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Old 05-24-2008, 04:16 AM   #1
BobNutfield
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New Slack Install, a couple of Praises and Concerns


Hello Everyone,

I have now had Slack 12.1 installed on my lappy for a week now and have had a good chance to explore everything. On the whole, I am extremely pleased I made the decision to install it. I had not regularly used Slack since 10.1 over two years ago, and 12.1 is a HUGE step forward. But I have one question and two concerns (minor, for me).

Question: I have looked at the install scripts on Robby Workman's site (am not a coder, so don't understand all of it.) I did install OpenOffice using his script. This was a 147mb binary, so I wanted to learn HOW 147mb is properly installed within seconds using this script and "installpkg". A binary this large on any other distro would take several minutes to install. Sorry if my lack of knowledge shows through in this question, but I just want to know all I can about the goodness in Slack.

Concerns: When using KDE, I generally have no issues. But, I prefer XFCE most of the time, and I don't seem to be able to use it as I get lock-ups and freezes when using firefox, and, for some reason, occasionally when using a terminal. I don't get any of this KDE. I am begining to suspect hardware issues because these are some of the major issues I had trying to use Ubuntu on this laptop. The system logs do not reveal anything.

My second concern is a little more serious. My CPU temps are considerably HOTTER in Slackware than in Ubuntu. It constantly runs in the 50-60 degree range, where it runs in the 35-45 degree range in Ubuntu. This is definitely not a situation I would have expected from Slack. I am running the 2.6.24.5-smp kernel on a dual core AMD. I can find a lot of information about CPU temps, but was just curious what I could check to try and remedy this in Slackware.

As I said, overall, set-up and fine tuning was extremely easy: fglrx, flash, codecs, all the goodies installed and set-up painlessly.

Thanks for any replies.

Bob
 
Old 05-24-2008, 05:38 AM   #2
digger95
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BobNutfield View Post
I did install OpenOffice using his script. This was a 147mb binary, so I wanted to learn HOW 147mb is properly installed within seconds using this script and "installpkg".
I always wanted to know that too! Not just openoffice, but any large package. They seem to install instantly, but when you go to uninstall, there's a file list a mile long that scrolls by the screen. It's like magic.

Last edited by digger95; 05-24-2008 at 05:39 AM.
 
Old 05-24-2008, 05:48 AM   #3
BobNutfield
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Yes, when I used to use Slack 10.1 I always wanted to investigate that, but just never asked the question. Now that I have a little more time to study such things, I would really like to know...

Bob
 
Old 05-24-2008, 06:23 AM   #4
Takla
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BobNutfield View Post
My second concern is a little more serious. My CPU temps are considerably HOTTER in Slackware than in Ubuntu. It constantly runs in the 50-60 degree range, where it runs in the 35-45 degree range in Ubuntu. This is definitely not a situation I would have expected from Slack. I am running the 2.6.24.5-smp kernel on a dual core AMD. I can find a lot of information about CPU temps, but was just curious what I could check to try and remedy this in Slackware.


Bob
Sounds to me like you don't have cpu frequency scaling enabled and consequently your CPUs are running at maximum clock speed all the time, hence the heat (and AMD mobile processors do seem to run very hot) and I suspect massively decreased battery time too. In Ubuntu this would have been on and probably correctly configured by default but in Slackware you will have to set it up yourself.
 
Old 05-24-2008, 08:42 AM   #5
BobNutfield
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Thank you, Takia, I had considered that and had already done modprobe powernow-k8 and modprobe_ondemand. But I am still getting "command not found" when I run cpufreq-info. I have never had to deal with this before because, as you noted, the "hand-holding" distros did that for me. I have more to learn..I'll keep searching.

Thanks again.

Bob
 
Old 05-24-2008, 09:01 AM   #6
Takla
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slackwiki CPU Frequency Scaling
 
Old 05-24-2008, 09:17 AM   #7
Bruce Hill
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BobNutfield View Post
Concerns: When using KDE, I generally have no issues. But, I prefer XFCE most of the time, and I don't seem to be able to use it as I get lock-ups and freezes when using firefox, and, for some reason, occasionally when using a terminal. I don't get any of this KDE. I am begining to suspect hardware issues because these are some of the major issues I had trying to use Ubuntu on this laptop. The system logs do not reveal anything.
I don't use Xfce, but could this be your issue:
Code:
mingdao@paul:~$ less /backup2/ftp/pub/Linux/Slackware/slackware-12.1/CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT
<snip>
If you notice Xfce's Terminal and perhaps some other applications being drawn
  very slowly in X, then you should try explicitly disabling the Composite
  extension in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, or set XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 in your
  environment prior to starting X.  For more information on this, see:
    http://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2792
 
Old 05-24-2008, 09:27 AM   #8
BobNutfield
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Takla: Thank you, the link to wiki solved my problem. I had stupidly forgot to un-comment the powernow-k8 in /etc/rc.modules. Follow the instructions the wiki got cpu scaling turned and the temps have dropped 10 degrees.

