I've only installed XFCE and I don't think that is the problem. And I've posted my hardware (lspci output) on a link above this post. The PC is so old that I think I will grab the HD for me and put the rest to collect dust.

Try a full install and then select XFCE or fluxbox for the desktop. See if that helps at all. Another option would be to try an older version of slackware, such as 13.37 and see if that helps. Maybe an older kernel would work better on the older hardware.

I would start over and do a full install which will probably be easier for you or install the software you missed. Maybe you did not install xorg. As you are a beginner I would go for the full install then choose Fluxbox when prompted.

I wouldn't be so critical of the hardware. Earlier this year, I put Slackware 13.0 on an old Pentium 1 (100 MHz) laptop with an old outdated Cirrus Logic graphics card. The X server and XFCE ran on it quite well. The only thing that disappointed me was trying to use my old parallel port flat bed scanner under sane. Sadly that works better under Windows 95 than in Linux.

Member Response
 

Hi,

Sadly, it looks like the OP will have issues with the old SiS driver for his video. Support for this legacy SiS hardware driver has been dropped.

Maybe revert to earlier versions of Slackware to get his OLD hardware functional.

Very good idea about using an older version of Slackware, onebuck.
It would be helpful to know what the OP installed. Did he/she just install XFCE?

I've installed everything, just dropped KDE and a few other packages. Of course I've installed Xorg.

I would very-much recommend that you do a full installation. A full installation of Slackware works out of the box with all dependencies met. You can have a full install of Slackware and run a light window manager like Fluxbox. It is hard to determine what is going on when you do a partial installation. If you do a full installation of Slackware and XFCE and/or Fluxbox does not work then perhaps an older version of Slackware is in order.

Greetz
This might be a good place and time, since we have some people new to Slackware, to point out a basic fact and a difference about Slackware.

Basic Fact - Unlike Windows, installing an application or lots of applications in Linux does not stack up and contribute to so-called "bloat" other than hard drive space. Unless you run it, it essentially doesn't exist. This is one reason why Linux doesn't slow to a crawl over time.

So there is no penalty, other than hard drive space to doing the recommended Full Install.

Slackware Difference - Unless one installs some 3rd party device, by default Slackware Pkgtool of itself does not attempt to resolve dependencies, leaving that job to a human admin. Many people find this time consuming and unnecessary ... that is until they consider the time it takes to recover a system broken by dependency bots. In Slackware, if you fail to meet a dependency the worst that can happen is that one app will fail to run. The system remains intact. Fix that dependency, and it will join the others and happily run. Leave it for another time and never get around to it? No problem. It just still won't run but nothing else is at risk.

For many the time spent resolving ones' own dependencies is well worth the time saved in troubleshooting since the only changes were made by you, so easily discovered as opposed to trying to follow the tentacles of dependency resolving bots which often install and remove packages far afield from the app one is trying to install.

As for older hardware while it should handle newer kernels and systems just fine, since only what is needed will actually be used, there may be some benefit (and little loss) in using older versions, probably most notable in boot times, but having little effect once up and running.

For OP, either XFCE or Fluxbox should work nicely. Fluxbox is lighter but does have a little less to offer the novice. With Slackware it is easy to try both by virtue of booting to commandline. One can launch either directly or through a login/display manager like GDM or KDM. KDM has an advantage of having a menuitem and ability to easily drop back to console.

Best wishes and welcome to Slackware and LQ.

It is not the first time I install Slackware without doing a full installation. The problem has nothing to do with it, and I think I will try an older version. Maybe 13.37?

Decided what I am going to do: set up the machine as a server to store my clonezilla's backups :)

For what it's worth, I am serving both a web log and Mediagoblin from a very similarly powered machine:

How did you set up the weblog? I've never set a server before

Well, I am using Steve Kemp's Chronicle blog compiler but there are several alternative approaches you could take. For example, Bloxsom is another fairly popular blog compiler with hundreds of add-ons available.

The idea of a blog compiler is that you set up your theme and edit your entries using your favorite text editor, then you run the compiler to generate a formatted and static HTML blog. Your server then only has to provide the static webpages of your blog -- thus even a puny computer can handle thousands of visitors.

One of the disadvantages of blog compilers is that comments from visitors do not get added until you regenerate the site. If this is not acceptable then you would need to investigate more resource hungry solutions such as Wordpress.

Regardless what blogging software you use, you will need to provide a way for people to find your site. You might want to start by using a service such as No-IP or DynDNS, especially if your ISP is assigning you a dynamic IP address. Another simple solution is offered by Pagekite. These outfits all offer free domain name services as long as you are willing to accept a URL that is in their subdomain (for example, http://yourname.pagekite.me). Otherwise you will have to purchase a domain name.

As for myself, I purchased my domain name registration from NearlyFreeSpeech.Net and use their API to update my DNS. This only costs me about $10 per year.

I recently upgraded my old laptop, which has similar specs as yours, and I had similar troubles with it: X took ages to start and was practically unusable, regardless of the window manager or desktop environment I chose. However, during the holidays I finally found a solution that may help you, too.

The problem was that X was running without hardware acceleration in framebuffer mode, and didn't detect hardware capabilities correctly. It was using only 1 MB of VideoRam although my hardware supports 8 MB of VideoRam. I was able to solve this like so:

X.org
1. Create an /etc/X11/xorg.conf. You can use the command xorgsetup (as root) to generate one for you. On modern hardware you don't need this, as X.org detects your hardware and in most cases loads the appropriate drivers and modules. But with some ancient hardware, such as your SiS graphics adapter, this fails at times.
2. Add a line for HorizSync in section "Monitor" (something like 30-50 depending on your display).
3. Add a line for VideoRam in section "Device". For my old laptop I added:
I have 8MB of VideoRam which equals 8192 kB.

If there is a driver for your video hardware, the above might boost your laptop, too. ;) Next is a tip for a relatively rich, responsive and good-looking working environment on older hardware.

Fvwm-Nightshade
I found Fvwm-Nightshade quite good. It has a few minor bugs, as it is still a young project, but it provides a richer (== more end-user friendly) environment than Fluxbox and takes much less resources than Xfce. That latter would run quite well as such, too, but with opening a few applications I quickly reached the limit of the RAM of that computer. FNS uses about 100 MB less than Xfce, and without any applications running stays well below 100 MB. It is fast and user-friendly, and, to me, it looks good, too. Also, most of the required software is part of stock Slackware, and the rest is available from SlackBuilds.org. For my old laptop it's now my preferred working environment. Maybe you want to give it a try after your you have X running with support for your hardware.

gargamel