Everyone take it easy on him he's just a kid. I give him credit for trying.

First I must acknowledge your feelings of frustration. I think every Linux user has thought of pouring a large coffee on his motherboard at one time or another. Forthwith:

I think that someone else said this, but it bears repeating: slack is not for beginners. But I encourage you NOT to give up. Keep working at it and don't give up. Long term you'll thank God in heaven above. Perhaps a Linux course at a local community college might help.

Why did you decide to install Linux?

On another note:

SECOND THOSE FEELINGS! I have to use windows for some applications and it makes me grind my teeth. I can't wait to reboot my system into Linux. I just reinstalled XP for the umpteeth time, and in the first week I had three unexplained crashes. I'm not talking about a download from a myspace page; WORD crashed. POWERPOINT crashed. Furthermore, mine is not a system owned by some kid who installed all kinds of buggy stuff. This was a fresh install, fully updated with SP2 and all the downloads from Windows download, by an experienced systems admin degrees and ~15years experience.

IMHO for the amount of money that has been poured into that OS, the instability that it demonstrates is shameful. Imagine what we could do with just 10% of Microsoft's annual revenue.

Oh, good, I'm glad to see this. He is a troll after all.

Well I finally got a response, as for the ...excuse me I was gonna lose my patience...I just have one question as how all the stuff I did out of boredom comes back on me..I had totally forgotten about angelfire crap...But oh yeah the question...as I am having difficulty with slack how do I make any other vet look bad...Plus I dont consider myself a vet and uless you were in say.. Battle of the Bulge, umm Vietnam...ETC niether should you...This is all voluntary...now you just do your job you dont claim veterancy over work. Being a medic and having the job of trying to put people back together or try my damnedest to stop multiple laceration exanguination, I have seen Veterans, no matter what you think youve done over here in know way makes you special unless you dont go home, then the my heart goes out to your family. The issue with slack in now way pertains to anything military..The issue with slack is aggravating and can make a mofo lose his patience, and the reason I bought the disks is to give some support to a computer issue I believe in, now buying hacked windows programs for 5 bucks while Im in Iraq Im all for, but for a linux os that I think should replace good old bills monopoly I will gladly pay for. I personally am having troubles, slack is creating issues, from way I previously ran a linix computer, now I understand that it is a different almost completely different OS it should not make me reload the complete os when I make one change such as : nano /etc/fstab
/dev/sdc /mnt/thumb noauto,damien,ro 1 0
if that is somehow fucked up then explain that to me why...otherwise help me to learn to write ??modules?? to the kernel so I can at least hear one damn song as I go to school for this stuff, and hopefully can get past this simple stuff and learn something from the computer issues I am having...and

Lets take a look:

You have started 24 threads - none have gone unanswered. The titles are mostly in-line with the usual, but some have been quite good, like putting the error message in. Some are astoundingly bad and would have produced a "patient" response. If you review the threads, you can see the signs.

You also left a lot of your threads unreplied to.

Well... the important thing is to learn and contribute. At least you're not a n00b

Questions following the guide (in my sig) tend to get a higher reply rate than those that do not... they stand out: "Here is someone worth helping". They get different people replying too... and those people will work harder to help. Now you know, you can try it out.

The guide in the link is actually harsher than the reality here, but this site exists to help people become less of a luser than they started out. We were all naive once (except, possibly, Pixelleny). We all got over it, mostly because someone took some trouble (and a LART).

... did they? Maybe I missed that, but the "not worth the money" comment could be sarcasm for "worth less than nothing". OTOH: having seen more of this user, I wonder ...

At this point, perhaps we should wait for this person to respond?

/dev/sdc /mnt/thumb noauto,damien,ro 1 0
That should be:
/dev/sdc /mnt/thumb <fstype> noauto,ro 1 0
Where <fstype> would be the filesystem type on the thumb drive, probably vfat.
What is damien? I can't find that in man fstab or man mount.

Every one of your threads got a response. What do you mean "finally"?
This is about attitude and personality. Was also off topic - so nuff said.
um... you are not forced to reboot when you edit /etc/fstab. If you want the changes to take effect, then sure... but even then, it is not needed. You can always just mount the drive manually this time round. It is a puzzle that you don't have udev though...

I note that when you add support for new hardware in Windows, you are forced to reboot.

However - none of your threads relate to this problem: this is the first you've told anybody.

Again, this is the first you've told anybody. You cannot expect help for things you do not reveal.

