Im using slackware 10.2.

I've tried to install several programs from tarball and everytime i run "./configure" i get an error message at the end that it can't find GConf and that its needed for something. GConf isnt one of the packages in Swaret and i can't find it on linuxpacakges.net either.

So what is GConf?
Why do all these programs need it?
And finally, if these programs need it, then why dosent slack provide it?

EDIT: Would the lack of GConf also be why "make" and "make install" dosent work?

It is installed with GNOME. The reason you don't have it is because Slackware no longer comes with GNOME.
Slackware GNOME projects:
Freerock GNOME
Dropline GNOME
GWARE GNOME
They must be GNOME based programs. What programs are you talking about?
See first answer.
If the ./configure portion error's out, then nothing else will work either.

HTH,
MMYoung

I tried to install firestarter (firewall) and it errored out at the GConf part, and shorewall errored out too.

So i can install just GConf so that these programs will work?

install it from the slackware 10.1 cd. your bound to have more gnome dependencies so install them as you need them. you dont need to install the whole gnome distro to get a package to work.

You can give that a try, but I figure that there will be other dependencies that will not be met either.

Later,
MMYoung

GConf requires multiple GNOME programs to operate.

The easiest way I installed GNOME programs without GNOME was to simply get one of the programs, compile it, make note or whatever was missing, then go grab the source for that program and compile it. Most of the time, when compiling that program, I would get more errors about missing dependencies for that one.

On and on it went, and after compiling and making packages out about a dozen programs, I got the GNOME programs to work.

From that experience, I learned to just forget about GNOME programs, and use pure GTK, or worse case sceneario, use KDE programs, since the kdelibs are still available officially in Slackware.

Try compiling and installing GConf-1.09 which is the old Gnome-1.4 version. It doesn't need anything installed beyond GTK-1.2.
A lot of programs won't compile if GConf and/or control-center aren't already installed -even though the program doesn't really need them afterwards.

Alright i'll try that, and report back. Thanks.