Upgrading Slackware? No Sweat with QtSwaret!

While it’s important to stick with a given distribution’s packages, that doesn’t mean you have to be trapped by their package manager. Slackware’s package manager, for example, is rather simple and lacks a lot of functionality. That’s what led me to seek out packages such as Slackcurrent and its GUI front end KSlackCheck. Today, however, I’d like to discuss what may very well be my new favorite: QtSwaret.

QtSwaret is a KDE-based, graphical front end to Swaret and the Slackware Package Inspector. It will display your current packages, compare them with and download newer packages, and allow you to open and inspect the contents of Slackware packages. There’s a simple database update button that will bring down the latest official list of Slackware packages, and a distro upgrade button that will start upgrading your current version to the latest-and-greatest.

The database/file listing is also searchable. For example, Slackware 10.0 did not come with Firefox or Thunderbird, so the “List Upgradeable” feature, which provides you with a full list of more current packages so you can install them at your leisure, does not list them. I typed their names into the search box and was presented with the packages for each. One click on Install and QtSwaret happily downloaded and installed them.

Note you will need to run QtSwaret as root if you want to install, upgrade or remove packages. While there is an icon in the KDE menu, normal users will only be allowed to view packages. You could suid the program, but sudo is probably a safer option and you best be sure you understand the security implications of each.

Also, when my technicians downloaded the All-in-One package, they did not receive the sample /etc/swaret.conf file and were unable to download packages until they created it. Rather than having to struggle through the settings in QtSwaret, I sent them a copy of my swaret.conf file and they were up and running. I had installed the three components separately, including a previous version of QtSwaret itself. If you don’t receive a swaret.conf file, you can snag mine right here.