Hey all,

I dont know if i am gonna get yelled at for posting this here, but it is Slackware related. I just want to let everyone know how much I have begun to enjoy my Slack 9.1 box. I have been messing with slackware since 8.1, but i never really used it as anything more then somethign to play around with occasionally. Now i use it as my only desktop, running Fluxbox as the WM, with a whole lot of add ons. I finally got ALSA working correctly, and it works wihth all my apps, i got JACK installed as well as a nice audio app called Ardor. I am just blown away at the performance i get out of my PC, its so stable, and reliable. And things just seem to get easier everytime i need to adjust somethign on here. I am really begining to enjoy all the problems that I dont have to deal with on my school network, that my roommates have to worry about cause they use M$. I dont knw why I am even posting this, i doubt many will read it, but I wanted to let everyone out there know that linux is my OS of choice and i dont see slack dissapearing as my distro anytime soon. Everyone who is thinking of trying linux needs to seriously consider slack if they are serious about getting to know the in's and out's of the linux structure.

And most importantly, thanks to all of those who post the answers to questions here on the forum's, I dont know what i would do without all the information that is on this site alone. It has honestly been a huge help for me in the past, and i know it will help me in the future!!!

Thanks again all!

Geoff

Cool. For now I`m a RedHat9 user, but i want to switch, because this rpm dependency stuff is making me nuts. Just want to know how Slack manages it`s apps. Is it possible to compile software from source, say optimized for my AthlonXP, and don`t make mess on the harddrive ?? I mean, I`m really tired of this dependency stuff as I mentioned above, and whant to get an altrenative, because it just sucks, when i find packages I want bult by Mandrake guys, who call python2.3, python2.3-base, but those 2 packages are essentially the same, and I really don`t want to wait for someone to build me a rpm package. Get what i mean ?? Where can I get some info about it, but please no noob info, like do this, do that.
Thanks in advance
PS. Sorry for my english, I`m a little bit out of rythm today, can`t concentrate

Yes. Slack manages packages great. You can use Slapt-get, and Swaret to manage them. I use Swaret and It's great. You can build/install from source or slackpacks (special .TGZ files )

Welcome to the world of Slackware SLaCk_KiD. It's good stuff.

Peace,
Whitehat

Or you can always bypass the dependencies. They may still work.

Concerning wether or not the hard drive will get "messy" or not, that depends on how good your organization skills are. If your talking defragmenation, I dont think linux in general is prone to fragmentation. Could be wrong. Also, you can compile software for your AthlonXP on every distro. Just a matter of setting a few variables.

Welcom to Slack btw. It is really a step ahead of the rest when you actually understand linux. I agree with you totally how everything feels like it gets easier. It really is just a matter of learning, then bending the rules to fit what you want.

Slack Kid: Lol glad you like it =] and yea i think alot of ppl do and are reading your post hehe..

CMDR_PAIN: Yes, you can compile software from source in Slack, but if you will, i recommend you install a program called 'checkinstall'. It replaces 'make install' because Slack uses .tgz packages, which are maintained by pkgtool, where you can install/uninstall/update/downgrade any package-program you need.

checkinstall will create a .tgz package of whatever you're compiling, and will also add it to your pkgtool list so that you can uninstall/upgrade it with ease (no more tail -f bla bla......, or whatever it was)

Kipp: I keep being told that Linux doesn't fragment its files because of the Journalised file system it uses (including ext3). So you dont need to worry about defragging.

Hope this helps,

No one yet answered your compile from source part of the question (I think) so I'll have a go.

Compiling optimised shouldn't be a problem at all, matter of factly compiling in general is not a problem if you can't find a slackpack for something you want.

There is a nifty ap called checkinstall in the /extras directory that'll turn your compiled package into a slack pack (run checkinstall instead of make install) so it can be installed uninstalled as a slack pack.

There have also been a few very odd times when I wantd something that could only be found as an rpm but with the ap rpm2tgz I could turn that into a slack pack too.

A couple years ago I was razzle dazzled by rpm but I was much more of a software junkie back then. Nowadays I don't often install things as I know what I want/need and it's on board. When I do need something it's easy enough to check the dependecies before downloading and/or compiling.

