VectorLinux Packages

VectorLinux is based on Slackware Linux, which is the oldest active distrobution out there. Slackware just celebrated it's tenth aniversary not very long ago. It's been around that long with good reason. It's simple and stable. I think those two words sum it up the best. VectorLinux takes Slackware and expands on it some. Especially on the tools department. "vasm" is a VL only add-on that is a very nice tool. It could be argued that VL is more desktop-centric. Or maybe that it is smaller, and default ISO is smaller than Slackwares. VL includes such niceties as checkinstall(covered later) by default.

VL inheirits its package management system from Slackware. Instead of .RPM, each package ends in a .TGZ. If you feel like some for details of a .tgz packages contents, you can head over to:

http://slackware.com/book/index.php?source=c3984.html

That's actually part of the official SlackWare book. Almost anything in there applies to VL as well. I believe the only major fundamental difference is the handleing of startup scripts.

There's an unofficial rewrite-in-progress of that book at:

http://slackbook.yoshiwara.org.uk/


So a VL package is a .tgz file. Each package contains a library or app that someone else has already compiled. You can just install the package and the app should in theory work right away for you. There are a few catches and gotchas of course. You can only use a package that is compatable with your computer (not usually a problem) and your version of VL (sometimes a problem).

I glossed over installing a .tgz file above, so let me go through in some details. Anytime you want to install a .tgz file, you need to be root, so you should open a terminal and type "su". From there, there's a couple ways to handle the file. The most basic is the "installpkg" command. You just type installpkg and the name of the file and it handles it from there. I can promise you that installpkg will almost never reject a file, but that doesn't mean the installed app will work.

To remove a package, you need the "removepkg" command. Just type removepkg and the package name. If you don't have the original package, and don't remember what the name is, you can go look in /var/log/packages. It should have files representing all the packages you have installed.

Those are the basic commands, but there are a couple wrappers on these to make them arguably easier to use. The first one is "pkgtool". Pkgtool is just a small menu based app that lets you manipluate packages. You can start it up in the same directory as a package and it should find it when you select install. Another nice feature is that when you select removepkg in pkgtool, it will recreate a list of all that you have installed so you don't have to guess or look it up. Pkgtool can be accessed through vasm too.

Another way about it is with "mc". Mc is short for Midnight Commander. It's a very useful filemanager that runs in a terminal. You can select a package through mc's interface and hit "F2" to bring up an option for installing the package.