Is it reasonably easy to have the latest, or nearly latest, version of applications with Slackware? Or do you desktop Slackware users have to settle for older versions?

Does Slackware have as many drivers as Ubuntu?

If you edit /etc/slackpkg/mirrors and uncomment one and only one mirror (remove the #) and run the following commands in order you will keep your Slackware station up to date.

1. slackpkg update gpg
2. slackpkg update
3. slackpkg install-new
4. slackpkg upgrade-all

Slackware 14.2 has Firefox 52.0.2, and a lot of other up to date applications. If you want newer applications then run Slackware64-current.
Slackware ships with a lot of drivers for graphics, sound cards and wifi cards.

1 members found this post helpful.

If you're looking for the latest and greatest versions, they aren't always available. The only place that has a closer to bleeding edge versions available is Slackware-current, but it still tends to be not nearly as bleeding edge as something like Arch. Slackware values stability over the latest and greatest.

As for drivers, Slackware includes a vanilla kernel. Slackware enables the majority of drivers within the kernel. It doesn't include any proprietary drivers, but the nvidia drivers are available on SBo.

1 members found this post helpful.

If you run -stable, updates typically only occur when there are security fixes or (sometimes) other important bug fixes. However, most people end up getting a lot of software from SlackBuilds.org or from Alien Bob's repository (or other well-trusted repositories, of which I can't mention all right here). These are typically updated more frequently than the base system.

Now, if you want your base system to be updated more frequently, you can run -current. It's designed for testing, though, so you will experience problems from time to time. However, you can instead run -stable and upgrade the odd package here and there (provided it's an end-user application as opposed to a library that other things depend on) using the source code and SlackBuild script provided by Pat from a -current mirror. It is not guaranteed to work, but it usually does. Try doing that on one of those distros with a finicky overcomplicated package manager!

In short, Slackware is never going to be bleeding edge like Arch with always the latest version of everything, but that doesn't mean you can't keep applications up-to-date. It may require more know-how than some other distros, but it's also easier in many ways because Slackware stays out of your way.

Drivers are mostly resides in kernel, so if you need better hardware support, you may need to built your own kernel. I need 4.10.x to have better support for Kabylake processors. Without 4.8+, i can't go to X since proper Intel support for the GPU is included in 4.8.x.

Sometimes, even -current is ahead of ARCH

Even though it's designed for testing, it's very rare to have a broken system due to -current (my broken -current system was long time ago due to XOrg migration, but it was fixed in the next 24h).

1 members found this post helpful.

I noticed today after finally having time to update that llvm-4.0.0 broke lightspark's build and found an existing issue report for it where the maintainer said he will take a look at it when arch gets llvm-4.0.0.

slackware-current is much more up-to-date than Ubuntu. Slackware stable is on par with Ubuntu LTS AFAIK.

Any driver available to Ubuntu is available to Slackware.

And if you don't want to wait, it's easier to build your own packages of the latest applications if you're using Slackware than if you're using most other distributions. Especially if you're using -current.

I accidentally installed 32-bit Slackware. The performance was decent.

When I realized my mistake, I installed 64-bit Slackware. The performance was a disappointment - especially video. When I drag a window it breaks apart.


I have 12 GB of RAM and ATI Radeon graphics. According to the docs page:


> AMD (ATI) Catalyst Driver Installation and Configuration
> Note: the driver will not work on 14.2 because Catalyst supports only Xorg 1.17 and 3.19 (or no?).

https://docs.slackware.com/howtos:ha...aphics_drivers

So am I stuck with this video?

I have run a few OSes on this hardware, including: FreeBSD, Calculate Linux (Gentoo based), and, as I have already mentioned: 32-bit Slackware. Only 64-bit Slackware has this issue.

Any advice?

ignore this.

While there isn't support for AMD Catalyst on Slackware 14.2 and newer due to AMD not providing updates for Catalyst anymore, the open source driver usually works great. But you haven't given us much to go on. Can you provide, at the least, the output of the following commands?

The output of these may lead to additional requests for information.

Both of those should be in the /sbin/ and /usr/sbin/ directories, which a normal user does not have access to by default. Only the root account will have those available to them in their path. You can reference them directly using /usr/sbin/slackpkg and /sbin/lspci.

If you look at /etc/profile, there is a section in there that detects if the UID equals 0 (which is the root user) and if it does, it will assign the various sbin directories to the PATH.

However, if slackpkg and lspci are indeed missing, there is undoubtedly something amiss with your installation. To verify, did you do a full installation? If not, what did you leave out? slackpkg is contained under the slackpkg package in the ap/ series and lspci is contained in the pciutils package in the a/ series.

If your installation included the a/ and ap/ series (they are enabled by default), then there is possibly something wrong with your installation media. Did you verify the MD5 before installing?

The slackpkg utility ships with Slackware. Did you do a full install of Slackware? The commands I typed assume that you're root.

# slackpkg update gpg
# slackpkg update
# slackpkg install-new
# slackpkg upgrade-all

Did you edit one mirror in /etc/slackpkg/mirrors and remove the # at the beginning of the line? Save and exit.

Can you describe the problem a bit better?

My guess is OP is referencing screen tearing, but that is just a guess. A better description certainly would help.

Suffice it to say, graphics were bad.

I have moved away from Slackware, now running Calculate Linux (Gentoo based).

I think the graphics in Calculate are a little better.

Thanks for the replies.