Slackware Up and Running
As I write this, I am currently running slackware 12.0
A lot of you, (Or anyone who is reading this :P) are probably wondering what kind of trial, error, problems, and success's I went through. Well here is the story.
As I was sitting with my laptop in my living room as usual, I just had the feeling that ubuntu wasn't what I wanted. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love ubuntu, and probably always will. But I just had the feeling it wasn't "everything" that I wanted. So I started looking for other distributions. Saw gentoo, and remembered my experience with it previously, and decided I would go with that. Well, read my other blog post and you will know what happened with that one. But then I remembered slackware. A distribution, to my amazement, I had not tried. I had heard a lot about it, heard it was pretty advanced, highly configurable, and the oldest maintained distribution out there. So I thought it sounded great. It sounded, like what I wanted. Perfect match. So I started reading up on it, found out it doesn't use sysV init scripts, but instead BSD init scripts. Which is better for me, instead of having subdirectories out the wazoo...I have one or too simpe scripts per action. Making it what I thought at the time, easier. Which it does, but I will get to the current happenings in a minute. Anyway, my quest began. I noticed that I couldn't very well download the dvd (3GB's) on a 12.6kbps connection, and I couldn't purchase it at $50, so I decided to do otherwise....sortof.
I went somewhere where I could download it, with ease. 1500kbps connection is a little faster, don't ya think? Anyway, I got it downloaded, and up and running in say about 10 minutes. Booted to a shell, and I automatically fell in love. How cool is it, to boot into a shell instead of GUI? It is totally wicked. I love it. Anyway, I'll go back to the installation. I popped in the cd, and IT booted into a shell. How freakin awesome? VERY! Used fdisk to partition my disks, and a freakin shell based installer. That was truly, the most beautiful installation I have ever done. It gave me options man. Options. I had the option of doing what EVER I wanted. Which packages I wanted to install, everything. Amazing. I really was pretty amazed at it. My mouth was open the whole time. I loved it :D Anyway, got it loaded using LILO, (I went ahead and decided to install every package, just for the heck of it) set my default window manager to fluxbox, but I also installed quite a few others (all on the dvd :P) and it booted. I got on, and there it was, a beautiful shell. First I used adduser and a few other tools to get my own user going, but logged in with root for a while. So I had a shell :D
I typed
# startx
And there was my fluxbox desktop :D. Next, I had to get my sound up, which was as simple as setting it to ALSA.
Then I decided to get my wireless card going. That was where I had a few issues.
A. I didn't have internet.
B. I didn't have ndiswrapper.
C. I had a usb disk....but it was in ext3 and this is the only linux machine I have.
So what to do? Well, I really don't NEED ext3 on my usb, so went to fdisk, formatted, made it fat32, and got down with it. Grabbed ndiswrapper, my drivers, put em on the usb disk from another machine, and then threw them on here. Ndiswrapper installed flawlessly from source, and I had ndiswrapper going with:
ndiswrapper -i netrtuw.inf (my wireless driver file)
ndiswrapper -m
modprobe ndiswrapper
:D So then what? Connected to my network, and it didn't work. Well, like I said slackware is HIGHLY user-input based, so I went to check it out. iwconfig and ifconfig reported to me everything in order, except two things. I didn't have an IP address, and no default gateway, which meant I couldn't do anything, even though I was connected ;). After reading some man pages, and then IRC I got this:
Setting my IP address
ifconfig wlan0 192.168.1.46
And adding my default gateway:
route add default gw 192.168.1.1
So now that everything was configured, I got internet :D. Very simple.
I added /sbin/modprobe ndiswrapper to /etc/rc.d/rc.modules and it loads on bootup.
So I decided to do a full upgrade, but needed a good package manager first. I mean, installpkg is wonderful, but it doesn't handle dependencies, so imagine upgrading every piece of software, and installing more with that... Yeah...Fun :) So I went with the slackpkg tool. Which handles dependencies. I upgraded EVERYTHING. That was my mistake. It removed xinit, and installed a new kernel, and on top of that missing some X packages. Nothing big....I just focused on getting X up. Popped in my DVD and started looking for xinit, and other packages I needed. Installed them, and then X worked. Wooh! But then....My mouse didn't. After a long while of trying to get it working, I found out that the new kernel I upgraded to....Didn't support my mouse. Which was ok, I just downgraded back to the kernel on the cd, and installed everything in /slackware/x on the dvd and I was good to go. Also, what was great about the install, is that it went with the radeon drivers. That was cool. Very cool. So Here I am. Running slackware. And ONLY slackware. Nothing else. No dual booting, just straight slackware. And I really really love it. A lot. I feel like I am in COMPLETE control of my system. And I love that it lets me configure things. Truly an amazing distribution. And not to mention the documentation, wow. The cd was full of it! Lots of .txt files for me to read, and a 284 page book for it! So far I am on page 92 today. I am really loving this distro.
It puts me in control. And plus, booting straight to a shell is just flipping amazing. I encourage anyone to at least try slackware. I really really love it.
Well, I suppose I will go now. I have a project I am working, making a file server out of an old computer, with a Linksys WRT54G router.
Peace.
A lot of you, (Or anyone who is reading this :P) are probably wondering what kind of trial, error, problems, and success's I went through. Well here is the story.
