Slashdot Mirror
The Stealth Desktop: Sight and Sound With Slackware
sombragris writes "Many people think of Slackware as a distribution oriented to servers and experienced users. However, here's an article that shows how to configure sound and the X Window System in Slack, in a newbie-friendly way and oriented towards desktop usage. The article is a follow-up to Part I of the series, where the author introduced his vision of Slackware as a desktop. Enjoy!"
Cheers!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Not just slackware but all linux distro can work as good workstation (X windows). Especially if you are developer or system network administrator (which chatting on IRC or yahoo) you can do lot of work. I really enjoy this stuff man!
The important thing is not to stop questioning --Albert Einstein.
Installing X is already covered in the guide. Slackware was my first distro, I don't remember having any trouble getting X to run :D
just my 2 cents
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
I just wired up Comcast cable broadband to my home network, and I was thinking of adding a small Linux-based file server. I think Slack might be a good choice.
Sleep is futile.
why would a newbie do this when you can find newbie friendly installations out of the box?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Im only new to linux. I've started off using Redhat, Mandrake, Debian, Caldera and some other minor linux distros and i found that Slackware was the easiest to install, setup and maintain out off all of the above. I also like how the packages are not modified.
I've been using Slack 9.1 now since it came out and honestly I can't remember having as many problems as he brings up. Aside from having to run alsactl to lower the volume a bit I had no problem whatsoever with sound and video. X ran out of the box too. I also used dropline gnome which is IMHO a great DE package.
Vision of Slackware as a desktop?
I've been using Slackware for my desktop for quite awhile now, and almost everyone in irc.freenode.net#slackware has been, too...
I don't know what people mean when they are complaining about X, every single time I've installed Slackware, I just login and type "startx" and it works fine.
Slack is a great distro... last year my university used it as the distro on our laptops for the computer science peeps for their programming. I found that it was a good system that was easily configured, but somewhat lacks in the port department. My suggestion: Install slack 10, then get either Gentoo's portage, or Debian's apt-get and install them. I am sure portage works in other distros and even in FreeBSD... not too sure about apt-get (allthough there should be no reason why it won't work).
Also, don't use KDE... I know you have a slick setup, but that WM is annoyingly simular to windows. Try one of the Window maker clones or if you don't like the minimulist approach, try Gnome... stable and sleek... and easy to install.
while(1) { fork(); };
I would say "Here's an entire article on just how to get sound and X Window system working, to reaffirm the belief that this is not what it was designed to do, and that Slackware is meant for servers."
That you can, with considerable tweaking, make something function as something else is not new. Yes, you can mod almost any car into making it a race car. Doesn't mean the original is a race car, not by a long shot.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You have a low enough ID number to have learned by now the answer to your question is YES, that's exactly how slashdot has always worked. The difference here is in the discussion.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Which wireless card? Having struggled to get my own working just recently (I certainly can't imagine it being easier with mandrake), I feel qualified to at least point you in the right direction.
I would also like to point out that this isn't a slackware issue, it's usually a linux kernel issue. Finding the right driver, having a kernel version that driver accepts, these are problems most will face. Will it be any easier on redhat? Sure, if the cute little gui wizard handles this, and happens to work for you correctly the first time.
Yes.
I had to configure how to access my WAP, but other than that, wireless worked out of the box for me.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
if you don't like the minimulist approach, try Gnome... stable and sleek... and easy to install.
Dear God...
Initial configuration may be a problem, but you have to do it only one time, I still think slackware major problem is its bad binaries support.
I'm ok in promoting slackware for small office desktop (very limited applications, like a word processor and browser), but in such ocassions will not be the end user who will install/configure, but the support guy.
Just what I thought.
try Gnome... stable and sleek... and easy to install
YOU FAIL IT - never has this phrase been more appropriate.
Right, upgrade to UT2K4, run it natively under Linux. Solved.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
At this point, all programs are easy to install for me... Linux has been on my computers at home for years now. I hate KDE, and do disike Gnome a bit... but if I were to choose, I would take gnome.
Fluxbox is my primary Window Manager though
while(1) { fork(); };
I know it's kinda offtopic (Mods don't hurt me) but Gentoo has some of the best documentation I've seen for Linux so far. It walks you through system setup, setting up SAMBA, getting ALSA and X to work and using Portage.
:)
I seriously wouldn't worry about letting a noob loose on Gentoo.
