Hi, everybody!
I'm running Slackware 9.1 and i have ncurses installed, but the problem is that i need ncurses-devel package to be installed also to patch the kernel with Mosix installation script. I have found nothing, except an rpm from Red Hat distribution, which is not appropriate, according to "rpm -i --test <packagename>" (the same trouble with an ncurses rpm from the same distribution). I'm a newbie, so I don't know what should I do. Is there any ncurses-devel package specially for Slackware, or it is possible to install it from another distribution without any problems?

Slackware doesn't use devel packages (except glibc and X) and includes the files that are in the -devel packages in other distro's in the single slackware package.

It's better not to use rpm packages of other distro's and if you want to use them , please convert them to slackware packages using rpm2tgz. Atter that, you can install the package using pkgtool. But will your newly installed converted rpm package work? I doubt it. You'd better look for a Slackware package or compile it from source.

But the problem still persists after installing the ncurses package from the Slackware distro (i have also reinstalled it, but there is no progress) - the Mosix installation script (that I'm trying to run) says that I have to install ncurses-devel to use menuconfig (instead config and xconfig)...

Mate, your problem is that you're trying to use
an RPM in Slackware ... slack does have the
RPM executable, but it's not RPM based as
such ... thus you'll NEVER find anything you
want because it won't be in the RPM database.

Try
rpm -qa

It should come back empty.


So, if you NEED to use an RPM, try a
rpm -i --nodeps
to ignore dependency errors.

The cleaner solution would be to grab a source
tarball and install it specifically for your system, using
./configure
make
checkinstall



Cheers,
Tink