Hi,
I am planning to quit Suse in favor of slackware because of my frequent failure to compile things on Suse and as i have read that slackware is very good for compilation. I have also heard Slackware is pretty fast which is quite intriguing to me.
However i have heard that slackware utility does not check for dependencies when installing programs. My first question is:
1- How in Slackware can one know if there are dependencies and what are the needed ones?

I also have a couple of more questions:

2- I want to use another utility to partition my hd's but use slackware's installer only to format the drives
(i want to give them a try. i was using reiserfs before). I don't quite find in the installation manual at which stage one can format and initialize the partitions. Also can i skip the fdisk (or cfdisk) command since i don't want to use Slackware to partition the hd's?

3- I have scsi hd interface and i see that there are several scsi kernels available on the CD. But it is not clear what each one does differently from the other ones. How can i know which one is the right one for me?

I have a wacom inotus tablet with USB interface and i know that its driver is available in the kernel. I hope it would not be too hard to configure it on slackware. Has any one used a wacom USB tablet in slackware?

I would apprecaite your comments. Ramin

1. Install the swaret package from the extras CD. swaret is similar to apt-get; it updates your distro from the slackware-current ftp server, and it resolves dependencies. However, if you want to install or compile third-party software, you will need to track down and install the dependencies yourself. Also, if you're going to do a lot of compiling, you should use checkinstall, also from the extras CD.

2. Slackware's install script does not have a partitioning tool. It is expected that you will partition the hard disk before you run the install script (usually with cfdisk). However, the install script will format your selected partitions with your choice of ext2, ext3, and reiserfs.

3. Sorry, can't help you with SCSI. Check the Slackware online documentation: http://www.slackware.com/install/bootdisk.php

I found this by googling "wacom usb tablet slackware": Linux Wacom Project

Thanks for the quick reply. I dropped some words when i wanted to say i want to try xfs/jfs filesystems. Does the installer give me the option of formating with these filesystems or just the ones you mentioned before?
Thanks, Ramin

1. Slack does not come with as advanced dependency checker as other distros, although swaret is pretty popular. You won't really need to worry about this during the initial install, but if you start adding apps, it may become an issue. I'd also suggest looking at http://www.linuxpackages.net/ because that site frequently will list (and have links) for all dependent packages that are associated with the main app you want to install.

2. Not sure why it would make any difference why it matters which tool you use to partition your drive. If you've got, for example, an 80G drive and create a 40G parition, a 25G, and a 15G, you'll end up with a 40/25/15 partition scheme no matter whether you use cfdisk, fdisk, Partition Magic, or whatever. Am I overlooking something important? As for the sequence of steps, my recommendation would be to do the partitioning before you start the install, and then during the install you'll have the option of either formatting the partition or not. If I recall, and as spurious indicates, the format options are ext2, ext3, or reiserfs. If you want to use a different format, I'd perform the formatting prior to beginning the install, and then at the point Slack asks if you want to format the partition, answer No.

3. Like spurious, I don't know. -- J.W.