I'm considering making the move to Slackware for both my desktop/workstation(I use it for general stuff and web development) and web server. I just have a few questions before I give it a shot.

Is there any easy way to install Slack without installing EVERYTHING? I'm a big fan of minimal installs.

Is there an easy way to install packages that you didn't pick up during the initial install?

What is the best way to keep Slack up to date?

Is there a guide to writing Slackbuilds? I want really up to date software for some things(dev tools, multimedia stuff, etc.), and I noticed that the Slackbuilds can sometimes be behind. I'm not totally opposed to writing some myself.

Thanks in advance.

Most of these topics are covered here. More details there.

Also, about "minimal install" there is a recent thread. Using the "search" feature of LQ will lead you to many threads on the same topic.

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1. During the installation process you can opt to install everything, a full install, or you can choose to leave out packages that you don't want. Usually we recommend that new users to Slackware choose a full install as that will work out of the box with all dependencies met. If you wish to leave out packages please do some reading so that you're not missing key libraries/ and or dependencies for your work station or server.

2. You can install prebuilt packages from Robby Workman or Eric Hameleers. They are two of our developers; their packages are trusted. You can also install packages using the build scripts from slackbuilds.org.

http://rlworkman.net/pkgs/

http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/

http://www.slackbuilds.org/

3. Use the slackpkg utility that ships with Slackware to keep your work station/server up to date.

4. http://www.slackwiki.com/Writing_A_SlackBuild_Script

You could use kikinovak's StripSlack, but I strongly recommend to do a full install, at least until you have gotten some experience with Slackware and its package management. Slackware does not have automatic dependency resolution, which makes it quite easy to bork your system if you remove packages that are dependencies of other packages. Disk space is cheap in these days and Slackware disables everything by default, so that you don't have unnecessary services running.
If you have slackpkg configured correctly you can just do The easiest way is to use slackpkg.
More info with Slackbuilds are pretty straight forward, most of the time you just adapt the version number to your needs and it will work. For some packages however (GIMP, for example), you end up upgrading half of the system libraries by hand just to get a newer version, or you have to write additional Slackbuilds for dependencies that have been added to newer versions.
In any case, studying existing Slackbuilds should give you a good amount of insight how to write new ones.

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Thanks for the info. I think I'm going to give it a shot.

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If this is your first time with Slackware, then yes, install everything. Why? Dependencies.

Slackware doesn't include automatic dependecy resolution so you'll be left with a great deal of gruntwork if you do a partial installation.

If you want to add more packages, I highly recommend getting sbotools from SlackBuilds.org and using it to add extra stuff. It has some automatic resolution of dependencies, but it's not perfect, so user beware that you may still have to do a bit of work.

Slackware's wiki is a gold mine of information. Use it, abuse it, and never forget it.

As far as anything else, stick with JFS or EXT4 for your root file system, make sure you have enough swap for building regularly, and above all else, enjoy, and DONT BE AFRAID TO ASK QUESTIONS. We don't bite, we won't ridicule you if something goes wrong, and just remember, enjoy your system.

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For a desktop/workstation, you can give my MLED a spin. Based on Xfce, with one application per task.

StripSlack is a toy project for a minimal server installation. It's unusable for a desktop or a workstation.

Pretty much all distros that cater to the "build from the ground up" crowd (Arch, Gentoo, even Debian) come with something like StripSlack as default minimal install to build up from. I don't see why it would not be possible (with some work of determining dependencies, of course) to build a desktop or workstation from it.

Aye, there's the rub.[1]

[1]William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1.

Of course it would be possible. But then, you might as well suggest to the OP that he reads a couple books about C and C++ and writes his own OS. Or that he builds a cathedral out of matchsticks.

I don't think that this is comparable. Finding the dependency info is some work, but not that hard, the Salix team provides tools like depfinder which make this process much easier (or just look at .dep files that Salix provides, if you want to do it manually).
Regarding the cathedral out of matchsticks: http://www.inspirefusion.com/matchst...ame-cathedral/

In a nutshell, the advice you're going to give to a newcomer of Slackware who just wants to install a lean desktop is to install a bare-bones system with three dozen packages and then to hand-pick all the remaining 1150+ packages one-by-one using a third-party dependency finding tool.

Sounds interesting.

No, you may have missed the part where I explicitly told the OP that I recommend a full install until he got more experience with Slackware and where I told him that it is easy to bork a system with removing a needed package due to its nature of not having automatic dependency resolution. But the OP also specifically asked about a minimal install and I thought it may be better to recommend a project developed and maintained by a seasoned Slackware user/admin and to use the tools already provided by the Salix team, if he/she really wants to go that way.

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Yes. I think the problem is we don't know the skill set of the OP. If the OP is an experienced Unix/Linux user then he/she should be able to go with a pared down install and figure out the odd dependency issue. However, if he/she is uncomfortable with dealing with applications that don't work then a full install is the way to go.

As a rule we prefer to offer trouble shooting tips for full installations of Slackware. Best of luck OP.