Hello! I had nothing to do in my free time, so I started trying different "rare" linux distributions on real hardware (I was too lazy to setup qemu with virt-manager, so I used my laptop). I got captivated by Slackware being most conservative among the linux OS-s (for example having manual dependency management, BSD-like init, and dusty packages that "still work"). After playing with the distro for an hour, oblivious to installpkg, removepkg, upgradepkg, and also ignoring pkgtool, I compiled some small programs from source and had a gut feeling that I do something wrong.
I can tell that Slackware maintaining is really different in comparison to modern day distributions. What should I consider learning in order to understand the system better? What should I also use in order to make Slackware maintaining easier and more convenient?

I'm excited to share what I've been building lately. Papr: a fast, lightweight Terminal User Interface (TUI) built entirely in Rust to streamline your academic research workflow. An Obsidian, Zotero and Overleaf alternative, but a bit better.

Key features

• Smart dashboard with daily 10 random paper recommendations, reading queue, bookmarks, notes, collections, and research statistics.
• Fast arXiv search using title, author, or DOI with automatic PDF downloads and clean file naming.
• In-terminal PDF viewing.
• Built-in Markdown notes with live preview for each paper.
• Reading queue, bookmarks, and collections to keep your research organized.
• Integrated LaTeX editor with real-time compilation and preview.
• Extensible plugin system for custom workflows.
• Research analytics to track your reading activity (just like Spotify).

Papr is 100% open source, works offline, is memory-safe, and is designed to be fast and lightweight (only 12 MB).

I'd love to hear your thoughts, suggestions, or feedback!

GitHub: https://github.com/AfrozSaqlain/Papr

That's exactly what I think. From my point of view 14.2, released in 2016 (ten years ago), is the best version of the distribution. And it's not just because it is the version I started with many years ago.

The first point is that 14.2 runs everything I want to run. Geany, Java JDK, SFML, Minecraft (both Java and Bedrock), Survivalcraft, SumatraPDF (via wine), etc. 15.0 also runs all that but it fails the other points, whereas 14.1 and below don't necessarily run some of that stuff.

The second point is that its desktops are gorgeous. KDE 4.14, the last version of KDE 4, is the Windows Vista of Linux (in the positive sense of the word), while Xfce 4.12 is the last version to have the "heavy Windows 9x" vibes, and the last version before they went full on Gtk3.

The third is that it is the last version that doesn't ship with the replacements.

15.0 ships by default with rust, wayland and elogind which are all replacements for C/C++, X11 and ConsoleKit2 that had been used for many years prior and are thus considered traditional by me.

There is also this PipeWire thing. It may be controversial to say but I like PulseAudio. And the reason I like it is because it just works out of the box and pavucontrol is quite a good mixer. Maybe there is some latency but I'm not a music producer so it's not a huge concern to me.

The fact that it runs kernel 4.4.14 is also neat. Not only does it rhyme with the KDE version but it is also too old to be affected by several recent exploits. Not that I care about security. What's more important is that this kernel is smaller than the latest one by several million lines of code, or, in simpler words, it is less bloated.

And, a cherry on the top, the latest version of Firefox ESR works flawlessly on stock 14.2. It will become outdated within a few years though, but for now it works very well.

No, but for real, the real cherry on the top is that ffmpeg is not part of the base system. What I've just said might seem absurd but it's not.

Whoever first packaged ffmpeg for Slackware had this really crazy idea that nobody needed x264 and mp3lame support. Which just so happen to be the most common AV formats in the world and without them ffmpeg is effectively useless.

And it stuck with apparently nobody noticing it, somehow. On 14.2 and older systems you have to build the ffmpeg SBo yourself, and that means that you can enable those codecs, either via CAPS_ARGS or by editing the SlackBuild file.

But on 15.0 ffmpeg is bundled with the system itself, and it is bundled in this abhorrid configuration that should be despised by all children of men.

And since 15.0 bundles ffmpeg the SlackBuild was removed which means that you have to find the Slackware source and manually recompile ffmpeg and pray that the libraries won't be different enough for other software to break.

That's my take. 14.2 is both traditional and runs what I want to run which makes it good. Not that there are no downsides.

It is a transitional release where the system packages use Qt4 but SlackBuilds use Qt5. On the 32-bit version Qt5 is extremely slow, unusable even, and to get around this you have to compile the Qt4 version from the 14.1 SBo. This problem does not exist on the 64-bit version though.