I applaud these guys efforts, anyway: every distro needs good docs, but it seems Gentoo has them first
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
A while back (whenever 8.1 came out) I decided to try linux. I read a few reviews, and what not. I first tested out mandrake. I had bought it at the store for a couple of dollars (less then $40, maybe less). I played with it for a while, but it just did not feel right.
I tried Debian next, but apparently thats above my head cause when I got to the dselect area I was overwhelmed. Decided, perhaps not for me.
Finally I tried slackware. What I really liked from the start was they had an entire book, for free, on their website that I could read for help. Although when I started the installation, I did not really need any help. Slackware has a great menu-driven installer. With some previous computer experience, and a little network know how, installation was a breeze.
At the time the kernel supported my sound card, but did not compile in the drive automatically. Before I realized I could of just built the module and used it that way, I decided to recompile the kernel. Also a very easy task in slackware.
Ultimately, I love the distribution, and have been using it since. I have a subscription so I get the latest distro in the mail a few days after it is released. Although truth be known I have no reason to even break the plastic on 10 because I have kept myself patched up and just do not need anything new. It does feel good to support Patrick and the slackware team. They deserve that, and much more.
I will say you have to be willing to read and learn (which means 99% of the world just won't like it) to use slackware. But, once you have learned how, you realize just how great Slackware is.
Brendan
p.s. www.linuxquestions.com has distro specific forums. If you need help, try their first.
Article is toast, so this is just a guess, but here's what I'd do to get my desktop up (seeing as I've been using Slack on the desktop for 6 months now, I'm still pretty inexperienced).
1. startx
If that doesn't work, use the CLI configuration tool to write an xorg.conf to fit what you need on your system, and all it requires is a limited knowledge of what your monitor supports and what video card you have.
2. alsamixer, and unmute sound.
I have no damn idea *why* that defaults to muted, but it does. Then, if that doesn't work, it's time to poke around in the kernel to find what you need as a module. Same as just about any other distro I've tried, really. Not too many of them tend to have a module for my nForce2 chipset handy.
3. Go get a well deserved victory sandwich. Enjoy.
On what planet is KDE 'simular' to Windows? Oh... its probably the IOSlaves that let you transparently save files to different networks via ftp, ssh, etc. Oh, wait, no thats not it. Maybe its that you can get an mp3 or an ogg from a music track on a CD simply by putting the cd in, and typing in audiocd:/ and picking the files you want. Oh, windows doesn't have that either? Seriously. The similarity begins and ends with the fact that they both have a taskbar, a cursor, and windows.
And how is Gnome not?? And they're both easy to install, because they come with the freaking distro!
I recently installed Mandrake in a White Box Machine that I got on the mail with no OS. It took less than half an hour to even get my cable connection working. Most everything was auto configured.That I call a desktop distro.
I have a sweet spot for Slack 'cause I started my Linux experience with Slackware almost 10 years ago. And I think there is a certain market niche for Slack, mostly in the server side of things. Some people want a mostly vanilla distro with binary packaging. These people want a stable, standard distro that you can install if you know the business.
That's that. But pointing to a webpage that tells you how to configure things that sould be automatically configured, does not make a distro newbie or desktop friendly. I am not critizing the original webpage, I am critical of the way this news bit has been posted to /.
Feh, When it can get my wireless card, both my firewire drives (instead of just one at a time), AND my canon A75 working with sound... call me
thanks alot for the advice :) im dling slack right now
yap
you're a pussy faggot. How do you know if its done right if you dont do it yourself.
I'm glad the first Linux distro I ran was Slackware. It has a steep learning curve (compared to Red Hat, etc.), but the knowledge I gained while running Slack has been of great use to me later. I wouldn't know half of the things I know about how a *nix system (Linux in particular) works if it wasn't for all the sleepless nights I've spent configuring everything from soundcards to qmail on Slackware. Especially learning how to compile applications instead of just downloading a package has proven very useful.
I now run Debian (mainly because of APT and the great community), but Slackware is what I recommend to my (techie) friends who want to learn how to use a Linux based system.
Yeah, blizzards and uphill both ways. Everyone has their way of learning, I guess.
I have been using Slackware since version 8.0 and 10.0 is the first version to give me some hassles. Mind you these hassles are minor compared to what you get with other distroes. I don't know what's wrong as I have used 9.1 on the same comp without these problems:
1 - Xine, noatun, kaboodle don't play MPEGs without dropping most frames (mplayer works OK, though not as well as with 9.1). Likewise xine has troubles with DVDs
2 - I had a really tough time getting sound to work (though not with KDE components). It's not an issue with permissions, but something to do with hotplug, udev, or something like that, which I think is also to blame for the next problem below.
