Re: [orca-list] orca questions

[Michael Whapples <mwhapples aim com>]

Regarding the questions about slackware, packages and gnome.

There is sort of dependency tracking if you use a third party package
manager, the one I am thinking of is slapt, an apt like system for
slackware but I think much less complicated. I don't know how powerful
swaret is, but that seems to be another popular one. I think I mentioned
gslapt in passing on another thread, well the answer to what it is, is
that it is a gtk front end for slapt.

As for gnome on slackware, yes there is slacky (www.slacky.eu), but you
might encounter problems on getting documentation/help as it is a
Italian based project, although there is some english documentation.
They have only just released gnome 2.22.1 (I think for slackware 12.1),
so there has been a slight lag there (in the past since I started using
slacky they seemed to keep track of gnome versions much quicker.

Another gnome distro for slackware is gnome slack builds
(www.gnomeslackbuild.org), and it seems like they have a branch which
tracks slackware current as well as a stable branch (gnome 2.22.x) which
tracks the latest slackware release. Unlike slacky which makes releases
on as ISO CD images, gnome slackbuild has it as online repositories to
be used with something like slapt. All gnome slackbuild packages are
meant to have gsb at the end of the file name (not as the extension,
still keeps the .tgz extension) to aid with uninstalling gnome
slackbuild if required. I have changed across to using gnome slackbuild
on my desktop when I moved to slackware 12.1, this was due to GSB being
the only gnome distro for slackware 12.1 when slackware 12.1 was
released. I am still using slacky on my laptop, but that's because I
haven't upgraded from slackware 12.0 yet as I am using that machine for
work and don't want any interruption should the upgrade fail to go
smoothly.

Hope that gives you some ideas on slackware packages and gnome.

As a comparison, I started with slackware, went to other distros for a
short time, but have always found myself coming back to slackware, and
now I am much more knowledgable of Linux than I was when I started I
seem to have settled properly with slackware.

Michael Whapples
On Tue, 2008-05-27 at 09:20 -0700, Steve Holmes wrote:
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> Concerning the questions about LFS vs Slackware vs other package based
> distros, I think LFS would be a blast to really get down and crawl
> under the hood and learn the ins and outs of your system.  It would be
> an extremely rich acedemic experience.  However, I'm geeky enough I
> would probably enjoy such an experience when I find the time to do
> this.  
>
> Otherwise, I'm inclined to follow Michael's view concerning
> Slackware.  I've been using Slackware from clear back in 1994.  I cut
> my teeth on this distro and am still using it.  I threatened to switch
> to Debian a few times but never took the plunge.  Slackware is my
> comfort zone and I find it easy to work with.  I wouldn't mind if
> Slack would implement a better tracking of dependencies but still.
>
> My other reservation about Slackware lately is the non inclusion of
> gnome.  You have to use other 3rd party mini distros of gnome and this
> causes a considerable lag in versioning of gnome apps.  Dropline gnome
> for example is still setting at 2.20 where 2.22.2 is going out to the
> street later this week.  Slackware just went through a new version
> last month or so so now I'm kinda stuck.  If I upgrade slackware, I
> may break dropline and dropline hasn't come out with any really new
> stuff yet. So that leves me in a hard place.  My questions now may be
> to see what other mini gnome distros are other slackware users using
> out there? I've heard of slacky and I'm using dropline currently so
> what others are out there and what version of gnome are they up to?  I
> really don't want to have to do another complete re-install like I had
> to do when I put dropline in.
>
> Thanks for any help.
> - -- 
> HolmesGrown Solutions
> The best solutions for the best price!
> http://holmesgrown.ld.net/
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