perfectly. But it was designed for interfacing with official slackware repos only, and nothing else. In this case, you will have problems and you should better stop using slackpkg.

I'm talking about the official slackpkg that comes with slackware here. If you swap that with the unofficial slackpkg+, you could set both slackpkg+ and slapt-get with any number of repos and there shouldn't be any problem. As long as you make sure their respective settings files point to the same repos and have similar settings in general and you update their respective package caches at the same time.

1 members found this post helpful.

just what im looking for ...