The only distro that I am running ony my computers is Slackware, I am interested in trying out FreeBSD though.

I have never used an automatic updater as I prefer to do updates manually.

I work at the command line most of the time but if I do need to use a GUI then I use WindowMaker as it suits my needs.

I use epsxe, xawtv and mplayer.

I use gqview, too. With correct options it serve as a ok viewer. There should be better one, I am just too lazy to search.

1. For my file servers thery all run slackware 10, but as for my desktop I run Windoze (w/ a blackbox shell replacement, the linux version of black box doesnt feel right although i haven't tried it in a while.)
2. Nope unless the slackware package managers is included in such.
3. Nope the comand line is all i need, if i do need a giu I use Flux or Blackbox
4. Mostly just the packages on cd plus updates. but i do have jabber, mdonkey, and a few others installed.

1. In my main machine i use slackware 10. i used to dualboot slack9.1 and red-hat 9.
On my other machine i'm running slack 9.1 and planning on trying out LFS.
2. I don't use any automatic updater, but i have been meaning to try out slap-get or slackpkg,
i just haven't decided which of the two to use.
3. I have never used Dropline Gnome, i simply don't use it because i like fluxbox a lot.
I also use kde but that is because my brother feels a little more comfortable using that.
( he prefers windoze)
4. checkinstall, zsnes, openoffice, streamtuner, firefox, my ati video driver,
k3b, rkhunter, chrootkit, and others i don't recall at this moment.

1 - Running nothing but slack on my desktop and on my laptop (out of commision due to PSU failure to work and I have no money to fix it) I have slack and a small partition of windows with just default stuff
2 - nope, don't trust em. I've seen too many horror posts on what the progs have done to want to. If it needs to be updated I'll use the pkg tool
3 - No dropline because I'm happy using KDE and flux.
4 - Mplayer, chkrootkit, etc. (maybe 5-10 total I'm lazy )

I run Slack only on my main desktop. My server used to be my desktop, and it has Slack and Windows ME. I haven't run Windows ME more than five times in the last year, so it's pretty useless. I just don't use the machine much, so I haven't got around to uninstalling it. Eventually, I'll probably move the hard drive off of my server onto my desktop machine. I'll probably keep Windows ME around, just to have a copy of Windows in case I need it.

I use SWareT. Why an automatic updater? Simplicity. It is very easy to keep my desktop current. Why SWareT? It was the first one that I came across. It worked how I wanted it to, so I stopped looking. I am interested in xpkgtool, but it is still in Beta and hasn't worked on my machine yet.

I have about five repositories listed for SWareT. It has an upside and a downside. When I update, I really only want to update from the mirrors. This makes it so that I am unable to do an automatic update with "swaret --upgrade -a". I use "swaret --upgrade" and manually choose the packages from the mirrors. Would be nice if I didn't have to. I could eliminate the repositories, but they are nice for installing new software that isn't included with Slackware.

I use Dropline. As for the why, when I first started using Linux, there were a lot of things that I didn't know how to do. My fonts looked crappy and I couldn't play DVDs. I installed Dropline and those things were fixed. I also didn't know how to update Slackware, and Dropline updated the GNome packages for me. The Dropline forums are also very helpful.

Now I know how to do a lot more myself, but the Dropline packages have never given me any problems, so I still use it.

Don't know an exact number. It's not too many. Here's a brief rundown:

Codecs - I installed a codecs package that had the Windows codecs for video
webalizer - To track website statistics. It had a dependency on another package, but I forget which one. I installed that, too.
EasyTag - It's a program for editing mp3 id3 tags. Couldn't figure out how to do it with the Slackware packages.
usbview - Let's me see what usb devices are attached. I just recently found that "lsusb" does pretty much the same thing, but I still like usbview.
fonts - I installed the 6700 fonts I found at http://gnome-look.org/ . That's way more than I'll ever need.
ddclient - Updates my IP address with dyndns.org.
gtk-gnutella - file sharing app.

Think that's it. I'll post back if I remember anything else.

1. Mainly slack, but I have WinXP installed for games and Palm Desktop. I've recently installed Mandrake for the hell of it,and I've setup more partitions so I could try other distros.

2. No I don't use autoupdaters. I like to install things by myself so it's easier to debug and fix errors if you know what just got installed.

3. No, I don't use dropline coz of the not so good things I've read about it. But I wanna try it on my other machine.

4. Lots
mplayer, easytag, grip, gnome-ppp, rhythmbox, gshield, firefox, openoffice, chkrootkit, rkhunter, checkinstall, gnome-pkgtool, giFT and others
oh yah most importantly frozen bubble, pingus and battle for wesnoth

1) I previously used redhat as my workstation but a couple of weeks ago i decided i don't want to use it anymore and so i switched to slackware. i currently have slackware 10.2 as my workstation. i tried others like freebsd, gentoo but settled for slackware. i think i would like to be a slacker instead.

p.s: i use the vmware workstation for all purposes of testing new os. i think its the best way to fiddle and nothing could go wrong and i don't really care if it did. i would just shut the whole thing down and start from scratch. he he!

2) no i don't use any auto updating software. i don't need to. my machine is configured just right for me. if i ever need to update anything i will do it manually. i like googling and this way i know what i am doing and how? you see i am just learning.

3) i use kde as my default desktop. maybe its because i am familliar with it since my redhat days or maybe its the best one there is. i tried others like fluxbox, fwvm blah blah but in my view they lacked something maybe a totalness. with kde i know what is where so that i can get to it damn fast when i need them. the others i know are minimalist but then i am not.

4) ya chrootkit, actually i have thinking about this rootkit stuff for a while and where else to search other than my favorite forum. i tried 'chrootkit in slackware' in the search box and the only hit was this thread. amazing huh! how things turn up. anyway i am researching this chrootkit thing maybe you guys could help.

have fun!

1.Yes,I have multiple OS on my desktop.60% on WinXP,30% on Slackware,10% on FreeBSD.

2.I don't.Because I have seen you guys posted messages which swaret or alike will screw things up.I update my Slackware manually.

3.I did.However,I discovered that would slow things down.I turn to fluxbox a week ago,very nice.

4.Like many others,MPlayer.And other like Acrobat Reader,RealPlayer or something.

The following is a list of the items that upgraded on a stock Slackware 10.2 system:

http://dropline-gnome.sourceforge.ne...pic.php?t=4739

Just a note: All packages are listed in the dropline-installer, allowing the user to select them before installation. It relies on advanced users to make their own selections if they do not wish to have a full install.

At home, a dual boot Slack/Win98. I run Slack whenever I can, but need Windows for MS Access and proprietary software packages that I need for work. The kids like their Windows games too.
At work, I administer three servers, all running Slack. One could boot into XP, but since I got all the necessary details to configure it for Slack it hasn't happened.
I have never run anything apart from Slack, although someone gave me an Ubuntu CD a couple of months ago. One day I might be crazy enough to try it.

My first upgrade I did manually, learnt a lot but wished for an automated tool. Ran swaret a few times with no problems, then had a major meltdown once when my dialup connection dropped out. I missed out on getting some vital packages, swaret continued and installed what it had received. Recovering without a working internet connection to begin with taught me a lot more. Maybe you should earn a Slack merit badge after recovering from a swaret disaster? Automatic updaters are good for automated download, but automatic upgrade is like driving on bald tyres.

I have never used Dropline Gnome. I tried Gnome in earlier Slack versions, but I was still learning Slack and Gnome was always problems whereas KDE just worked. Also I have antiquated hardware, and Gnome was too big of a performance hit. I am currently spending a lot of time in XFCE.

From the extras directory, I like K3B, XCDRoast and especially checkinstall. I must get around to trying slackpackage.
From the wider world, wine (to try and break the dependency on those proprietary packages), scribus, ocrad (so that I have OCR in Kooka), povray ( so that KPovModeller works) as well as GNU scientific software of little appeal to the masses. There are others that I have tried but not made much use of.

Thanks for the opportunity to try those QUOTE things!

Have fun!

Slack all day every day....have alot of other machines but for my day to day use this is the box for me... plus it is the best hardware wise out of all my machines so it was a natural choice for me to want to put slack on here.
Slapt-get....but honestly hardly ever use it, when I do downloads only.
No gnome here please. KDE on this box, flux on my slack laptop install.
Lots...bt does using rpm2tgz to convert an rpm count as a non standard package...?
anyways thanks pat...

1. Do you use multiple distributions on your main machine(s)? Do you run mostly Slack? Do you run mostly something else?

I've got Slack on on drive and Debian Sarge on the other. Slackware is my main OS.



2. Do you use an automatic updater (swaret, slapt-get, etc.)? If so which one? Why or why not?
No, I download to a directory and use upgradepkg.


3. Do you use Dropline Gnome? Why or why not?

I use either kde or xfce.

4. Other than the above how many non distribution packages do you use?
Openoffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Moneydance, K3b, etc, etc.

1- Just Slack is physically installed. I have CentOS, Ubuntu and SLES installed in VMWare to play with, but I am not really using them.

2- No. I run Slackware stable so updates are few. I like to do it manually because this way I know exactly what happens. Useful if there's a problem after the upgrade.

3- I don't like GNOME, I prefer KDE.

4- Most from Linuxpackages, a few made by myself. But I rarely have to create packages myself. Most important ones for me are OpenOffice and Guarddog.