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The Stealth Desktop Part III
uninet writes "In the third installment of the Stealth Desktop series about Slackware Linux, Eduardo Sánchez builds upon the previous steps of Part I and Part II. Continuing where those parts left off, he introduces the subjects of user, font and printer management in Slackware using KDE."
To be fair , slackware isn't really the first choice as a desktop system but it is among the first choices for a backend server (I use it for such myself). With that in mind I'm not sure how to configure printers via a GUI is all that much use for most slackware users. I personally would be far more interested to see how to do it via the command line so you can configure the things via a dial up at 3 in the morning when things have gone pear shaped at work. Anyway , no doubt other people will have other opinions :)
Slackware was my first and still favorite Linux distro (back from the a.out days). At one point I uninstalled both Redhat and Debian in favor of Slackware. Eduardo should be commended on making Slackware more accessable to those who want to try Linux.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
Not talking about slaskware as the distro, or the server distro, but like linspire, and perhaps SuSE, they are aiming at really easy to run and user experience oriented linux.
The article picks up on some great standard management applications, KUser and font installer, the whoel article reads like a PCPro article about windows 98 through XP - and many people read those articles and glean new ways to use thier OS.
even the printer installation looks scarey, but upon reading I can imagine a newbie person running this command, setting it up, seeing the results, and then using the fairly friendly dialogues to complete the tasks.
Figure 18 I had to check they weren't comparing with windows way of doing things.
I have to say, linux has crept from being 'will it ever be ready for the desktop' to 'which distro will desktop people pick'
I recommend you let some of your friends read this and see how easy it all is.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
This CUPS Horror fairly describes why a Gooey interface to printers are not enough.
Looks like the article was slashdottedQuidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Slackware is a great distribution and very well-suited for custom servers and *nix fans. I have purchased Slackware CDs and have a machine in my home with Slackware 10.0. I have also met people running their small business only with Slackware. It is also a great distribution for experimentation and for learning the inner workings of GNU/Linux.
Out of all the distros, I really wish Slackware would just go away.
Blah,blah,blah open source is all about choice...
But every damn time some person is looking to dump Windows and migrate to Linux and needs some realistic advice on which distro to go for, some clown pipes in to 'put his props in for Slackware'
Just stop it. Please. You can't possibly be doing any more damage to Windows people looking for a clear and easy migration path.
So, here we have a person who has never heard of "Windows Update". Like any software, bugs are inevitable, and updates happen as a result. Just be glad someone is updating the software rather than simply letting all of the vulnerabilities ferment.
I think the main issues of feature comparison between distributions, in the context of widespread desktop adoption, are (in order of importance):
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
try the google cache
If you don't learn from history,
then you are an idiot by definition.
--- Vadim Yasinovsky
As a comparably new convert to Debian (I run knoppix at work for web development) I'm interested to hear comparisons between Debain and Slack. Both seem to have similar advantages over other distros ( package management, power and configurability) and both are seen as slightly 'newbie hostile'. I've tried strains of linux that weren't Debian (SUSE and Red Hat have their nice points, but both lasted about a day) - what's to reccomend me to Slack?
---- death to all fanatics
Nice to see someone actually written something about Slackware. Slackwares always been my favorite distro .. I used to be a control freak i guess, thats why i like it. Im thinking of changing now tho, prolly because im getting too lazy for all this slackin :)
SuSE, Mandrake, Xandros, Linspire, Knoppix, TurboLinux, Ark, Mepis and more have had those three points solved ages ago. Nowawadays you CHOOSE your difficulty.
If like me you just want a system to surf the web, play games, write documents you use one of those distros.
If you want to do stuff like programming and servers get Debian, Redhat or Whitebox.
If you have no life and want to tinker all day you get Gentoo, Slackware, Arch etc.
Thats the point of distros, if you don't want to tinker, don't download the tinker distros.
For the record, I use Ubuntu, the hot new GNOME 2.8 based desktop distro, its so easy use I thought someone replaced my computer with a Mac!
Having been using Unix for 15 years it is hard for me to tell if Linux is there yet as I am not a naieve user, but the likes of Lindows and Lycoris seem to be very usable, as do distributions with slightly less of a naieve user focus such as SuSe and Mandrake (and RedHat was going in that direction to before the Enterprise/Fedora split). So things are going in the right direction at least.
What would be interesting is to see a proper survey of users of a variety of levels who have never previously used Linux and see how they react to the latest distros on the desktop.
IMO, these guides are useful for general Linux users who want a guide to various tools on their desktop.
Slackware users, on the other hand, tend to prefer a more terminal/console-centric view, so the usefulness of this guide to anyone using Slackware for, as I've usually seen it, a server of some kind [printer, file, FTP, web], would probably do better to read some other documentation.
Just my $0.25.
It's only an insult if it's not true.
Although there are many important differences between different distros, aside from some configuration utilities, (which make a large difference to unfamiliar people), they all offer the same software written by someone else and hope that they have compiled it correctly and have it running stabley. GNU/Linux is all about the same whichever flavor you like it.
It has recently been released and it has caused quite a stir for its ease of use despite being based on Debian. For me its the first GNOME since 1.4 that is better than KDE. I suggest you try it and you will see why Slackware is a minority and why thousands of user are switching to Ubuntu!
Ubuntu Linux
Wikipedia article.
