raymac46 Posted March 18, 2016 Share Posted March 18, 2016 (edited) Whenever I install anything remotely Slackware related I get the same feeling I did when my mother said: "You'll eat what is put in front of you and like it!" As long as the default install gives you what you want you are OK, but try something else and the wheels fall off quickly. In Debian if you want a new piece of software Synaptic or apt are a click away. In Slack or Salix no joy. You have to try some sort of Slackbuild activity which in my case always fails with some cryptic log entry. I get that you need kernel source installed but when I tried to install Netsurf (Netsurf!) in Salix the build failed because some arcane javascript resource was lacking. I never have found it. It's not a package. Is Slackbuild always such a crapshoot or is it just my bad luck? Any way to make sure it'll work the first time? Edited March 18, 2016 by raymac46 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted March 18, 2016 Share Posted March 18, 2016 I've been running Slackware for a decade now and have only rarely done the Dependency H3LL thing. SlackBuilds are not your only option. You an also compile on your own from source, if you're comfortable with the make command from the CLI. However, compiling from source success is just as critical when it comes to dependencies as is SlackBuilds. With SlackBuilds, dependent applications are usually listed on the Slackbuild page along with the source and SlackBuild downloads. You need to install the dependencies first. Sometimes, the dependencies have dependencies; a first step into Dependency H3LL. Falling down that abyss is usually a frustrating waste of many minutes/hours of your life. Avoid it at all costs. An easy way is to find SlackBuild that some other poor bastage spent hours compiling and has posted on his/her own site. A wonderful example of this is the EXCELLENT repo that Alien Bob (Slack dev Eric Hameleers) had on his site --> http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/ Or Slack dev Robbie Workman's repo --> http://rlworkman.net/pkgs/. There are lots of contributors and sites like this. Google is your friend --> http://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/salix/sbo/14.1/network/netsurf/ Oh, and Slackware SlackBuilds will not always work in the derivative distributions due to changes the derivatives have made to the base system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted March 18, 2016 Author Share Posted March 18, 2016 So the secret is to stick with straight Slackware rather than try Salix or Vector? Also if you were to want to install Chromium on a machine that would run it OK, how would you do it? I'm getting lost in the details I'm afraid. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted March 19, 2016 Share Posted March 19, 2016 Well, on a machine that is capable of running Chromium (not that Acer ), I'd just go to Alien Bob's repos and grab the already built .txz Chromium package and install it via the Installpkg command in the terminal in Slackware. Easy-peasy! For Slackware 14.1 stable (32 and 64 bit available): http://www.slackware...uilds/chromium/ 1. Open the terminal in the directory where the just downloaded chromium-version-bla-bla.txz is located. 2. Install using the installpkg command $su *password here* #installpkg chromium-version-bla-bla.txz That's it. All done. Takes about 10 seconds to install on a moderately fast machine. This should work on pure Slackware or on any derivative distro that uses the .tgz or .txz suffixes (proprietary to Slackware. By the way, Slackware has a wiki (not anything like Arch's, unfortunately) with some good info. I'm an Editor/Admin there. docs.slackware.com 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted March 19, 2016 Author Share Posted March 19, 2016 OK so you aren't really building it yourself - it's similar to a PPA that you can add in Ubuntu or Linux Mint? That simplifies things quite a lot. Debian and Fedora based distros have pre-built packages you can get on the net like Google Chrome or Earth or Virtual Box. Same sort of idea. I thought that even if you found a site like Alien Bob's you would just get the script and still have to do the build. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted March 19, 2016 Share Posted March 19, 2016 Nope. There are sites all over like Alien Bob's where you can find ready-to-install apps that the owner initially builds/compiles and updates regularly. Eric Hameleers' (Alien Bob) is one of the best. I always suggest that if folks utilize a bunch of his excellent SlackBuilt apps, it's just a cool thing if they click HERE and drop a buck or two in the tip jar. