Slackware curiosity

[KenHan]

I would like to ask you people about slack 8.1,
if I lets say, do a complete installation (got a 4 disk package)
is it still faster than other distr .. or would that render me in the
area as rh/suse/mdk ??

I would love to try it, tried it many years ago, but back then Linux was too hard for me to understand .. however now I've got the "tux-bug" in me .. I eat / sleep / drink /dream about linux .. hehehe .. I love suse and rh but I am a speed freak .. and I do want to learn .. but I am afraid that everything will be a hassle if I switch to slack ...

would I for example be able to use the latest kde with my nvidia card and such..just as in suse and rh ??

Is debian the dist that comes closest to slack in stability and performance ??

grateful for any help

//KenHan

[Neoslak]

I would like to ask you people about slack 8.1,
if I lets say, do a complete installation (got a 4 disk package)
is it still faster than other distr .. or would that render me in the
area as rh/suse/mdk ??

I would love to try it, tried it many years ago, but back then Linux was too hard for me to understand .. however now I've got the "tux-bug" in me .. I eat / sleep / drink /dream about linux .. hehehe .. I love suse and rh but I am a speed freak .. and I do want to learn .. but I am afraid that everything will be a hassle if I switch to slack ...

would I for example be able to use the latest kde with my nvidia card and such..just as in suse and rh ??

Is debian the dist that comes closest to slack in stability and performance ??

grateful for any help

//KenHan

My 2 cents worth is that Slackware is great. I like Debian, too but as far as ease of optimizing, making custom packages from source, stability, performance, etc. I like Slackware the best. It is also much easier to install than Debian, I think.

I'm running KDE-3.04 and it works fine with the NVidia drivers, as does Gnome and a whole bunch of other multimedia apps I use - Mplayer, Xine, etc.

I've got 5 computers running Slackware and two running Debian and although I love Debian's "apt-get update" and it's stability, I like to play with a lot of "bleeding-edge" stuff and Slackware works with everything I throw at it. Slack is also, IMHO, more standard and standards-based... more BSD-like and Unix like than the other distros.
This means it is much easier to port software to it. Slackware even runs rpm if that's what you like, and comes with rpm to tgz conversion tools. I much prefer slackware's .tgz packages that can be easily worked with on any *nix computer that has tar on it.

Although Slackware's package system (pkgtools) doesn't really support dependency checking, I've never really had a problem there. the ldd command will tell you what libraries an executable depends on, on the off chance that you have a dependency problem.

I'm running Slackware 9 beta 1 on several machines and it is even better and faster than Slackware 8.1. It's based on GCC 3.2.

The Slackware 9 beta 1 has KDE-3.1rc2 in the "extras" directory but I haven't tried it yet.

Anyway, hope this helps. I really think once you've tried slack you won't go back!

Cheers

Chuck Bell
crbell@linuxmail.org

[KenHan]

Thank you very much for answering and straight that out for me,
I ordered a 4cd dist slackware from the web today, dunno really what
else is on it other than the cd 1 and the source ...

But maybe I would be better of trying that "current" version ?

Did I understand you right when I suppose I don't have to know 400 different compiling techniques to get things to work ?



And that it is still faster even though I might not be able to recompile the kernel and do tweaks like that for a good while (hard to know what to select and deselect in the conf section before compiling) ?

I appreciate your time and help..

//KenHan

[Neoslak]

Glad to hear your ordered Slackware! Well done.

I recommend you just install version 8.1 which is, I'm sure, what will be on your CDs when they arrive. The "current" version is still considered a beta testing version and is a little more likely to cause problems than the officially released version.

To get going with Slackware here are a few pointers that I recommend...

If you are planning to dual-boot Linux with some other operating system, I recommend you put Slackware on it's own hard disk if you can.
Make a list of what hardware your computer uses - what video card, modem, network card, sound card, etc.

