Okay, so my goal for this summer is to learn linux, and I picked slackware because I read one of those subgenius books. It's a lousy reason, but I've never been known to do things the easy way.

Anyway, it took me a few days but I managed to battle my way through the installation basics using the slackware book that I found on the getslack website. I have a whole computer in the other room dedicated to the endeavor, and I managed to get everything up and running.

Maybe.

I guess.

Anyway, I managed to login as root and create two other users. The catch is that my users can't actually do anything. Root always has # at the commandline, and from it I can startx, but not from any of the other users. The command prompts for my other users all start with $. Most of the commands that I can find in the slackware book require yet a third symbol, %, and I haven't even managed to see that one. I've managed to get access to the # sign with su, but this doesn't do a whole lot of good.

I want to play with X, but I can only do so as root, and the program is quite keen on reminding me not to screw around too much as root, lest I render the entire system inoperable. But I HAVE seen Xwindows in action, and I want to know how to put my system to use. Anyone have any really dumbed down links for a guy like me?

Linux learning advice tip #1:
Don't use Slackware.

Not that there's anything wrong with Slackware, only that its rather advanced. Trying to learn on Slackware is jumping in the deep end.

PatrickNew - wth? That's not very useful.

The % symbol is the default csh prompt, which must be being used as an example but isn't actually relevant. # is the default root prompt. $ is the default user prompt when using a Bourne-family shell (sh, bash, ksh, whatever). A lot of issues between # and $ boil down to permissions. Search the web and/or read the Slack book for more info. As far as X, post specific errors. You should be able to run that as unprivileged user if you can as root.

And welcome to Slackware - you will become an excellent swimmer.

Could be worse...he could be trying to learn Linux with Gentoo or (H)LFS...

And I'm going to disagree a bit. Using something like *buntu or Fedora or <pick your fav. user-friendly distro> is going to slow the learning process. It'll be easier, mind you, but not necessarily the best for learning (will take much longer to learn Linux in-depth)...just my thoughts. I run Gentoo/Slackware, and FreeBSD/OpenBSD...so take what I say with a grain of salt...

OP got Slack installed with no previous Linux knowledge. That's a good sign...OP has the determination to get the job done. Kudos to Philipthegr8.

DISCLAIMER: No, I'm not a Linux-guru-elitist...but I believe that human beings possess the intellect to figure this stuff out and dumbing everything down to the point of "point and click" serves only to weaken the individual's understanding of the system they're running. That said, starting off with a user-friendly distro for familiarity's sake is not bad, as long as you MOVE ON once you get comfortable!

I couldn't agree more...

If you want to learn more about the CLI (command-line interface) and bash try:

for those new to linux:
http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/cli.html

Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide:
http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

not that's it's really for advanced users, but ...
"This tutorial assumes no previous knowledge of scripting or programming, but progresses rapidly toward an intermediate/advanced level of instruction"

Just remembered these for more links.

Wow, upon rereading my post, I was a bit of an unhelpful jerk, and I do apologize. I'll stand by my suggestion though, for one reason - package management. I feel like a new user would be best served with more advanced package management. No one package manager is the "linux package manager" and what you learn on Slackware may be totally irrelevant to another distro, should you ultimately choose another. I just think that's a hurdle you could remove from your own path. If you learn apt or yum first, then don't ever use that knowledge again, its not as big a loss, as you didn't have to learn as much in the first place.

And sincerest apologies on the original message.

I strongly disagree with you there. Apparently, I'm not the only one either.

Slackware's configuration files are all commented superbly. Generally speaking, the comments in the config files are enough to help you understand how they work (or at least get things configured properly).

For someone willing to edit config files by hand, there is no better distro choice.

I'll disagree with you there as well.

I've been using Linux for over 7 years, and don't remember much of the early days, but I can tell you that I've never experienced pain like I did when I tried to use RPM for the first time under RH 6.0. Dependancy hell sucks, and still exists in tools like apt or yum. Personally, I can think of no greater turn off for a newbie.

