Been lurking about here for a bit,asked a few questions about slack 3.5 awhile back,and still using it LOL.Anyway, have slack 9.1 up and running with a fresh kernel I built with your help guys......THANKS.Your help has been invaluable.

This thing freaking flies now, not bad for 6yr old hdwr.Windoze is now officially GONE from my life,everything I couldnt do w/o windoze is now history !!!

Not sure I made all the right choices with my kernel but its fast and rock stable.I compiled some modules in the kernel,ones that get used constantly,and left the others as modules.Kernel ended up like 900kb.Left myself some growing room hdwr wise,but after how easy the build went,not sure why I bothered.

My family of pc's are all about to get the slackware treatment.Been a RH7 user sporadically and gone thru a few mini distro's, never was impressed.Ordered slack 9.1 for $4.98 shipped and its blowing my mind.Best $$ I ever spent.Peace,and thank you.


penguin power !!

Congrats

You can always recompile it if you add hardware
I tend to strip my working kernel of everything, and have anotherone with everything but the kitchen sink. (which I beleive Gnome or KDE come with )
I keep that if I ever have to add hardware quickly, or if I have to take my harddrive out, and move it to a different computer.

Contratulations

This is good

I would say that if everything is working as well as you claim, and the kernel is around 900kb...you've made the right choice

Sounds like an adventure...be sure to let us know if we can help in any way...and CONGRATS!!!

Thanks guys, my turn for some payback and help out others when I can. Not an expert by any stretch, but im not afraid to poke around a system and try stuff out either.I did do a fair amount of reading first....cant stress enough about knowing what hdwr youve got.Linux isnt as picky as it was a few yrs back, but its definitely less tolerant of bad set-ups,and it will force you to know what youve got so you can set it up right....which in the end is a good thing.

Saw a post a few weeks back wondering if it(linux) was ready for primetime,IMHO yes it is.Isnt any tougher than windoze to set up,just a different mindset and language to learn,once you get into it.......it actually makes lots of sense,very intuitive after awhile.Cant ask for much more in a pkg than slack 9.x either....2.4gigs of software,talk about a kitchen sink distro !! Not only that,but once its set,it stays that way...redmond better get their act together or they'll have a penguin on their door sooner or later LOL.

Now all I gotta do is change 6 more boxes over

This is gonna sound stupid, but i gotta know . . .

Is the kernel the "vmlinuz" file?
If not, then what is it?

Thanks,
John.

Yes, dufferin. vmlinuz is the kernel image.
Congrats horndude! Slack does kick ass. I used Mandrake 8.2, 9, and 9.1 over the course of a year, but never felt 'at home' with linux until I tried Slack. I would always be booting back to windows for whatever reason. It's been like 4 months now since I used windows. No reason to whatsoever. XP feels like a real turd now, lol. Give Fluxbox a try on Slack. It really provides a different feel (like linux should imho) and is smokin' fast!

fluxbox might be smoking fast, but it doesn't offer much when it comes to functionality for the desktop user. That is just my opinion.

I tried fluxbox, and handle applications, and have a complete overview of all those running applications on the several desktops sucks ass. I'll use XFce, cause it is relatively "light", compared to gnome and kde, but it offers a lot of functionality. Nice overview of the open applications, nice way to use your scrollbutton to change the several desktops (which i find extremely handy )
and adding something to your panel is very easy. Don't like to edit a textfile every time i want to add or modify something in the panels. But maybe i am just lazy

This is certainly true, and the biggest pain in the neck I've had with getting Linux working - Took a lot of trial and error to get everything set up, and I'm still not convinced it's quite right...

Looking forward to replacing my unknown prebuilt with a computer that I specifically chose every bit of hardware for.. should make my life a LOT easier!

Not trying to argue you into using fluxbox - that's an individual decision - just pointing out some stuff: middle-clicking on the desktop brings up a workspace menu for an overview. If you must, there's 'fluxter' which is a fluxbox pager. The scrollwheel does change desktops in flux, as do the function keys and the menu and so on. On the top layer of my menu, and bound to 'mod4+f' for an acclerator, is a command to open a vim session that loads up all my flux files in gvim's file browser and includes flux menu syntax highlighting and folding and so on. Way cool and *very* easy to configure everything from that central method. It's 'opening a text file' but not the usual 'opening a text file' and flux also has configuration controls on a more-or-less default part of the menu structures - such as right clicking on the toolbar or the slit or the desktop, but I never use them because the gvim method is so much better (to me). And there's even 'fluxconf' for a GUI editor, kinda like 'fluxter' provides a pager. (Tried both, deleted them both, because they're just not necessary.) 6 desktops and windowing controls bound to the keys I've chosen, as well as the usual mouse stuff - I have certain desktops associated with certain types of apps so I don't actually use the middle-click method - I just know where stuff generally is. 'mod4+tab' cycles through open windows per desktop and 'alt+f?' jumps desktops. And so on.

No, it's definitely not for everybody but it has a lot more functionality than meets the eye and that let's applications and/or really nice looking themes meet the eye without stuff in the way.

I tried XFCE4 for awhile, though - it's nice, too.

Try using the newest CVS fluxbox. A lot has changed. A lot of the issues that you mention have been fixed. Actually almsot all of them. Try using the fluxter plugin too, and there's a menu/config editor too. It's completely GUI.

XFCE4 is nice. I tend to use KDE or Flux though, depending on what I want to do.

I just set up Gentoo yesterday and flux was the first thing I emerged after having a 'working' system. I noticed a few different options and such, but didn't give it a lot of thought. Then I was reading about the new features in devel 0.9.6 and wanted to give it a try, then realized that was the version I was running! Gentoo is pretty friggin' cool, and Flux simply rules

Is that devel version of flux very stable?

It sure seems to be. I have been compiling code for like 24 hours straight since emerging the new Flux, and while my CPU usage is @ 100%, I have like 20 other windows open. Listening to tunes, chatting on licq, reading email with evolution, surfing the web... I was even using Gimp. Not a hiccup. I have also played with every setting I could find so far to get Flux set up the way I wanted it
It's certainly worth checking out.