Slackware Linux Blog by İsmail

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Switch to multilib with 32-bit compatibility on Slackware64

Slackware64 is pure 64-bit system and does not contain multilib and 32-bit compatibility packages officially. This does not mean that Slackware64 is not multilib-ready. It is possible to add layer of multilib and 32-bit compatibility software to Slackware64.

You need multilib support because some closed source programs, such as Google Earth, Adobe Reader and Team Viewer, require multilib and 32-bit compatibility layer in order to be run on Slackware64.

To switch multilib with 32-bit compatibility on Slackware64 14.0 using Eric Hameleers' packages and guide;

1. open a terminal emulator,

2. download the complete Slackware 14.0 multilib folder.

lftp -c 'open http://slackware.com/~alien/multilib/ ; mirror 14.0'

3. become root,

su

4. change directory to the downloaded multilib packages' folder.

cd 14.0

5. upgrade your 64bit Slackware gcc and glibc packages to their multilib versions,

upgradepkg --reinstall --install-new *.t?z

6. install 32-bit compatibility packages to support all the 32-bit programs,

cd *-compat32

upgradepkg --install-new *-compat32/*.t?z

7. add below lines to /etc/slackpkg/blacklist file for blacklisting all off multilib and 32-bit compatibility packages against updated by slackpkg tool,

#
# This one will blacklist all alien packages:
[0-9]+alien
#

For further information about multilib, look at here!

Friday, November 30, 2012

Disable or Enable Touchpad by synclient

Some notebooks do not have any BIOS option for enabling or disabling touchpad. You can achieve this by using Fn + FX key combination, but this time another problem occurs in some notebooks that do not memorize that action. For every reboot of the system, you need to disable touchpad manually as previously. Do not worry! Using synclient utility, you can tell the computer to do it instead of you.

Below command will disable touchpad.

synclient TouchpadOff=1

For enabling touchpad, you need to set value to 0 and run this command in terminal as in below.

synclient TouchpadOff=0

For adding this command to startup, navigate to

For KDE (4.8.5):

System Settings > System Administration > Startup and Shutdown > Autostart > Add Program

For XFCE (4.10):

Applications Menu > Settings > Settings Manager > Session and Startup > Application Autostart > Add

and add below command line to startup.

synclient TouchpadOff=1

This will disable touchpad instead of you on every logon.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Setting Slackware Screen Brightness Value by xbacklight

Setting screen brightness on every boot gets everyone annoyed. Follow below guide to avoid this.

If you have full Slackware 14.0 installation, you possibly have xbacklight package installed on your box if you did not uninstalled it.

Slackware provides xbacklight package in official file tree under .../slackware/x/ directory. If your box does not have xbacklight installation, you can simply install it by slackpkg tool as following. (For using slackpkg, firstly you need to be configured it.)

slackpkg install xbacklight

Now, navigate to

For KDE (4.8.5):

System Settings > System Administration > Startup and Shutdown > Autostart > Add Program

For XFCE (4.10):

Applications Menu > Settings > Settings Manager > Session and Startup > Application Autostart > Add

Finally, add below command line to startup.

xbacklight -set 50

This will set screen brightness to 50 per-cent of its maximum value. You can assign to it any integer value between 0 and 101.