How I got fed up with Gentoo, flushed it and went back to Slackware

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT A REVIEW OF SLACKWARE 12 NOR IS IT A PROPER SET OF INSTRUCTIONS TO INSTALL SLACKWARE - ANYBODY USING THIS IS AT THEIR OWN RISK. THOSE WHO WANT A GUIDE TO SETTING UP SLACKWARE 12 CAN LOOK HERE


So i got tired of Sabayon . I never believed it would happen , but it did . What did me in was a desire to go deep . Now Sabayon is a great distro for home use. Yeah you heard me right , a Gentoo based distro , good for home use. Well , before you all start making wry comments , go check out www.sabayonlinux.org , get the latest ( I think its 3.4f) . Sabayon is good when you are satisfied with the live DVD. Lot of software , so much so that people call it a bloated distro. But once you do a full install, you won't have to go look for software to do day to day stuff like web browsing, email , word processing , spreadsheets , music management , p2p , DVD viewing /ripping ( it contains libdvdcss !!) . Software management is a dream with portato / kuroo.

Now, i am not an optimization freak, but one day i decided that my system can be a wee bit more faster if i do some optimization - and i found myself digging through documentation . Pages of it . Tonnes. And all of it were portage specific . Lots of stuff to tweak. Mind you Gentoo tweaking is not for those without patience. Anyways i got fed up because i was learning a lot of Gentoo specific stuff ( For god's sake , USE flags !! mmmmmmmmmhhh !!)

So one day i got ktorrent to siphon off a copy of Slackware 12.0 - Ze old faithful. Never failed me . Ever (OK there was the first time when i was perplexed by the weird init style , lack of utils/config stuff and a very loose , abstract way of package management ). I went about reading the change log.

To my delight i discovered that i am going to get a 2.6 kernel by default . And a lot of other stuff. As usual no Gnome - it did worry me this time. Well , this time , I'd seen Gnome working on an Ubuntu and a Fedora . It was working like a charm. Everything appeared 'lite'. Whatever had they done to Gnome ?

Slackware install steps.

Its the easiest linux install i have ever done. I start out with a Windows machine and convert it into a dual boot one. Once the DVD boots , you are asked if you want to use a non -us keyboard map , i haven't had to use it ever. You press enter to until you get a root prompt and then do the following

1. run cfdisk to create linux and swap partitions as needed
2. type 'setup' to invoke the installer. No fancy gui. a simple ncurses interface. You don't need more . Trust me.
   
3. Installer comes up with ADDSWAP ( setting up swap partitions ) selected and pressing Enter will cause the installer to auto detect SWAP partitions and display them. One more dialogue will come up asking if you want to check them for bad blocks . After that the swap partitions are activated and added to fstab.
4. The next step involves setting up partitions. All detected linux partitions are displayed and you can setup your root partition. If you do setup your /usr/local and /home in different partitions , now is the time to do it. This step involves choosing your filesystem also. I go with Reiserfs ( i feel that its faster ).
5. Installer detects windows partitions and asks if you want to add them to fstab. i usually don't do it. ;) i will come to that in a moment .
6. Now the installer will want to select your installation source media. I press enter to choose CD/DVD.
7. This step involves pressing an enter to ask the installer to auto detect. This step is there to choose the media manually if needed. I have never had to do that
8. Now comes package category selection . This is different from individual package selection . It selects groups of packages like KDE , Program Development etc etc. I select everything except KDE (Internationalization) - oh wait , it is the default selection. All i do is press enter.
   
9. Next step decides whether or not you get to choose individual packages. I go by full installation option here ever since i got my current PC. Again pressing an enter is all i have to do.
   
10. Now i go read a book since its copy files time. It finishes in about 10-12 minutes.
11. Now the installer asks me if i want to create a USB Flash boot disk. It used to be a boot floppy in previous versions. Guess who is keeping up with times. I skip this step.
    
12. Next is modem config. I press enter here.
    
13. Next up is installing lilo ( OK Slackware still doesn't like grub for some reason - but lilo is enough ) This involves whether you want an expert mode or not ( Enter to select simple ) , adding parameters ( i don't add any so again its pressing an enter ) and choosing where to install. I always install it to superblock ( on the root partition)
14. Mouse configuration involves choosing your kind of mouse and pressing enter. Another dialogue asking whether to start gpm during init will pop up , again press enter :D.
15. Configuring network involves assigning IP , netmask , gateway , hostname , domain etc. silly matters. they are over in a jiffy. If i use DHCP i don't have to do all this.
    
