Slack-newbie with SW selection questions
 

By friendly pressure by astrogeek I installed Slackware 14.1. this morning ;-)
Now I guess the next steps are:
1) getting the machine to network (no cable, just wifi)
2) start adding SW
The questions are, how do you use wifi?
- command line
- Network manager
- wicd

How/where do you get your SW
- any popular package managers around
- Repos? (astrogeek told me about SBo already - impressive site)

And one more: which DE is the most popular among "Slackwarians"?

Why I'm asking: I've realized that standards tend to save you from problems nobody can help you with.

[edit]
Ah, there was a poll: network manager v.s. wicd,
although command line was not included.

You answered your own questions

Any of those will work just fine, though NM or Wicd would probably be more suitable before you know what you're doing on the command line. To use NM just select it in networksetup and the widget should already be in KDE.
For Wicd install it through "slackpkg install wicd" (it's in the "extra" packages so it's not installed by default)

Slackbuilds (Sbopkg is your friend) is the most popular place to find Slack-builds, though there are other places

Welcome to Slackware

Both wicd and NetworkManager are easy to use and work well. Just try one.

slackpkg+ is an extension to the standard slackpkg tool which allows you to add a number of repositories of high quality packages. It's worth noting that the full install of slackware already comes with tons of software. Maybe what you need is already there?

Brian

To choose your network manager just type as root:

Just wanted to add that wicd has interactive user interfaces for CLI and GUI, so if you want to work from the commandline you don't have to work with tools like wpa_supplicant if you don't want to.

I've used both NM and Wicd, both are excellent. I prefer Wicd on Slackware and Debian.

Use wicd or network manager. The old way is just not flexible enough, especially for wifi. Note that both wicd and network manager have CLI interfaces, so this isn't CLI versus GUI.

For DEs and WMs, you should try them all and decide for yourself. It depends on what you want. Do you want something flashy and bloated, fast and minimalistic, or something in between ? No you usually can't have flashy without bloated.

Apparently you have never tried Enlightenment.

I have and I was thinking of it, and it is pretty close.

Hope I didn't twist your arm too hard! All intended to be helpful, but I am an unabashed Slackware fan! ;)

I am not a big wifi user but have always used Wicd on my laptop when necessary without problem. I'll defer to others for more advice on that one...

Some tips on managing your software installs:

1. Under Slackware the "database" of all currently installed packages managed by the package tools is /var/log/packages/...
If you need to know if a package is installed, or version...

2. Slackbuilds from SBo are the best way to build, install and update packages not included with Slackware. But the concept of the "slackbuild" is actually copied from Slackware which builds all the distribution packages similarly. So learn the basic ideas of slackbuild scripts and everything else will become very easy!

You have mentioned needing Eclipse, so you will also need java which is no longer included with Slackware. So using the slackbuild to install java would probably be a safe and easy introduction to the concept.

Due to licensing restrictions, Pat no longer distributes java, but he includes the slackkbuild for it in the /extras/java/... directory on the install DVD (or get it here). You probably want the jdk.

The basic steps:

1. Get the source code and put into same directory as slackbuild and desc files (link provided in SBo scripts, you may have to look online for java)
2. (As root) chmod +x java.slackbuild; ./java.slackbuild - the completed package will be put into /tmp/jdk...txz
3. Install: installpkg /tmp/jdk [tab]

You are done!

You may want to archive the resulting package, or you can delete it at this point.

Welcome to Slackware and good luck!

Slackware really shines with one of the lightweight WM/DEs, like Fluxbox or XFCE. (My favorite is Openbox, though...not included in the Slack install, but I hear it's available at Slackbuilds or on AlienBob's site).

Personally, I don't see the sense of having an efficient, nimble OS like Slackware, and then bogging it down with something like KDE.

(OP, you'll be profusely thanking AstroGeek.... The old saying is true: Once you Slack, you never go back!". I'm a Slackware noob myself- but I instantly realized that Slackware is the OS for me- I've tried a few others, but now my search is over!)

KDE's resource usage is often exaggerated. If you actually use a large part of its functionality it should use more resources to try to build up the same functionality with other software on a WM, since KDE will be better integrated.

Also, what many people overlook: The OS and its user interface are nothing more than a tool meant to give to the user the functionality the user needs and wants. Obviously these needs and wishes are different for different users and can not be generalized. After all this is why we have different distributions, different WMs/DEs and in general different projects for any kind of software.

For that reason, it makes as much sense to run KDE on Slackware as it makes to run Openbox on Ubuntu, or any other WM/DE (or non at all) on any other distribution.

Enlihtment is still around? :-)
Used it on Red Hat 3.x three decades ago.

Got the wifi up this morning using network manager (no wicd, so the selection was obvious.)
Tried to write a message here using my new and shiny Slack, but the server became unavailable in the middle of writing it.

Have other people experienced unstability of LQ in the last couple of days?
Is it the time of day (or rather, night at my timezone) or something else?

Good point. It's like: If someone likes/wants KDE, they can at least have it with all the advantages of Slackware; and it'll likely run better on Slackware. It's just, to me, KDE seems so antithetical to the Slackware philosophy. I mean, I'm glad that there are so many choices of WMs/DEs in Slackware (You can never have enough choices...), running the gamut from Window Maker to KDE, but personally, if I ever have to do another Slack install, I'm leaving out all of the K-Krap. KDE reminds me of Windows! I was clicking around in XFCE (my current DE, until I install Openbox) when I first installed Slack- and clicked on some K program just to see what it was. It turns out it's a remote desktop sharing thingy. Just from clicking on it once, it made it open automatically every time I booted up (even though there was no entry for it in autostart!)- and even after I'd close it, I'd catch incoming connections trying to connect! I finally had to break the damn thing by removing one of it's main files, in order to stop the nonsense. KDE just seems so out-of-context in a distro that is about simplicity and user control!