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!"

Comments

X Slack??

[PeterPumpkin]

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

Re:X Slack??

[Alan Hicks]

Throwing in a shameless plug here. Myself and some of the other BOZOs on alt.os.linux.slackware have been sort on-again off-again working on an updated release of that book. You can find that project here.

Re:Vision?

[Xoder]

I concurr. Sound worked correctly out of the box (the volume levels were zeroed, but that's nothing that aumix can't fix). X started up with my window manager of choice no problem at all. Happened in slack 9 on my laptop, happened with slack 10 on the desktop.

Verdict: Article is a troll. =)

Re:Are you sure?

[Slack3r78]

Two words: Dropline Gnome.

Dropline's a meta-distribution that sits on top of Slackware that's very desktop oriented. It even has a helpful little applet that checks to see if there've been updates and a simple menu based program for upgrading the system. This means you get all the latest packages with a pretty nice amount of ease.

When it comes down to it, Slack is actually one of the simplest distributions out there. Everything is very logical, and nothing is made more complex than it needs to be. Thrown in with the nice admin tools Dropline provides for those that aren't really comfortable hand editing config files, and I feel like it makes for an excellent desktop distribution.

User since 8.1

[brendanoconnor]

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.

Re:hmm

[Bob The Cowboy]

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!

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

just ignore him - look at his website link - he's a java programmer for god's sake.

Re:Uhh

[nwbvt]

I disagree. Being a newbie isn't the same thing as being an incompetent moron. In fact, newbies generally refers to a class of people who have very little experience in something but are interested in learning. What better learning experience than something that has you do the configuration yourself rather than having some script do it hidden away in the background?

Saying Slackware is newbie-friendly does not mean it is right for grandma, merely that it is a good choice for someone interested in learning about Linux/Unix but who currently has little experience.