Kernel 2.6.21.5, GNU (Slackware 12.0).

Hi:
In my days of M$-DOS/WINDOW$, when I installed a new suit of programs, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, usually the installer displayed a message warning me thus: "Close all your applications before continuing", etc.

Now, in my linux box, I want to compile and install a slackbuilds package. And I wonder: should I exit X first? That is, the Desktop Environment (DE)? Or perhaps during the compilation phase I can still make use of the DE? Any suggestion would be welcome.

Ehh.. No need to "close your applications" or exit X for compiling/installing 98% of stuff; I don't think I've EVER had to exit X to install anything other than the nVidia driver I use, which won't build or install if X is running.
Basically, "Close all your applications before continuing" is not a Linux problem.

If it isn't part of X itself, you should be fine; and even if it *is* part of X, X is already loaded into memory and running, so you probably could install parts of X too and not expect anything weird or changed until you logged out and restarted it - but I haven't tried this lately and don't suggest you risk anything important by installing parts of X while X is running.

To be sure, what is it you're building/installing?

MPlayer-1.0rc2.tar.gz with the MPlayer.Slackbuild script. That is, the program will later be invoked simply as 'mplayer'.

EDIT: it has some skins too, to be able to be run in the GUI if I want to.

Go ahead and build & install MPlayer, no problem. Any sort of program or application, such as this, you can build/install while X is running and your desktop is up.

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Thanks a lot.