Linux is a free Unix-type operating system originally created by Linus Torvalds with the assistance of developers around the world. Developed under the GNU General Public License, the source code for Linux is freely available to everyone - which is what makes it "free".
Slackware is the oldest Linux "distribution", that is a Linux kernel with an assortment of other programs and tools which makes up an operating system. There are many others, but I stick with Slackware despite the hideous name, because it is stable, fast and, by now, an old friend!
Further set-up notes relating to peripheral programs are here.
This is the pick of the bunch.
Tricky no longer thanks to the wicd program - available on the Slackbuilds site!!
This can be tricky. To get the wireless connection working on peteranna, I first re-named /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless.conf to stop it being used. Then all the settings go into rc.inet1.conf Here is the relevant section.
Config information for wlan2.
IFNAME4="wlan2"
IPADDR4="192.168.2.9"
NETMASK4="255.255.255.0"
USE_DHCP4="" ### ie DO NOT use dhcp
WLAN_ESSID4=wurbleburble
WLAN_MODE4=Managed
WLAN_CHANNEL4="6"
WLAN_KEY4="wurbleburbleburble"
This is an area not well covered by the SlackBook, in fact it is not covered at all. Hitherto I have used lprng and apsfilter. These have both been put out to "pasture" in Slackware 11, so, time to try the CUPS system. This works well but I have an ancient printer (Canon BJC-4000) and CUPS seems to have no driver for it.
To get BJC 4000 working I needed the bjc600 driver which can be downloaded from linuxprinting.org This site will tell you all you need to know about your printer! Drop the driver into /usr/share/cups/model so that cups can find it Then to re-start the cups daemon run killall -HUP cupsd You can then use a web-browser to go to http://localhost:631/admin where you will be able to use CUPS to set up your printer.
Just copy the source directory on your installation CD to your hard drive or download it from a mirror (slackware-12.0/source/l/freetype/). Go to that directory and begin editing the freetype.SlackBuild file. Uncomment the line that enables the bytecode interpreter. Now use the SlackBuild file to compile freetype. This will result in a freetype package being created in /tmp. Quit out of X, removepkg the freetype package you have installed and installpkg the the new one. Do a ldconfig and restart X.
Sometimes a necessity to cope with new hardware or to fine-tune the system.
Just to summarize the commands
# cp /mnt/cdrom/kernels/hugesmp.s/config /usr/src/linux/.config
or to use the .config from the running kernel
# zcat /proc/config.gz > /usr/src/linux/.config
If you are using a configuration file that is for another kernel version than you are currently compiling, it is likely that both kernel versions do not have the same set of options. New options are often added (e.g., because newer drivers are added), and sometimes kernel components are removed. You can configure new options (and remove unused options) with the "make oldconfig" command:
# cd /usr/src/linux ; make oldconfig
# cd /usr/src/linux
# make menuconfig
or just edit the thing in a text editor!
Then the command to calculate dependencies, build the modules and the kernel all in one go.
# cd /usr/src/linux
# make
Install it!
# make modules_install
maybe
# rm -rf /lib/modules/2.6.21.5-smp
then
# cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.21.5-smp-ddk
and then we have to configure Lilo!!!