Hello everyone,

I'm writing up a small note to present myself in the forums
after finally deciding on making an account.

I've just switched from xubuntu to Slackware 14.1 on my one
and only laptop, an x220 thinkpad, and it has been great so
far. The reason for the switching was because I felt now a
bit more ready to learn linux, a goal I've had for a few years
now, and always saw Slackware as the final goal I had to work
myself to.

Regarding the installation process I have to admit that it
was easier than I imagined it all these years. I downloaded
the .iso, made it hybrid, used dd to copy it to a bootable
USB stick, booted my system from the USB drive and proceeded
to be greeted by the root cli. From there I partitioned my
disk in two partitions: swap and main. I then made the linux
partition bootable, wrote the changes to the disk and proceeded
to run the setup program. It was quite easy. I did a full install
without KDE and selected xface as my DE for starters. Once I had
installed everything and configured the basics (keyboard, language,
ethernet and so on) I rebooted my system and logged in as root.

I went ahead and read the mails I had received upon finishing the
installation using mutt and wrote down all the tools that Patrick
mentioned in his mail. Then I created a user account, logged out
of root and logged in my user to test. All fine.

I learned so far that I can install tgz packages with 'installpkg'
and that compiling from source is as easy as downloading the tar
ball, "untarring" it, going into the folder, reading the READMe
file and following the instructions there which mainly consist
of ./configure, make, make install. I encountered some errors
in some packages of software which had to do with others pieces
of software not being installed on the system, so I paused that
installation, went to get the one I needed, installed, then proceeded
with the one I started with. All went well without any major issues.

Configuring the wireless device on my laptop was easy too. I kept
my mobile phone close to me to google anything I had doubts about
and found the slackwiki, the slackbook and this website pretty
helpful. My first try at configuring the wifi device was cumbersome
but it worked. It consisted of using wi, ifconfig, wpa_passphrase
and configuring the wpa_supplicant and getting an ip address from
the dhclient later on. This worked fine for an initial use, but I
soon afterwards discovered wcid-curses and wicd on the GUI which
made my life easier.

I also learned to uncomment one of the mirrors for the slackpkg
tool and updated the system after installing it. It went by fine
and I felt great watching all that text scroll and having newer
versions of the software I had. An example would be firefox.

I also discovered slackbuilds, which are pretty awesome. You just
download the slackbuild, the tar file, untar the slackbuild, move
the tar inside the folder created by the slackbuild, then run the
slackbuild. Sometimes I have to chmod +x and sometimes it's done
by default. This creates a tgz on /tmp/ that I can easily installpkg
on.

I decided to use the mate desktop which was easy too. I downloaded
a zip file of the git repo, ran the script for the dependencies,
installed the base system, ran xwmconfig and chose it. Started the
x server and it was all there, beautiful. I made some configurations
on the theme, keyboard shortcuts, installed dropbox and skype, and
went ahead to install libreoffice. I needed the jdk8 to install
libreoffice (the slackbuild has an old version that I couldn't use
so I went to sun and downloaded the correct version needed by the
slackbuild by copypasting and using search) so I did that and then
installed libreoffice which is now working flawlessly.

So far its been two days and I've learned a lot. I learned to use
wget, edited my .bashrc and .bash_profile files, made some basic
changes to my .vimrc file, and learned where some configuration
files are. I don't have a login manager and I keep my inittab to
3 so I learn then CLI, starting x only when I need it.

I'm using two books as reference besides Google, and those are:

1. How linux Works, 2nd Edition
2. The Linux Command Line

Some issues I had which are still unsolved but I'm currently
researching are how to use slapt-get, how to use rsync for
backups to an external usb drive and how to fix an issue I had
compiling tf50b6 (Tinyufugue - a mud client) from source. I get
an invalid reference to pcre. As a workaround, I installed the
slackbuild from 10.1 and it runs fantastically well. I'm just
curious about this error and want to see if it's an error on my
side or a bug in this particular build.

Anyhow, I just wanted to present myself and tell a bit about
my experience with Slackware. It's an honour for me to be part
of the community and to have been thus far able to hold my own
in the slack world. The reason I went with Slackware was to learn
linux, and this is why I decided on Slack instead of, for example,
Arch. I didn't want to learn so much about a specific way of doing
things, or a specific package manager and repos so much as learning
a general way of working in linux, a set of skills that might
be useful if I someday have to deal with BSD or any other linux
distribution. Also, I wanted to learn how a system without a
registry (systemd) works so I can learn. Regardless of the good
things systemd might have brought with it in the eyes of some
people, I'd feel at the moment a bit like using windows if I went
with such a system. I guess I just want to be able to know which
file does what and to read bash scripts to understand better what
they do before letting a huge daemon "worry about everything". I
guess I want to worry myself so I learn. Oh, and I'm not so much
into eye candy, being instead more into usability, the learning
experience and gaining an understanding of the system. In time
I will have to learn about systemd so I can understand how to
interact with it in case I have to deal with a system like that,
but all in due time. It's like programming, I guess. I would like
to learn the language, logic and good design before learning to
use the IDE.

In any case, thank you for reading this and I hope to interact
with some or all of you in the time to come.

Regards,
Boricode.

You would not normally do a "make install", because that's the step where you want to make your own slackpkg (for easy and clean removal). Rather something like:
If you want to be sure that DESTDIR is actually supported, you can do "make --dry-run install DESTDIR=/tmp/foo" first. It doesn't always work this way, but most of the time it seems to. You can automate these things with slackbuilds too.

2 members found this post helpful.

Hi Boricode and welcome on board!

