Hi,

Not really. The install for Slack was straight forward for me then and now. Sure DOS had it's time but that is long gone. Unlike Slackware, which is right up front with the Linux community. Some users claim bleeding edge for their distro. But can they do the things that a Slack user can? Think not!

Funny that the term dinosaur pops up here. I used it a couple of months ago when SW12 was released. Can you guys read Dutch?

BTW: Debian? Nah, I'm not into politics...

I tried Slackware 12 recently and did not find any difficulty with the text mode installation. It was just like old times from my early days in Linux.

I also tried the latest Debian recently (Etch I think). I hadn't read the instructions in the magazine (it was a DVD from the latest Linux Magazine) and didn't type the command for a Gui installation (installgui), so it installed in text mode. This seemed fine and the installation was successful. Later, I tried again with the Gui mode and it was almost the same - same prompts, same choices, just not the same graphics.

Nice graphical installations are fine, but by no means essential. It is when the installation sneaks in things without warning that I get upset - like SuSE changing the Kernel during a default installation resulting in the default Graphics drivers not working. A text mode installation which works flawlessly and gives the same result is fine.

In the past, I have had problems with Debian, but both installations of Etch worked fine. Even Slackware (which requires a little more care when installing) worked fine. Even more impressive was the way it setup the graphics for me without any manual configuration apart from selecting the resolution. From memories of the old days, I was expecting to have to set that up manually - which used to be a nightmare. Many thanks Slackware for that.

Incidentally, as stated in the post above, even Windows does part of its setup in text mode. Not sure about Vista, but XP and win2k both do.

Sure! Dutch, Gaelic, Hebrew, Heiroglyphics, Sandscrit, Cimarrian and a bit of Cave Painting. Actually, I don't. I'm not even 30 yet, but I started using computers when DOS 5 was current.

Right, onebuck, those "bleeding edge" people are concentrating on staying "bleeding edge" and, what I've witnessed, tends to be stuff like Beryl and other eye-candy. I follow the kernel a bit and upgrade when I think there's something I need, and I have a few favorite apps that I keep up to date, but I keep my desktop basic and clean. I've enabled some Kicker and menu translucency on my laptop but that's the extent of my eye-candy. I spend more of my time researching how to make something work or just work better, or how to do something a different and more efficient way. Hence the huge stack of prints I previously mentioned, and it's still growing.

the slackware installer is so fast, it installed in less then in an hour on my p3, thats why I think it would be stupid to make a graphical installer is because they are so slow and the slackware install is already pretty simple so it is not nessecary

Browse through the changelog and see how many times PV thanks the many contributors to the project, including such great people as Eric H. and Robby W. who not only help make slack what it is but generously and regularly help us humble mortals on this very site. (I am so impressed at the patience and grace with which these gurus help answer even the most basic questions.) It is not to take away from Pat, but I don't see slackware as a one-man operation at all.

Brian

The first time I ever installed linux was ubuntu 5.04. Back then the text-based installer was the only way to install ubuntu. I didn't think it was very difficult, just different from windows. Ubuntu's graphical installer does not offer any real advantages over the text based installer, except that you can surf the net while it is installing.
When you think about it, much of windows XP install is text based (the partitioning part, for example, and typing in that long product activation key that you are not allowed to loose). The only graphical part of a windows XP install is all the Microsoft advertising.
I don't mind GUI installers either, as long as they work. One of the things I have always liked about linux is all the choices available. So people who want GUI installers should have them imo.

Yes, Microsoft's installers contain more advertising than information. I still remember the installer for Visual Basic 4.0. Ugh!

One thing I never figured out about Microsoft, or any Windows software, installers is why does the computer always have to be rebooted to apply changes? When I install Zone Alarm or just change something about Office's setup the computer has to reboot for the changes to take effect. Win9x was even worse because if you changed your IP address you had to reboot.

And Windows itself has to reboot at least twice during the installation. Vista might be better, but I don't know because I refuse to look at it. The only theory I've come up with is the change from text-mode to gui, then to load device drivers and finally to start the fully installed OS. As I recall, the Slackware installation doesn't reboot at all. When it's done you're already in the new OS.

The only time I've ever had to reboot Slackware was after installing hplip, although I remember that I once installed it and I didn't need to reboot. I know that hplip has to be started before cups, so I do try to make this happen, but often I just have to restart before it recognizes the printer properly.

In my rc.local I added a couple of lines:

/etc/rc.d/rc.hplip start
/etc/rc.d/rc.cups restart

When I first installed hplip I did the same thing from a xterm window. No rebooting necessary.

When I edit udev rules I run:

/etc/rc.d/rc.udev stop
/etc/rc.d/rc.udev start

No rebooting necessary.

This shouldn't be necessary, as rc.hplip is called before rc.cups in the rc.M script.

Brian

It is now, but before Slackware 12 it wasn't, and I've been using hplip for a couple years now.

Thanks, I'll try this next time and see if it works ... it should.

Actually it was like this in Slack 11 as well, although the hplip package itself was in /testing.

Brian

I didn't follow the stuff in testing. And I could be wrong but, if hplip is called from rc.M, it seems that the hplip package alone wouldn't have been enough. Wouldn't I have also needed the updated rc.M that calls it?

Anyway, that's history now. I don't always upgrade my rc scripts with new Slackware versions since I tweak things once in a while. I do browse and compare them to see if there is something in the new script that would really be a benefit to me. I did with the upgrade to 12, but I didn't between the 10s and 11.

Choices is what Linux is all about.