SlackPack: Slackware packages

The week, that just passed, was devoted to the Linux games on SlackPack. Currently the collection of games isn't big, so I've decided to enlarge it a bit. During the last week I have built several games - from the more advanced GNU Go and KSudoku to the more amusing PlanetPenguin Racer and Pingus. Well, I had to build some build requirements like SCons and few dependencies like ICU and Boost, but I'm sure I'm going to need them in the future.

Along with the games there were two package updates Thunderbird BG and MySQL Connector/ODBC. Both packages have long support record in SlackPack and they couldn't wait.

All you need to do now is download and enjoy. Enjoy gaming!

Three months ago I issued an warning about the use of my Slackware 11.0 KDE packages on Slackware 12 and then posted about "problems" with their rebuild. Today I'm pleased to announce that all my KDE packages that are available for Slackware 11 are available for Slackware 12 as well. This took me long time, because for the Slackware 12 repository I'm building all the packages dependencies.

Happy using!

Starting my new Slackware 12 repository, I have decided to build all the dependencies of my packages and not to relay on third parties. Thus you should be able to use my packages getting their dependencies from the same place. If you can't find a package dependency, please write me and I will try to create package. Please, note that this doesn't include official Slackware packages. I'm rebuilding some of them, but only if there is a sense.

Be happy!

During the last week I have rebuilded some packages for Slackware 12 as well as for Slackware 11. However I can't still start rebuilding KDE packages for Slackware 12, because I have problems building PyGTK. I'm receiving some strange messages from Python stating 'Could not write method ...'. I will greatly appreciate any help on this, while I'm trying to determine the problem myself.

Update: Because this was just an warning I've ignored it, but I should get touch with the developers.

Early this morning Slackware 12.0 was released. It's this year major release and this is also the first release based on 2.6 kernels. Slackware 12 has new path for KDE and uses udev instead of hotplug. Dependencies may also vary, because some pacakages were splitted.

While most of my packages for 11.0 should work on 12.0, I don't recommend using the following packages:

• Packages of KDE applications - they may not work, because of the new KDE path (I've noted missing functionality, because of not found plug-ins);
• Packages that use hotplug (such as foo2zjs) - they may also not work even if they include udev rules.

I will rebuild those packages for Slackware 12.0, but since I'm too busy recently I can't tell when this will happen. So stay tuned and please report any broken package to Georgi D. Sotirov.

Recently the site get a new build machine on which the packages for Slackware 11 and 10.2 will be built and prepared. The machine is an old IBM NetVista with an 1 GHz processor and 256 MB of RAM. Currently on the 20 GB hard drive IBM Travel Mate there is one partition with a clean install of Slackware 11 and soon the other part will be taken for Slackware 10.2.

This way the packages will be build on clean Slackware installs and they should be good for your system. Site primary machine is busy with other things and is now running something that is Slackware current with lots of miscellaneous things, so creating good packages can't be ensured.

I'm pleased to announce SlackPack 0.3.0. The new release took me about two months of development, but I'm happy to put some new features and fix some small problems detected by me.

What is new?

• Older packages are marked as obsolete and wrongly build or with security issues in the bundled software are deleted from the repositories;
• MD5 Verification;
• Package signatures is now reviewable from the interface;
• Advanced search now has option 'only latest' which will select only recent packages and is used by default;
• You can donate to the site through Epay and MoneyBookers.

The details are in the Changelog file.

Happy using!

Being busy preparing the new version of SlackPack, I dropped package building for some time. Today I'm returning with three new packages for Slackware 11.0 of recent software releases. These are:

• OpenOffice.org BG 2.2.0 for x86;
• OpenOffice.org BG 2.2.0 for x86-64 and
• Thunderbird 2.0.0.0 BG.

The latest was released just hours ago. I'm happy to release the new version of OpenOffice.org BG since it already has been delayed from the official English release.

Cheers!!!

P.S. Stay tuned for SlackPack 0.3.0, coming later this evening.

Tonight mirror support was added to the site. Now you can choose how and from where to download a package. Currently the repositories are mirrored only on marla, but I hope to find some international mirrors in near future.

Today SlackPack went online. The site was almost ready months ago, but I repeatedly delayed the primetime. Finally I'm putting the site to the public. I hope you will find it useful with all the information it provides.

Now that the site is online I will have more enthusiasm on developing it, because I have many ideas on improving the user experience and adding new things. Stay tunned for more.