What to do after installing Slackware 14

Once we have done the Slackware installation 14, some minor adjustments are necessary.

1. Add a new user

It is always recommended within the Linux world, DO NOT use the account of root to work, therefore we must create a different user for this purpose and this is achieved through the command adduser.

# adduser

It is necessary to add our newly created user to the various groups

# usermod -a -G <nombre del grupo> <nombre de usuario>

where can be: audio, lp, optical, storage, video, wheel, games, power, scanner.

It is also necessary that the user we just created has root privileges, this is achieved by modifying the file sweats, in my case I will use vim.

# vim /etc/sudoers

or we can do it in a "more secure" way through

# visudo

We seek and we uncomment the line (we remove the # character)

#%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

Once this is done we can continue the process through our user, therefore we close session as root

# exit

and we log in with our user.

2. Change the system language

If we have decided to use KDE, we can from System preferences change the language and keyboard layout, but this would only affect applications belonging to that desktop environment.

To modify the language of the system in general, some environment variables have to be exported, this is achieved editing the file lang.sh

$ sudo vim /etc/profile.d/lang.sh

We search and comment the line (we add the character # at the beginning)

export LANG=en_US

then we add

export LANG=es_MX.utf8
export LANGUAGE=es_MX.utf8
export LINGUAS=es_MX.utf8
export LC_ALL=es_MX.utf8

You can change en_MX.utf8 by the language of your country.

To get one full list of languages supported type in your console

$ locale -a

If you use a shell other than bash (or plan to use it) you also need to edit the file lang.csh

$ sudo vim /etc/profile.d/lang.csh

We search and comment the line

setenv LANG en_US

then we add

setenv LANG es_MX.utf8

3. Update the system

The first thing we must do is choose the repositories that we will use, preferably the ones closest to our location, for this we edit the file mirrors uncommenting the lines that we consider appropriate.

We can notice that there are servers of the branch current containing more updated packages

$ sudo vim /etc/slackpkg/mirrors

What is better, stable version or current?

In Slackware the decision is not very simple, it is not exactly between deciding between Debian Squeeze and Wheezy. The stable version is very polished but it is not patched except for very critical security issues, the branch current receives updates more frequently that improve security but deteriorate its stability to a certain extent, however, there are few occasions in which this generates a real problem.

During this process we will use slackpkg, you need to log in as a user root.

a) Update the package list:

# slackpkg update

b) Install the updated signature key that guarantees that the packages that are installed are official. (Only done the first time)

# slackpkg update gpg

This will give us as a result

Slackware Linux Project's GPG key added

c) Update all installed packages

# slackpkg upgrade-all

d) Install the new packages (if you decided to use the current branch this will add the new packages of that version)

# slackpkg install-new

4. Configure boot

I suppose that the majority of users who have just installed this distribution will be somewhat puzzled when noticing that the graphical environment is not accessed directly but that it is necessary to start using startx.

This is because Slackware by default starts in runlevel: 3, for its part, this distribution needs to start in runlevel: 4 To access the graphic mode automatically, for this we must edit the file inittab

$ sudo vim /etc/inittab

We search and comment the line

id:3:initdefault:

then we add

id:4:initdefault:

5. Configure LILO

By default LILO FABRIC The waiting time is set to 2:00 minutes (1200 tenths of a second), which can be a bit annoying, you have the option of pressing a key to interrupt the count and continue with the system load, but if you It is interesting to modify this waiting time on the LILO FABRIC you need to edit your configuration file, this we must do it as root

# vim /etc/lilo.conf

We search and comment the line

timeout=1200

then we add

timeout=50

So the screen of LILO FABRIC It will only be available for 5 seconds (the time must be specified in tenths of a second, you can use the amount that seems appropriate).

Done this we must execute

# /sbin/lilo

This is necessary to rewrite the MBR.

So far what I consider should be done once we have installed Slackware, in the next installment I will talk about handling packages in this distribution.

I want to express a special thanks to creel [ksuserack [at] gmail [dot] com] who was kind enough to provide me with a complete article of his authorship on which this and the following writing in the series are based in part.