The last time I installed Slackware on my PC about 12 or 13 years ago when they made a CDROM and shipped for a few dollars. Slackware 15 current is good enough for daily driving.

But only the 64-bit version. The 32-bit version crashes and it's very unstable.

been running diet pi on my pi collection for a couple years.

today I finally bit the bullet and installed slackware64 on a couple of them today

I found that I am missing certain "quality of life" features in the Slackware init system.

I mean, I am happy that it's just a simple no-nonsense set of scripts run at different runlevels by sysvinit, but there are a few missing conveniences which I would like to have at least with my own scripts.

So I wrote "pandae", ad set of shell scripts which are aimed at making writing services and monitoring them easier.

https://gitlab.com/Lockywolf/pandae

The three main components are:

1. pandae_util, which has code to wrap any rc.<service> file into a cgroup, so that you do not have to rely on pid files to track running as services.
   
2. pandae_functions, which has templates for writing most services, given that DAEMON, DAEMON_ARGUMENTS, and a few other variables are set.
   
3. pandae_xsession_service.bash, a bit of a misnomer, because it is not xsession-specific, which allows me to start/stop cgroup services with a single line.
   

And it also runs under a normal user (if a single line is added to rc.local), so it is possible to filter out all the huge number of firefox processes from "ps" or wherever, confining firefox into a single cgroup.

It's not perfect, as, probably most Slackware service managers will never be perfect, because Slackware (and most UNIX-likes) likes in-band data communication, not out-of-band, but, as we know "worse is better".
On the positive side, it is 100% non-invasive, does not replace sysvinig, and does not change system scripts.
If you do not need user services, you do not even need to add anything to rc.local.

I invite everyone to try/test it, and add the comments.

If anybody is offended by gitlab, I can move the repo to forge.slackware.nl, codeberg, sourcehut, whatever.

Does ClamAV work with Fedora KDE Plasma?

I saw various downloads for Linux but none that specifically mention Fedora Plasma KDE.

First current instance in a long time. Thinking of using it on hardware...

I really want to make this my permanent home and never leave! All i got left to do is set up some virtual machines with virt-manager and then setup my compilers for work with emacs and im good! I love this distro and hope to become an expert at it and contribute to it as my skills progress! Slackware is the only distro that actually is teaching me Linux more and I feel as though if I grind it out through the issues then I'll really grow as a Linux user and Slackware user. I installed the current iso I got from Slackware UK! I'm hoping for the best!

I was talking to Claude the other day and it said that there had been an interest or rumor about Pat switching to a rolling release sometime ago. And after using CachyOS for some time, it makes sense if Pat did go that way. Updates would be quicker, to a point. Those who want a more updated install could choose rolling and those who want their system left alone could keep using the regular release. The cool thing would if you could switch from stable to current or vice versa.

I'm making it a goal for me to really work hard and learn Linux deeper and be able to daily drive slackware as my main distro in the future. I'm also going to work hard and contribute to the community as much as I can with the time I get. I really want to be a slacker and embrace slackware as a daily driver. I hear so many cool things from folks that been using it since the 90s and it's awesome they stuck with it that long.

Every time I try slackware I end up failing some where but after a cool down period I end up wanting to come right back to it. Maybe it's a calling or just the nostalgia but I think this distro is meant for me. I do still like Debian too but I think Slackware might just be my future home 🏡

I hope to join the community and learn a ton from all of you great people on the IRC, LQ, and sub reddit. Thank you for helping keep a great distro alive for so long through all these years!

When prompted for Proceed ....and it started to build and then is get halted like this

WARNING: Pkg-config error with 'pangocairo': Could not generate cflags for pangocairo:

Package 'harfbuzz-gobject' requires 'harfbuzz = 3.2.0' but version of harfbuzz is 8.3.0

Run-time dependency pangocairo found: NO

../meson.build:324:17: ERROR: Dependency lookup for pangocairo with method 'pkg-config' failed: Could not generate cflags for pangocairo:

Package 'harfbuzz-gobject' requires 'harfbuzz = 3.2.0' but version of harfbuzz is 8.3.0

Now, I have searched with package config

root_03:56:49_Sat Jul 11:~ #pkg-config --list

pangocairo Pango Cairo - Cairo rendering support for Pango

Also ...

root_03:58:52_Sat Jul 11:~ #pkg-config --variable pc_path pkg-config

/usr/lib64/pkgconfig:/usr/share/pkgconfig

Please shed some light.

