slapt-get For Linux

slapt-get is a completely free and open source command-line program that has been designed from the ground up to act as a package manager for the Slackware Linux operating system, as well as its derivatives. It is very similar to the apt-get command offered by the APT utility of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution.

If you run Slackware Linux it’s very probable that you already have the slapt-get utility installed, but new Slackware users should known that the tool will allow them to query both official and third-party Slackware repositories for packages, compare packages, install new packages, remove packages, as well as to upgrade installed packages, all with a few simple commands.

It is also very important to know that the slapt-get utility only works with version 9.0 or higher of the Slackware operating system, because of the OpenSSL and Glibc 2.3.1 libraries. It requires the presence of the libcurl and GPGME libraries, the latter being available only on Slackware 12.0 or later.

As mentioned, slapt-get is already installed on a Slackware or Slackware-based operating system, so all you have to do to get started, is to open a terminal emulator application and run the ‘slapt-get --help’ command to view available options and the usage message, which will help you learn how to use the program to install, update, search and remove packages from your distribution.

The command-line options are split in two sections, targets and options. They are both needed when using the program to interact with Slackware packages. You can read its man page, which provides comprehensive documentation about each option, as well as various usage examples that will help you learn faster how to use slapt-get, just run the ‘man slapt-get’ command in the Terminal app.