Let’s admit it – Slackware packages is not complete for most users therefore there exists the third party packages repository such as SlackBuilds.org. Maintaining those third party packages on your Slackware machine can be tricky if you don’t keep track of the non-Slackware packages you installed.
Keeping up to date
The most commonly used utility I know to keep your Slackware updated is by using slackpkg tool. However, it only updates packages that are shipped by Slackware. To update those packages, the user must manually update them by download the updates perhaps and re-building them.
Last time I checked, I have 78 packages and many of those are dependencies are just dependencies. To keep track of those list, I checked the forum for some hints and found this thread: Get list of packages not in base system.
There are several ways but I found the one I’m looking for which uses slackpkg and here is the simple command:(Run as root)
slackpkg -dialog=off -batch=on -default_answer=no clean-system > NonSlackwarePackages.txt
It simply calls the clean-system routine of slackpkg, turned off the dialog and cancels the update and lastly dumps the output to the file. The file will contain the name of the third-party packages installed in Slackware. Here is my dump of non-Slackware packages:
CImg-1.2.9-noarch-1_SBo Cython-0.12-i486-1_SBo GConf-2.28.1-i486-1_SBo ORBit2-2.14.18-i486-1_SBo SDL_Pango-0.1.2-i486-1_SBo SDL_perl-1.20.0-i486-1_SBo a52dec-0.7.4-i486-1_SBo acpica-20100702-i486-1_SBo amrnb-7.0.0.2-i486-1_SBo amrwb-7.0.0.3-i486-1_SBo blobwars-1.14-i486-1_SBo cabextract-1.2-i486-1_SBo defendguin-0.0.11-i486-1_SBo devede-3.16.9-noarch-1_SBo dirac-1.0.2-i486-2_SBo dvdauthor-0.6.14-i486-2_SBo faac-1.28-i486-2_SBo faad2-2.7-i486-1_SBo ffmpeg-0.5.1-custom-1_SBo flash-player-plugin-10.0_r45-i386-1_SBo fontforge-20100501-i486-1_SBo frozen-bubble-2.2.0-i486-1_SBo google-chrome-6.0.472.63-i386-1_SBo gtk-chtheme-0.3.1-i486-1_SBo guvcview-1.4.1-i486-1_SBo lame-3.98.4-i486-1_SBo lbreakout2-2.6beta7-i486-2_SBo lbxproxy-1.0.1-i486-2 libdc1394-2.1.2-i486-1_SBo libdv-1.0.0-i486-1_SBo libdvdcss-1.2.10-i486-1_SBo libevent-1.4.13-i486-1_SBo libmikmod-3.1.12-i486-1_SBo libmp4v2-1.9.1-i486-3_SBo libmpeg2-0.5.1-i486-1_SBo libpaper-1.1.23+nmu1-i486-1_SBo libquicktime-1.1.5-i486-1_SBo locale-gettext-1.05-i486-2_SBo micropolis-20080222-i486-2_SBo mjpegtools-1.9.0-i486-3_SBo mozilla-nss-3.12.4-i486-1_SBo neverball-1.5.1-i486-1_SBo obexpushd-0.8-i486-1_SBo opencore-amr-0.1.2-i486-1_SBo openjpeg-1.3-i486-1_SBo openoffice.org-3.2.0_en_US-i586-1_SBo opera-10.60-i386-1_SBo orc-0.4.4-i486-1_SBo physfs-2.0.0-i486-3_SBo pingus-0.7.3-i486-1_SBo portaudio-V19-i486-1_SBo privoxy-3.0.12-i486-2_SBo proxymngr-1.0.1-i486-2 schroedinger-1.0.9-i486-2_SBo scons-1.2.0-i486-2_SBo siege-2.67-i486-1_SBo skype-2.0.0.72-i486-1_SBo speex-1.2rc1-i486-2_SBo supertux-0.1.3-i486-1_SBo tor-0.2.1.24-i486-1_SBo tovid-0.31-i486-1_SBo transcode-1.1.5-i486-1_SBo tuxmath-1.7.2-i486-1_SBo tuxpaint-0.9.21-i486-1_SBo tuxtype_w_fonts-1.8.0-i486-2_SBo txt2tags-2.5-noarch-1_SBo umtsmon-0.9-i486-1_SBo vcdimager-0.7.23-i486-2_SBo virtualbox-kernel-3.1.6_2.6.35.7_smp-i486-1_SBo virtualbox-ose-3.1.6-i486-1_SBo vlc-1.1.1-i486-1alien vlc-mozplugin-1.1.1-i486-1alien webcore-fonts-3.0-noarch-2_SBo wine-1.2-i486-1alien wxPython-2.8.10.1-i486-3_SBo wxcam-1.0.4-i486-1_SBo x264-20100327-i486-1_SBo xvidcore-1.2.2-i486-1_SBo
After knowing what needs to be updated, it is up to the user on how to check for updates and install updates. As for me, I just manually visit SlackBuilds.org and check if there are cool new updates. It is a tedious task so instead, I will only install updates for every new Slackware release or when there are critical updates.