16. Choosing which services to run at startup . Nothing much to it.
    
17. Then it asks me whether i'd like to try custom fonts for console. i always say no.
18. Time configuration involves telling the installer whether the hardware clock uses Universal time ( Choose NO ) , and then choosing the timezone.
19. Next up is choosing the desktop environ to run
    
20. Set root password
21. Done

Installation is over now. See it was a lot of Enter-keys and some essential information . Thats all.

Now i mount the windows partition corresponding to C:\ and copy the first 512 bytes of the root partition ( to which lilo was installed ) to it using

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/hd
dd if=/dev/sda9 of=/mnt/hd/lnx.boot bs=512 count=1

After that i boot to windows and add and an entry to boot.ini - "Linux"=C:\lnx.boot . This will let me load lilo with the NT boot-loader. I always go this way because of a bad experience ( which i cannot recall now - this is called addiction to process ).

Now i reboot to a fresh slackware . Login as root

Time to mount partitions. I don't go the /etc/fstab way. No siree. I head over to /etc/rc.d/rc.local and add as many mount commands as needed there , with all permissions. Easier this way.

Then i edit /etc/resolv.conf and add the opendns nameservers there.

Ha ! what ? No sound ? Run alsaconfig and alsamixer to enable sound and control volume etc.

I pray hard now and type startx. I am greeted with the KDE first time wizard. I thank god for letting xorg start without hitches.

Head over to nVidia and get the linux driver setup. Running it ensures a nice xorg conf. Muahaha I am good to go .

Well almost.

Konqueror shows the partitions alright , but clicking on it doesn't mount it. It coughs up a dialogue about no permissions and things like that.

A security policy in place prevents this sender from sending this message to this recipient: see message bus configuration file (rejected message had
interface "org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume"
member "Mount" error name "(unset)"
destination "org.freedesktop.Hal")

Thats the error.

Solution ?

No problem , head over to linuxquestions.org and search for the error. Seems i need fuse and ntfs-3g. OK off we go to slackbuilds.org. Searching for ntfs points me to fuse and ntfs-3g.

Slackbuilds are an awesome way to look at packaging. Basically i get the source of the package and a script which builds a slackware tgz package with that source - from the same page. I get source for fuse and ntfs-3g and build the tgz by running their corresponding slackbuild scripts. Now if i ever need to re-install slack 12 , i won't have to go looking for the packages . :D . I install the packages and store them away for future use.

I start up 'kuser' and add the root user to the plugdev group. I add a regular user account while i am at it . The regular user also gets to be the member of plugdev group. Restarting the hal daemon ( /etc/rc.d/rc.hald restart ) fixes the unmountable/permission not set issue. Now i can just click-to-mount. :D

I get the following from Slackbuilds.org : Mplayer, Mplayer codecs, guarddog, Wine . i create my packages and install them .

I google for slapt-get and gslapt packages for slackware 12 and install them also. Now installing software is easy. just invoke gslapt and search for the packages. It looks like the synaptic package manager for Debian. I add http://darkstar.ist.utl.pt/slackware/addon/slacky/slackware-12.0/ to sources section of gslapt preferences. This is the Slacky.eu ( italian slackware users group ) repository. They are a good source for non - gui packages . GUI application packages might be italian , not always , but you never know.

Now for the Gnome part. Slackware doesn't come with Gnome . Maybe Pat likes KDE . maybe Gnome is unstable and baaaaad . I don't care either way. I point my browser to http://www.droplinegnome.org/ . I download their installer package and install it. Running it brings up a simple ui like the slack installer which offers to download and install the whole of Gnome for me. I say "Thanks much" and go to sleep while it downloads the gnome packages and installs them . When i get up in the morning, i see a message telling me that Gnome has finished installing and that i can reboot.

Then I remember. I edit /etc/inittab and edit it to boot to runlevel 4. ( change the line that says id:3:initdefault and replace that 3 with 4 ) . Thats it. I reboot and find the gdm (looking oh so nice ) waiting for me. I log in with the regular user account into Gnome and enjoy :D.

See ? Setting up slackware is easy . Takes about 40 minutes to have a running system ready for anything. Adding more ( the Gnome ) takes time , but doesn;t break the system. And those who waht 'package management' , you have slapt-get + gslapt. I don't see any need for it, because we don't install many extra packages . If you go the Gnome way , the dropline installer will take care of it. Whats so hard in saving all the packages you ever install to a separate backup directory ? If you stick to slackbuilds and use linuxpackages.net and slapt-get as last resorts, slackware package managent is nothing.

You just don't worry about managing packages when you are a slackware user :D .

And eerily , my system is now faster than it was with the sabayon installation. It feels like i am back home from a journey.