3 - Could not get my USB thumb drive to work (this worked flawlessly under 9.1 with hotplug)
As I said, these are minor, though annoying. Still, Slackware is the least annoying distro out there, which is why I will continue to stick with it. Patrick does a wonderful job.
just ignore him - look at his website link - he's a java programmer for god's sake.
asdf
Where is the author coming getting these ideas? The Slackware 10 install set up my sound and video without any feedback whatsoever from myself, and on fairly recent hardware too: onboard sound from an Intel motherboard and a Radeon 9000.
All I had to do was turn up the volume when I logged into the gnome desktop, which I agree should be done for the user in the first place, but it is hardly worth whining about.
You can do better than that. We can see the redirect right there.
You suck at this game.
I decided to stop using Dropline Gnome when I stopped liking the eye candy. I currently use the Milk 2.0 rounded theme with some other add-ons, and it's just fine for me.
I agree, though, that DLG makes the Linux desktop really easy and configurable. It's just that it's not my type and I can do without it.
The DLG update manager only manages the actual Dropline packages. Although it covers other system level packages, it's not a complete package management tool. Then again, the desktop is mainly what's being used, so I guess it suffices.
I haven't had any problems using Slackware on my laptop. It Just Works (TM).
Mine has worked out of the box in Slack 9.0, 9.1, 10 and various "current" upgrades. All it took was insert it into a PCMCIA slot :)
I never thought for myself when I got into linux. Someone told me 6 years ago 'Redhat is the way! Slackware sucks!' The recent versions of Redhat give me such a headache because the installations appear to make decisions for me. Slack doesn't. Not only that, but configuring slack is so much easier than Redhat. As corporate as Redhat gets, they come off as a microsoft of linux. Slack reaches back to the roots of linux.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
The name comes from the church of the subgenius... Not due to slacking off.
First of all, it isn't made _by_ slackers, but _for_ slackers, and second the 'programmers and designers' are actually one man.
On a more serious note, I've had slackware on application servers (serving thin clients) and have never had any hassle. The 'lack of automation' is basically sticking to the KISS philosophy, and to be perfectly honest, personally I find that it's the other distro's who's toolsets are bloated, not slackware's limited. Then again, it's probably a matter of taste...
Ask 8 slackers a question, get 10 awnsers (a citation, but I can't remember from who)
I dont advocate or promote any distro over another. Linux is too personal for that. However, I will say that I have been using Slackware for quite some time and I use it daily on an IBM laptop as my main workstation. Like others have said, it all worked out of the box. And my wireless net cards worked too. As far as a learning curve goes, yeah it has one. But, it is much shorter than learning equal skills in Red Hat, Mandrake or SuSE. m
$ whatis msft msft: nothing appropriate
In the past week I installed consecutively, Slackware 10 (cause I want to do a live cd and slax is awesome but I like gnome...) Yoper V2 and went back to Fedora Core 2 for now. Slackware is easy to install and all but it behave not that good on my hardware (nforce2 A7N8X) the good thing for me was that (compare to fc2) it reads mp3 and movies out of the box, the bad thing was that it didn't read them that well. I also had an issue with mozilla not accepting any submit in any pages (buttons or enter, think google search) so it was really really confusing. I then tried Yoper, which is very very good, but lacks an extensive package collection...and nobody took care of my dependencies...! For me right now FC2 is the way to go, I love gnome and the red hat theme, I love evolution ready to go, and I love Yum; the only "ennoying" part to get a working environment being to add the livna depository to yum (through a downloadable yum.conf) then yum update, and yum install xmms-mp3 xine flash. the last bit is to get my ntfs drive to be read and it is a simple as downloading and installing a rpm. It takes me less than an hour to get a fully configured workstation with all I expect from an PC. People might not like redhat, but if you don't want to go through debian or gentoo and want a good looking, reliable desktop fast, well FC2 is the way to go.
Pardon me for stating the obvious, but a little rant is in order. Every linux machine can be turned into a desktop machine no matter what normal distribution you install on it. The normal in the previous sentence refers to linux distributions that aren't modified to be used as real-time operating systems, or have undergone serious modifications to suit some particular combination of hardware for embedded devices and even then, I'm quite sure it's still possible if you take into account the limitations these modifications imply.
