UGN Security Forums UGN Security: Knowledge Base Operating Systems *nix & *nix Security Slackware

Ok this is going to be my official slackware post. I used to think it had weaknesses as a distro compared to others like gentoo with its aptget and the *BSDs with thier ports collection, but lately I've been finding a huge slackware community out there and great tools.

DOSSlack:
For all of you who have had problems booting Slackware from CD on your old machines
http://www.userlocal.com/dosslack/

Slackupdate:
A script to check and update all the packages in your slack install. Even the kernel (although that might be a little scarry)
http://128.173.184.249/slackupdate/

Dropline Gnome:
The full gnome suite configured specifically for slackware. Installer and updater. Includes Xchat2 Evolution Gaim and Mozilla.
http://www.dropline.net/gnome/download.php

userlocal.com:
Lots of great slackware info and community.
http://www.userlocal.com

I love slack ... My altime fav distro .

I used Slackware 9.0 for a little white, great distro, i am new to linux but i liked it a lot.
Then i switched to Knoppix STD, used it for 2 weeks or so
then i tried FreeBSD for couple of days and love it = )

God i love the ports option, so easy

so, just a quick question about the slack 9 iso. it DOESN'T come with the kernel source code right? i mean, i know i can download it and stuff...but shouldn't a distro come with the source for the kernel installed?

btw, i've used mandrake and slack so far, and i prefer slack much more//

Yeah, that is one thing that bothered me about slack9. They chose to leave the kernel source code out so they could fit the distro on a single CD. I think if you purchase the 4 CD set from the slackware store, it does include the kernel source.
Otherwise, you can download the matching kernel source for the default slack9 kernel (2.4.20) here:
http://his.luky.org/ftp/mirrors/slackware-9/slackware/k/kernel-source-2.4.20-noarch-5.tgz

And it does come with any of the tools ive listed above. Maybe thats why it's title slackware because the developers slackoff and the users have to do their part to pick up the rest. It never claimed to be a user friendly distro. who knows..

Slackware 9.1 has been released. See the official announcement here:
http://www.slackware.org/announce/9.1.php

2 more announcements to make your slackware life a little bit easier.

slapt-get:
The debain style apt like application retriever. It searches 100's of slackware mirrors through rsync and gets you the packages you want.
http://freshmeat.net/releases/137570/

swaret:
Another slackware auto-updater.
http://www.swaret.org/index.php

im on the verge on getting my first linux distro..few queries first.

1#would i be able to run slack from my cd rom, i heard zipslack can boot from the floppy?

2#i want most of the features of slackware...but run it along with my win2k os...so shud i go for bigslack instead , or will 'slackware' work fine?

3#how shud my partitions be?
would this do (assuming im giving 13-15 gigs) and that i might want to have a few more kernels later...I better make the changes now .
/ = 1G
/usr = 7G
/home = 2G
/var = 2G
/tmp = 1G

4# the only reason i got this is so that i could 'learn'...so do i really need fluxbox ?


i found a nice place to find distro's and comapre them
http://www.distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major


cheers...

#1 If you want a 'live' distro that you can run off a CDrom and a ramdisk try slackware-live . Although I would probably go with Knoppix for a live CD.

#2 If you want to run it along with win2k try an emulator like vmware and install your linux distro on that. Bigslack won't work on an NTFS system which I think that win2k is, although win2k might run on FAT also.

#3 That is personal preference personally I only use seperate partitions for 'swap', '/boot' and '/'. Make your swap space about 2x the size of your ram. Boot is where your kernels are stored, but it doesn't need to be that large about 500MB. Your '/var' partition might want to be a bit larger with slack since it's your web server directory (/var/www) and stores all your log files.

#4 Who says you "need" fluxbox? That's like asking "I'm thirsty, do I need orange juice?" No, there are many window managers for you to choose from as are there beverages. If your distro doesn't contain a certain distro you can always install it later.

I hope that answers your questions.

http://emerde.freaknet.org/

No longer do I think gentoo > slackware. Portage for slackware! uNF! doesnt get much better than that.

yea it does:X Xbill, and quake/quakeII/III for linux/;D Games premade for linux out there, they work hella easy well with slack. Slack user since 3.0 :X yes that is ancient, the kernel version was uber old. But if you think those changes you've mentioned are much...psssh I've seen them [censored] do alot worse. I'm glad slack has at least held together, but I full support the makers. I used to talk to a brother, and sister that coded on the slackware team. Um slack used to be 300megs for the iso:D that's everything, one boot, and one root disk. Gah...yea slack is pimp yo, the more you use it, the more you explore it, the better it gets:) user local, and slack updaters are coo:) I like the pun on /usr/local.

bosky101 lol, look into dual booting with lilo, yes boot installs from cd work, the images will load, you don't need that many partitions all seperate for sections, slack will do that on it's own. If you want. So say your windows part is like 20 gigs, you have 15 free, you use Partition Magic Pro 9.0 or whatever to resize the parition down to 10 gigs, you still have 5 free on the other, and 10 free for slack, say you have 256 ram, maybe a 512 or 256 linux swap partition, and you can label it through fdisk on slackware install if needed, then all you need to do is make a main linux parition, 9gigs or whatever. 9.4. so in short you need to go to http://www.linux.org or http://www.linux.com and look into the install directions it's all there to learn, but the most important are those. Also http://www.slackware.com 's faq has MASSIVE compiled info on [censored] like this. Have fun:)

Slackware 10.0 is now released.

slack is great. you can have a real linux system and still have great video acceleration easily (nvidia.com drivers) and good sound (alsaconf). if you want an awesome desktop, get dropline. the package manager now has gui interfaces if you don't like the old text based one. more and more packages come out daily.

nvidia drivers are only good if you have an nvidia card... And are not only available to slackware.

Alsa as well will work with any distro and not just slackware.

And as far as package managers go, Portage has them all beat.

(IMHO as a side note if you don't like using the commandline then you are never really going to unleash the full power of linux)

Infinite

/me agrees with inf.

FreeBSD
is
the
[censored].

And I'll explain more tomorrow when I'm less not low.

.....wow perg that was enlightening I knew there was a reason I liked you

Slackware
is
the
[censored].

I respect *BSD since it is a direct descendent of original Unix systems, but theres something about slack that just makes you feel good about your system