Notes on Linux

tested on an intel core duo E5200 with 2 gigs of ram

The main attributes are:

kernel 4.4.14

kde 4.14.21
firefox 45.2
chrome 56
bash 4.3.46
rtorrent 0.9.6

added dosbox-0.74-x86_64-2jsc.txz
for old dos games

The slackware DVD will boot up and it is easy enough to run the install script. First time slackware users may find the install script to be a bit primitive and it assumes the user has some knowledge of cfdisk or fdisk.

One configures the network the usual way with netconfig.

Note that slackware will install and not run X automatically, so I just run X as a user via the startx script. This will bring up kde 4.14.21

I was familiar with slapt-get so I was a bit surpised to see it was replaced with slackpkg located in /usr/sbin. Also gslapt has disappeared along with kpackage so I'm not sure what is available to install packages via a GUI.

Downloaded packages may be installed via: sudo /sbin/upgradepkg --install-new package.txz

Running dmesg now requires using sudo.

I found it useful to download and install flashplayer-plugin-24.0.0.221-x86_64-1alien.txz to get flash working. I also installed wine-1.9.23x86_64-1alien.txz for those few windows programs I run (mostly games).

All in all I'm quite happy with slackware 14.2 on my quasi-modern computer. Old school linux and openbsd types will no doubt feel at home with slack. There's no systemd to worry about. A full install takes about 9 gigs of drive space. The slackware folks have obviously put a ton of work into this new release. A word of warning to linux newbies, this isn't the easiest distro to install and is probably best suited to linux intermediates or experts.

I recommend Slackware 14.2 for the linux traditionalist.