I'm growing tired of the glowing reviews of distribution X and company Y providing the best desktop environment available. People can run Gnome or KDE on any distribution as long as they know their favourite package management system, and if not then ./configure; make; make install has always done the trick. Oh, I'm not saying that it isn't a good thing that distributions are trying to provide desktop environments, in fact I think it's a great idea. But at the heart of the matter of it all lies that whatever distribution you run, you can ALWAYS run windowmanager X or desktop environment Y, usually without too much hassle.
I've used slackware for years, and it was the first distribution I ever installed. I've used Redhat and Linux From Scratch, and lately I use Debian. But I've grown so tired of the endless debates of geeks preferring one distribution to another. It's all the same, just a little different, and even then you can still do whatever you want. Can we please stop our little holy wars, because the rest of the world doesn't care. If a person who is not a technophobe asks me what linux distribution to use, my answer always is "Pick one of the better known ones, and you'll be fine."
Maybe this is a smug attitude of mine, but I don't care. If someone wants to run fedora, fine by me. Someone chooses debian, fine by me. Someone chooses windows, be my guest. But please stop being such zaelots, as it's hurting the community.
Slack does make a good desktop, but I won't say it makes a good desktop for everyone.
The first distro I ever installed was Slackware 3.1 and used it and the other 3.x releases for about 3 years. Then I got tired of doing everything by hand and I switched to RedHat 6.2. I stuck with RedHat for several years after that, and now at work I deal with mostly RHE3, so the experience of using it paid off, but it was Slack that actually taught me how to do everything.
When it came time to upgrade my system at home, though, I ran into trouble. I'd been using RH7.1 for a long time and thought that I would go to RH9, but the installer frequently crashed during installation and I'd have to start over. Then when I finally got it installed and working, I managed to bork it while trying to get audio and video codecs and software installed. I could have tried repairing by hand, I suppose, but it being a fresh install anyway, I figured it would take less time to just start over from scratch and reinstall one more time. No dice. The installer crashed again.
I like RedHat, and I still run RH8 on a small print/mail/firewall server at home, but after the repeated installation trouble, I decided to go with Slackware. It is nice and conservative and I knew that it would at least install correctly, even if it needed a bit more hand holding to set up.
So I got out my Slack 9.0 CDs a friend had burned for me and loaded it up. No problems. Not a single glitch during the entire installation. Everything was smooth as could be. Sound worked out of the box, and X configuration was easy with xfree86config. I compiled Window Maker and KDE 3.1 from source, and had no problems at all with them.
Now I've got a clean, fast system with a low memory footprint, and it gives me no headaches. If there is anything I want to do, some program is already installed to do it, so even if I don't have the program I prefer, I've at least got a program I can use, and that is what counts. Downloading other programs is no big deal for me.
I'm not the only one who uses this box, either. My wife uses it sometimes and she knows nothing about computers. But Gnome, Mozilla, and OpenOffice handle 99% of her needs, and she can deal with them without trouble. She still needs me to do updates, and configure things, though.
So my judgement of Slackware today is this: it makes a great desktop for people who already know how to use Linux and already know how to customize things the way they want. For newbies it's probably too intimidating unless they are really interested in learning, but it can still work for them if a knowledgeable person is around to take care of details.
I asked a friend with a ton of bandwidth to download the gentoo CDs for me, and out of curiosity he tried it. Hosed computer. (yes, he has succesfully installed other distros)
I seriously would worry about letting a noob loose on something that has you play with fdisk, mkfs et al.
While we're comparing Gentoo and Slackware, I might as well add my 2 cents. /opt/ or /usr/local/ or whatever else is fashionable at the time. I'm guessing that Slackware has a lot more consistency across the entire install. Gentoo is, in theory, great, but you can't tell me it's fully mature and ready for everyone. I am actually going to try out Slackware as soon as I get my new laptop.
I've been using Gentoo for a couple of years now, and even after going through several fresh installs, it always seems to get cluttered up when different ebuilds decide to install, say, games in different directories. They could be in
Besides, editing a few config files by hand is fine for me if I at least know where they are.
its WMP54G linksys pci card, and ive spent a lot of time trying to get it to work, with out any luck
Wow sound!!!!111oneone - I think Strong Bad's Compy 386 is going to be tough to beat
I'm a unix sysadmin, and though I've never used slackware and have little use for Linux in general, my impression of this distro has always been that it's built by slackers (thus, the name), and as such I wouldn't want to put it on *any* server.
