Switch to Slackware for desktop OS

ExternalUse · 09-19-2013, 11:25 PM

I am thinking about doing the switch -- and my main concerns are the amount of time I'll spend configuring and getting things setup. I used slackware way back when, probably 5-6 years ago, only for a short time as a desktop OS.

My experience with linux is server/professional level. I've gotten to the point in my day to day activities at home where Windows is annoying me, and would rather have a stable platform to work on. Some of my dev servers have been up for over 2300 days.... lol

I am trying to gather a list of items I'll need to successfully go through with this, and a few things that concern me are:

1. NVIDIA Drivers + Multiple Displays
I've got to be able to have my GPU running, and configured pretty easily. I remember having problems with dual monitors, but eventually found a solution which I do not remember.

2. Steam
This could cause some issues with the 32-bit dependencies, not sure if anyone has insight on how easy/hard this will be to setup

3. KDE + Eye Candy
One thing I really enjoyed about KDE was either how good your system looked, the look and feel -- or how terrible it looked. I remember back that some GTK/other "display" stuff was missing and everything looked like complete shit. Then one day, I magically found the correct packages, (eg. for firefox) and everything was completely different and smooth!

4. Open Broadcasting Software
Free, open source product for Windows to stream content online. Is there an alternative to this, that integrates easily with the current online live streams, such as twitch.tv etc..?

EDIT:
5. On board sound (Realtek HD)
I've got speakers plugged into the back of my computer, surround sound. In the front, I also have a headset for skyping. On Windows, I am able to switch between which is "Default" -- often times I want to listen to music using my speakers, and at night I'd like to use my headphones. Certain applications even give me the option to pick a default device (speakers, or headphones) for them. Would this be possible on Slackware?
END EDIT.

I do recall slackbuilds having a lot of the things I needed. I am unsure whether I'll have issues with going 64bit, which is crucial or else there goes 12 GB of my RAM...

Let me hear some opinions.

brianL · 09-20-2013, 06:32 AM

1: NVidia drivers. Two options, either use the SlackBuild, or the NVIDIA-Linux-*-*.run from the Nvidia website. No idea about dual-monitors.
3: Alien Bob provides good releases of KDE. I'm using his 4.10.5.
No issues here with 64-bit.

Have a look at the Slackware Documentation site linked in my signature.

colucix · 09-20-2013, 01:31 PM

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Slackware forum and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

273 · 09-20-2013, 01:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brianL

1: NVidia drivers. Two options, either use the SlackBuild, or the NVIDIA-Linux-*-*.run from the Nvidia website. No idea about dual-monitors.

For dual monitors (after the binary install and a reboot) I run nvidia-settings as root to set the dual-monitor configuration and tell it to save the xorg.conf. I am currently trying to get the NVIDIA drivers working with kernel 3.11.1 and struggling but that's just me trying to do things without documentation (and I suspect 3.11.1 needs a patch or something) -- it worked straight away with the huge.s kernel and I've had it working with a previous kernel straight from kernel.org.

dugan · 09-20-2013, 01:45 PM

Setting up Steam is very easy if you have a 32-bit or multilib system.

Just install Alien Bob's package: http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slac...s/steamclient/

If you need to set up multilib, visit: http://connie.slackware.com/~alien/multilib/

Alien Bob · 09-20-2013, 02:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ExternalUse

2. Steam
This could cause some issues with the 32-bit dependencies, not sure if anyone has insight on how easy/hard this will be to setup

3. KDE + Eye Candy
One thing I really enjoyed about KDE was either how good your system looked, the look and feel -- or how terrible it looked. I remember back that some GTK/other "display" stuff was missing and everything looked like complete shit. Then one day, I magically found the correct packages, (eg. for firefox) and everything was completely different and smooth!

4. Open Broadcasting Software
Free, open source product for Windows to stream content online. Is there an alternative to this, that integrates easily with the current online live streams, such as twitch.tv etc..?

5. On board sound (Realtek HD)
I've got speakers plugged into the back of my computer, surround sound. In the front, I also have a headset for skyping. On Windows, I am able to switch between which is "Default" -- often times I want to listen to music using my speakers, and at night I'd like to use my headphones. Certain applications even give me the option to pick a default device (speakers, or headphones) for them. Would this be possible on Slackware?

2. Steam is dead easy. On a 64-bit Slackware you need to install multilib packages too, otherwise it is just: install my Steam package, login, and go!

3. The KDE 4.10.5 of Slackware-current looks immensely much better than the KDE 3.5.10 which was featured in Slackware 12.2, 5 years ago.

4. Perhaps you should like into Webcamstudio as a Linux alternative to Open BroadCaster Software.

5. Skype allows you to pick the recording and playback device from the list of available devices. So does VLC and probably other GUI applications too. And KDE4 has configuration widget fo sound devices and their priority.
When my son plugs in his USB headset with microphone, he can use it immediately in his KDE Desktop.

