Hello, I've been searching the forum for this kind of information, but I couldn't find anything... sorry if this has been asked before (and please give me a link to the topic, so I can learn )
What I basically need is information about the packages that Slackware 9.0 installs, 'cause reading the docs in /usr/doc doesn't give me enough hints as to guess what the program is for. What I'm trying to accomplish is to install ONLY what I need in my system without making and LFS system. I want to use Slackware and it's pkgtool. So, as you can see, my problem is finding the necessary information as to know whether I can remove the package or not. I went to the expert mode in the installation, but I couldn't get the "you need this to use foo utility". I don't want to install everything, not only for space reasons, but because I want to know what I have in my system and what it is used for. (I know an LFS system would be good, but I don't have a really powerful machine, so compiling would take too many hours...)
If someone has a link to get this kind of info, it would be appreciated.
Sorry for my English, I'm not a native speaker as you surely guessed.

an easy way (other than pkgtool) to see whats installed is to look at /var/log/packages... in here will be a text file for every package installed. if you look at the text files themselves they'll typically tell you what the package provides.

To learn dependancies I think the only way to know is to look at a website for a piece of software and learn what its requirements are.

or you can just start uninstalling till you break something.

Thanks for the fast reply. I was wondering how to read the descriptions used in the installation... . Now I know where they are.
Although the "uninstall till you break something" isn't pretty, I think it'll be the way to go...

As a general rule though, don't uninstall things that came from the a directory because you don't want to break the system so bad you can't install packages anymore. Becareful just randomly removing things.

You can also get information on the packages here:

http://www.slackware.com/packages/in...=i386&series=a

As I read it, there are options at install time, full, expert, etc. The newbie (previously normal) option only installs necessary stuff, prompting for optional packages. I would have thought this would be how to start with a minimal install?

I think during installation, right next to the package being installed, there is a word in parentheses:

(Recommended) or (Optional)

It would be safe to say that (Optional) items can be left out, right?

I've always installed the whole shebang. On my laptop, I did a full install, then decided to run 'pkgtool' to remove some stuff and ended up killing my laptop installation. LOL From now on, I'm going to start using either 'Expert' mode or something that'll prompt me for what to install.