Use slackware for awhile, and you'll see why it doesn't come with OpenOffice.org, mostly cause it isn't a desktop distro like Xandros or Lindows. It's not a RHEL, or RHWS. It's just slackware.

You have abiword, kate, kwrite, koffice, and many others. Why add *another* office app, especially one so big. Your typical slackware user doesn't usually need more. And if they do, they download and install it, simple.

ok. I think I am getting it. So slackware is a small, stable distro that you really have to put some work into to get everything to work. I did netconfig... ok? it is not bringing up eth0. I do ifconfig eth0 up.... nothing. Ok slackers... give me guidence.

Sounds like the module isn't loaded. Which NIC do you have?

3Com 3c905 intergrated

You can use /sbin/lsmod to see which modules are loaded and /sbin/modprobe to load a module. My card was autodetected, it uses the tulip module. I would try to "modprobe 3c59x" as root and run netconfig again.

software on slack?

www.linuxpackages.net

or

www.freshmeat.net
www.sourceforge.net

rpm2tgz will be your friend, or compile from source.

There is also slack package for Ximian version of OO.org. Links are in www.dropline.net/forums in contributed packages section. I prefer Crom's version

you can try out distrowatch (http://www.distrowatch.com). from there you can find a list of alot of the more popular software packages included. i have never had trouble installing anything that wasnt included by default though....just by reading the install insctructions...most things you need to install that dont come with your system you can find in *.tar.gz or *.tar.bz2. just extract, ./configure, make, make install.

I installed Gentoo. I really like it but running into a few problems. I am looking again at Slack and Debian. I am still not convinced that Slack is that good. I see Slackware is really slacking on there documentation. There is great forums but where is the documentation? Can someone convince me that Slack is the way to go?

I have a quick question, when you guys say about applet, what actually is that? Is it Java applet? I doubt my answer so I need your answer.
Thanks

I am talking about in Gnome you can add "applets" as they are called. They are just additional little programs that you can add in the panel. Like monitoring tools, log out applets.... and so on.

I came from a unix background, having used FreeBSD for what seems like forever. I tried Gentoo, Mandrake and had a go on Red Hat round a friends house. The day I installed Slackware I knew I wouldn't go back.

Slackware forces you to educate yourself, you learn to fix your own problems. It's incredibly fast. With just X running, it maxes at 18 processes. With Mandrake, this number was closer to 50! With Mandrake, the GUI tools would never let me set up a machine to do packet routing (even though they insisted they did). When I set up my slackware router, this feature was on and working within half an hour.

I haven't seen it crash yet, and the first time I rebooted was about 23 hours ago. It's definately the cleanest distro. I know that every file on the hard disk is there because I said it could be there - unlike Mandrake where there was about six copies of .xinitrc, each about 150 lines long. It's definately the way to go if you like to feel you actually own your computer, but you have to work for it. Be prepared to get very intimate with your hardware and learn your PC inside out.

It is NOT friendly to newbies.

It's the sort of distro you install on your grandparents Windoze PC when you want your inheritance to come early...

mark

I have installed Gentoo and it took two weeks. I have learned several things and really have enjoyed this disto. I am still in a testing phase. I am not sure about a couple of things on Slack. Updating.... how is this done? Installing new packages....what do you do? Plus the documentation for Slack really stinks... what about documentation... other places?

Slackware comes with pkgtool, which allows you to download slackware packages and install them. It also comes with updatepkg, which allows you to <gasp> update installed packages.

You literally download the package, run pkgtool as root and select "install packages in this directory". updatepkg works in the same way.

Usually I compile from source, or even better, use cvs if it's available.

The documentation is usually hit or miss. I generally hang around forums and ask questions. It helps if you know the specific subject. Generic subjects are always more difficult to find, such as the question on X i'm about to post in another forum on this site!

Slackware does come with a lot of HOWTO's and FAQ's. These are avaliable on the slackware site or in the ISO's (which is how I downloaded it).

mark

How does the updatepkg work... what are the options?
Same question for pkgtool....