Eric

ExternalUse · 09-20-2013, 04:43 PM

Awesome great feedback! I shall keep you guys posted on my endeavor after work tonight.

kikinovak · 09-20-2013, 04:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ExternalUse

4. Open Broadcasting Software
Free, open source product for Windows to stream content online. Is there an alternative to this, that integrates easily with the current online live streams, such as twitch.tv etc..?

http://www.radionovak.com:8000/radionovak.ogg

Running 24/7 on a Slackware64 14.0 public server with Icecast, MPD and NCMPC.

If you want your Slackware desktop to JustWork(tm) out of the box, you might give one of these a spin:

http://www.microlinux.fr/slackware/

MLED is based on Xfce 4.10, MLWS on KDE 4.10.5 with some more lightweight apps.

MLES is the "server" pack and contains the streaming audio apps built against a full set of codecs.

Cheers,

Niki

enine · 09-20-2013, 08:33 PM

One of the steps I took was switching over all the stuff I used to cross platform running under windows (firefox, thunderbird, openoffice, etc) so that when I switched to linux the stuff I used I was already familiar with. Then I did a couple instals under vmware player (would use virtualbox now) so I could test a distro or two while still in windows.

xflow7 · 09-20-2013, 09:11 PM

I don't use Steam or OBS or have a Realtek card. But I've been running Slackware as my primary OS at home for around 10 or 11 years. I do have a dual-boot with XP, but I can't remember the last time I booted to it. The main thing that I have had to keep Windows around for is streaming video from Amazon.

I use 64-bit Slack with Alien Bob's multilib packages and, though I was a bit wary of dealing with multilib at first, it's really been pretty seamless. Have to pay a bit more attention to package updates/upgrades, but other than that, it's been a breeze.

yes, some things have required some messing about, but not that many and it's kind of a hobby for me.

Good luck!

Dave

hitest · 09-20-2013, 10:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ExternalUse

Awesome great feedback! I shall keep you guys posted on my endeavor after work tonight.

A full install of Slackware will most likely work for you. Once you Slack, you never go back.

ExternalUse · 09-20-2013, 11:11 PM

So far so good, I will keep updates rolling on this thread. I am having an issue with my USB ports not working after a certain amount of time. It's very frustrating ... the two ports my mouse and keyboard are connected to randomly stops working, which at first made me think my OS crashed. Then I found two new USB ports on my machine and they worked there. But the problem comes back, now those USB ports do not work....

I had to restart the machine for my all of my USB ports to come back alive. The "dead" ones -- give power to my mouse or keyboard, which ever is plugged in... but turns off right away. What's going on??

zrdc28 · 09-21-2013, 12:18 AM

I had the same problem on one of my computers a month or so ago, all 4 of my usb ports would just stop working. an update/upgrade solved it, I do run current! and update regular.

ExternalUse · 09-21-2013, 12:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zrdc28

I had the same problem on one of my computers a month or so ago an update/upgrade solved it, I do run current! and update
regular.

Thanks, I will try that out. I did an update/upgrade after I first installed the system to get everything up to date.

For the USB issue, here is some output of my controllers.

Code:

bash-4.2$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 1532:010e Razer USA, Ltd 
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 008: ID 1532:0013 Razer USA, Ltd

Also, I have Skype up and running now, except my microphone doesn't seem to work. I know that the mic is enabled, because I can hear my self through the kmixer... Any suggestions?

The error I get on Konsole is

Code:

ALSA lib conf.c:4692:(snd_config_expand) Unknown parameters CARD=PCH
ALSA lib control.c:953:(snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL default:CARD=PCH

Fonts -- oh god. This is starting to really hurt my eyes after a while. I've copied over the MS windows fonts and rebuilt the cache. Do any of you have a good template / settings you follow that doesn't hurt your eyes? I've gotten it either too big, too small, and the rendering looks awful. I followed some of the steps on this guide (http://duganchen.ca/writings/slackware/fonts/), but this might be the thing that prevents me from going full desktop OS. The fonts are starting to irratate my eyes, forcing me to make firefox 2-5x larger in order to view the text properly, even at a decent size.

Kallaste · 09-21-2013, 08:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ExternalUse

Fonts -- oh god. This is starting to really hurt my eyes after a while. I've copied over the MS windows fonts and rebuilt the cache. Do any of you have a good template / settings you follow that doesn't hurt your eyes? I've gotten it either too big, too small, and the rendering looks awful. I followed some of the steps on this guide (http://duganchen.ca/writings/slackware/fonts/), but this might be the thing that prevents me from going full desktop OS. The fonts are starting to irratate my eyes, forcing me to make firefox 2-5x larger in order to view the text properly, even at a decent size.

I'm not really clear on what problem you are having with the fonts. Could you explain whether they are too big or too small, and why they hurt your eyes? Copying the Windows fonts and doing 'fc-cache -fv' would not do anything to change the size of your fonts, so perhaps you could tell us about any other steps you have taken. Maybe post a screenshot?

On my systems, sometimes I use Infinality, and sometimes I just add some nice default fonts and turn on anti-aliasing. I've found the way fonts render in Slackware depends heavily on what hardware I'm using. Sometimes they need tweaking, and other times they are perfect out of the box.

Dugan's page (the one you linked) really has a lot of good material on fonts in Slackware. I would read through it completely and do what it says, and then if you still have a problem, give us more details.

And welcome!