Random thoughts, tips & tricks about Slackware-Linux, Lego and Star Wars

Archive for 2008

October 14th, 2008 by Niels Horn in , , , |

Working with fvwm2 wasn't too much fun… So I started looking for and old Slackware version that had KDE.I found out that my oldest CD with KDE was Slackware 4.0:

As it says on the cover, it comes with KDE 1.1, so this was my new project.According to the cover from the original 4-disc box, we're [...]

October 12th, 2008 by Niels Horn in , ,

After successfully installing Slackware 3.5 and discovering that Slackware 1.1.2 was still available on the internet at sunsite.unc.edu I simply had to try it…
At first I had no luck, as this version does not support the standard VMware network card (PCnet32) and also lacks support for IDE CDRom drives. The VMware emulated SCSI cards (BusLogic [...]

October 11th, 2008 by Niels Horn in , ,

Finally got X working on my Slackware 3.5 installation.Well, not perfectly, but good enough to capture a screen:

I had to configure X by editing XF86Config that's stored in /etc in this version.After some tweaking I got it to work with the basic "generic vga" driver, with a resolution of 640×480. It should work with higher [...]

October 10th, 2008 by Niels Horn in , , |

Last week I found the original Slackware 3.5 CDs that I have. I have several older versions of Slackware in my collection, most of them original CDs.I started using Slackware in 1996, when I bought a book called "Slackware Linux Unleashed" from Sams. It included Slackware 96, which is also known as Slackware 3.1
Since I [...]

October 5th, 2008 by Niels Horn in , , |

Just a quick hint for those having trouble using the 'generic' kernel (as we should always use) when installing Slackware as a guest with VMware.
VMware creates SCSI drives by default when we create a new virtual machine for Linux with a 2.6 kernel, emulating a LSI Logic SCSI controller. The 'huge' kernel that comes with [...]

October 3rd, 2008 by Niels Horn in , , |

If you want to be sure that your computer clock is accurate - always - you can configure your system to use NTP (Network Time Protocol).
NTP is one of the oldest protocols on the internet and its predecessors, going back to the early eighties. If you are interested in reading a small article about the [...]

September 29th, 2008 by Niels Horn in , , |

As I am an old-time computer user, I still prefer doing almost everything from the command line (CLI). I program almost everything in bash-scripts and schedule them with cron.But of course I do use a graphical interface to read mail (although I have Alpine configured to read my mail from the CLI) and browse the [...]

September 28th, 2008 by Niels Horn in , , , |

The internet is an amazing thing. Sometimes we forget too fast how things used to be before the internet. Yeah, I know, I'm getting old… I started working with computers when there was no such thing as the internet.
Today I was 'Googling' and by coincidence found a page talking about some software I wrote several [...]

September 28th, 2008 by Niels Horn in ,

I am a big fan of VMware and virtualization in general.At work we use the professional version to install servers that are only used a couple of hours a week, like systems for testing new releases of software etc.At home I use the free vmware-server-1.0.7 version to test new releases of software, different operating systems, [...]

September 27th, 2008 by Niels Horn in , |

Those who use Slackware will know who Patrick Volkerding is. For those who don't: he is the creator and maintainer of the Slackware Linux distribution. Also known as 'The Man'.Browsing for articles about the history of Slackware (I might write something about it in the future), I found an interview with Pat from 1994 from [...]