My minimal Slackware 13.1 system with X

As a minimalist, I've always been looking for ways to setup a minimal system for every Linux distribution I use. The thing is, however, I have only used 2 distributions so far: Debian Lenny and Slackware. With Debian, I used the 'base system' installation, and after that, I began to build the whole system up with just software packages I wanted to use. Most of the time, I'd been using aptitude with the option '-R' to ignore recommended packages. Although for many in the minimalist world, the use of  a package manager is not the 'preferred' approach, it has helped me a lot by resolving dependencies automatically.

Now when it comes to setting up a minimal Slackware box, things are harder. Slackware is minimal by design, with a minimal package manager named slackpkg, which does its job very well: installing and removing packages, searching for files in packages, etc... except for one thing: it doesn't resolve dependencies for you. After many tried-and-miserably-failed attempts, I've found these two valuable resources. Among many others, they're very good starting points for a newbie in a world of packages without package managers.

Samac's Super Slimline Speedy Slackware:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/samacs-super-slimline-speedy-slackware-704866/

Elfo's Slackware-minimal:

http://cybercenter.com.pt/?p=15

Elfo's setup has helped me out a lot with an up-to-date 13.1 minimal Slackware. But it comes without X, and IMHO I don't think that SSH is essential at this stage. Great thing about Elfo's setup is that after installing Slackware with the tagfiles provided, you have a minimal box with network connection up and running. 

I have to admit that I've never been successful in installing Samac's "slim" Slackware. From Slackware 12.2 to 13.1, the packages have changed just enough for a newbie to feel that adapting this setup to 13.1 is rather too hard for his knowledge. But Samac has done a good job sorting out the necessary packages for X, which saved me lots of efforts to have X up and running in 13.1. 

So, after having gathered the result of their work, I removed the unneeded packages, added some new ones for 13.1 and here is the result: Slackware 13.1 with X. 

Total packages: 126

Space required: 440MB

You can have a look at the package list online here. Or you can download the tagfiles tarball here. I haven't got the chance to do another new installation yet. If you've decided to give it a try, please let me know how much space it needs so that we have an accurate figure here. You can do so with a 'df -h' right after the installation.

Please also notice that:

- For the sake of convenience I added vim as a text file editor. If this not your preference, please 'SKP' it in the tagfile in 'ap'. 

- Only the bare bone of X is included. If you want to really "see" X running, install your window manager as well as the packages needed to run it. For windowmaker, you'll need packages giflib and (of course) windowmaker. fluxbox, twm, and openbox are supported out of the box, so just install the respective package and adjust the ~/.xinitrc script accordingly then you can run any of them with "startx".

And yes, any suggestions is warmly appreciated. You can leave a comment below.