A while back I installed Slackware64 14.2. I discovered that several browsers, eg, Opera, Chromium, didn't work. Firefox and Seamonkey did work so I used them. Other programs, such as audacity worked nicely and others. Then I ran slackpkg for the first time (to get discord to work). After that, the browsers worked but other programs like audacity are now broken. This is not really helpful, honestly I need audacity more than chromium.

I have been told to bow down to the computer god and serve it, that my problems are due to my neglect of service to the machine. My POV is that the computer is here to serve me, not I it. All of this seems to have begun with Slackware 14.2 and I have been using previous releases without incident for many years. So what happened? Why did the Windoz virus of constant updates infect Slackware?

Did you run slackpkg install-new

What mirror did you select in /etc/slackpkg/mirrors?

It depends how you installed audacity, discord and the other third-party software. Since they're not included with Slackware it's unlikely you used slackpkg to install them, unless you are using slackpkg+ and they're available as binaries at Eric's repo.

sbopkg and sbotools are available for building the software you have listed; slackpkg without the plus extension looks after packages included with Slackware, and has nothing to do with audacity, discord and chromium; with the plus extension slackpkg can be configured to install some or all of the third-party software you need.

But until you clear up which slackpkg you are using, and how you install third-party software, nobody can really help you.

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Is this a support request or a rant? You certainly didn't just run slackpkg, since it requires a secondary command to do anything. You gave far too little information for anyone to help you.

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It seems this started here https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...-a-4175675470/

So a few tips with slackpkg.


slackpkg update
slackpkg upgrade-all
slackpkg install-new (Paranoid, but I do this every update.)
(slackpkg install multilib, if you're using multilib.)

Make certain your kernel and modules are blacklisted. These should be installed manually, so you don't ever overwrite your working kernel.

slackpkg clean-system will remove all 3rd party applications installed as slackware packages. It will break things, if you have things compiled against them. (Like other 3rd party software.)

All of Alien Bob's packages, for instance, require an updated Slackware, too. (His packages are nice because they always work and always build, if you're using his slackbuilds.)

Packages are built against libraries on your system. When the system is updated, if those libraries are updated to binary incompatible versions of their older selves, the packages that depended on them will need to be rebuilt.

Newer versions of Chromium based browsers were likely using newer libraries that didn't exist on your stock 14.2 and you built audacity against the stock versions of libraries on your 14.2. When you updated, it brought in new programs that broke audacity. Generally, this doesn't happen frequently when running a stable release (as Pat tries to minimize breakage unless absolutely necessary due to a severe bug), but if you're running -current, updates can and do break 3rd-party packages as the core of the OS is updated.

If you accidentally selected a "current" mirror instead of a 14.2 mirror in /etc/slackpkg/mirrors, then this is likely what caused the breakage. A simple rebuild of audacity and its dependencies should fix the issue. Coincidentally, this is why *I* don't run -current. I don't have the time to fix programs when they occasionally break.

If this happened with a 14.2 mirror selected, then it is extremely rare (and I'd be very interested to know your error message). However, again, a simple rebuild of audacity and its dependencies should fix the problem.

This is why some prefer distros that offer binary based repos, because when the OS is updated, all packages on the binary repo should be updated, so when you update the system, everything still works. When you're working with a non-binary repo (like Slackware's SBo, Arch's AUR, Gentoo's ebuilds, etc), if the OS is updated, it might require recompiling programs against the new libraries in the core OS. Is does take more work, but it does give you more flexibility when compiling those programs (enabling/disabling optional features).

This is not true. The GPG key doesn't change, so if you already have it in your keyring, don't fetch it again.

As a matter of fact, I would consider it suspicious to update the key using a file downloaded from the same mirror whose files you want to check for authenticity. A perpetrator who controls the mirror could compromise the packages, sign the packages with their own key, and put the corresponding public GPG key to be downloaded from the mirror. "slackpkg update gpg" would first delete the previous key and then import the compromised key.

I would prefer to download the GPG key from a key server, like this:
or

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Thank you all for your inputs. It's a lot to digest and I will have to study on it a while. It was meant as a question but I don't know enough to formulate a question. Hopefully I will be able to pose a good question soon.

You definitely do not want to be updating the GPG key every time you change mirrors! The whole point is that you have the real public key from the project, and that in general doesn't change. If a mirror was compromised and files altered, for sure a new (evil) keypair would be generated and your `update gpg` would set your system to trust it. Anyway, Petri Kaukasoina laid it out nicely.

Hmm, I don't know what's up with your system, but I run Firefox, Chromium (slackpkg+ / alien repo), Vivaldi (SBo), Falkon (slackpkg+ / ktown), and Audacity (SBo) on both stable and -current. So yeah, there are no inherent problems with it all. Hopefully you can get it sorted out.

https://slackpkg.org/documentation.html

Here's some documentation about slackpkg so that you may better understand how it works.

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I stand corrected and edited accordingly. It's one of those things I only do once every seven years or so, and couldn't remember what best practice was.

Hi. I think it's better to run 'slackpkg install-new' first, in case of some of the upgraded packages not working because of the missing dependencies (happened to me few times in past ).

I usually do this:

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OK. More coffee needed.