Slackware + Lego, anyone?
 

I am in the middle of a "project" building some of the software for Lego fans on Slackware. There are some nice programs for Linux, like LeoCad, LDView, POVRay etc.

My goal is to submit SlackBuilds and offer pre-built packages for those who prefer not to (or simply do not know how to) compile their own software.

Most of these programs have RPM or DEB packages available but the simple rpm2tgz process normally does not work because of some dependency or binary incompatible libraries, so it is a fun project for me to sort things out. :)

I noticed in the on-line Lego community that most fans use Debian-based Linux flavors (mostly *buntu).

So my question is: are there any Lego fans around here using Slackware?

Even if there is noone here, I'll still continue my project as I want to have these programs running on my system so that I do not need to run the Windows versions in a VM anymore. :D

I grew up on Legos and thus, I'm a BIG fan!! I didn't know that software like this existed!!! I'll have to give it a try.

Having said that, I can't wait for my kids to get a little older so that I can have an excuse to play with Legos again. ha, ha! The mall near by actually has a Lego store. :)

I'll be looking forward to your slackbuild.

:D My kids got the "Lego bug" from me...

With the different software programs you can build your "virtual" models without making all the mess and at the same time having an unlimited supply of all the pieces you want ;)
And your "collection" fits on a pendrive :cool:

Expect some packages for Slackware over the next couple of days / weeks (this is a spare-time project...)

Sweet! Call me old fashion though, because I still prefer to build them by hand! ;)

Here are pictures of Tux built from legos:
http://www.ericharshbarger.org/lego/penguin.html
Some people build computers from legos:
http://legocomputer.com/
Slackware would surely run better than Windows 98 on the lego computer :)

@tommcd:
I know these pictures :)

Do you use any of the software I mentioned under Linux?

That lego computer looks mighty nice!! :)

No I don't. I don't actually know of linux software for legos, so I did a google search.
Did you see the "lego computer" link I just added to my last post? Pretty cool, isn't it?

Very cool! I just saw the link now (have to get some work done once in a while ;) )
I probably have enough parts (computer & Lego) to build something like this as well, but where is the time...

nice~ Back in the day I had the entire Lego pirate collection.

We need a Lego Bob!

First package available...
 

A small update

I managed building LDView 4.1 on Slackware 13.0, both 32 & 64 bits versions.
The SlackBuild is in the "pending" queue on SlackBuilds.org

For those who cannot wait or do not want to compile their own software, packages can be downloaded from my site.

Since LDView 4.1 uses the QT4 library, it will only work on Slackware 13.0 that comes with KDE4.
You do not need to use KDE4 (I don't) and not even need to have it installed completely (I also don't), just make sure you have the qt package installed.

It *might* work also on Slackware 12.2 with KDE4, but I have not tested it.

See the attached image to have an idea of what it looks like :)

Lego .. hell yeah :) dang I grew up on that stuff when I was a wee one. Still have it all stored at /dev/parents. :)

And at Uni I jumped at the chance to work on a project with lego mindstorms which was great fun but utterly useless, still I got marks for playing with lego :) how good can it be. ;)

I used to do handmade PovRay scenes all the time but I don't really have much time for it anymore. If you didn't already know, there's an incredibly nice library of digitized Lego pieces that can be used with Povray here (along with a nice gallery of pictures he's made with it). All this made me realize how much I miss playing around with raytracing :)

@sunman:
Thanks for the link, very nice things there!

I used to play around with POVRay a lot, but that was many years ago, on a machine running Windows and with a lot less power (I think it had 256M at the most and a PII processor. Things could take hours to finish...
Part of the project is building POVRay on Linux and see how things have improved. :)

Another update

Managed to build ldglite on Slackware. The SlackBuild is in the pending queue and pre-built packages can be downloaded from my site.

ldglite is nice for creating images (bmp or png) from LDraw files from the command line (I like command line utilities :))

I am having less luck with the CAD program LeoCAD.
It builds and works fine on 32-bit Slackware, but on Slackware64 it crashes...
I patched the sources to solve some problems (after looking at the sources in the unstable branch), but it's not that simple. :(
If I cannot get it to work, I'll have to stick to the 32-bit version until the author releases the next version that seems to be prepared for 64-bit Linux versions.