Bruce Hill: Thank you, that is exactly what I needed. I can't believe I read the Hints and Tips both before and after installing and missed that. Thank you very much.

Welllll! No concerns/issues left. I am indeed a happy SLACKER!

Bob
 
Old 05-24-2008, 09:57 AM   #9
T3slider
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Everything else has been answered, but thought I would respond, ignorantly, I might add, to this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by BobNutfield
This was a 147mb binary, so I wanted to learn HOW 147mb is properly installed within seconds using this script and "installpkg". A binary this large on any other distro would take several minutes to install.
I would assume it's because Slackware doesn't do any dependency checking before installing something. OpenSUSE takes seemingly forever to go through all of the installed packages to see if there are conflicts etc. and also checks if the package has dependencies. *buntu does this as well but it seems to be quite a bit faster (haven't tried Debian, but I would assume apt-get would act similarly in both distros). Slackware just installs it without checking anything. That's a good thing and a bad thing in my opinion, but I'm not a fan of dependency-resolving (at least not on my system) and so it's OK with me.
 
Old 05-24-2008, 10:23 AM   #10
digger95
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Hi Bob!

That used to be a fun and well-practiced drinking-game back in the day. You'd watch Bob Newhart episodes and anytime someone said 'Hi Bob' on the show you had to take a drink. LOL. I'm showing my age for sure, but I DO love Bob Newhart.

Glad to see you got everything worked out. Slackware is the best!

Dig
 
Old 05-24-2008, 10:59 AM   #11
shadowsnipes
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Quote:
Originally Posted by T3slider View Post
Everything else has been answered, but thought I would respond, ignorantly, I might add, to this:

I would assume it's because Slackware doesn't do any dependency checking before installing something. OpenSUSE takes seemingly forever to go through all of the installed packages to see if there are conflicts etc. and also checks if the package has dependencies. *buntu does this as well but it seems to be quite a bit faster (haven't tried Debian, but I would assume apt-get would act similarly in both distros). Slackware just installs it without checking anything. That's a good thing and a bad thing in my opinion, but I'm not a fan of dependency-resolving (at least not on my system) and so it's OK with me.
It is also important to note that the OpenOffice slackBuild, unlike most of the slackBuilds, does not actually do any compiling. Instead it simply repackages the official binary into a nice Slackware package.

Also, while the pkgtools do not do any dependency resolution they do some sanity checks. For instance, when you removepkg files are not removed if they are a part of another package. The tools are very quick and, as such, it seems to me that the main time limiting factor (on big packages like OOo at least) is how fast your CPU can untar the package file.
 
Old 05-24-2008, 12:17 PM   #12
BobNutfield
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Quote:
Originally Posted by T3slider View Post
Everything else has been answered, but thought I would respond, ignorantly, I might add, to this:

I would assume it's because Slackware doesn't do any dependency checking before installing something. OpenSUSE takes seemingly forever to go through all of the installed packages to see if there are conflicts etc. and also checks if the package has dependencies. *buntu does this as well but it seems to be quite a bit faster (haven't tried Debian, but I would assume apt-get would act similarly in both distros). Slackware just installs it without checking anything. That's a good thing and a bad thing in my opinion, but I'm not a fan of dependency-resolving (at least not on my system) and so it's OK with me.
Thanks for that. But I would have thought that the dependency checking takes place immediately after the download before the install (I know it does on Fedora.) The actual install time for an application as large as that on Ubuntu and Fedora would be at least two to three minutes. On Slack, it took (and I am not exaggerating) 9 seconds. I asked the question because both installations are binary. As I said, I am not a coder, but having installed hundreds of applications on dozens of systems, I am just baffled by the speed of the installation (completely with no errors, including all the desktop icons.) I just thought there might an explanation of why this is so. I hope no one perceives my comments as a dig at the other distros (I run a lot of them and I like them all, I promise), but it had been two years since used Slack regularly and I had forgotten just how good it really is.

Bob
 
Old 05-24-2008, 12:22 PM   #13
GazL
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Slackware package installs are very little more than a tar -zxf with a bit of logging thrown in.
They're incredibly fast to process becuase of this. Package removes on the other hand a quite slow as they do a lot of processing.
 
  


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