So what songs are you trying to play (format) and how are you attempting to play them?

While commendable, you were the one complaining about the price. You had the opportunity to assess the value to you of the OS before paying. Had you taken that opportunity, you would have been able to direct your funds towards a distro you find more useful.

Now... do you think you can manage to start writing in paragraphs? Your posts are tricky to read. Much appreciated.

I'm starting to see the OP's point. I can't do anything with Slackware, either. I booted into it a couple of weeks ago, and it just sits here - no crashes, no forced reboots, nothing.

Browsers will stay up as long as I want. Even the Firefox memory leak is no problem, but in other flavors it would continue to grow until it consumed much of my memory.

It's going to take the proverbial crowbar to get this thing off my computer.

I have to admire the patience of Simon and others, especially when OP posts a follow-up rant but never apologizes for the initial garbage-mouthing. The effect on me has been to fire up another computer to download Slackware. (When someone says something is too hard, I take that as a call to arms.)

What--pray tell--is the "Firefox memory leak"? Have I been using Firefox for 2 years without knowing it was doing bad things?

Huh????

Well, I doubt it's a problem unless it's crowding your memory. It's mainly been irritating to me, not a problem, and I shouldn't blame Firefox without knowing the cause for certain. I found this on mozillazine.org:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Memory_Leak#Memory_leaks

As I've experienced it, Firefox gradually increases its memory usage (shown in htop) over time and it seems to be different from the cache because clearing that doesn't release it. I've found this to be an issue with Debian and Fedora but not Slackware.

Not "too hard", just a bit tougher than most. Not a great deal of hand-holding going on.

I think we are looking a the usual sequence of n00b questions:
1. why doesn't my hardware "just go"?
2. why do I have to "mount" my drives!
3. why can't I play music (mp3s), video (mpeg), or DVDs (encrypted)?
4. why don't you guys just tell me what I want?
5. Waaaah! I can't do anything with this thing!

I vote for stopping this thread.

Re: Stopping this thread

Second.

just would like to say something on this:

as you guys can see this is actually my first post on the forum, because I did not have the need yet to post any questions of my own. For any and every problem I have had with Slackware I've been able to find answers here, just by looking through the archives. and in the rare event of not finding the answers here I was able to find it somewhere else. So if questions do not get answered, I guess the issue indeed lies with the poster as stated before.

second, Slackware is the first distro I'm actually seriously looking into, and even with only minor Linux skills from playing with other distro's (and a lot of help from this forum) I've been able to compile my own kernel, get sound working, install drivers for my video card and so on... so, IMHO, Slack isn't all that difficult. But this statement comes from someone in the IT world, having done lots of troubleshooting, although never on Linux systems.

so, in short:
Slack is not that hard if you just put your mind to it
support on this forum is awesome (proven by the fact that I didn't need to ask anything yet)

I just wish I had some more time to work on it so I can finally get rid of that Windows install on my desktop machine (although I can do most things with Slackware, running windows apps (i.e. games) doesn't always work like I'd wish it would work, but I'll get the hang of that too eventually)

finally I would just like to take this opportunity to thank all of you slackers who aid others in solving their problems with the system.
great work and great distro!

Below is a list of things needed to install Slackware, no matter the version:

1) A computer! (natch)

2) A CD ROM or DVD ROM drive on said computer.

3) A brain...This can be a tall order in some cases!

4) A keyboard and the ability to type the words, "root," "fdisk," or "cfdisk," (optionally, you may have to type something foreign, such as "cfdisk /dev/sda"), "setup," your password twice, network information, and finally, "reboot."

5) The ability to use said programs when they are invoked. In some cases, this is easier said than done. In all cases, there is information in this forum on how to use all the programs invoked in the above steps. See immediately below!

6) The ability to read through posted threads under the Linux Questions Dot Org's "Linux-Distributions--->Slackware" forum, otherwise known as RTFM (Read The Friggin' (as opposed to that other "F" word) MANUAL!).

7) A set of balls, in the figurative sense, anyway.

While it is helpful to know a bit about computers, not knowing immediately what BIOS means, or what an interrupt is, or the hexadecimal address used by that errant video card isn't going to condemn you to living with M$ software for the rest of your life.

I also have to disagree with a common misconception: Slackware isn't for newbies! WRONG-O!

When I was a newbie in 1994, I attempted installation of three different Linux distributions. To the best of my knowledge, they were the only game in town in that space of time: Debian, Red Hat (when it was free and open), and Slackware.

