Salix user for 24 hours

[salixious]

@knome: I don't mean to dis' Salix, but I've used CrunchBang Linux for awhile and it has been rock solid for me as well and I even dabble with pulling packages from the Backports repo.

[fleabus]

I thought about using my username and avatar from another distro as well, but I think for privacy reasons it's best to use different ones on different forums.

I thought about that, and fought with myself a bit over it when I was getting started, but decided I liked it better this way. I really don't mind if folks know who I am, and I see a lot of others propagating the same username/avatar etc on other forums -- it's nice to see them in other places as well. I fully understand and support the privacy issue too, and I see why folks might not want to be known all over the place by the same handle and avatar.

For me this is a great learning experience. I suppose I should thank Lennart for giving this old dog the motivation to learn new tricks! I've discovered a surprising fondness for Slackware, and as a lazy Debian user I appreciate the opportunity to become a lazy Slacker as well... The more I use Salix and Slackware, the more I like it. I've only scratched the surface (takes me forever these days) but I'm having a natural born ball. Salix is really wonderful.

[salixious]

It certainly has been a learning experience, although I'm not sure that it is great. I spent about 3.5 hours earlier compiling the Chromium browser...3.5 hours; that's insane. So far, that has been the worst one. TrueCrypt took awhile to compile, but no where near as long as Chromium.

I'm with you on being a lazy Slacker. After finding out that Salix made it easy to compile and install from source, I made the decision to try it instead of Slackware. Both of them being otherwise the same made the decision that much easier.

[fleabus]

I sort of came up the back way, checking out the Slackbuilds site first, then discovering sourcery, and finally spi, rejoicing as I discovered each of these new things. Spi is really great, reminds me somewhat of the little "apt" shortcut script in Solyd. As a lazy Debian user that apt script spoiled me so rotten that I snatched it for my handy utils toolbox.

So far I haven't run into anything I normally use that isn't available here. I'm normally a FF/Iceweasel freak, so I'm ok in the browser department, and my needs otherwise are pretty simple. Spi found Slackbuilds for Luckybackup and Coolreader. Then VLC, Calibre, and some transcoding stuff and I'm pretty much set. All in all I find Salix completely agreeable! It seems very rock solid. I've only been using it since August, but never once has it frozen or required a reboot, in spite of this user... It just sits there and works, and you don't have to fool with it. And I love Xfce.

[salixious]

"...I snatched it for my handy utils toolbox."

I use Rainlendar for my PIM needs and I do not see it in the Salix/Slackware repos, nor on SlackBuilds.org. Debian has a nice alarm clock app called, wait for it...alarm-clock. The closest thing I found runs from the CLI. I would prefer a GUI version, but I may check out the CLI app. I also enjoy using the Double Commander file manager and that wasn't available in the Salix/Slackware repos.

Browsers...I prefer Chrome over Chromium, but didn't see it in the Salix/Slackware repos. I can't remember if I checked SlackBuilds. Once I get more comfortable with Salix, assuming I continue to use it, I'm going to look into how to get the latest and greatest browsers. Midori is the most up-to-date browser offerred via the repos, but Firefox is somewhat stale and Chromium is pretty old. I will also look into getting Chrome versus Chromium. I think I can get the latest Firefox and it will run from it's own folder. I use it on CrunchBang Linux that way and it's really easy to keep updated from within the browser itself.

I also use CrunchBang Linux and I've used it for over two years straight now without a hiccup, with the exception of the times I attempted to roll with the Backports and Unstable repos. I've learned how to cherry pick from the Backports repo now instead of tracking it, which has resulted in some up-to-date app upgrades without breaking my system.

Okay, I think we better stop our back and forth. We've kind of hijacked this thread. Hope to trade posts with you in the future.

[laplume]

Hello All,

From time to time I use to get out packages Salix using the repos of the italian community of http://www.slacky.eu
Repos are located at http://repository.slacky.eu/. I use to include and activate them in Gslapt sources (priority: custom) just for the time I need to retrieve packages I cannot find in official repos. Quite a nice addition to the Salix/Slackware official ones.

Regards,
Antonio

[skrotnisse]

Thanx a lot!
Actually, I think I will have use for the link right now.

[mimosa]

By aware that your mileage may vary using third-party repositories, which haven't been tested during the Salix release process and may well contain poor quality packages. I wouldn't recommend doing so for less experienced users. I myself would almost certainly download and install any such packages manually (using spkg -i, which tells the package mangement system about them) if at all. Or I might just build my own from source.

[salixious]

By aware that your mileage may vary using third-party repositories, which haven't been tested during the Salix release process and may well contain poor quality packages. I wouldn't recommend doing so for less experienced users. I myself would almost certainly download and install any such packages manually (using spkg -i, which tells the package mangement system about them) if at all. Or I might just build my own from source.

+1