Didier, Thank you for the excellent and comprehensive reply. I appreciate that you continue to maintain the SLINT project and keep it in sync with the security improvements of Slackware 14.2.

The target device is currently LLVM/LUKS, LILO, Slackware64 14.2 without KDE packages, but with AlienBOB Multilib, VLC, QT5, and many SBO packages, including OpenOffice4.1.7, Scribus, Inkscape, KeePass and keepassxc, Claws-mail with dillo plugin, skypeforlinux, zoom-linux, vivaldi, MasterPDFEditor, XnViewMP, fvwm3 and all the dependencies needed for those applications. I know some of these are available from SLINT, or Salix.

Is it possible to continue to use the SBo's if not available from SLINT/Salix?
Which brings up the question, do I need to rebuild all the SBo's after upgrading to SLINT?
I think I read a Slint Documentation page about using SBo's and special handling, is it still correct?

My bigger concern is moving to GRUB, since I'm using LILO now. Is that GRUB2? Can I run GRUB2 in a /boot of 100MG?

Thanks again, BrianA_MN

Hi Brian,

• I have zero experience with LVM/LUKS, but I don't see a reason why it would not work the same in Slint as in Slackware.
• You can still continue to use LILO if you want. After a kernel update you will just need to update lilo yourself. Be aware that we don't ship huge kernels (but for installation, until the new installer be released). An initrd is automatically built, but named like e.g. initrd-generic-5.4.75 not initrd.gz (an initrd is built for each kernel). The corresponding kernel is named vmlinuz-generic-5.4.75 and no symlink is written. You will have to take care of that or just switch to grub, which would be simpler in my opinion. Until you do you will have a reminder displayed after a kernel upgrade (if /boot/grub/grub.cfg is not found) like this:
  Code:

  It seems that you didn't install grub in Slint. If you installed it from
  another distribution you should now run update-grub from this other
  distribution, else Slint won't boot from the grub menu. If you used
  another boot manager than grub we suggest that you install grub now.

• KDE is the only optional series of packages at time of Slint installation (as an aside even if it is installed a small script allows to show the menu entries for most KDE apps only on the menu of KDE itself).
• I have zero experience with multilib. But as the gcc* and glibc* used in Slint come from Slackware, there should be no issue just replacing them by multilib packages already built by Eric. Two small caveats: you should rebuild in Slint some of the compat32 packages with the version shipped in Slint when it differs from the one shipped in Slint, and we do not use slackpkg at all, let alone slackpkg+.
• VLC and Qt5 (and also mpv, way better than VLC IMNSHO) as well as Scribus, Inkscape and claws-mail are included in Slint. Some versions could be old (especially claws-mail) but upgrade requests are allowed on our mailing list, sometimes even fulfilled :-)
• Be careful with Salix packages: as Georges' policy about upgrades and mine differ, you could come across versions mismatch issues for the dependencies.
• You can indeed continue to use SBo. sbopkg is included in Slint. Caveat: I modified it so that the -k option works for packages whose name don't include SBo (as we ship some of the software also available through SBo, to avoid installing them twice at different versions) but doing this I introduced a bug: sbokg will fail to upgrade any existing package if the -k option is used. I will fix that, meanwhile as a workaround you can just remove then install instead of upgrade.
• Most packages you got from SBo should work in Slint. If some don't (probably because of a version mismatch of a dependency) you will need to rebuild in Slint. The easiest way is to use sbopkg. Just use the version shipped in Slint and indeed sqg is your friend.
• We use grub2. 100M for boot will probably be not enough, 200M is preferable if you can resize it, or just don't use a separate /boot partition. Maybe there is an issue doing that with LUKS, however IIRC this is possible if using GRUB, cf. the Arch documentation.

1 members found this post helpful.

@Didier Again thank you for the clarifications. The noted details to be cautious with sbopkg are especially appreciated because I use slackpkg+ to keep 14.2 core and the alienBOB packages up to date and sbotools and sboui to keep the slackbuilds up to date. So there will be some adjustments to administrative tasks on my part. Does SLINTS "update available" notification widget require grub installed, or does it use sbopkg? I was actually thinking of using slackpkg+ to add SLINT repository as priority PRIORITY_PACKAGE, and then simply slackpkg upgrade-all, but I think you are advising against that, am I right?

