My adventures in Slackware

[elija]

For those of you who are remotely interested, I have gotten round to installing Slackware and I am blogging about it here.

At the moment it just deals with the installation of the OS. The fun stuff is yet to come

In another thread, I talk about not learning the operating system, but I am about to start to. It has only taken me two years to get here - and even now I don't need to; I'm just a bored geek.

[Freston]

Hope you don't mind I took liberty to add some comments O_o

I'm just a *bored* geek.

Not anymore you're not, you're runnin' Slackware now

As with all Linux Distributions, I could install Slackware straight to a GUI in this case KDE by default

Nope, you can't not unless you `vim /etc/inittab` first. And once you're there, you may want to edit some more. The runlevels at which the standard console getties are active for example.

Taking the advice of the initial screen I logged in as root with no password required

Hihi, it took me about a dozen installs to find that one out

I typed the first command "fdisk", ran away and tried "cfdisk"

There's also sfdisk, for all your geekish non-interactive and/or scripted partitioning needs

A few screens later and I had selected my packages to install.

Also recommendable are X, N and L, cuz it's easier, more fun and more convenient respectively. And Y! The fortune cookies of Slackware are different from Ubuntu's fortune cookies. More dark, more sinister, more cynical and thus more fun.

That's it! A few more screens like this one and it was time to remove the CD and reboot into my new Slackware install.

A full install takes me about 15 minutes. But to fully configure the install so it does what I want may take days.

So far it has been a lot easier than I expected.

Good for you!

The main thing is, what most people describe as arcane commands are just little tools that help those that know how the system is set up. For example all your services are in /etc/rc.d/ ('d' is for daemon). Want a webserver? `sh /etc/rc.d/rc.httpd start` and Apache is up and running. Compare this to anything else, where you have to left click, right click, tab 'settings', submenu 'advanced', select options, and press 'apply'.

The textual way seems more difficult at first, but once you 'get' the logic behind the system it'll start to make sense.

Have fun!

[elija]

Not anymore you're not, you're runnin' Slackware now

LOL Probably true

Nope, you can't not unless you `vim /etc/inittab` first. And once you're there, you may want to edit some more. The runlevels at which the standard console getties are active for example.

Well, I could have installed KDE and I assume boot to it straight away.. I have no idea what that last sentence means but that's what a learning curve is for

Hihi, it took me about a dozen installs to find that one out

OWNED!

Also recommendable are X, N and L, cuz it's easier, more fun and more convenient respectively. And Y! The fortune cookies of Slackware are different from Ubuntu's fortune cookies. More dark, more sinister, more cynical and thus more fun.

Again the learning curve - I may go back and look at what they are and see if I can install them through the package management, when I figure that out

A full install takes me about 15 minutes. But to fully configure the install so it does what I want may take days.

I suspect it will be months... This is going to be a spare time thing.

The main thing is, what most people describe as arcane commands are just little tools that help those that know how the system is set up. For example all your services are in /etc/rc.d/ ('d' is for daemon). Want a webserver? `sh /etc/rc.d/rc.httpd start` and Apache is up and running. Compare this to anything else, where you have to left click, right click, tab 'settings', submenu 'advanced', select options, and press 'apply'.

The textual way seems more difficult at first, but once you 'get' the logic behind the system it'll start to make sense.

I have used the command line a lot in RHEL and Ubuntu Server to configure software and I love it for setting up servers. When I said arcane commands I meant to do the installation, instead I got something that looks like an old DOS "GUI". Hardly unfriendly, just not pretty.

Have fun!

I have no doubt that I will and be ready for all the stupid questions that I suspect will be coming in the Slackware forum :S

[Dapper Dan]

Glad to hear it's going well elija! I remember my first attempt at Slasckware when I wasn't ready. Went down in flames. Second attempt was more than a year later and it seemed easy. I suppose I'd learned a lot in the interim. I was so very proud of that first Slackware install! Still got a screenie of it.

By the way, one program that I really enjoyed using with Slackware (and the app that led me to my present distro) is CruxPorts4Slack. Although it shouldn't be used as an update utility, it enables you to install a number of programs and applications from source using the CRUX repositories that may not otherwise be available. I hope things continue to go well for you!

[elija]

Well that was kind of an anti climax really...

I have a VM with Slackware, X and XFCE installed. I am running Abiword, Gnumeric, Geany, CSSed and the GIMP.

I had built it up to be very difficult and it was really easy to do. Maybe my test laptop will be more challenging what with the NVIDIA graphics and Broadcom Wireless...

I will have to blog about this - so far - though...

[rtrahan]

I got Slackware to boot and run off of USB Flashdrive on a second computer I have, Pentium 4. The CD is broken so I tried the USB and it worked. I thought that was cool that they would offer it. Now I can carry slackware anywhere and just salp it in. That sounds impressive but I don't even use Slackware it was just a geek adventure to see if I could do it...right now I am a frustrated Knoppix user (see post in Knoppix) anyway nice meeting you,joined website today been using Linux about 6 weeks.

[Freston]

Taking the advice of the initial screen I logged in as root with no password required

Hihi, it took me about a dozen installs to find that one out

OWNED!

Oh! no! I was owned, but not anymore , but you, you are owned like the rest of the world

You don't need to log in, you can just press [enter]. If you want to know, the last lines of /etc/rc.d/rc.S in the initrd of the install CD are something like this:

echo "Login as 'root'"
echo -n "Login: "
read BOGUS
# Fooled you! :p

edit:
Hey, we both have 700 posts today *aw* so special

[elija]

LOL. One of these days I may check that out...

It is funny but now anyone can find this post and the joke is over...