Hello,

I come from RedHat world and I'm used to yum and rpm package managers.

Is there a similar way to install and update Slackware?

How do I find and install the dkms package?

Thanks for any help provided

Slackware is very different from what you're used to.

The straight answer to your first question is, "no." You are expected to maintain the system yourself. Updates, upgrades & patches are made available, but they aren't automatically downloaded or installed for you. There are some third party applications which do this, but the functionality is not provided out of the box.

Regarding your second question, to be honest, I didn't know that DKMS existed until today.

From what I can see, it provides functionality which would be redundant in Slackware for a couple of reasons: Firstly, Slackware doesn't provide any out-of-tree modules. Secondly, you should know which out-of-tree modules you need to compile, if any.

That said, there is no reason it shouldn't work following the advice in this thread:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ckware-307883/

Be aware that I haven't tried it (nor do I have any desire to), so it may not work.

Good luck.

Slackware uses pkgtool and it's related utilities (installpkg, removepkg, upgradepkg) to manage slackware .tgz packages. There is no automatic dependency management. See this from the slack book:
http://slackbook.org/html/package-management.html
There is also slackpkg which is included with slackware. It can be used to upgrade and install packages from any slackware mirror. See this article on slackware package management:
http://www.linux.com/feature/60326
For 3rd party packages for slackware, the best place to check out is http://slackbuilds.org/ These are slack build scripts that compile programs from source for slackware. There is also sbopkg, a tool that automates the installing and upgrading of slack build packages from slackbuilds.org:
http://www.sbopkg.org/

Thanks to both of you for the explanations. I appreciate your efforts to help me.
Your answers also explains why I did not find anything relevant on search engines in the Internet.

In order to help people who could come here for the same solution, I'm posting the following information about DKMS:

DKMS is the Dynamic Kernel Module Support made by DELL under GNU license.
I'm testing Slackware as a guest in Sun's Virtualbox and it requires DKMS for better system integration.
References for DKMS are:
http://linux.dell.com/dkms/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic...Module_Support

You could try to install the RPM system into Slackware. RPM provides source code, try building it.

I'm doing the same thing now, except with the dpkg system.


good luck,
rabbit2345

I use several tools for software package management.

1. pkgtool
Included with Slackware, this is (n)curses frontend for the command line tools installpkg, upgradepkg and removepkg.

2. slackpkg
Downloads and installs (if you explicitly wish) updates and patches for stock Slackware packages. Like 1., it doesn't help to keep 3rd party stuff up-to-date, unfortunately, which is why I also use the following.

3. slackyd
For management of 3rd party packages hosted at http://www.slacky.eu. This is a great repository provided by the Italian Slackware community. And from my experience so far, I can highly recommend the little tool, too.

4. sbopkg
Downloads, compiles and installs (if you explicitly wish) packages using SlackBuild scripts from http://www.SlackBuilds.org.

5. src2pkg
This tool makes Slackware binary packages from source code packages. Once the tool finishes, you can install the package using pkgtool. It also simplifies the installation of foreign binary packages, such as RPM packages for other distros, on Slackware.

6. slapt-get
This is a tool resembling the functionality of dpkg (or whatever the precise name of the Debian package manager is...), to a degree, including dependency checking.
It helps to search, download and install packages from multiple repositories, such as Slacky.eu (see above) and http://LinuxPackages.net (a big repository with 3rd-party packages for Slackware and some derivatives, such as Zenwalk).
But I use it only for dependency checks. Once you start allowing slapt-get not only to check, but also to *resolve* dependencies, depending on how you configure it, it may start to flood your machine with lots of stuff you never knew that you need it.
This is, of course, not something to be blamed on slapt-get as such, but on the package maintainers, as they define the dependencies of their packages, while slapt-get only evaluates this information. But coming from RPM, if you really can't live comfortably outside the dependency hell, you may like slapt-get.


gargamel

Slackware has always had an rpm package. The only thing you need to realize is, that Slackware packages are not installed with rpm so your computer will not have a rpm package database. Therefore you will have to install a RPM on Slackware using the command "rpm --nodeps" or else rpm will give you a tonne of errors about unmet dependencies.

Even better of course is to change the RPM to a Slackware package and use installpkg to install that.

Eric

VirtulBox can make use of DKMS, it does not require it.

Simply mount the additions CD, open a terminal and -
sh VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run

Reboot as it prompts you too. Mouse integration, shared folders, USB, and shared clipboard all work. As do guest resizing, and seamless mode.

Could someone advise me how to install notecase and glabels into slackware64?
I am moving from slackware 32 to slackware 64, and I confused with the different methods on offer. I have managed to get pre-compiled packages to date.

If I compile a package how do I know it is compatible for slackware64?
I have a notecasex64.rpm package, should I use rpmtotgz, if so how?

hilario,

I very-much like and use pkgtool, slackpkg, and src2pkg in Slackware. These utilities are very fast and thoroughly do the job for me.

I did it-rpm2tgz worked fine!
It was easy once I found the correct info and a compatible package.
Sometimes the hardest part is working through the methods.
Now for glabels and kompozer.