First steps with Slackware: how to install software

When I started using Slackware, I was coming from Ubuntu. Used as I was to a packet managers doing everything automagically, I was a bit puzzled by Slackware's way. So after messing up for a while my first installation I discovered three ways to install software that I'm comfortable with:

• using a pre-compiled package (easier)
• using a slackbuild script (easy)
• using sources (less easy)

But let's start from the beginning.

Understanding how and where software files are stored

Usually in Slackware software is installed in /usr/, unless you specify otherwise. In most cases you will have all the software's files copied to /usr/lib/softwarename and a symlink in /usr/bin, usually linking the main executable placed in /usr/lib/softwarename.

Installing Mypaint 1.0.0 step-by-step

Mypaint is an amazing digital painting software for Linux, Windows and Mac. I absolutely love it, but installing it on Slackware 13.37 was a bit tricky...

First of all, download and extract mypaint 1.0.0:

wget http://download.gna.org/mypaint/mypaint-1.0.0.tar.bz2
tar -xvf mypaint-1.0.0.tar.bz2
cd  mypaint-1.0.0

Now, if you take a look at the readme file

cat README

you'll see that it needs scons to compile. If you haven't installed scons don't panic, there is an easy to get SlackBuild: