Hello everyone. I am brand new to slackware, I'm surprised I actually got it installed as I've never had luck with text-based installers. Usually X never installs so I'm stuck at a prompt. But this time it worked, and I'm very pleased.

I installed Gnome as that's what I'm most comfortable with. I'm trying to get my fonts to render well (laptop screen), I enabled subpixel hinting and the like but it hasn't helped. I've reopened firefox several times and it hasn't changed the fonts there or in the terminal. They aren't horrible but I've seen much better on other distros. Do I need to log out and back in or reboot?

I also would like to find a good wiki. The slackware wiki seems sparse, one of the reasons I need a good wiki is for help installing packages as I'm used to apt-get doing it all for me. haha. I installed slapt-get and that worked fine for installing one package but I can't seem to find the package name for a network manager. I want to be able to connect to wifi without having to do it the cli way. I rarely have success doing it that way. It did work the first time I booted after installation though. I'm only about 2 hours into my first slackware install. I have a lot to learn as this is far different from any other distro I've used (mainly debian-based ones). Please go easy on me. I'm not new to linux as I've been using it almost exclusively since 2002. But with debian's babying I've not come as far as I'd hoped cli-wise. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!!

All the basic packages you news to get started. In the /extra folder on slack cd, there is a package called wicd. This is a good wireless manager that also comes with an applet. Definitely check it out.

As far as finding other packages, use the slackbuilds.org repository. Most other applications you need will be on there along with their dependencies, even tho you need to install them yourself. You can use the sbopkg tool from slackbuilds to easily download and install applications from sb.

Good luck.

For network management you can use wicd, you will find it in the /extra-folder on your installation disk.
For information about installing packages you should have a look at the SlackBook, especially the chapter about package management. I would strongly recommend to read the whole book, it contains a huge amount of information about your new system.

Have fun with Slackware!

Thanks guys. I have another question... I've noticed that I have to su root before I can install packages. I'm used to using sudo. I did set up sudo for my username but sudo won't work for installpkg. Is there a way to make that work or is slackware built that way for a reason?

Thanks!

How did you set up sudo? What exactly did you do?

The only thing I did was edit the sudoers file: brittany ALL=(ALL) ALL under User Privilege specification.

run (as root):
# visudo

uncomment this:
%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

Then add your self to the wheel group. You will have to log out and in again for the change to take affect.

(Some would say it's unwise to uncomment this line, and instead give your self sudo permissions for certain commands).

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Thank you Dinithion. I don't know vi anymore (been years since I used it) I don't know the correct way to delete one character, i, delete didn't work. So I edited it in mousepad and saved it. I logged out and back in and I still can't run installpkg without being root. I did add myself to the wheel group by doing "usermod -a -G wheel brittany". I did not find the gui user group settings. Only the Password and User Account settings which do not have groups as part of the settings. I'm not familliar with KDE which is what I'm in right now.

You can start visudo with another editor by setting the EDITOR variable, e.g.

would start it with nano.

The reason that you can't run installpkg is that normal users don't have /sbin in their $PATH, either issue:

or set your $PATH to include it (you might also want add /usr/local/sbin and /usr/sbin to your $PATH as well).

If you want an 'easy' way to configure wireless networking you could install wicd from extra.

How do I add that to my path? Do I need to create a .bashrc or .bash_profile?

For the subpixel hinting fonts part: deadra has made some patched slackbuilds available. You can find the post here


if you are using 64 bit slack you can download mine, created with the above post, you can find them here : http://www.pupsys.net/files/fonts/

I'm using 32-bit. I feel like a noob but how do I install these files? They have a .SlackBuild file which I have no clue what to do with. I found this on google:

Step 3 - Execute the SlackBuild Script (as root)

Make the script executable with chmod if necessary:

chmod +x chemtool.SlackBuild

Then run the script:

./chemtool.SlackBuild
I did that with cairo.SlackBuild but it returned tar: /home/brittany/Downloads/cairo/cairo-1.10.2.tar.?z*: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

I don't know why it would detect a "t" as a "?" though. Am I doing something wrong by untarring them and trying to run the slackbuild itself? I didn't see any instructions for slack noobs in that forum thread you gave me.

Greetz and welcome to Slackware
1) IIRC even Alien Bob uses sudo for some things but I suppose I am too Old Skool. Sudo introduces security risks IMHO akin to windows where users have or can get root privileges with a user password. However lately with Win 7 it seems that ultimate control is reserved for Microsoft since there are some operations that are not permitted even with hax to increase Admin privileges. So if you'd like the best of both worlds, complete security and ultimate power, it is just best to use "su".... again IMHO.

2) Notice that there are 3 files associated with SlackBuilds
a) the install script as in your example - chemtool.SlackBuild.sh (presumably packed in chemtool.tar.gz)
b) the source file including the version used in that SlackBuild
c) md5 or some other hash checker to insure clean download

Guys more 1337 than I will say use CLI, but in multiple archives that require a proper order I prefer File Managers. So I unpack the Slackbuild file which creates a folder as it's namesake and then download the md5 and source files to that folder and unpack the source there. Then run the Slackbuild script and kablammo! ur done! = ^ )

In the case of many multiples, such as wine, I create a wine folder and then let the slackbuild.gz's build subfolders within that.

Hope this helps

Aha! Thanks. I was overlooking the source.sh files. Derr Haha. I was able to install all of. THanks for the walkthrough! I haven't figured out how to add colors to to the terminal yet but that would help me I'm sure when viewing ls in the terminal. I'll get to that sometimes soon I think. Now to log out and back in to see if it made any difference!