Finally go around to installing slackware on my laptop. been a red hat user for a couple of years now.
The problem? I'm having is this, When I add the battery meter to my panel it always reads as if the battery is dead. In RH it just "works", it there something special that needs to be configured in order to get the correct reading? I am using gnome 2.2 if helps in troubleshooting.

Also, when I startup a terminal session for within X my prompt says bash-2b or something and there are no colors for seperating directories from files. again rh jsut seems to "work" the way i want it to.
Any pointers on how to customize these options would be appreciated.

Thanks

I guess it depends on what your definition of 'works' is...

Slackware is just working the way it is configured.

WRT to the color ls you may add 'alias ls=ls --color' or something similar to your .bashrc (when bash starts) or .bash_profile (when you log in).

For the most information type 'man ls' from shell. It has some good information in there.

for starters I can't find a .bash_profile or .bashrc file on the system anywhere. as far as the color thing goes, in redhat when I type ls files, directories, links and so on appear in different colors, slackware does that from the main console, but after I start X everything from a terminal window is white.

If neither of these files exist you can create them with the following shell command:

$~ touch .bash_profile; .bashrc

Then use a text editor to enter any aliases you wish.

If the shell does not *look* the way you like please check out 'man xterm'. It will give you many options to have it look the way you wish. For example:

$~ xterm -ls -sb -rv

Will spawn an xterm with options:

-ls ( a login shell )
-sb ( draw scrollbar )
-rv ( reverse video ) i.e. Black backround and white text.

I believe you can use 'CTRL' and each of the three mouse buttons to bring up options in a current xterm.

If you are not following me on the aliases type this in shell:

$~ ls --color

and you should see color listings.

By putting:

alias ls='ls --color'

in your .bashrc and/or .bash_profile it tells bash that 'ls' means 'ls --color'

Regarding the battery, you need to enable the 'apm' module to use laptop battery power management features.

You'll find this in your '/etc/rc.d/rc.modules' file:

#### APM support ###
# APM is a BIOS specification for saving power using several different
# techniques. This is mostly useful for battery powered laptops.
/sbin/modprobe apm

Make sure that last line is uncommented as in the example above.

TSJ

many thanks to theSuperJason and g00$e.

my battery indicator is working superbly

I had .bash_profile, i created it previously, but not .bashrc, created it, added some of the initial amenities I was looking, and whoohoo! i cooking now.

thanks again