Slackware

[Mikenell]

I'm thinking of giving Slackware a try and triple booting between Win ME, Debian and Slackware or installing Slackware on my laptop. I would download the iso image from linuxiso.org, so is that the latest version? I saw there were two isos, would I need the additional software one? What software is on there? Is Slackware hard to setup? Is there a new version planned for release anytime soon? If there is, I'll wait for that or is it easy to upgrade from one version of slackware to another?
Sorry for all the questions.
Thanks
Mikenell

[Mikenell]

Oh btw, are there any UK Slackware mirrors? I couldnt find one at the Slackware site but I thought there might be one that isnt listed or something.
Thanks
Mikenell

[Derango]

From what I've heard, setting up slackware is at about the same dificulty level as setting up debian...which isn't the most easy to set up distro in the world.

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This space For Rent

[jbstew32]

Debian is much harder. If you aren't a newbie, you will want to use dselect which has a learning curve that is riduculous. Once you get the hang of it, and take about 2 hours configuring the packages specifically to suite your needs, everything should work fine. Setting up Debian is pretty hard if you have never done it before. It is worth it though because of course, apt-get. Just remember, no KDE.

Personally, I would not recommend installing Slack and Debian on the same system. You will feel like you have the same thing running. Debian is only really good if you have a lot of time, and if you have high speed internet. Slack is the best all around though. Its great.

http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/cool.gif Slackware http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/cool.gif

[X_console]

You only need to download the Install iso. The other one, Contrib, is optional. It just contains optional software that's not considered "completely stable" to be a part of the actual distribution, but there anyway because it's popular.

Slackware isn't hard to setup. You need to know a few things:

1. how to partition. Slackware offers you fdisk or cfdisk (which is similar to DOS's fdisk)

2. what kind of monitor/video card you have

That's pretty much it. The instructions are straight forward. It won't configure X for you during install (although I think it does if you choose a framebuffer configuration).

You have options as to what packages you want install. You can either install everything, or you can install by groups of packages, or you can choose to install each individual package manually. You can also do a quick install (which requires some preparation. I wrote an NHF on it. See: Slackware Tagfiles)

The latest version is 7.1. I don't know if any new releases are planned soon. Your best bet would be to go to http://www.slackware.com and watch the development forum and changelog.

Upgrading Slackware can be a bit tricky. Normally the recommended method (which is a bit of a tedious thing) is to backup all your files, and then to wipe the hard drive, install the new version, and restore your backups. It's safe, but it's time consuming. Various utilities have been created to do auto upgrades for Slackware. I wrote one myself (See: slackUp http://www.moonfrog.org) and an official upgrade, called autoslack is in the beta stages.

[bkurt]

I used Mandrake 7.1 for about two months and enjoyed it since I was kind of new to linux but after awhile when i wanted to go and configure things I found it cumbersome to do so. So I just got Slack 7.1 about a week ago and wiped out Mandrake and installed Slack. The install isn't bad at all. It's not as pretty as others but by no means harder. As long as you can partition a hard drive the rest is pretty straight forward. I got Xfree86 4.0.1 installed with the nvidia drivers and now I'm compiling kde2 and really enjoy the cleaness and superior feel to Slackware.

[Mikenell]

Thanks, Slackware sounds cool, I have 20% of the iso I probably won't have it all for another 2 days tho (56k connection).
Mikenell