Playing with Slackware
Posted on December 24, 2002
I guess I got a little ahead of myself in saying I was installing Debian. Sure, that was the intention, but after trying to install it so many times without success I gave up :-(
I ended up installing Slackware, which is another ‘not-for-the-faint-of-heart’ distribution. On the one hand it’s pretty cool. It’s only one CD, so there isn’t a ton of crap included with the distribution. On the other hand, there is a lot of stuff missing that I took for granted when using SuSE and Mandrake. (Click on Read More to read more) Slackware is another non-commercial distribution, like Debian, though it is a bit smaller (in popularity and probably size, too). It touts itself as being the most “Unix-like” Linux distribution, for what that’s worth.
Like Debian, it was a text-based install (as opposed to the graphic installs of SuSE and Mandrake). Since I never actually got Debian fuly installed, that’s about the only comparison I can make. Actually, it downloaded as 655MB, so I had to use a 700MB/80min CD-R, which I didn’t have to do with Debian.
At any rate, I finally got it installed. I rebooted the system, and came across the first difference between SuSE, etc, and Slackware. LILO (the Linux Loader), is text based, not graphic. Not a big thing, but different. I hit enter, and let it load Linux.
Then I came across the second difference between Slackware and the other distros. After it loaded, it ended up in the console, instead of automatically starting Xfree. That means I was just at the login prompt. No swanky window manager login here. I logged in as root, figuring I would have some work to do. It said I had mail, which typically means there is a “Welcome to this distro” email. I skipped reading the email and typed ‘startx’. The screen went blank. Hmmm. That’s not good. I reboot, and go through it all again, but this time I read the email, which actually had some tips in setting up Xfree.
I go through the xf86config program to setup X, but I apparently made a couple of mistakes, or didn’t pay that close of attention, because when I typed ‘startx’ again, it only showed me part of the screen at any one time. I could use the mouse to go down and see the Kicker panel, or go up to see a few icons, so I wasn’t totally hampered by this odd problem. I also didn’t have any network, and the only thing that KDE showed me to connect to the internet was KPPP, which is a dial-up program.
I used my laptop to get some more info on my monitor and check out updated drivers for my video card. I also looked and RP-PPPoE (Roaring Penguin PPP over Ethernet). The video drivers were too big to fit on a diskette, but the RP-PPPoE was only around 300K. I popped that on a floppy and then put it on Slackware. I typed ‘go-gui’ and it built with no problems. I entered the data for my DSL account, and I was extremely suprised when it went. FWIW, that means RP-PPPoE is using eth0 (the ethernet card), even though the KDE Control Center doesn’t see it. One problem solved.
Next problem to solve was the funky resolution/video problem. Now that I had Slackware on the net, I grabbed the updated drivers for my video card and installed those. I re-ran xf86config and paid attention this time ;-) Now I know I can change resolutions just by hitting ctrl-alt-+, and I can kill xserver by hitting ctrl-alt-bksp. Second problem solved.
Now, it’s late, and that’s all of the problems I intend to tackle for the day. I got it installed, which makes me once again feel confident in my |33+ 5k1llz :-) Tomorrow (today), I go “shopping” on Freshmeat and SourceForge for more software. Now that I installed this system, I have well over 30 gigabytes of space to fill up. Gotta do something with it.
One final note: I learned Linux by using Mandrake, because it was (and still is) a good distribution for people coming from Windows. With SuSE, I learned “there is more than one way to do that.” It taught me there are substantial differences between the distributions, and it opened my eyes to a more global outlook. Slackware will (probably) strengthen my skills with Linux and computers, because it is a very basic distribution, and will require me to do a lot of work to get it to where I want it.
Keep an eye out for more details
Maybe now I can work on the Mocha2 website :-)
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