Thank you everyone! All of your suggestions have been very helpful.

That's something I like about Linux a lot, the community is very helpful!

Thanks again.

1 members found this post helpful.

<2 cents>

In the past I found fault with all package managers, and yes even the mighty pacman has screwed me more than once.
However I do continue to tinker around with whatever attracts my curiosity particularly when it comes to things that involve Slack.

I mess around with Salix from time to time and found it to be the best alternative to Slack as far as my thoughts go.
Something I discovered is if you take a Slack system and install the corresponding version number of the Salix “slapt-get and gslapt” and add the GSB repo to it you can install almost all packages with dependencies.
And if you do make a mess out of everything “slackpkg” can clean it up in “most” cases.

But for my own desktop that I have to depend on, there is no package manager but me and sbopkg.
When I work up the deps for a package I list them on a sqf for sbopkg to use.

If I'm making a package for something like ffmpeg or transcode that have options available, I'll let sbopkg run off the deps and I'll build ffmpeg and transcode by hand so as to enable the options I want. Enabling those options is something package managers can't do. You just get whatever generic package that happens to be on the repo. Sbopkg can enable options but I find it easier for me to just hand roll the package.

I would think it would be better to get familiar with manual package management before using package managers.

</2 cents>

@ dependency checking in Slackware.

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The average user will never need dependency tracking. Slackware is designed to be installed as a complete OS and has no other repositories other than what you get with the iso's. Other Distributions provide a comparable number of packages on the iso's but also provide humungous online repositories of every open source application you could ever think of. The closest analog in Slackware is SlackBuilds.org. And every program listed there has a list of dependencies. Since you have to compile all the packages your self, you will do your own dependency tracking during the compile process. Any good Slackware repository, like Alien Bob's or Robby Workman's is going to have a proper list of dependencies for anything you want to install.

If you are more advanced, there are tutorials for stripping down Slackware to the bare essentials. But at that point, it's not Slackware any more. Even with dependency tracking, mistakes can be made any you will never know if you really have what you need or not.

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