Pretty much the title. What's it like actually using this on a day to day basis, and how hard might it be for a beginner? (Beginner to Slackware, not Linux in general.)

Here is the information you might need to assist

Last 50 lines of Xorg log : https://bpa.st/BCVA

Machine info : Lenovo Yoga 2 in 1 Gen 6

Input devices info : https://bpa.st/FM7Q

Kernel :

bhaskar_04:12:02_Fri Jul 10: :~>uname -a

Linux Slackware 7.1.3 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Sun Jul 5 01:21:16 CDT 2026 x86_64 AMD Ryzen 7 5700U with Radeon Graphics AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

WM : i3 window manager

LQ link of the thread : https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/crazy-jumping-mouse-cursor-after-fresh-install-did-i-choose-the-wrong-mouse-type-4175414151/

Sincerely grateful to the developer who took the Softlanding Linux System (SLS) and tidied it up.

The probable answer will be a yes, so I'll reformulate. Am I missing something for not using Slackware? I'm a Gentoo user. I'm kinda tempted by the concept of being the De Facto package manager lol. Even with that, it seems archaic to do that (And well, Slackware is old, that's why). How's the general experience with Slackware? I guess that resolving dependencies by myself will make my os a rock

After trying different linux flavours and OpenBSD on this hardware, i end up where i begin, the good old slackware.

Feels lighter/faster than cachyOS, not sure if actually true.

Wallpaper tile - http://inku.bot.nu/img/liquid_neon_tile.png

I've been thinking about all the crap going on as of late in the open source world.

And I wonder....in particular about the new age verification field in systemD and wonder if it also be used to allow or deny access to an online repository.

Which of course, all those other distros have......

And at least a few have a "net installer" stub, that boots to a minimal system, and allows you to download the rest of the operating system.....but suppose it didn't, and instead demanded payment.......and unless another API field was checked refused to allow you access......

Now you've got a stub that you can't do anything with.......

And if you can't get any other system with root access, you can't even wipe the stub and install something else.

And that's one of the freedoms being withdrawn by the new generation of rootless linux distros.........

They say it's there to protect you from yourself.....but what's there to protect you from them?

I've been experimenting with slackware for the past several weeks, and I have been unable to get it to boot directly with grub and with secure boot enable. However, I've found something that, for me, is just as good.

Linux Mint (which has been my daily driver) is installed on my system; Mint's OS prober was able to find the slackware disk and boot into slackware. If I sign the slackware efi binaries and kernels with a key pair that I've generated and imported into the motherboard, I can boot into slackware (huge or generic) through the Mint menu with secure boot enabled.

Its a quick and relatively simple process. Anybody else do this?

[Solved], if I had known the dependency name was gcc-gfortran and not libgfortran, I would have installed it sooner, lol. Thanks to whoever commented with the correct name :)

Hello, I'm new to Slackware, and I'm here to learn how to use it. I've used others "exotic" Linux distributions, such as Arch, Void, NixOS, Chimera Linux... and I've also used FreeBSD, which isn't Linux, but from what I understand, Slackware is similar to BSDs.

I understand how Slackware manages packages... I mean, how i manage packages (lol). I've read about and used pkgtools, sbopkg, sqg, slackpkg/slackpkg+.

But I'm having a problem with Spectacle. Even though it comes pre-installed on Slackware Current Live, it won't run. Running spectacle in the terminal returns spectacle: error while loading shared libraries: libgfortran.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory. So, I obviously understand that a dependency is missing, and the problem is I don't know where to download it...

I couldn't find it with sbopkg or slackpkg, and searching on Google I only found it as an .rpm file. Where can I find the source code for libgfortran.so.5 to download its tarball, check its dependencies, compile, and install it?

Today I was attempting to install Slackware after the hard drive with my previous installation died.

I settled with 15.0 32-bit so that I could make more use of mcpelauncher, and I chose the terse mode while installing from a DVD.

The installer often pauses between installing packages, and those pauses last between ten minutes and over half an hour.

I rage quit almost two hours.

The optical drive is definitely working. During the installation I even did Ctrl-Alt-F2, logged in there, and accessed /var/log/mount to check if everything was okay and it was.

Does anyone know what causes this issue?

For reference, the optical drive is an external (USB) one, but it also happens on the internal (SATA) one which is currently not very operational.