I'm downloading the 64bit DVD ISO as I type this (from 13.37). Shall I do a complete reinstall for this? Yes, yes, I think I shall. The Slackware installer is better behaved than some others. Very straight forward and works a treat!
News:
http://slackware.com/index.php
Buy Slack:
http://store.slackware.com/
Torrent Slack:
http://slackware.com/getslack/torrents.php
Page with other ways to Get Slack
http://slackware.com/getslack/
Power is something that should be given to those who need it to serve and withheld from those who seek it to rule.
I'm downloading it via torrent, I've already reuploaded 7MB, maybe it'll help speed up your download
I still have a subscription, but I asked them to keep billing and stop shipping the media. I never use it anymore and would rather stop piling them up in the closet. I don't even install every version and when I do, I usually download the latest slackware-current ISO. I may download this one though, I have been wanting to do a newer KDE build, but have procrastinated at upgrading all the dependencies. It might be time for a whole new Slackware base.
I'm done and uploaded nearly 100MB at this point. Once I get it burnt off I'll stop and do the install but I'll be starting the upload again once I'm done.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaand Hi from Slackware 14.0!
New kernel (3.2.29), new XFCE (4.10) which has a few nice touches, like being able to arrange icons on the desktop automatically as well as showing thumbnails. The standard XFCE right click access to applications is still there. The libreoffice (compiled by Alien Bob) works just fine, which is good since there's no official package for that and won't be a recompile that I know of till 3.6 hits. I don't like the default theme with XFCE 4.10 but all my settings picked up right where they left off from my Mint XFCE install. Also a nice touch is being able to set the desktop backgrounds to automatically refresh/rotate at set time (even different times for each desktop if you have multiple monitors).
As a few additional packages become available for this it's going to be a pretty sweet environment.
I don't seed torrents. I make sure I'm there to stop them the instant the download finishes. It's irresponsible to leave that shit running. I shut other people's torrent programs down when I see them too, and take them out of startup. Some idiots wonder why their Internet is so slow... because they have a list of torrents sitting there seeding on one or more computers in the house. You need to be able to send to receive any data and upstream bandwidth is always severely capped.
While downloading torrents, I do open the port but I restrict uploads to 25 kb/sec so it doesn't affect my downloads and browsing, as well as others in the house. It's enough to remain in contact with "tit for tat" peers and exchange pieces.
It's not my job to facilitate that and neither would the infrastructure support it if everyone did it. This is why I don't believe that torrents are a viable way of distributing anything, it relies on resources that aren't theirs to utilize. I only use bittorrent out of greed. I know it's not going to be sustainable so I take what I want while I can get it. It's a dirty way to download.
I'll just wait until mirrors have the ISOs and I'll download it at full speed with ftp, hassle free. There are almost always better ways to download legitimate files than bittorrent. We like to think it's legit but it's pointless when it is.
I have no problem seeding torrent (legit ones anyway) as I only do so for a project I'd like to give back a little something to. I certainly don't leave it running willy nillly with everything I've downloaded.
![[ GK ]'s Avatar](image.php?s=c5fb71acb839db213904b242359e234f&u=240&dateline=1217293729 "[ GK ]'s Avatar")
I also really don't care for torrents. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've downloaded torrents. I'd much rather just go to the official source for my downloads.
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3L / Intel Q6600 / EVGA GTX 280 / HT Omega Claro+ / 4GB G.Skill PC2 8500 / Corsair 1000W PSU / Lite-On LightScribe DVD Burner / Lite-On DVD-ROM / Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB / Seagate Barracuda 500GB / LG FLATRON IPS235
what, no screenshots?Originally Posted by Dark Angel
aaaaaaaaaaaaaand Hi from Slackware 14.0!
New kernel (3.2.29), new XFCE (4.10) which has a few nice touches, like being able to arrange icons on the desktop automatically as well as showing thumbnails. The standard XFCE right click access to applications is still there. The libreoffice (compiled by Alien Bob) works just fine, which is good since there's no official package for that and won't be a recompile that I know of till 3.6 hits. I don't like the default theme with XFCE 4.10 but all my settings picked up right where they left off from my Mint XFCE install. Also a nice touch is being able to set the desktop backgrounds to automatically refresh/rotate at set time (even different times for each desktop if you have multiple monitors).
As a few additional packages become available for this it's going to be a pretty sweet environment.
Look to thy airspeed, lest the Earth should rise up and smite thee..
Since I carried over all my config files from 13.37, which I'd carried over from Mint, which I'd saved to my netbook from my previous 13.37 install it looks pretty much the same as the last lot of screenshots I put up.
The real differences for me are all under the hood. New kernel, new glibc, new libssl and libcrypto ... that kind of thing. Apparently there's a new network manager (probably in the KDE set) but I just set that up the old way during install since I run XFCE.
I didn't upgrade for the pretty, I wanted the functionality.
