Understanding Repositories
 

Hi!!

I have recently installed Zenwalk 4.4.1 on my box, after using Ubutu followed by Arch Linux for sometime. In both my previous distros, there were very good repositories from where I could install all the extra apps I needed.
In Zenwalk though, I dont seem to understand the repos!! :(
When I start netpkg, it gives me a list of 'mirrors' to select. When I select one of them, it syncs with the mirror, and then the netpkg GUI starts. But in the list of available packages I see only very few! I tried toi choose another mirror, and this time I see more packages, but dont find the ones I am looking for (e.g. the bengali ttf fonts, vlc, etc).

What I have understood so far is, to install package X, I have to locate a mirror which has that package, select/add it from/to the list, sync with it and install. But this is quite inconvenient to search for a new suitable mirror and sync it every time...more so since it seems that I can enable at most one mirror at a time.:( Or am I missing something obvious here??
Is there any 'official' repository/mirror which contains most(if not all) the packages one might need?

about mirrors:
You can't enable more than 1 mirror at a time

about packages:
ZW repo's contain (nearly) 1 package for 1 task (as explain on http://zenwalk.org).

Some packagers have create packages for "alternative" soft they like.
Some (most of them) on any official repo, a few other send links of their own repo/packages on the forum (http://support.zenwalk.org).

With Debian/Ubuntu, you can enable multiple repositories. If I am not mistaken, a search will go thru all of them looking for the desired package.

If "mirror" above is meant to mean "repository", then I do not understand why you can only have one.

You can install most (but perhaps not all) slackware packages on zenwalk without a problem. The vlc package from videolan works fine on zenwalk:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-slackware.html
You can also get other stuff from:
http://linuxpackages.net/
http://www.slacky.eu/index.php

Hmm, that one package for one task philosophy certainly explains why I couldn't find my beloved Window Maker. I'll go with source install..

Sometimes a search through the Zenwalk forums can yield some nice results. For example, Amarok is not official, but contributing packagers have created a very nice set of packages for the media player, including most dependencies that aren't in the repos.