Slackage management

Package management in Slackware is done through the pkgtools suite which includes self-explanatory commands such as , , , among others. A common complaint is that unlike almost any other modern package manager that you’d care to name, Slackware’s does not automatically resolve dependencies. We’ve already seen that this was commonplace in the early days, but for many users this will seem like something that we shouldn’t have to put up with in the 21st century. But it all depends on your philosophy – Slack users like to be in control, and they don’t necessarily feel that they are in control when they are asked to install one package (presumably one they know about, because why would a Slackware user install something without knowing all about it?) and all of a sudden the package manager goes ahead and installs all manner of other things (some of which the user may not be so familiar or trusting with). The Slackware way is to figure out or look up which dependencies are required and install them manually.