Remember that problem I had with gdk-pixbuf in Slackware?

Some of you might be interested to learn the final solution. In my previous thread I found a solution of sorts, which was to build gdk-pixbuf from source and install it in /opt alongside the official version. But that's really a kludge, not a solution because it doesn't explain what was going wrong or how to fix it properly.

The actual solution is quite simple, though not obvious. The official Slackbuild for gdk-pixbuf uses the configuration flag "--enable-introspection". When you use this flag, you also need to have shared-mime-types installed in order for file format recognition to work, and I didn't. Remember, this wasn't a standard Slackware; it was my minimalist hand-rolled version, Slackbody. Of course the gdk-pixbuf package that I built by hand didn't have this flag set so it worked even without shared-mime-types.

Here is the relevant passage from the gdk-pixbuf documentation:

"gdk-pixbuf will use GIO for mime type detection if possible. For this to work, shared-mime-info needs to be installed and XDG_DATA_DIRS set accordingly at configure time. Otherwise, gdk-pixbuf falls back to its built-in sniffing implementation."

It's nice to be able to wrap this up.

Now that you have learned about the configuration flags, you can move on and attempt a gentoo install...

I like that you made the effort to actually find the proper solution and even the extra effort to post that solution with such details.

Thank you Hazel. Are you still working on that Linux Book??

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Originally Posted by alf55

Now that you have learned about the configuration flags, you can move on and attempt a gentoo install...

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I did actually have a Gentoo system a few years ago but i gave it up because I didn't like living on the bleeding edge. All those daily updates seemed like too much hard work.

Quote:

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I like that you made the effort to actually find the proper solution and even the extra effort to post that solution with such details.

Thank you Hazel. Are you still working on that Linux Book??

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No, that's finished. You can buy it in paperback from Self Publishing, Book Printing and Publishing Online - Lulu if you're interested. It's called The Charm of Linux and it only costs a few pounds.

I use Gentoo, I update every 3 months (any longer results in too many days of being partially updated). I have used many and have taught admin classes with Fedora, RHEL, and SuSE. I started Unix in 1976 and Linux in 1992 (downloaded the 5.25 inch floppy disk images). Will have to get your book and have created a bookmark. Since I am in the US, I need to find some other books before placing an order.