Newbie wanting to move to Slackware for good
 

I have 10.2 installed and would like to learn a few things:

How to identify if an online program will work with Slackware, how to install it, and how to remove it. I'd like to rip DVDs, burn DVDs, install uTorrent, etc

How to find hardware drivers and initialize them. (Starting with a Belkin F5D7050 USB Wireless NIC)

How to install Wine.

If I can get some help to figure out these few things I can migrate all my PCs to Linux and say goodbye to Microsuck forever. Thanks in advance!

Try reading the slackbook for one (link in my sig).

For packages see:
http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/
http://slackbuilds.org/
http://www.linuxpackages.net/

For DVD ripping try any of the following:
http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=rip+d...&Go.x=0&Go.y=0

For DVD burning use k3b.

AFAIK, utorrent is Window$ only :( Try ctorrent or azureus or bittorrent ... all of these run on Linux.

You could always compile things yourself (what I usually do). Just download the respective source code and read the "INSTALL". It's usually:

For that wireless card, do you know the chipset or version number ? There is a good chance you may have a chipset that has a good driver for it.

http://linux-wless.passys.nl/query_p...andname=Belkin

Thanks for the links! How do I upgrade to the 2.6 kernel?

2.6 kernel
 

You can search the forums to upgrade to the 2.6 kernel. Could consider downloading and installing Slackware 11.0 and doing the huge26.s install (will have to install the rest of the necessary files from the extras folder :).

Yeah, you should consider upgrading to Slackware 11 if you're going to run 2.6 kernel.
It's more up-to-date to work with recent 2.6 kernel.
You're going to have tough time getting all the dependecies installed for dvd ripping programs so just take it slow and be patient.
You can get Wine from here http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...ackage_id=6301
but try to find native Linux apps equivalent to the Windows apps you need.
It's a long and hard journey but the reward is a system you'll be proud of.
Welcome to Slackware.

you can also get wine from slackware.com/~alien , most of the time he is faster with new versions.

Bittorrent: Well, Bittorrent itself, Bittornado and ktorrent are all avaible from slackware ( in extra/ ). However utorrent should run quite fine with wine / crossover.

if you install software the way texmex suggested, you will have a hard time uninstalling it later. you can automate the package generation with checkinstall or slacktrack ( both in extra/ ) or write your own "Slackbuilds" , there are enough examples in source/ .


last words:
keep away from -current and RTFM ! ;)

or paco (what I use)

Or just follow the instructions in the kernel source archive.

does anyone else use makepkg? thats what i've been doing lately. or slackbuilds.