I'm planning to continue with LILO, but will look into whether I can use LLVM to exand /boot to 200MG in order to use grub. How many initrd's will SLINT support? Currently with LILO I have two in the /boot, which I can select when LILO first starts. One is PV's generic kernel 4.4.yyy release as a backup to my local generic kernel builds of 5.4.yyy. Will I still be able to have a backup kernel incase an issue arises with the latest kernel SLINT releases?

The SLINT documents are fairly complete and the SLINT forum has additional information re-read, before asking any more questions.

Cheers, BrianA_MN

Neither; it just uses slapt-get, as explained here by its author, George Vlahavas. So it handles only changes in the repositories sourced by /etc/slapt-get/slapt-getrc, which in case of Slint include at least those of Slint64-14.2.1 and Slackware64-14.2.

Yes. Among the reasons, slapt-get handles dependencies listed in the PACKAGE REQUIRE and PACKAGE CONFLICT fields of PACKAGES.TXT, slackpkg doesn't.

As many as /boot can store.

Slint will always preserve the kernel running when doing the upgrade and its associated initrd so you will always have at least two kernels and initrds in /boot to choose from when grub starts. But you won't need to keep a generic kernel 4.4.yyy release (but it won't be removed until another one will be running).

Additionally Slint ships the grub-emu utility that you can use in a running system (for instance after a grub update) to check the look and content that will have the the grub menu after rebooting (see attached pic for an example).

Better read the Slint documentation here, the one on slint.fr is not up to date. And feel free to ask more questions on our mailing list.

Attached Thumbnails

 

1 members found this post helpful.

Do I need to uninstall slackpkg+ and slackpkg before installing and using slapt-get?
It sounds like you already have QT and VLC in the Slint repository, will the QT and VLC -alien packages need to be re-installed?
I used slackpkg+ to install and keep up-to-date the multilib packages, will slapt-get do the same?
Turns out it wasn't hard to migrate to GRUB with the 100M /boot I already had. I found a thread from summer of 2020 which referred to RicardCranium's script to help with menuconfig. Then I installed grub-install and rebooted. It turn-out OK, although I don't think it found all the Linux kernels, just the default Slackware kernel.

I'll read the referenced documentation site. Since I plan on upgrading a working 14.2 and not re-install, should I remove the SBo versions of packages included with SLINT to avoid the slint<->sbo tug-of-war on the updates?
Cheers, BrianA_MN

No, but you won't use them anymore

Tht shouslm be done automatically when running slapt-get upgrade. To be 100% sure i will try tomorrow

I have to check, but I don't think so.

Not sure. It's late here, wil check tomorrow.

Cheers,

1 members found this post helpful.

Didier, I'll try to keep my questions about a standard upgrade to 14.2.1.2 to this thread. Sorry about polluting the other ANNOUNCE thread with my response on what I was trying to do. I don't really have a testing bed, but once I have 14.2.1.2 installed I can try the -rc releases.

I think I still need to do the dist upgrade from Slackware 14.2 to SLINT 14.2.1.2 with the slapt-get dist-upgrade. I'm trying to be cautious since I have a claws-mail 3.17.7 patched for OAUTH and don't want to loose it.

I mention that I use sbotools and it will automatically retain the built packages in a separate designated repository, so when temp is wipedout I don't loose the build, or if a build is bad I can easily go back to the previous version by simply upgradepkg from the repository of old build. It will be interesting to see which SBo packages (there are currently over 508) are replaced by SLINT.

Sounds like I either would use slackpkg+ for multilib upgrade or I'll need to use compat32pkg, also mentioned by Eric in the multilib writeup.

UPDATE: Actually, slapt-getrc can be set with a CUSTOM class for the multilib repository and it will always be the top priority for the glib and gcc and compat32 packages over Slackware and Slint. Then slint packages, then slackware packages. That's slick and less confusing than slackpkg+ setup with priority_pkg and repository orders.


You're ahead of me 6 hours in world time, so maybe wait until I get a change to try and report back to you on Tuesday evening.

