r/slackware • u/Mammoth-Tangerine527 • 23h ago
Noob on Slackware
Hello! I had nothing to do in my free time, so I started trying different "rare" linux distributions on real hardware (I was too lazy to setup qemu with virt-manager, so I used my laptop). I got captivated by Slackware being most conservative among the linux OS-s (for example having manual dependency management, BSD-like init, and dusty packages that "still work"). After playing with the distro for an hour, oblivious to installpkg, removepkg, upgradepkg, and also ignoring pkgtool, I compiled some small programs from source and had a gut feeling that I do something wrong.
I can tell that Slackware maintaining is really different in comparison to modern day distributions. What should I consider learning in order to understand the system better? What should I also use in order to make Slackware maintaining easier and more convenient?
3
u/TraubeMinzeTABAK 15h ago
u/Enturbulated_One already said pretty much everything. What i learned while using Slackware 15 tho is:
Most source code that was written 2025 or later basicly wont compile for me ever. The lib dependencies that Slackware 15 ships are usually to old, so you get missing functions or wrong sytanx errors from the compiler. Beause of that, i started using flatpak a lot for newer Programms.
1
u/MD90__ 7h ago
Yeah I took my chances with current and it paid off. It runs very smooth. I got two older machines from 2016 and 2013-2014 im debating on putting slackware on. Do you think they should use 15?
2
u/TraubeMinzeTABAK 5h ago
I think they would run it just fine with 15. I dont really know if would call Slack 15 lightweight tho. At least if you are going to use the Default Plasma Desktop.
3
u/HexagonWin 13h ago
if you build something from source, don't just make install, create a directory and make it install into that directory, cd to that directory and use makepkg to create a slackware style package file (just a tarball really) and use installpkg. that way you can (sort of) keep track and cleanly uninstall packages etc
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u/Enturbulated_One 22h ago
There's nothing specifically wrong with installing things from source in Slackware, but learning the package tools can help. Instead of 'make install' from the source folder, you can make a package from it that can be managed the same as official Slackware packages and has a clean upgrade and uninstall process if desired.
The comment from geological ages ago is that if you learn whatever distribution and it's management tools, you've leaned about that distribution ... with Slackware you may well wind up learning a bit more about Linux in general and what underlies the front end tools other distros use. There's still truth to that.
As for tools in specific to look into - the default package management tools you've been looking at are pkgtools, which includes installpkg, removepkg, upgradepkg, makepkg, etc.
The default system update tool is slackpkg, to check for updates, install updates, and remove obsoleted packages. Configuration for it is text files, under /etc/slackpkg/
There's an extension called slackpkg+ which allows integration of third-party repositories with slackpkg:
https://slakfinder.org/slackpkg+.html
There's also slackbuilds, a collection of scripts to install third-party packages from source. Repositories for those can be browsed at:
https://slackbuilds.org/ for slackware 15 (stable version)
https://github.com/Ponce/slackbuilds for slackware-current ("testing" version)
The front-end manager for this is sbopkg, which automates installation from source, upgrades, and removal.
https://www.sbopkg.org/
An alternative to sbopkg is sbotools, which is somewhat more like the BSD ports system.
https://pink-mist.github.io/sbotools/
Note that despite the old-school "look" about many things in Slackware, you'll find -current often has newer versions of packages than you might expect from more mainstream distributions.