Read the Slackware-howto that should be in the root directory of the install CD. Also check out "Slackware Linux Essentials" at http://www.slackware.com/book/

The part that seems to confuse some new users is setting up their partitions. Rather than install everthing in one partition, I recommend planning your disk layout a little bit before installing.

Assuming you have one IDE hard drive, it will be called /dev/hda

Depending on the size of your hard drive, I recommend making 4 partitions layed out as follows:

/dev/hda1 / # The root parition: give this at least 500 Mb but I'd recommend a Gig or so if you have it to spare.

/dev/hda2 /usr # I usually split the difference (however much space is left after partitoning the root and swap) between /usr and /home

/dev/hda3 /home

/dev/hda4 swap # A swap parition (128 Mb is a good size)

This is just my idea of a sensible layout... Other people have different opinions but there are many good reasons, including security, to at least give the root it's own partition.

After you get everthing installed and running, you will definitely want to build your own custom Linux kernel, but it isn't hard. In fact it is rather enjoyable to many people. :-) You may find you have to build your own kernel to support your sound card or other hardware. But this is true of any Linux distibution.

Besides, Slackware 8.1 comes with linux-2.4.18 and linux-2.4.19 has been out for quite a while. You might as well download and install it and gain the improvements the latest stable kernel release offers.

Don't be intimidated, though. Yes, there are a lot of options, but just read the README file in the /usr/src/linux-2.4.19 directory, follow the directions, and choose the options that you are sure of. If not sure, there are help screens, lot's of documentation, and forums like this.
It is actually very cool to go through all the kernel options just to see what they are and learn a little about what all technologies Linux supports.

And, to put things in perspective... realize you *can't* recompile the Windows kernel, even if you really needed to!

Essentially, with a new kernel source in /usr/src/linux the sequence is:

make mrproper
make menuconfig
make dep
make bzImage
make modules
make modules_install

Then copy /usr/src/linux-2.4.19/System.map to /boot/System.map
copy /usr/src/linux-2.4.19/arch/i386/boot/bzImage to /boot/vmlinuz

lilo

and reboot.

Anyway... just a little info to, hopefully, smooth out any bumps in the road.


Hope this helps -

Chuck Bell

[KenHan]

Thanks guys so very much for your help !!
got it running now ... and it ROCKS!

It's alot faster on my machine than the other distributions I've tried
only got one minor problem with it and that is that when I run as root my sounds works fine in kde, but when I run it as a ordinary user (users -group) I get an error when starting kde.
this:
sound server error
cannot open /dev/dsp (permission denied)
using device null
anyone have a clue ?
I cannot find a "/dev/dsp" .. but like I said it works perfect when root ... but other than that it does run flawlessly, and I got everything working that I used to have in rh and suse ..

cool ..

thanks again ..
:

//KenHan

[SkyNet]

KenHan,

Slackware by default doesn't create a audio group like many other distro's. This means you'll have to do it. I'm going to bed, so for now I'll give you the crappy simple solution. Later I'll give you the secure better solution.

Okay this should give you sound with normal users. Become root if you arn't already and type: chmod ugo+rwx /dev/dsp

Exit root, login as a user, and enjoy.

[KenHan]

Thanks man ..

got it all to work

//KenHan

[SkyNet]

Ok the best way to setup your audio so that your mixer, etc, etc will work is to do this:

Edit /etc/group, and add an entry called audio it could look something like this:
audio::102:root,usersname

You will want to make sure the user you're using is in the groups allowed to access it. Hence usersname.

Ok after this in done, you'll want to correct the group of the audio,mixer, and dsp files. So become root, and move into /dev. Once done set your dsp back to it's original permissions with chmod ugo-x dsp then issue again chmod o-rw dsp. There now dsp should be the way we want it.

Ok last 3 steps:
chgrp audio audio*
chgrp audio mixer*
chgrp audio dsp*

This will change the group for those corresponding files to audio, so that every user listed in audio's group will have access to those files, and no one else.