Didier, this is sufficient advice on what I might expect as I proceed to dist-upgrade. I'll do the testing. I assume your hands are full answering your newest ISO rc release to not need this additional.

Stay safe and Cheers, BrianA_MN

@Didier, Before I proceed with the dist-upgrade I'd like your opinion on a number of questions. Grub2 is installed and working. Slapt-get is installed from slint.fr repository. I've modified the slapt-getrc to include a CUSTOM for multilib repository.

1) Previously you mention the current versions of gcc and glib in Slint are newer to support MATE and XFCE 4.14. However multilib gcc and glibc are based on the Slackware 14.2 gcc and glibc. Would you agree I'll need to rebuild multilib packages for gcc and glibc, as well as remove the CUSTOM statement?

2) If I use CUSTOM for a local repository of SBo pkgs, would that keep the updated claws-mail 3.17.7 which was build with OAUTH2 from being downgraded during a dist-install? I think not and I'll have to upgradepkg from the local repository after the dist-upgrade. Your thoughts?

3) When I installed scribus from slint (slapt-get -install scribus) the application installed with no problem. But when I tried to install inkscape it caused problems and would not run after install. The inkscape install over-wrote the following later rev SBo already present on the system, without notice. avahi, gnome-vfs, libcdr, blas, lapack, numpy3, and potrace. I then had to go back and upgradepkg from my local SBo builds with upgradepkg for avahi, libcdr, blas, lapack, and potrace. When installing packages, does slapt-get check if the packages is already on the system? Does it check the version level?

4) Is there a command like slackpkg has to discover what packages is installed and if an upgrade exists? In slackpkg it is slackpkg search <packagename>.

5) Once dist-upgrade is completed, will LXDM automatically be implemented? I currently have sddm-18 running because slackware-current is moving to sddm. Which brings up... will slint move to sddm in the future Slackware release?

Thank you again for your patience and thougts.
Cheers, BrianA_MN

Hi Brian,

Actually the glibc and gcc packages shipped in Slint are the genuine Slackware ones. I have zero experience with multib, but assume that if you have already multilib versions of these packages (those built by Eric) there should be no issue using them as-is. The version of glib2 is not the same in Slint as in Slackware but that's a different topic

I have zero experience using the --dist-upgrade option of slapt-get and don't advise to use it. If you give your custom source the CUSTOM status in /etc/slapt-get/slapt-getrc and do an slapt-get -u, then after that a package found in this repository will have priority over a package with the same short name found in another repository with a lower priority.

So if your run slapt-get --upgrade after slapt-get -u, slapt-get will propose you to replace the Slint package for claws-mail with yours. You can check typing slapt-get --upgrade -s before slapt-get --upgrade.

slapt-get installs the packages found in the mirror with the highest priority in /etc/slapt-get/slapt-getrc. The same applies to dependencies recorded in the PACKAGE REQUIRED: line of PACKAGES.TXT for the target package (in this case inkscape). So to avoid that you'd have to store the packages you don't want to replace in your custom repository. If you do a slapt-get -i, slapt-get looks for a package of the same name on the system:

• If there is none, it will install a package from the repository with the highest priority that provides it.
• If one is installed with the same long name (including the version, arch and the build tag) it will do nothing unless you use the option --reinstall
• If the long package names differs the installed package will be replaced.

• slapt-set --search <package-name> will tell you if it is installed.
• To know if an upgrade exist you will have to ask globally: slapt-get --upgrade -s
• There are also the options --installed and --available
• All this is documented in slapt-get --help and man slapt-get

Again, it is not advisable to use --dist-upgrade. If you want to install all Slint packages, just type: 'slapt-get --install-set slint'. It will consider the priorities of the repositories as indicated above. If you want to cherry-pick some packages (with their dependencies), just type 'slapt-get -i <package short name>'.

In Slint you use the login manager you prefer and we have a handy application to pick one or switch to another one:I intend to ship in Slint 15.0 all Slackware 5.0 packages, with or without modifications. So if SDDM is included in Slackware it will be included in Slint. I won't have to modify login-chooser, it will just list SDDM when it will become available.
You are welcome. Maybe it would be easier to install Slint anew and add to it the software/versions you would miss. The new installer can also make room in the last partition of a drive formatted in ext4 for Slint. In any case do not use slackpkg or slackpkg+ in Slint, that would just make things harder.

