Slackware 10.2 initial tips and pointers

Just switched back from using Suse for a few months. I was first overwhelmed by the good looks of SUSE after being obssessed with getting a Mac OSX. But then I got sick of the bloat and GUI, and switched back to good ole Slacky.

Just a few pointers i picked up.

* i shouldn't use old CD-RWs anymore to burn slack isos on. They scratch after using for a few distros, and it becomes very frustrating when installs fail because a package is corrupted because of a scratch on the CD. I am gonna use a brand new CD-R everytime from now on to save the pain and trouble.

* if kernel panic or some other weird thing happens like Slackware not being able to boot up at all after installation, try installing the bare kernel without ACPI. That did the trick for me on a HP Pavilion desktop.

* if one wishes to compile other window managers, you can get it listed on xwmconfig quite easily. Just cd /etc/X11/xinit/. ls should show you xinitirc, and xinitrc..
then, cp xinitrc.blackbox xinitrc.ratpoison (for example)
vi xinitc.ratpoison, delete the line exec blackbox and replace it with exec ratpoison. save it. and on the next xwmconfig, it will show up a ratpoison.

* one can setup X automagically with xorgsetup. If that doesn't work, then do it manually with xorgconfig

* NFS works only if two services are activated: nfsd and portmapd. Activate services by cd /etc/rc.d/
chmod +x rc.nfsd; chmod +x rc.portmapd

* if dhcp is not working, restart the internet startup service with /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 restart. if that doesn't work, maybe hotplug hasn't started, which means your network card if not up yet.

* distcc works well. Only problem is that some programs won't install properly with it because of bugs that only show up with distributed compiling. For example, I couldn't get arts to compile properly. DVD::rip and its dependancies compile with no problems.