In other words, "I have no fucking idea what this even is, but the name sounds highly suspect so it must suck. QED."
The name has nothing to do with "slackers", it's a reference to Slack. As a distribution, it is simple to install, straightforward to administer, and has a very broad set of tools and applications available as installable packages.
You accuse the maintainers of laziness, when in fact Pat Volkerding and crew have consistently turned out the most stable, full-featured, and robust Linux distributions available for over ten years now. I wouldn't use anything else on a production server. I hope for your employer's sake that you don't leap to such ignorant conclusions while administering AIX, or Slolaris, or whatever "real" Unix you work with.
I've wondered about that myself, though its usually as easy as if its not in /usr/bin or /usr/local its /opt. Weird, and annoying.
The only other thing that's annoyed me with gentoo is when etc-update hoses my fstab (and half a dozen other important files.) Maybe I just don't know how to use it properly. That and waiting for a new program to get into portage, but that is the price you pay for reliability in dep. handling.
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
What little I've been able to dig up suggests that there aren't linux drivers for this card. However, many people seem to have no trouble with ndiswrapper, which is what I use. It's a simple "configure; make; make install" sort of package, but I'm sure there are RPMs and debian packages for those that prefer those distros.
/path/to/inf-file", the .inf file being the windows driver for this card. What I've read suggests that you use the driver that comes on the CD with the card, and not the driver dowloaded from broadcom's site.
Installing ndiswrapper will mean you need a newer 2.4 kernel or 2.6. No kernel patches are necessary, and it may throw a few warnings, but should still compile. After installing, do "ndiswrapper -i
Then, "modprobe ndiswrapper". At this point, the activity light on my own shitty card starts blinking, I would expect yours to do so also. Then comes the iwconfig setup, which I imagine varies quite a bit. Others have told me that "iwconfig wlan0 essid MyWAP" should be enough, but my machine just acts goofy without getting a link. I always have to do "iwconfig wlan0 channel 10" first.
Also, a caveat. As soon as the ndiswrapper module is loaded, my machine will be slow to respond, taking as much as 15 seconds to see a keystroke. It behaves like this until I get my link, after which it starts acting normally again. So that it doesn't take forever (did I just fatfinger wlan0 again?), I usually type it in as one big command line, like so:
modprobe ndiswrapper; iwconfig wlan0 channel 10; iwconfig wlan0 essid Ansible; dhcpcd wlan0
I was so worried, at first, that my shitty walmart clearance bin ($15) iBlitzz card was never going to work. Just took a little patience.
Off-topic: Another thing I'd like to point out. If you are like me, you have a dedicated linux server that has acted as your home router for years. Adding wifi to your house should be as simple as a few lines in rc.ipmasq to do NAT for a new segment, and maybe a 3rd ethernet card (ok, so maybe you already have that quad port, I did!). Well, access points cost $70-100... far more expensive than those shitty wifi routers that are always on sale and rebate. But you don't want switch over to the hardware router, or worse, daisy-chain this thing behind the linux router, where it will try to double NAT every single packet. It's also almost impossible to find specs on the things, if it can be turned off in the config. And don't even bother asking that salesmen at Circuit City (*cowlike stare* "Uh, yeh, they can all be turned off"). If the cheap router offers a 4 port switch (though I'm sure it routes/NATs these too) it's been my luck that using one of these ports to plug into the linux server does the trick. Plugging the linux server into the WAN port did some crazy shit, but on the LAN ports, it just assumed it was connecting 2 local machines, exactly like I wanted it. While I can only say this with certainly about the iBlittz router turd that I have, I'm pretty sure it would be the case with all such routers that have a builtin 4port switch. Hope I've helped someone.
The only other thing that's annoyed me with gentoo is when etc-update hoses my fstab (and half a dozen other important files.) Maybe I just don't know how to use it properly.
._cfg0000 file or move it somewhere else (I used /root/cfgblackhole/). After that, run etc-update and -5.
/etc/dispatch-conf.conf -- set every yes/no option to yes, and make sure the archive-dir exists (create it yourself if you have to). Oh, and emerge rcs if you've not done so already, dispatch-conf needs it to do version control.
After I switched to dispatch-conf, updating config files stopped being a pain.
