thinking of switching to slack
 

i have read a little bit about slackware and it seems really nice. I do have 2 questions though, which for the most part refer to software installation:

i have read that at times u will install software and when u try to run it nothing happens b/c dependencies haven't been filled, but these are never told to u, so u have to figure it out on ur own. is this true?

does slapt-get work decently? I don't mind installing from source, but some progs are just easier and run the same installed with a decent package manager (firebird)

As long as the proper Lib packages are all installed and stay installed, there are NO dependency grips from slackware!! Some people try to save space and start un-installing stuff and run into problems!!
Read the Slackware Essentials book!! you can find it at Slackware.com or

read slackware unleashed........
http://messias.wan.nl/linux-Document...x%20Unleashed/

I recently switched to Slack, as I have had it with RH, ManDrake, and the like
In fact, the less you have to deal with an 'rpm' the better.
Slack has a couple of commands that might help you
installpkg is good for installing .tgz files
pkgtools lets you know what you have installed
and you can always use the -nodep tag to install.
I haven't had to compile from source any of the packages I've installed,
but that doesn't mean that I won't :)

I am running slack on my:
Compaq 1270 Laptop
160 MB Ram
K6-2 350Mhz
4.3 GB HDD
works great quick, and reliable.

if you start the program from the command line, you will usually get an error message that will point you in the needed direction.

i'm really inter in slack and really want to try it....is the install pretty straightforward...i know it's text but iread it's not too bad

the installation is a breeze.... and Slack itself doesnt really seem all that 'tough', atleast not to me..... its fun.... Definitely install it..... :-)

how long does the install generally take, and i also read to do the complete install

Total installation took me almost 30 minutes. It isn't like Gentoo, you don't have to compile a massive amount of stuff just to install the OS itself.

then maybe i'll go ahead and give it a try tonight....i have been using linux for a while now and haven't found a version yet that i can stick with...i keep switching , hopefully i can stick with slackware, that it does everything i want

Yes, the one nice thing about slackware for me was after installing.
Since I ran redhat n mandrake a bit all I had to do was spend a little time reading, and in under 2 days my system was setup and configured the way i wanted it.
Heck, i can even burn CD's (thanks to this site showing me how to setup scsi emulation of course).

I know there are alot of people who like to spend all their time tweaking and changing and reconfiguring their systems, and when they get bored they install a new disto- starting the whole process over again. I did try that, running redhat, mandrake, debian, knoppix, and FreeBSD.

Everytime I came back to slackware because I realized I wanted to use my computer, not reconfigure it every other day with a new distro.

I know there are alot of people out there that want to spend all their time on the bleeding edge trying to get the lateset dev. version kernel to work, but maybe I need more than one computer to fully apreciate spending time with such tasks. In my case I have one computer, my "home computer" if you will.
Maybe one day I will have another system and will be able to devout more time to hacking, shell scripting and kernel configs n things of that nature. Until then I guess this is it. Just something besides windows.

Also, if anyone is interested, slap up a post if you know of any good places to find a decent system for things like gaming n web/graphic design. Ive been doing design for a while and want to work more with GIMP n things of that nature (Blender as well), and want to get a beefier system. Preferably somewhere around 2 gig.

Enough babbling, thanks again.