I just switched to Slackware after using Gentoo for a while. (STILL NEWBIE!)

In Gentoo everything is compiled and installed from source, but this is done automatically by "Portage", so I don't really know how to do this manually?

As an example I wan't to install the latest version of Kopete, that can be downloaded as *.tar.bz2 and *.tar.gz2. In Gentoo I would type "emerge kopete", which would download the source, unpack, compile and install it. Done!

So...

How should I do this in Slackware?

1. Unpack the archive
2. ./configure
3. make
4. make install (as root)

Done.

Also, slackware.com team have a Packages Browser:

http://www.slackware.com/pb/

Well first unpack it. If you're using Gnome click the mouse at it and the file roller should come up. KDE has something similar. If you right click it should give you the option to extract it. If you want to use a command it would be
tar xjf /path/to/file.tar.bz2
or
tar xzf /path/to/file.tar.gz
then
cd /path/to/file
./configure --(options)
make
make install
type ./configure --help to find what options are available.

Thanks!

np

People often reply np, what does it mean?

Ohh :

No Problem
^^

It means: No Problem

Hi,

You should also check a program called "checkinstall" (well, I think it's "just" a script).

You can then replace "make install" with "checkinstall" and a slack package will be created for you. This way you can easly re-install the package (in case you need it) or remove very easily (you can use pkgtool that has a curses frontend).

Also note that sometimes you'll have to type "./configure --prefix=/usr" so that all the libs and stuff needed for compilation can be find. I don't know if there's a better way (and I don't care by now since I'm the only user on my machine).

I hope this helps you.

Bye

SnOp

hi,
Do I use the same procedure for source and binary packages?
What's the difference between the two types ?

thanks !