1) Don't just hit -5 everytime you use etc-update. Look at the list. If there's a file you want to keep, exit with -1 and either remove the
2) You might want to use dispatch-conf instead of etc-update (it's part of portage, no need to emerge it separarely) -- it's much smarter, allows you to compare diffs, and has better options for keeping the old file. Also, you'll to edit
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
I am still sort of disappointed with GNU/Linux sound. (Saying GNU/Linux to show I'm not a penguin-hating man. Just trying to tell the truth.)
ALSA was supposed to fix everything. Having two cards and switching between them easily. Configuring new hardware easily. It's easier than it was with regular OSS, but it isn't super simple. Or maybe it's just my config (debian unstable.)
Anyone else have complains/solutions/great tools that I am stupid not to have?
Thanks.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
Funnily enough, I installed Slack on my laptop 3 days ago. All went hunky dory... sort of.
I use Fluxbox as desktopWM, and it all worked great - unless I fired up a KDE/Gnome app - then fonts went HUGE (Mozilla here)
Buit, having a few years ;) experience with Linux, I re-ran /usr/X11R6/bin/xf86config and sorted.
BTW, pre-compiled Slackware is soooooo fast - nearly as fast as Gentoo built on box.
Nick
I've been using Slackware for over 2 years in a dual-boot situation (Win 98). It started off pretty simple with a Zipslack install to a dos directory, using loadlin to switch to Linux. Shortly thereafter I used part2.4.3 to create a true linux partition and swapspace, manually copied the installation from the DOS partition to the linux partition, ran LILO and got lucky on the first try.
Still no X or sound, so first I downloaded an updated kernel (2.4.19 IIRC), then began filling in the required libraries. Got X working, but KDE crashed and burned due to a dependency problem while loading. After much trial and error worked around that with an older version of XFREE86 and some symlinks. Then switched from default SVGA to NVidia drivers. Still works but no sound yet.
Next "discovered" swaret and upgraded the whole kit and kaboodle to Slackware 9.1 (very slowly- I'm on dialup in the middle of Brazil). Got the ALSA drivers working somewhat, so now have sound.
Of course at this time the mX440 decided to die and take the AGP on the motherboard along with it, so the system gets a brain transplant. With no hope of getting back home where good hardware is reasonable, I opt for whats available - a somewhat crappy ASUS a7v266 motherboard.
The Windows part went without a too much trouble, boot to safe mode, uninstall the old hardware, do a quick search and destroy mission in the registry, reboot and let it grab the needed files off the motherboard CD. Now for Slack - BORF-kernel panic on boot.
About this time I get a good deal on a 120 gig HD, and as the hd in the kid's machine is dying, another transplant in order. Of course I'm a lazy fuck and will do anything to avoid a reinstall even if it takes longer. Windows - no problem at all, used part243 to clone the partition off the 40 gig drive, finished that part in 30mins with formatting and all. Decided my linux partition deserved to be somewhat larger, so I couldn't clone. Formatted the partition. Now what?
Remembered I STILL had the old ZIPSLACK installed on the windows partition i had cloned, ran loadlin and now had access to the old linux partition. Used the old linux to copy the files over to the new partition. Ran lilo & to boot the new linux partition. Kernel panic. Boot to DOS, run loadlin, fixed the references causing the kernel panic in rc.d (old NVIDIA cruft) reboot.
Boots fine, no X, sound drivers still not right. Oops! Install cd only has linux drivers for old version of RH. Try to install manually anyway, kernel mismatch so give up. Change to plain old SVGA in XFree86Config, finally get X working, and lo and behold KDE is working too. Upgrade my moz to Waterfrog and start browsing in search of solutions. Which is where I am now.
Watashi wa chikyubutsurigakusha desu.
well, we actually have a linksys router WRT54G, and it doesnt even blink when i modprobe, so i am just goin to wait till i get back an dhave plain ethernet to use
Since when does sound not work on Win2k/xp/2k3? This is 2004. Hardware probems you had eight years ago with win 3.1/95 don't count anymore.
That being said, if sound doesn't work, then yes, it's not newbie friedly.
The original poster doesn't seem like the real troll here.
It would be cheaper just to run UT2K3 natively under Linux.
They said "Slackware", "X-Windows" and "friendly" in the same sentence. LOL! :)
Just kidding, you know we love you
I could be wrong. I'm always wrong...
Dude, this is an easy one. The default location of the little Gear do-dad to bring up the menu is the same as the start button in windows. With gnome, it's on the mirror opposite side of the screen. Duh.