Slackware's tgz system (while not as complex as other packaging tools) is a brilliantly simple system which newbies can easily learn.

And there's the rub. Simplicity is the name of the game. How does one create a package from source under Ubuntu?

1) Slackware takes care of dependency hell by shutting up and doing what it's told - including installing completely broken packages. What's worse - getting an error message saying that you can't install an application without libFoo, or just installing the application, which will immediately die upon running with no particularly useful error message. Slackware package management is powerful, in that it allows you to bend the rules. This is a good thing *when you already know what you're doing*.

2) I create packages from source under Ubuntu with checkinstall, exactly as I would do it in Slackware.

hopefully this witty banter hasn't scared the OP out of his thread. can you post (or describe) the error a little more completely?

sometimes when you create a user there is no /home/<user>/.xinitrc file, and if you create one the problem can be solved:

you can replace the "startxfce4" with the windowmanager of your choice.
hth

In almost 7 years' use of Slackware, I've never seen that happen. Upon execution, a binary will generally tell you the name of a library it can't find.

This is a non-issue if you compile software from source, because the "./configure" process takes note of the libraries present.

If you want to use binary packages under Slackware, there are repositories like linuxpackages.net which also provide the dependancies for their packages.

Either way, I think automatic dependancy resolution is more trouble than it's worth.
What rules?

The only rules on my machine are these two:
1. Rob is the boss.
2. If Rob is wrong, refer to rule 1.
How would you do it without checkinstall?

Really? Because in a bit under 3 months of Slackware, I've seen it happen countless times. Slackware package management requires me to track dependencies, and if I don't do so, things break.
True, but that name may or may not be the name of the package which provides that library.

Also true. However, if the OP was that interested in installing considerable quantities of software from source when binary packages are available anyways, I would refer him to either (H/C)LFS or Gentoo.

But, they will still allow a user to install an application with unmet dependencies.

A very respectable opinion. I merely wanted to suggest that it may be of benefit to the OP, as that time may be better spent learning the Linux CLI, or mucking about in X configuration.

The rules being things like "I require this library to run."


Why would I want to do it without checkinstall?

To the OP: If you do choose Slackware, try to take advantage of one of the optional add-on package managers, such as slapt-get. They will ease the transition a bit.

haha...indeed.

As for dependency hell, been there, done that. RH cured me of manual dependency tracking. I refuse to do it.

And that's the problem with binary package managers. You get what the dev decided was best to include for that package. Everything on the system includes Samba support? Darn...guess you're SOL if you don't want to run Samba. (Picking on a random package that gets called in quite often in userland...nothing against the Samba project).

That's where compiling from source holds sway with me over "quick and easy" install methods like apt-get or yum. I can define what packages I want to include support for and I don't have to worry about some dev running

./configure --enable-*

on me. I choose what goes in and what doesn't. I don't want to run Samba? Fine. Modify /etc/make.conf (Gentoo) or run configure as needed (Slackware) and install from source. Easy as pie. Gentoo takes it a step further, however, by allowing me to reinstall my entire system (say, Samba has a nasty security vulnerability discovered), with one command without the hassle of hunting down packages. Yeah, I can break stuff in Gentoo (emerge -C samba, for instance, if I've compiled my system to require samba), but it's an active effort (99% of the time) to break stuff. Gentoo does, however, require an insane amount of patience...though it's been my experience that the wait is more than worth it...so I type a command, walk away for a bit to go get a beer or whatever, and my system happily performs dependency checking and removes support for stuff I don't want...

How is that harder than dependency hell involved with binary package managers?

That was not fair.

@ Philipthegr8: Linux learning advice tip #1:
Use any distro you like.
This is a myth. My first step in Linux was learning Slackware, 5 years ago. I had no ideea about partitioning, installer, config files, init scripts, so on. I learned Linux with Slackware. Then with RedHat, then with Debian and with a lot of others distros. Most of all are great.
There is no end in Linux learning.