I strongly agree with the usage of checkinstall because many makefiles doesn't have rule for uninstall.

I'm too very satisfied with Slackware. Moved from Win98 to Slack 9.0 in March 03, didn't bother to dualboot. After a week or so i began to feel more and more pleased with my software. After just some weeks i couldn't stand Windows any longer (who does?). I have learned soooo much with Slackware compared to windos. Before i hated the command line, with Bash i became to love it, now i'm trying out Zsh

I only use windos in school and when i need to use the familys computer for some reason.
I'm on my way to getting a ssh server up so i can use console Slackware from school

Hey slack_kid, any tips on getting ardour and jack to work. I tried a couple of months ago, everything compiled alright, but when I tried to run ardour I think jackd gave an error similar to " no process named ardour". Like I said it's been a couple of months, I don't remember exactly. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated though.

Oh yeah, I forget to mention that I'm VERY satisfied Slackware customer!

I like, most of the others that reply, am also very satisfied with slack. I have been using it as my main desktop system now for about a year, and I, also, love it. As for adding new programs, I was always either compiling from source, or if I could find a package, I would use that. The rpm2tgz works really well also for the certain situation were you just can't find a slack package, and feeling to lazy to compile from source. Over the weekend, I finally decided to give swaret a try, and it is a beautiful thing. I was able to upgrade all my packages to Slackware Current with ease. So I guess to answer the question, there are a few different options for application management, depending on how you feel, and what you want to do.

Thanks guys, I didn`t think I get so much replies. Btw I`ve got checkinstall too, but I didn`t manage to use it.
kipp, xushi I didn`t think about defragmenting the ext3fs, but thanks for the info. So i see Slack should be the ideal distro for me. You see I have learnt to use the computer on the Amiga, and I really know what can be squeezed out of a 2GHz AXP. On AmigaOS 3.9 it wasn`t a big problem to listen to mp3 and surf the internet, doing some other stuff, etc. and all this on a M68060/66MHz RISC with FPU, with 32MB SIMM RAM (not SDR not DIMM), and a S3virge class graphics card. You fell it ? Everything runned smoothly, really. When I think about comparing a PPC G4 1GHz equipped Amiga with my rig, i don`t think my had any chances.
I don`t want to play with rpm`s with --nodeps --force, yeah maybe it`ll work. Hell someday RH9 will be obsolete and with no support from RH means no packages, and I don`t want to shift distros, like Intel shifts sockets . So I like rather to tweak my system and have it to run for years.
Oh, btw, where can i get some good dsc of Slack, I know google, but it takes time. For the end, how does the installation of slack look like ??

Regards

....?

Anyway glad we're all of some help, yes Slack is worth giving it a try, it can be a bitch to handle sometimes when you have a problem here and there, but you have all the support you need. Also, once you Slack, you wont go to anything else =]

You can get Slack 9.1 from some of the mirrors listed in their download section. Some of them just give you Torrent links (ignore them), while other mirrors actually do provide you with the ISOs. (i think some of the France ones do), but just look through them.

If all else fails, and if luckely you live in the UK, you can get one from yourlinux.co.uk for 1 quid or so

hey wallison, it took me an entire night to get ardor to finally work, my main suggestion is to check out this site... http://www.audioslack.com/index.html

I found it to be extremely helpful in sorting out the dependencies, and they also provided the majority of them in *.tgz format which alleviated the long process of compiling from source. I also found a nifty little GUI for the JACK Daemon called qjackctl, it helps make it a little easier to monitor the daemon, and configure it correctly. You can find it here...

http://qjackctl.sourceforge.net/


other then that i just did alot of fiddling around to see what worked and what didnt, it you want to ask me anything else, you can reach me on Rusty096 on AIM, just fire away.....hope i was helpful!

slack is easy to get attached to and kinda become evengelical about. its just really nice and clean and solid. its the only time ive gotten an os to run everything and run it well. i can get winders to do it for about a week. i can sorta do it with redhat, but its slow and not as solid.

slack is just awesome, esp with dropline

I have to say that slackware handles packages very well (everything can be improved though). I strongly advise using checkinstall to keep track of source installs.

My 2 cents

A Slacker