I know what you mean, I was just curious if there was anything startling. I have 13.37 running xfce very nicely in virtual box, does everything I need very well. I used to waste a lot of time with themes and menus and things but lately everything is xfce. I find a nice picture and that usually stays the wallpaper for a long time. I've tried KDE a few times and for me it's just too bloody cluttered with fragile eye candy options that can't be relied on to be there every time you reboot.Since I carried over all my config files from 13.37, which I'd carried over from Mint, which I'd saved to my netbook from my previous 13.37 install it looks pretty much the same as the last lot of screenshots I put up.
The real differences for me are all under the hood. New kernel, new glibc, new libssl and libcrypto ... that kind of thing. Apparently there's a new network manager (probably in the KDE set) but I just set that up the old way during install since I run XFCE.
I didn't upgrade for the pretty, I wanted the functionality.
I'm using something like Grogan's settings that were posted a while ago in one of the desktop threads. Not exactly, since I can't see some stuff I use with those exact settings, but pretty close. It suits me and that's what matters.
No, I wasn't thinking that you did. It's just general ranting. Sometimes things people say get me talking about shit and I don't mean it as criticism of them.
I'd probably find myself on a bandwidth meter if I seeded torrents. I'm really supposed to be metered with a 250 Gb limit which adds both upstream and downstream data for that limit (and $1 a gigabyte over that) even for a business account, according to the literature, but for some reason I am "unmetered" when I go to their bandwidth usage site. My DD-WRT router keeps pretty good bandwidth data (logged in nvram so it persists) and I know I've gone over just on downloading alone some months (without adding on the upstream bandwidth) and they have not said anything, so I think that's correct. Others I know on this same service get a letter the first time they exceed 250G then billed if it happens again. Only the 40 megabit and 100 megabit services are metered on this ISP. The 20 megabit service isn't. I have the 40.
Mine is 100GB (down only metered) so I'm not worried about that (I also don't use nearly as much as several here, my record is only about 60GB for the month) but I'm careful about seeding because we play online games from time to time and it ruins the ping on my connection. Even when I do seed something I just try to upload what I downloaded, not constantly for days on end like some folk do. If I was getting a shitty rate because a neighbour on my ADSL node was seeding tons of stuff I would most certainly be pissed off and inclined to do something about it.
Personally I find torrents a handy way of sharing free/os software, especially when the main mirrors etc are lagging under heavy load like when a new distro release hits or the local mirror is just plain shitty.
I didn't think you were criticising me personally, I was just presenting a different viewpoint.
Try a decent KDE centric distro.
I tried KDE on Ubuntu (went back to Gnome 2.4) and on Slackware (switched straight over to XFCE) and both times found it to be pretty much how Michael described it, though I would have also added that I found it an affront to my eyes (it was so bright and garish that it genuinely made my eyes hurt), counter intuitive and awkward to do what I required of it, which wasn't anything spectacularly difficult. I have no problem if other people do like it, Linux is about having the choice after all, but I am not a fan and telling me I just haven't seen it on a KDE centric distro will only convince me to never try one. I will admit that I prefer relative simplicity and subdued colour schemes, so XFCE suits me very nicely, just not with that god-awful "bubble" theme.
It's no harder to change desktop and colour scheme, icon set or wallpaper to suite you than it is in any other DE. With the added bonus of being able to create something (a look) from scratch.
I actually agree with Michael's comment about being cluttered on first use, it now needs to be organised and refined more, and importantly the devs know it. People on the KDE forums continually point out that it's time to stop the forward development and focus on what's already their for at least one version. We'll see what 5.0 brings, but developers are in short supply.
I have no idea why so many distros manage to fuck their KDE implementation up to a point where it sucks. There's about three distros that I've tried that get it to run nicely, none of them the main distros, with possible exception of SUSE and Gentoo, and even then I still preferred Chakra and ROSA.
Slackware seemed fine when I tried it in VB and I didn't have a problem with it but it always seemed a version or two behind something like Chakra. And the performance levels between early 4.8 and 4.9.1 are significant.
Redhat (and Fedora) used to really fuck up KDE... they made it all grey and ugly on purpose, so it didn't look better than their Gnome implementations. (That was years ago mind you, I haven't tried a redhat based distro at home in a long time)
lol. I can believe that. I think a lot of it's down to the number of environments most distros cater for, time and man power, combined with fixed release dates and a lack of bodies in testing for any length. Soemthing's got to give somewhere along the line and if one environment is more picky than another then...
Ok, first compile done (Wireshark) and it went without a hitch. The environment seems to be very nice and rock solid as you'd expect from Slackware.
I have to redo mine in VB, it's running slow as Vista on a 386, I don't know what went awry, but it took hours to install too.
I'm dl'ing now, 13.37 ran really nice for me in VB with XFCE.