As I was sitting with my laptop in my living room as usual, I just had the feeling that ubuntu wasn't what I wanted. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love ubuntu, and probably always will. But I just had the feeling it wasn't "everything" that I wanted. So I started looking for other distributions. Saw gentoo, and remembered my experience with it previously, and decided I would go with that. Well, read my other blog post and you will know what happened with that one. But then I remembered slackware. A distribution, to my amazement, I had not tried. I had heard a lot about it, heard it was pretty advanced, highly configurable, and the oldest maintained distribution out there. So I thought it sounded great. It sounded, like what I wanted. Perfect match. So I started reading up on it, found out it doesn't use sysV init scripts, but instead BSD init scripts. Which is better for me, instead of having subdirectories out the wazoo...I have one or too simpe scripts per action. Making it what I thought at the time, easier. Which it does, but I will get to the current happenings in a minute. Anyway, my quest began. I noticed that I couldn't very well download the dvd (3GB's) on a 12.6kbps connection, and I couldn't purchase it at $50, so I decided to do otherwise....sortof.
I went somewhere where I could download it, with ease. 1500kbps connection is a little faster, don't ya think? Anyway, I got it downloaded, and up and running in say about 10 minutes. Booted to a shell, and I automatically fell in love. How cool is it, to boot into a shell instead of GUI? It is totally wicked. I love it. Anyway, I'll go back to the installation. I popped in the cd, and IT booted into a shell. How freakin awesome? VERY! Used fdisk to partition my disks, and a freakin shell based installer. That was truly, the most beautiful installation I have ever done. It gave me options man. Options. I had the option of doing what EVER I wanted. Which packages I wanted to install, everything. Amazing. I really was pretty amazed at it. My mouth was open the whole time. I loved it :D Anyway, got it loaded using LILO, (I went ahead and decided to install every package, just for the heck of it) set my default window manager to fluxbox, but I also installed quite a few others (all on the dvd :P) and it booted. I got on, and there it was, a beautiful shell. First I used adduser and a few other tools to get my own user going, but logged in with root for a while. So I had a shell :D
I typed
# startx
And there was my fluxbox desktop :D. Next, I had to get my sound up, which was as simple as setting it to ALSA.
Then I decided to get my wireless card going. That was where I had a few issues.
A. I didn't have internet.
B. I didn't have ndiswrapper.
C. I had a usb disk....but it was in ext3 and this is the only linux machine I have.
So what to do? Well, I really don't NEED ext3 on my usb, so went to fdisk, formatted, made it fat32, and got down with it. Grabbed ndiswrapper, my drivers, put em on the usb disk from another machine, and then threw them on here. Ndiswrapper installed flawlessly from source, and I had ndiswrapper going with:
ndiswrapper -i netrtuw.inf (my wireless driver file)
ndiswrapper -m
modprobe ndiswrapper
:D So then what? Connected to my network, and it didn't work. Well, like I said slackware is HIGHLY user-input based, so I went to check it out. iwconfig and ifconfig reported to me everything in order, except two things. I didn't have an IP address, and no default gateway, which meant I couldn't do anything, even though I was connected ;). After reading some man pages, and then IRC I got this:
Setting my IP address
ifconfig wlan0 192.168.1.46
And adding my default gateway:
route add default gw 192.168.1.1
So now that everything was configured, I got internet :D. Very simple.
I added /sbin/modprobe ndiswrapper to /etc/rc.d/rc.modules and it loads on bootup.
So I decided to do a full upgrade, but needed a good package manager first. I mean, installpkg is wonderful, but it doesn't handle dependencies, so imagine upgrading every piece of software, and installing more with that... Yeah...Fun :) So I went with the slackpkg tool. Which handles dependencies. I upgraded EVERYTHING. That was my mistake. It removed xinit, and installed a new kernel, and on top of that missing some X packages. Nothing big....I just focused on getting X up. Popped in my DVD and started looking for xinit, and other packages I needed. Installed them, and then X worked. Wooh! But then....My mouse didn't. After a long while of trying to get it working, I found out that the new kernel I upgraded to....Didn't support my mouse. Which was ok, I just downgraded back to the kernel on the cd, and installed everything in /slackware/x on the dvd and I was good to go. Also, what was great about the install, is that it went with the radeon drivers. That was cool. Very cool. So Here I am. Running slackware. And ONLY slackware. Nothing else. No dual booting, just straight slackware. And I really really love it. A lot. I feel like I am in COMPLETE control of my system. And I love that it lets me configure things. Truly an amazing distribution. And not to mention the documentation, wow. The cd was full of it! Lots of .txt files for me to read, and a 284 page book for it! So far I am on page 92 today. I am really loving this distro.
It puts me in control. And plus, booting straight to a shell is just flipping amazing. I encourage anyone to at least try slackware. I really really love it.
Well, I suppose I will go now. I have a project I am working, making a file server out of an old computer, with a Linksys WRT54G router.
Peace.
Contrary to what some people believe, you have proven that Slackware is not a nightmare to setup. Sure, there were some glitches here and there, but which Linux distro works exactly the way you want out of the box? Besides, your experiences have made us all the wiser for it. I will check out Slackware soon, when I have the time. Your post has given me courage. Thanks.