Recently in Slackbuilds.org Category

It's always news when a new version of Slackware is released, and this week Slackware 13 is available for download or purchase on CD or DVD.

The release announcement details which version of what package/app/feature is included in the new release.

I spent a bit of time running Slackware 12.0, but didn't do much with 12.1 and 12.2.

Part of that has to do with the fact that Slackware doesn't ship with GNOME, and if you choose to install without KDE, intending to use either Xfce, Fluxbox or another window manager, you don't end up with all that many apps.

I have two Debian Lenny-equipped laptops at the moment, with my main laptop running Ubuntu 8.04.

The "quicker" of the two Lenny laptops is in backup/test mode right now, with a fully encrypted LVM installation. It's been going pretty well, but if I don't think of another machine I can run Slackware 13 on, that Toshiba laptop might be pressed into service for it. (I've got two resurrected-from-the-dead 2002-era Toshiba Satellites, making a-b testing pretty easy ... both have dead touchpads, one has some kind of inverter going bad, making the screen blank intermittently and also has a dead sound chip.)

This time I think I'll go for the full KDE experience. Aside from a few mellow-harshing bugs, I did enjoy using KOffice at one time. And if I did "get used to" KDE, the software mix in Slackware without adding anything else is pretty darn good.

The problem is that even with Slackbuilds and other repositories, there's nowhere near as many apps readily available for Slackware as there is for Debian-based distributions.

But Slackware is still Slackware, and the aforementioned Slackbuilds go a long way toward assembling a complete system, and there ARE tools such as slapt-get and Gslapt that make updating a Slackware box much less nightmarish (I got in the weeds pretty quickly on a Slack 12.0 install when I had to manually download packages and use updatepkg to roll them in one by one).

I didn't really need Geany, but I wanted to try Slackbuilds.

The instructions are too brief. I only say this because I can't make it work.

I extract the Slackbuild script, download the source to the proper directory, run the script as root and then get an error message.

The output says: "tar: This does not look like a tar archive," or "bzip2: (stdin) is not a bzip2 file."

I'm sure I'm missing something, but what?

Not one to wait, I went to LinuxPackages.net and got Geany for Slackware 12.0. I used pkgtool to install it. Worked perfectly.

Still, I'd like to figure out Slackbuilds. I'd love to know what I'm doing wrong.

I sent Slackware expert Willy Sudiarto Raharjo an e-mail asking for help. I've exchanged e-mail with Robby Workman before, and he's responsible for many Slackbuilds scripts, but I figured I'd ask Willy first and see what he comes up with.