I used to use Redhat/mandrake on the desktop. But then I discovered Slackware and started running it on my desktop. Its very good... but you need to know a bit about the internals before you can start using it. I like it because it doesnt try do everything for you and installing other things is easy. I think its also a good distro to start learning linux.
at linuxpackages.net the development of non-slackware packages for slackware seems to validate the gentoo philosophy of choice and flexibility.
I've been running Slackware 10 on a Pentium II 200 MHz with 128 MB RAM (XFCE, not Gnome or KDE) with acceptable performance.
Any real Linux user should create an LFS system at least once. I found it a usefull and educational process, and it gretaly helped me to understand things that were previously somewhat mysterious, like the boot process.
It only takes one afternoon with a decent machine to get a basic booting system, another on top of that to have a full X session with most desktop goodies.
Once I was at this point, I really only used the system for a few days before installing Gentoo again (maintainging all those apps yourself with no packaging system is a pain), but I still don't consider it a waste of time.
Try it out!
Oh, cmon! Be a little fair will, you?
The way I learned how Linux works, as in for real, was by using Slackware. I'll admit SuSe and Debian are way ahead in the ease-of-use department, but trying to tweak those distro's is something I find truly painfull. And it hides the inner workings so well, that moving to another distro means learning everything all over.
But to your piont, if you've read the configuration manual for slackware (yes, if you're truly clueless at something, you can resort to manuals), it's right there.
So even if the installer doesn't tell you, it's not like it's a big mysterious secret how to config X. And if you know it's called X and you want to run it... You probably know about XFree86Config?
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
If you have no life and want to tinker all day you get Gentoo, Slackware, Arch etc.
You'd think this would be mod'ed flamebait or troll allready, this being slashdot and all?
And yes, I use Slack and as current state of affairs I have no life :)
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
I have a few gmail invites.
oh yeah....& I use slackware.
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
Slackware 4.0 and beyond have a nice, clean installer. You put in the CD, and receive a message that says: type SETUP.
You type SETUP, and everything is self-explanatory, including a useful Help button.
You follow every step, and everything gets installed. At the end, it configures your ethernet, timezone, and stuff.
If you don't want to mess with packages, you can always install the full distro.
That has been true for 7, 8, 9, and the part of 10 _I have seen , and the installer hasn't changed. The benefit of that is that it feels _familiar_ (to a former slack user) , or, as Windows users say when they meet Windows-style apps, "user friendly" (to former Win users, like Suse, and KDE stuff). That is a usability issue with other distros, they keep hanging the install procedure (for example, Yast was a pain, before 8.1, now at least it doesn't change much)
It has three major "desktop user" problems.
- After a clean install, you need someone to tell you that you need to use xf86cfg (or whatever it's called now) to get to the desktop. (maybe init 4)
- Printers are not configured in the default procedure.
- The install procedure doesn't install slapt-get or swaret by default, so you can auto-upgrade your packages.
So, slackware is not the easiest distro to install, but the distro + a floppy with a three-line bash script in fact make the easiest (and cleanest) distro to install.
----
I believe most of the talk about slack being a hard distro comes from the earlier times, when it was one of the few distros, and there was no "desktop environment", we just used window managers, and many "desktop apps" (windows-style apps) weren't available for GNU/Linux. Plus, we were all double-booting with win, and re-partitioning, which is kind of a hard task, and now not so many people need that step in their install. Now, the install is simpler because the system is usable enough that you can use you machine exclusively on free software, so the problems asociated with double booting (wich are the hardest) are gone.
But I believe that when people say Slackware is harder, they are talking from conceptions adquired in the nineties (3.4), and not from versions 4.0 and beyond.
Other than that, slackware is much friendlier when it comes to installing non-popular software, because most installs provide headers for common libraries, that "desktop oriented" distros don't provide.
Try to install an updated version of "gaim" in a SuSE 8.x, so you can use "updated" MSN protocols. WIth slack, you can always compile your own, or ask a friend yo ssh to your machine and do it.
I missed the above post that makes many of the same points.
I'm using slackware right now. I don't have a problem using it. My point is that it doesn't matter what I find easy, it matters more what a completely naieve user would find easy. I would find it hard to put myself in that users' shoes.
Slackware is a great system. In fact I'm writing this from a KDE running from slackware. My boss likes Redhat because he doesn't know sh*t about Linux and knows nothing about Slackware to even give it a try. Some people, eh?
Linux makes the most of whatever old hardware you've got: Printing with my LPT1 BJC-4200 is MUCH better quality that in windows which feeds the paper too fast causing white stripes through text. In was also fairly easy to setup (detected first time).
In fact my only real problem is that my mom likes to play a shockwave game called "fowlwords" from kewlbox and it's too slow in crossover. Bear in mind this is with a celeron 400mhz.
"GNOME is better than KDE"
"KDE is better than GNOME"
"Yeah but windows sucks! so use KDE"
"No KDE is too much like windows, use GNOME"
"But GNOME is more like windows that KDE"
"Right, so use GNOME"
bah. *goes back to his machine, closes windomaker and starts fluxbox*
I've got an old Pentium 1 266-MMX laptop with 64 megs of RAM. I've currently got Debian on there. Would Slackware be a better choice for the amount of memory that I have?
Jewnix is for semites and gays.
Windows is the only truly japethetic operating system.
LOL I'll be laughing with this for a while!
Your head a splode