Slacky repo

I was lamenting the very poor selection of packages in the official Slackware repository, as well as the lack of dependency information. So, Arch created a very favourable impression, with a good selection of packages and database files with dependency info.

I have built "Slack Puppy" with a lot of PET packages from the Puppy4 repo., such as Abiword, Gnumeric, xine-lib, Gxine, as they aren't in the official Slackware repo. I know there are other Slackware-based repositories around, including those of distros like Vector, but I have just found this:

http://repository.slacky.eu/slackware-12.2/

...great, heaps of packages. In the future I can pick packages out of there.

I also did the "Arch Puppy" build with lots of Puppy4 PET packages, simply because they work. Packages compiled in Puppy4 have a low number of dependencies, and those dependencies are generally configured with minimal features. Also Puppy4 has older versions of libraries than the recent Slackware/Debian/Ubuntu/Arch releases*. All of these factors mean that the package is likely to work without any hitches in these recent distros, or for that matter a Woof-Puppy built from one of these distro's base packages.

In fact, in some cases the Puppy4 packages work better. In the Ubuntu "Intrepid Puppy" build, I had earlier used the ffmpeg, xine-lib and gxine Ubuntu pkgs, as well as our codecs PET package, but Gxine did not perform well, refusing to play some video files. I rebuilt with Puppy4 packages and they played fine.

* This is a heavily qualified statement. A later library version may change the "API", that is, the calling conventions for it's functions, which may break an application compiled for an earlier version of the library.

---

Comments

rolling releases
Username: dogone
Barry, what are the implications for Woof of "rolling release" distros like Arch? Do they make maintaining Woof easier or more difficult? How do Woof users deal with major (and sometimes unpredictable) base distro upgrades?

Some perspective
Username: dogone
"The Arch wiki contains this anatomical comparison between Arch and other distros. It's informative and of interest even to those not considering Arch. Recommended reading. http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Compared_To_Other_Distros

Slacky.eu
Username: happypuppy
"http://repository.slacky.eu/slackware-12.2/ That's the best Slackware repository and the only one worth mentioning :) The best thing is 99% of those packages are Puppy 4.x compatible.Just strip them and convert to .PET

Tags: woof