I've just finished installing Slackware on an old Laptop for my sister. I've been using Ubuntu on my PC for some time now, so I know Linux a little bit. I'll probably switch to Slackware too this week. It seems much more flexible than Ubuntu.

- How do I make a Useraccount? I'm logged in as root (which is a no-no, I know).

- I need a Filemanager, possibly like WindowsExplorer or Nautilus. I'm running Fluxbox and don't really want to install parts of Gnome/ KDE just for their filemanagers. Something simple would be nice.

- I'm using xterm at the moment, are there any other Terminals which are a bit more customizable?

- Coming from Debian/ Ubuntu I've been spoiled with apt-get. I've get slapt-get to work, but need some good repositries.

- I can't get the ö, ä, è, ... keys to work properly. How can I setup the keymap?

- How can I "unload" ALSA without recompiling the kernel?

- I'm using an MS IntelliMouse: How can I get the mousewheel to work?

Thanks for your help!

Cheers

check out my humble howtos about sound and mouse
http://slackercroft.freewebpage.org

While in shell use command
#adduser
to create a user
to edit use Midnight Commander
#mc
or Pico editor
#pico /path to file

-To add a user - from a terminal use the adduser command
-ROX-Filer is a decent file manager.
-A lot of people say they like aterm as an improvement over xterm. I personally stick with xterm 'cause I don't need all the "eye-candy".
-Some places to get Slackware packages:
www.linuxpackages.net
www.slacky.it
-Why do you want to unload ALSA? If it's compiled as modules you can move or remove the *.ko files from /lib/modules/<version#>/kernel/drivers/sound (I think that's the right path)
-The easiest thing to try first for the scrollwheel is to:
1) Open the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file in a text editor
2) Move down to the core pointers section
3) Change the protocol to "imps/2"
4) At the end of this section add Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
5) Restart the X session if you were in one.

Hope this helps.

Regarding the keymap, if you need it in CLI you'll need to edit /etc/rc.d/rc.keymap.
If you need it under X, you'll have to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and change the layout option to suit your language, I speak spanish(es), so mine is: Option "XkbLayout" "es"

Thanks for your help. The Laptop works nicely now. Just got to load OpenOffice tomorrow and it's finished.

One last thing though: I want to write a shutdown script. How can I do that and can I execute a script like that without "su"? When I use the poweroff -n command, the Laptop doesn't shut down completley. It shutsdown all the devices, but not the screen & keyboard (I can restart with ctrl+alt+del)!

For the shutdown you need to edit the /etc/rc.d/rc.modules file and uncomment the line that loads apm at startup.

You can manually load apm simply as root:

#modprobe apm

Then the halt command will totally shut down your system.

Because of the network nature of Linux, you have to have root access to issue the halt command.

chmod +s /sbin/halt

Thanks guys, you've been a great help!

One last question: What package system does Slackware use or do I have to compile them myself? When installing I remember seeing a "RPM (Unsupported)" package.

it uses binary gzipped tarball (TGZ) packages by nature, but because of LSB it will also work with RPMs...

it's quite common for slackers to compile their own packages using build scripts, but the average joe won't have any need to compile anything really...

you can look up the package section in the book: http://www.slackbook.org/

Or use utility called "rpm2tgz" to convert archive and then instal it using regular "installpkg"

"rpm2tgz" is like "Alien" then under Debian.

Compiling is the same under Slackware too: ./configure ./make ./makeinstall?

./configure && make && make install

shall do the thing properly

installing like that kinda sucks IMHO, you'd probably wanna make a slackpack and then install it using installpkg, which would look kinda like:this way you have all the benefits of the slackware package system... you can easily see exactly which files have been placed into your system, you can easily remove all the files with one command, etc...

better yet, forget about doing it from the CLI and just write a script which you can tweak for the rest of your life...

win32sux, your advice is great, but that would probably change the group /usr/bin belongs too, and also it won't work if the Makefile used by the program doesn't support DESTDIR.

true, my example doesn't do any permissions or anything else - i just wanted to make the point about making a package vs. installing a la "make install"... and yeah, you're right about the DESTDIR thing also, although 99% of the software i've compiled accepts it... then again, i haven't compiled much software... BTW, even though i think checkinstall sucks, i'm surprised nobody mentioned it... usually there's a ton of checkinstall-pushers whenever the topic of making slackpacks arises... oh well, here's the link FWIW: http://asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall/ there's a package of it (pun intended) in the extra directory on the CDs: ftp://ftp.oregonstate.edu/pub/slackw.../checkinstall/