1 members found this post helpful.

So Eric converts a number of essential packages, like glib2, for compat32, as listed in the multilib documention for what is converted by massconvert32.sh. I suspect that multilib will be broken until massconvert32.sh is again run against the Slint 32bit packages.

Thanks for the command combination hint, that is what I was looking for. AND it saved me from a calamity, because I had mirrored the 32 bit Slackware official repository in the slapt-getrc and this showed arch x86_64 being converted to arch i586 and some to arch i486. After correcting slapt-getrc to arch x86_64, and running slapt-get --upgrade -s then it showed me that kernel files were being excluded, 224 files would be upgrade, 96 files newly installed and 5 files not upgrade. Since I have slint as the preferred, it is still replacing some slackware standard versions with same version from slint. There will be about 30 SBo packages I'll have to re-apply because their versions are newer. Most concerning is that slint's version of lxc is older than standard slack64-14.2? But before we go there, a bunch of "Regex Error: Invaldi preceding regular express Failed to compile regex" messages appear before the package lists. I thought these might be the Multilib repository, but if I comment that line out they errors still occur. Any thoughts of what to try?

Well an interesting thing happened on the way to the Forum.... If I use slapt-get -u the updates fit on "/". But if I do slapt-get -install-set slint, then "/" runs out of space. I suspect this is because of LibreOffice, Mate, LXDE, LightDM, and other packages I'm not interested in at this time being added to /usr/bin on "/". There must be an abundance of other new programs, since it says it will fetch the equivalent of 1.7G of data for storing on "/". I need to look at the slint repository to know what the other apps (other the LO) would be added in the 446 newly installable apps, there maybe others I don't really want.

Can I use the ISO with pkgtools? And would that let me select which apps I'd like? I don't want MATE or KDE, and don't need LibreOffice at this time. If that worked then I can re-install or upgradepkg the SBo's from my local repository, like for any special packages like Claws-mail, Keepass, and others.

Your thoughts about the Regex errors and pkgtools?

I really don't know.

Sorry, no clue.

The Slint repository is indeed huge.

No idea about the Regex errors.

I think that you have to make a choice:

• If you just want to use a few Slint packages, download them then install them with pkgtools. If you are lucky they will be fully compatible, else it shouldn't be difficult to add the missing dependencies.
• If you need many, just install Slint and import or rebuild the packages you want to keep.

An hybrid system (Slint+Slackware) would just be to hard to maintain, I think.

@Didier Thank you for all the help and timely responses. Keep up the great work with SLINT for international users of Slackware and most especially for those with sight impairments, it is a great and honorable undertaking that you've done for those users and Slackware.

I was attracted to SLINT by your efforts to offer a system which considers all types of users by language and by sight. Plus you have later versions of many packages, libraries and even many of the Slackbuilds which are already on the system I use. So it seemed logical to consider moving to SLINT, rather than continuing to wait for Slackware 15 when after 4-1/2 years there is no inkling of an rc0 yet. SLINT would modernize a 14.2 system, with LO over OO, OpenJRE over Oracle Java, and automation of package updating. Questions were introduced when perhaps multilib and claws-mail may need to be re-built, and there are many other packages (including language and speech) which are not of interest at this time.

So, I agree with you that a hybrid system would be difficult to manage. My interest is probably a few nuumber of apps, like slapt-get, slapt-src, slapt-update-service, LibreOffice, OpenJRE, XFCE-4.14. Perhaps a few others, but I have to look through the repository more closely. I've appreciated the move to GRUB, and that seems to be working. Maybe I'll figure out the commands to block installation of certain packages during a slapt-get -install-set slint, which would solve my specific interest.

Thank you again for all you do in the Slackware community. Cheers, BrianA_MN

I don't know a way to do that. Better cherry-pick the packages you want from the Slint repository, typing as root slapt-get -i <package>.

Check your configuration. That is the regex parser telling you that the regular expression you provided is invalid and being ignored.


take care,
jason