But seriously, KDE gives me a headache. It does have a lot of really really nice features...but there are almost too many...it's just not for me. I do, however, think people should try both, along with XFCE, and see what they like best. Personally, gnome gives me what I need out of a desktop environment.
Slackware makes no pretension of being "newbie-friendly".
That said, it tells you how to configure your soundcard at every reboot and it keeps telling you until you do exactly that.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I have had installation nightmares with Mandrake, Suse, Redhat, Yellow Dog, and I'm sure there have been more. I have less trouble configuring Slack and keeping it updated. I did have to learn Linux in the process, but that was what I set out to do when moving from Windows.
As updated versions of other distros come around, I give them a test drive on my laptop and always end up moving back to Slack. It just works and you don't have any little utilities trying to take over your config files.
Slackware is dead...in japan.
Having struggled to get my own working just recently (I certainly can't imagine it being easier with mandrake)
.inf file.
.inf file, the thing borked. Look in the .inf file, it's in unicode. Remebered seeing something in the FAQ about converting .inf files from unicode to ascii .. went back to the page, and there it was. Typed in the command, my .inf file shrunk in half (but still over 500k! holy inf file), and successfully installed.
I've just setup a Linksys/Broadcom 802.11g PCMCIA card on a fresh installation of Mandrake 10.0 Official and no, it's not particulary easy. The version of ndiswrapper included in Mandrake is quite old (v0.4, the newest release is v0.8) and doesn't have the ndiswrapper command at all.. so I couldn't figure out how to load an
First thing I did was removed the ndiswrapper package, and installed the kernel source package. Downloaded ndiswrapper from the site, and looked on their page of supported chipsets (checking lspci for which card I really had) for which driver I should get, in my case it was the Dell driver.
Compiled, installed ndiswrapper no problem.
Tried to install
Upon a modprobe, the driver loaded! I didn't have to iwconfig, it found my access point and essid automagically. After a quick ipconfig (I use static IPs, DHCP isn't for me), a creation of an ipup-wlan0 script to do this automatically for me next time, and one line added to modprobe.conf and modules.conf, my network now magically comes up whenever I start up my laptop. Total time taken, about 2 hours (mostly figuring out how to get my urpmi in a workable state).
My only complaint is that when I come back from a suspend, I have to open a root shell and "ipup wlan0".. but windows had the exact same problem, so I figure the card looses it's config when it powers down.. I'll have to look for a way to automatically run the ipup when I come back from a suspend.
DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
Okay, this is going to sound like a troll, but what does Slack have that makes it better than a more "polished" distro? With the one that I use, I slap the DVD in and it starts chugging away (after I do my own partitions manually of course, and select what software I want first).
:) I started with Slack v3.0 and couldn't get it going, tried again with 3.1 and "many" things started to work :)
:)
Configuration is not too much more than clicky here and clicky there.
Before I get lambasted for running a "dumbed-down" distro (or being dumbed-down myself), once installed I do everything else with my favorite tools -- the command line & mc. And don't get me wrong, Slack was my very first
And who could forget copying all those damn floppies
So what's new with Slackware?
John
I dream in binary.
Slackware runs perfectly out of the box...Or rather, CD. Pop it in, follow the simple menus, the only part that could be hard at all for a newbie is setting up LILO/networking, and anyway the default choices usually work fine. I was able to install it back when I knew absolutely nothing about *nix at all. I didn't even know what ls did at the time, and I managed alright. So I can't see how you justify it "being thought by many as a distribution oriented to servers and experienced users."
No it doesn't. There was an issue a while back where the native Slack iconv.so library was replaced with libiconv by Dropline, but that was resolved months ago.
It does, however, replace X11 with one optimised for i686 (as opposed to the native i486 code). None of this, however, raises any problem with building your own stuff. I compile stuff all the time, and DLG has never caused any problems I didn't have with Pat's generic version of Gnome.
As for pam, I guess if you don't like it, you don't have to use it; but DLG uses it simply because it improves the overall desktop experience.
Consciously installing Linux presupposes that you have at least some idea what you are doing, and why, so you will presumably have some idea where to look to get things set up properly.
Setting up Windows can also be a bear of a job if/when things don't work out properly the first time, which is why it is usual for people to get the dealer to do it.
why, OpenBSD of course :-)
-- If I were a fish, I'd be wet