Brian's Blog

It's no super secret that I love Slackware Linux. There are many great things about it that I don't really feel like going into at the moment. There is one thing though that is a bit of a pain, and that's software installation. I mean, it's a breeze when there is already a package available. Just a simple installpkg packagefile.tgz and it's all done. The trouble is finding a Slackware tarball can sometimes be a challenge.

Now, there is Linuxpackages.net which is nice and all but the packages don't come with source usually and the usually don't include the slackbuild script used to generate the package. The trouble with that is you can't easily roll your own or check what options were used at compile time. Then there is slackbuilds.org which is a collection of slackbuild scripts. You just download the script and the source. Then run the script to generate a custom made Slackware package for your system. Then install that. The trouble with that is that the repo isn't huge. I've submitted a handful of slackbuilds to help but unless slackbuilds.org becomes hugely popular I doubt the repo will get huge.

Now, having been playing with Kubuntu on my laptop here I have to say it's darn hard to beat software installations on it. The rebos are just gargantuan and the Adept Manager is easy to use. Just search, select what you want to install, and click apply. Done in a snap. It would be nice if Slackware could get to that point one day.

It's not like I'm going to stop loving Slackware over one slight shortcoming though.