Red Hat couldn't get the CD ROM working. Debian could get the CD ROM to operate during install, and never again afterwards. Slackware set up right the first time, and could sometimes even operate the CD ROM drive, if the moon was in the right phase and I threw the right kind of runes at the machine, while chanting the proper mantra (usually involving the "other 'F' word" of which I spoke earlier).

At that time, there was no Gnome desktop, no KDE, no compiz, and so on. There was only TWM, FVWM, and one or two others...or console for the UNIX snobs. A full fledged kernel could fit on one floppy, 1.44 meg or 1.2! While there were forums, they were limited to people with access to the internet: colleges, government, and private folks with enough means to have their own internet connection, or (GAG) AOL.

Since DOS ruled the earth at that point in time, one either knew how to type something cryptic like "format a:/u/s/q", or one went without formatted floppy diskettes. So, to make the leap from "format a:/u/s/q" to "fdisk /dev/hdc" wasn't that far. I was used to a command line interface. If you weren't, you didn't get Linux, PERIOD!

Slackware of today is a cakewalk in comparison to what it was then. This forum is one of many on the internet. Few indeed are people without an internet connection. There are personal web sites devoted to information about Linux in general, and Slackware in specific that are nothing short of completely amazing!

I have, perhaps, the most stellar installation of a non-Windoze operating system as I have ever had. With certain programs, you cannot tell the difference between the look of my computer under Slackware, and its look under Windoze XP. You can tell the difference in operation. Slackware is much faster, much more stable, and works better with my wireless networking.

I am sure what I am about to say will come off as arrogant, and some may fault me for it, but I will say it nonetheless. The only people who can't get Slackware up and running are people who have no mental discipline whatsoever. They probably had just as many problems trying to find the CD key for their Windoze installation as they do trying to figure out how to put the letters together to form the command "cfdisk /dev/hdc".

There are rare cases of hardware problems stopping Slackware from installing. However, if your computer has a hardware glitch that prevents it from loading and/or running Slackware, Windows isn't going to run all that well either, if at all. Conversely, your computer works under Windows, it will work under Slackware.

Here is a list of things I got functioning on my computer under Slackware, just by reading the F---ing manual:

Wireless Networking (was a pain in the ass, until I got the right info)
NTFS read/write (easy!)
Kernel compilation (even easier!)
hal/dbus (another pain in the buttocks, but easy once you get the right info)
FULL Unicode support (too easy for words!)
./bashrc, and all it entails (ditto)
MIDI support (removed due to timidity messing up my system, but easy enough to set up)
and just last night, compiz! (I'm still unsure which command actually made it happen. It was PURE trial and error! I'm trying to get it going on my other machine. It really rocks the Casbah!)

Now I will grant you that I once worked as a PC tech, building, upgrading, and repairing computers. That fact alone more or less means I am going to have an easier time of Linux in general, and Slackware in specific. However, the only skill I need to really make Slackware work was learned before I entered kindergarten: how to read.

Having read all the entries in this thread, I can see that there were many attempts to garner info that went unanswered until a rant was produced by the originator of the thread after a few attempted to assist him (or her).

Clearly, the person in question is more interested in bad-mouthing Slackware than he or she is in getting their computer working. If this is the case, then I agree that no more should be said on the issue.

I think it should be said again that merely being able to read is all one really needs to make Slackware (or any other Linux distro) work. Whether or not you know what the command "iwconfig wlan0 channel 6 commit" means, if you can read the words, spell them properly, and hit the <enter> key when you're done, you will get a result. It's even easier if you know how to cut and paste the command. Understanding of what it all means will come later.

If you are of the kind of mindset that most who post here possess, you will wind up with a computer that you know better, and that runs better than it ever could with any M$ offerings. I've seen it happen time and again. Watching the lights above the heads come on is the thing I like most about coming to this site and reading the goings-on.

If you are of the, "I can't do it," victim mindset, then you will come here again and again making yourself look foolish. You will bore people, and eventually, no one will pay you any attention.

So, it's up to you, som1udntknw. Either learn to read the friggin' manual, or annoy people to the point that they pretend you don't exist...as some here are already doing!

It's only computer science, not rocket science, after all!

Blessed be!
Pappy

Please somebody delete this thread before anyone else decides to post a self-aggrandizing mini-novel about what it does or does not take to be a slackware user. Most of us newbies are doing just fine thank you very much, and can easily do without the condescension.