Using slackware
I recently started to use slackware for my desktop, I tried it a few time in the past and didn't take the time to create a setup.
The install dvd (mirrors) has all the software available in slackware, it can be used offline.
The slackbuilds site has a lot of additional packages, I found everything I usually install in debian.
In my setup script, I install sbotools which is the package manager for slackbuilds. The command sboinstall installs packages and their dependencies.
The packages are compiled and then installed.
What I like in slackware:
- a full install has a lot of software
- slackware tools are shell scripts, they have few dependencies
- the boot manager is lilo
- the complete distribution is on a single dvd
My install steps are listed in install.txt.
In the normal install, the setup script asks less questions than the debian installer, it doesn't setup the network. When the setup is done, a lot of software is preinstalled in the system and ready to be used. In the minimal install, I deselect about 400 packages.
The packages are less granular than in debian (to get qmake, the qt5 package has to be installed and in the debian there is the qt5-qmake package)
I find the setup of self compiled linux kernels quite straight forward and without issues, lilo is simple to configure: Here the steps for compiling the linux kernel
I upgraded the system to current branch and it crashed:
slackpkg update
slackpkg install-new
slackpkg upgrade-all
wget was not working anymore after install-new (a new wget was installed but the new glibc was missing because it was to be upgraded with upgrade-all), I reinstalled and ran update-all first and then install-new.
Upgrade to current https://docs.slackware.com/slackware:current
The command order that works is:
slackpkg update
slackpkg upgrade-all
slackpkg install-new
slackpkg clean-system
When using current branch, sbotools refuses to work because slackware version 15.0+ is unsupported.
sbosnap update
Pulling SlackBuilds tree...
Unsupported Slackware version: 15.0+
To fix this issue, create the file /etc/sbotools/sbotools.conf:
mkdir /etc/sbotools
vi /etc/sbotools/sbotools.conf
SLACKWARE_VERSION=15.0
Hashtag: #slackware