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted March 19, 2016 Author Share Posted March 19, 2016 (edited) I'm going to give Salix another spin on my Acer if I can get the memory upgraded. The Dell netbook I have is so Linux unfriendly that even something like Linux Mint has to be installed with a wired connection. You can then use the Driver Manager to get the Broadcom wifi working. I'd be head banging for days to get the wifi working in any flavor of Slackware. The Acer has an Atheros wifi chipset that just works with any distro. Much easier on the temperament. Edited March 19, 2016 by raymac46 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted March 20, 2016 Share Posted March 20, 2016 Broadcom in all my Dells (and the Compaq) is a ROYAL PAIN IN THE ASCII to get going with Slackware. I've done it so many times now, though, that it's not so bad. I enjoy the pain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted March 20, 2016 Share Posted March 20, 2016 I'm going to bump up my old thread about wireless in Slackware w/ Broadcom. It's an interesting thread, but the solution doesn't really happen till the 2nd page or so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted March 20, 2016 Author Share Posted March 20, 2016 Yeah I read it Went through the same steps and even after that wicd wouldn't recognize the wifi setup. Augh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted March 20, 2016 Share Posted March 20, 2016 Broadcom in all my Dells (and the Compaq) is a ROYAL PAIN IN THE ASCII to get going with Slackware. I've done it so many times now, though, that it's not so bad. I enjoy the pain. I thought that the broadcom issue was something of the past. From the Arch wiki: Broadcom has a noted history with its support for Wi-Fi devices regarding GNU/Linux. For a good portion of its initial history, Broadcom devices were either entirely unsupported or required the user to tinker with the firmware. The limited set of wireless devices that were supported were done so by a reverse-engineered driver. The reverse-engineered b43 driver was introduced in the 2.6.24 kernel. In August 2008, Broadcom released the 802.11 Linux STA driver officially supporting Broadcom wireless devices on GNU/Linux. This is a restrictively licensed driver and it does not work with hidden ESSIDs, but Broadcom promised to work towards a more open approach in the future. In September 2010, Broadcom released a fully open source driver. The brcm80211 driver was introduced in the 2.6.37 kernel and in the 2.6.39 kernel it was sub-divided into the brcmsmac and brcmfmac drivers. https://wiki.archlin...oadcom_wireless Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted March 20, 2016 Author Share Posted March 20, 2016 Well maybe it was just me but I still had Salix issues with an old Broadcom adapter on my netbook. Even after I installed all the firmware, had the proper modules in place, WICD wouldn't recognize the presence of wifi. I think the problem may be that the particular adapter I have in the netbook is a low power one (not your mainstream BCM 4311 or 4312.) Broadcom works fine for me with Debian distros using the wl driver which I assume is related to later Broadcom releases. And of course just about any distro will work great if you have an Atheros wifi chipset. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted March 21, 2016 Share Posted March 21, 2016 Broadcom may have released updated drivers, etc., but Slackware has not, to my knowledge, done anything with them. Maybe in the upcoming release? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted March 21, 2016 Share Posted March 21, 2016 Broadcom may have released updated drivers, etc., but Slackware has not, to my knowledge, done anything with them. Maybe in the upcoming release? Even for Slackware, 6 years seems like a loooong time to not include them after they were released especially if it fixes a somewhat major issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted March 21, 2016 Author Share Posted March 21, 2016 I think you can use the wl driver if you build it. http://webgnuru.com/linux/slackware_bcm43xx.php 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted March 21, 2016 Share Posted March 21, 2016 Well, Slack isn't nearly as slow as Debian, but some things take a while to show in the stream. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted March 21, 2016 Share Posted March 21, 2016 Well, Slack isn't nearly as slow as Debian, but some things take a while to show in the stream. Understandable but 6 years is not just "a while".. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted March 22, 2016 Share Posted March 22, 2016 It's all relative. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted March 22, 2016 Share Posted March 22, 2016 I just checked... Slackware64 14.1 nor Slackware Current include the BCM drivers. However, Alien Bob has them in his repos. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted March 23, 2016 Author Share Posted March 23, 2016 Now that I got my shiny new 1.5 GB Acer on the rails, I went over to Alien Bob's, got his Chromium package and installed it easy as pie. Checking out RAM usage with Chromium, I'm up to 1 GB now so I sure needed the extra RAM. No swap though. Thanks for the advice and consultation Eric. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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