Got it reinstalled, went pretty fast this time, despite everything being the same. Maybe it was something happening with the host last time. I still couldn't run xorgsetup, it exits with a seg fault. But XFCE seems to be running good so far.
Everything seems to be working, I even have composting turned on, think I could use this just as well as Mint, except I'll have to learn to compile. Anyway looks like this VB installation of Slack should be a good base for learning and experimenting
Slackware14.jpg
There's an awful lot of stuff available that's already built into slack-packages ready to install and a ton more that you just download into a folder, open a terminal and run the "slackbuild.xxxxx" script to compile without having to know the nuts and bolts of the whole thing. Slack won't hold Mr Winkie for you while you pee like Ubuntu, but there are handrails if you want to use them.
That's kewl, maybe I'll end up loosing the Ubuntu training wheels after all
Before you jump, be aware that YOU are the dependency management for applications. The package manager, good as it is, doesn't do that. While that can be a little frustrating at times it forces you to check what you install and can prevent you from accidentally installing things you may not want.
I'm running a pure 64bit system this time. Slackware64 is multi-lib READY but unlike Mint/Ubuntu64 etc Slackware64 doesn't come with the 32bit stuff already installed.
Back about 12 years ago I think I was running Mandrake, and I remember trying to get some programs going and ending up in dependency hell - I'd hunt down a required dependency, and then there'd be another and another, then some dependencies would have their own dependencies, & some of the required dependencies would end up being older versions of ones already present and upon which existing programs specifically required. It was absolute hell
One I've run into a couple of times was with BOINC. Slack 13.37 ran with libssl-0.9.8 but any recent version of BOINC insisted on 1.0.0. In the end all I had to do was put a copy of the new lib in the right directory (/etc/lib64) but not actually install it. That way the OS had the links and libs it was compiled against and since BOINC looked for libssl-1.0.0 directly instead of using the system links it would just pick up what it wanted without issue.
Another way is to give the problematic app all the crap it needs in it's own directories and leave the system libs alone. That requires extracting the relevant stuff from the archives rather than installing it system wide but it's often quite do-able.
Trying KDE in the new install, I'm not sure about it yet, must tweak till I break it like I usually do in KDE.
I got printing and scanning working in my VM install of Slack14, maybe its time to install it for realOne small issue I haven't figured out yet - even though Xsane works, it doesn't link to Gimp and so I can't launch scanning directly from Gimp. Interesting that it comes with version 2.8.2 of Gimp - it's the first time I've seen a Gimp version newer than 2.6.x, seems like the one in the Ubuntu repositories has been mostly unchanged for years.
You might have to make a symlink:
whatever your .gimp directory is named (I'm just guessing that it will be .gimp-2.8 in your home directory)Code:ln -s /usr/bin/xsane ~/.gimp-2.8/plug-ins/
THEN, you should see Xsane under "Acquire" in Gimp.
That did the trick! Thanks Gro
Nabbed that as well. I usually use SimpleScan to create multi page pdf docs direct from the scanner (for documents and shit like that) but for image scans this will be much better.
Thanks G! Nice bit of info.
Well I did it! Slack is installed
If you force yourself to configure things the way you want (no penguins leading you around by the end of your penis), and use Slackware, you will see how much better it is than all that other ubollocktu crap.
Zema, I've found two sites to be very helpful for getting packages.
The first is http://pkgs.org/
If you can't find what you want there then you'll be compiling things yourself, one way or another. I often use http://slackbuilds.org
They provide scripts that build Slackware install packages and provide links to the application source.
I also use AlienBob's stuff for some things like LibreOffice http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/libr...ges-available/ while his pre-compiled stuff might not be perfect for everybody it does make Slackware more accessible to a lot of people.
The last alternative, and the one I suspect G uses, is to build it yourself ye olde skool way.
I've gotten used to having compiles running on my second monitor while doing other things on this one. I like to keep an eye on the terminal output as things run, not that I understand much of what I see but I like to do it that way.
Thanks DA, I'll definitely be making use of those
Spent all afternoon without success getting my nvidia settings to stick (this machine has an 8400 GS). Originally after installing the nvidia driver and trying X, things were messed up. I checked the xorg.conf and it looked like a messy jumble compared to the one in my Mint install. I renamed it and copied the one from my Mint install, but on starting X things were still messed up. I generated another conf file and the results were the same, and I tried making a simple generic conf file and that too made no difference. So I went into X and managed to get to the system menu, opened a terminal and ran nvidia-settings as su. I got the settings perfect, resolutions and positioning of both monitors etc after I pressed the 'apply' button. I saved the configuration and as far as I could tell it was saved, but every time I restart X, I'm right back were I started, with the same messed up display. The way it's messed up, the resolution is super low, the monitors are mirrored, and moving the mouse to the edge of the screen causes the entire screen to scroll. It always starts up with the screen scrolled halfway over. Usually the video settings will stick when applied as root, but it isn't in now.
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