I downloaded tf-50b8.tar.gz from sourceforge and got the same error you describe.
According to this, pcre_info has become obsolete, as a result I adjusted the sources like this:

I didn't push further than (./configure && make) and I don't know If the software works, but at least It compiles.

You may give It a try.

1 members found this post helpful.

Those are great books, and I'm using them quite often. For Slackware-specific documentation, your first stop should be here:

http://docs.slackware.com

Cheers and welcome to Slackware,

Niki

1 members found this post helpful.

Welcome to Slackware and check out SlackBuilds.org for extra packages. If you need a good toolkit to help get SlackBuilds.org (SBO) tamed a bit, I recommend sbotools which acts a bit like portage used by Gentoo/Funtoo.

Hope you enjoy Slackware, and feel free to contribute back by helping SlackBuilds.org out with packages not yet added, or creating your own unique packages to share.

1 members found this post helpful.

Yes indeed that fixed the problem. It works flawlessly after that. Thanks a lot for trying it out and pointing out where the errors were. I tried googling the error to see if I found something, but couldn't make much of it yet. Learned something new today.

Hi Niki, and thanks. Yes, those docs are fantastic. I enabled multilib support using the alienbob guide in the docs. Also, and even though I haven't received it yet since I live outside the US, I ordered the Slackbook.

Thanks Reaper. I will look into the sbotools. At the moment I'm having fun using the Slackbuilds and altering the scripts configuration a bit.

As time allows during the week or weekend, I will apply the changes to the source of the tf-50b8 tarball and see if I can manage to make a slackbuild for it and test it a bit. The pkg we have is tf-50b6 from slackware 10.1 and it would be good perhaps to have the latest with the fixes. I don't know much about the way these things are submitted, but I'll play around with this one and when I get the hang of it I'll start packaging other things here and there to contribute.

Ah, this is very helpful. I hadn't thought of this before since I was just following the instructions of the README file and using the info here as reference the first few times. Where it says "compiling from scratch":

http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:sla...lling_software

The more I learn, the more I will look into automating these things and see if they can be of use to others.

Thanks again for the different perspective and correction.

The slackbuilds.org templates are pretty useful for learning how to make your own slackbuilds.

http://slackbuilds.org/templates/

1 members found this post helpful.

Greetings and welcome to the Slackware Brotherhood, especially this shining example here at LQ. We may argue and have differences of opinion but all in all it's a very healthy environment with some really skilled regular posters.

I have heard a number of "outsiders" refer to the Slack Community as a "religion" largely because there is one final arbiter and "protector of the vision", Patrick Volkerding, but I think if any of them spent any time here they'd realize that "religion" is way off the mark. There are many powerful and prolific contributers right here regularly at LQ and Patrick himself does not seem to hold himself "above" but freely mingles here. Also LQ enjoys fair, consistent and reasonable moderation. Jeremy has an exemplary Forum and it shows many times over in the quality of questions, concerns and answers. We have had our "flirtation with the flames" regarding systemd but that has settled out fairly nicely.

I salute and empathize with your reasons for migrating to Slackware and applaud your choice. It isn't "gospel" it's just simply true that Slackware is the most vanilla distro that above all respects the concerns of those who choose it to do what you want, no more and no less.

Slackbuilds have come a long way from merely a way to do a job that Checkinstall used to do and they have largely changed Slackware for the better. Given your reasons for choosing Slackware, do be aware that here just like everywhere there are those that fall prey (from my pov) to convenience automation. In my estimation it seems those people, knowingly or not, are trying to improve convenience with never considering that is the motivation behind all the others since Ubuntu that strives to something akin to "free windows" and I think ultimately dissolves what makes Slackware unique and different, in danger of having it become an "also ran".

The choice is still there. Nobody is forcing anything. Just be aware that we are not immune to the evolutionary alternatives that influence all Linux and choose carefully if you would stay true to your purpose. It's not a religion and Patrick ain't God but he deserves and gets as much appreciation and respect as I can muster for any human being on the planet. He is a man of principle and his works show it. Welcome aboard the finest ship to ever set sail on this sea of code.

2 members found this post helpful.

Now don't you wish you would have tried it earlier? Linux has came quite a ways with respect to hardware to support & the Slackware 'extra' community has expanded nicely in the 15 years that I've used it which has made it all that much easier! Hope Slackware fits your needs and you enjoy Pat's take on what Linux should be.

1 members found this post helpful.

I don't know your policy regarding security and most of this stuff is definitely over my head so I just trust Debian (or mancha for instance) to handle those things for me.

If you have a look on the Debian repository, you'll notice few patches for this software. These patches have been gathered in one file named debian-changes.You can find this patch in the tf5_5.0beta8-5.debian.tar.xz package(in the patches directory), here.

We can apply this patch like this:
If you intend to package TinyFugue for slackbuilds...well, I don't say that you have to include this patch into your work. You should ask the mighty packagers at slackbuilds.org what they think about It before ; I just wanted to pinpoint that there are correctifs related to this software.

Cheers!

1 members found this post helpful.

Well, there is the occasional spouting of "scripture" from "Bob" and various people like that. I find it annoying to see here and I think it detracts from what we do here, but I also know that some forum members do enjoy it, so I stay silent on it (this is my first time mentioning anything about it, and it'll probably be my last). I would think it would prevent some from interacting with the forum, but luckily, it isn't present in Slackware itself, and mainly seems to be mainly present in the LQ Slackware community and isn't used much outside of it. And even within the Slackware community here on LQ, it isn't very common, so unless people are frequenting the forum, they are unlikely to run across it.