Alien Pastures

I am beginning to feel the lack of computing power in my attic…
There is a pending KDE 4.5.0 release, which needs to be built for slackware-current. Then there is also VLC 1.1.2 which was released a few days ago… and those packages need to be built for Slackware 13.1 (so that they can join [...]

Hi!
Just a quick message before I hit the bed,
I uploaded some Slackware packages for your consumption.

vlc – the new stable release 1.1.1 became available for download today and my packages are now ready to be grabbed at http://slackware.org.uk/people/alien/restricted_slackbuilds/vlc/ (this UK mirror hosts the packages with export restrictions – they contain mp3 and aac audio encoders) [...]

Just to add another message to the turmoil of cheering blog posts
Slackware 13.1 has been released today.
Read all about it in the official announcement or  read the ANNOUNCE.TXT directly.
As usual, it is recommended (but not mandatory) to buy a copy of the DVD or CD-set which helps funding the development of the distro [...]

Now that Slackware is nearing a new release (that would be 13.1 of course), it is again obvious how tedious this process of finalizing is. Even though I am not the maintainer, just someone on the side (albeit pretty close to the fire) there are so many small issues to be taken care of… I [...]

A few weeks back Laurent Parenteau asked me to contribute a post to his series “Meet the Linux family” on the blog “Software Development with Linux“. Well here it is: http://laurentparenteau.com/blog/2010/02/meet-the-linux-family-eric-hameleers/ . Nothing spectacular, but just enough controversy (I hope… I wrote “Steve Balmer” and “Eric Raymond” on the same page) to make it interesting [...]

I have always really hated the Git Version Control System (or VCS).
I am pretty comfortable working with other products like RCS, CVS and Subversion (SVN). I am not a developer, so my main use for a VCS is a to allow me to keep track of the changes in my SlackBuild scripts or my [...]

A bit of history… I realized that just a year ago, KDE 4.2.rc1 got added to Slackware’s “/testing” area.
With all the recent posts on this blog about KDE4 and me telling people how nice I think this version of KDE is, I realize that “liking” is a very personal expression of feelings. A feeling shared [...]

… Ok, ok, it is not so bad actually! Au contraire!
Slackware Linux development made a big leap today, when Pat Volkerding updated the distro’s “vital organs” of kernel, glibc and gcc. The “dull” phase of the slackware-current development cycle is over hopefully, and it’s back to the bleeding edge.
To be fair, gcc 4.4.2 has been [...]

There are several ways to install Slackware to your computer. You have network installation options available (where the packages are on a remote NFS/FTP/HTTP/Samba server) and local options (where the packages are on a DVD/CDROM or a local directory).
In all these cases you need to boot your computer with Slackware’s installer. Traditionally you can boot [...]

Perhaps you run the 64-bit Slackware 13.0. If so, did you by any chance install my 32bit multilib packages on top, and then ran the slackpkg command after that?
There was a bug in my multilib conversion script convertpkg-compat32 (all versions before “10alien“). The compat32-tools package which I have uploaded today contains a fixed version (11alien).
If [...]