I've been messing around with Slackware for a bit and it's still pretty much hopeless from a hardware point of view. I'm planning to reinstall Red Hat, see what they are doing right with my hardware, and then reinstall Slackware again.

Out of curiosity, what kind of development packages do I really need from the Slackware install? Just for usual compiling... some of the stuff in there looks really foreign. What's the absolute minimum?

Ren

for a basic install with compiling you need
a
ap
d

k = kernel source...

read the Slackware-HOWTO from the ftpsite

Ask about that here, I'm sure you'll be helped.

Nuh ... don't do that, unnecessary efforts ;)
We'll get you sorted!

You tell me which languages you want to use,
and I'll tell you which packages you should
consider/can skip ;)


Cheers,
Tink

For a minimal install you could use vector linux. It's slack9.0 based, but you could then run swaret and just update the packages that vector installed.

I also had a little easier time installing vector. There are install scripts for pcmcia and 3-button mice, it was pretty nice to just be able to click yes when I was asked if I was using a notebook and wanted to enable pcmcia instead of to manually configure the system after the install.

LOL, I love this forum. You guys are the most helpful people ever.

I did ask about my problems with Slackware before, but unfortunately I couldn't find a solution despite many people posting ideas.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=134055

I'm glad to say I managed to resolve the problem with X crashing when I switch to a terminal and back. I copied Red Hat's xconfig file, and made some corrections and I now am set!

Unfortunately, I still can't get my USB CDROM to work. I couldn't load usb-ohci with Red Hat either.

The development tools... what I meant was, what's the minimum from series D that's required for someone who rarely compile and stuff. I checked out Vector Linux, and it seems that they only have 3 of the packages in that series... is that enough? Or are there more that they didn't list on their site?

Cheers.
Ren

I hope I can add a few things to that one when
I'm back home later ...

No idea, I never managed to get Vector installed
on three different PC's ... they all run Slack (8.1
and 9) now. As for the minimal tools: I'd say
gcc, g++, make, autoconf and automake is all
you'll need if you don't write programs yourself.
Maybe perl and python, but that's it.


Cheers,
Tink

Awesome, that was exactly what I needed to know. Thanks a lot, Tink!

For some reason I couldn't get Vector to work either, but that may be because I was trying to install from a HD partition since my CDROM isn't recognized by its base kernel.

And finally, thanks for taking up my old dead thread. It really is much appreciated.

Ren