i made a fatal mistake last night. I was bored with the games that exist on KDE, so instead of asking Michiel for some more i went looking to see if i could find some. I found this article, which recommends the top 10 free linux games, and not being interested in FPS, and having all the rest, the only one remaining was “Pingus“. That was the really really bad mistake: idly commenting “mmm, wouldn’t mind playing that”.
two minutes later i found myself working with slackbuilds!!! whaaa? where did slackbuilds come into it?! i only fancied playing a little game, not downloading/extracting/installing stuff, and WAHHHH working with root!!! (DO NOT WANNNNNT!) However, it turns out, to my total and utter surprise ($clue: sarcasm) that the Slackbuild team (specifically ppr:kut thanks ppr:kut!) maintains a Slackbuild of Pingus and that that’s the best place to download it from (well Michiel *would* say that wouldn’t he?). so i do. rather nervously. I find the relevant page for Pingus, then ask “now what?”. he points me to the HowTo page, and i nervously download the slackbuild (the .tgz file, in case anyone was wondering). Michiel directs it to the right directory (and i’m still very confused about this process but maybe writing it all out will help), then extract it, using the tar command (tar xvzy filename. i think. something like that anyway. Hey, i’m going off memory and it was 2am at the time…) and then i download the source. The first time i do this from the webpage, later we do it another way which confoozes me still further (and i’ll say this before Michiel does: it doesn’t take much.. to confooze me that is).
once all that’s done we execute the script by using the chmod command (as described on the HowTo page), and then, of course, we run into a problem. Turns out pingus has 3 dependencies (someone didn’t read the top of the pingus page properly.. both of us) – boost, scons and physfs. apparently i already have boost on my system (as Straterra said: thank god, compiling boost on a little PIII would be a nightmare, apparently) so i had to download the source file & slackbuild instructions, and extract, execute and install both of these before we could execute (compile) the pingus slackbuild properly.
And this was the part that *really* confused me for a while as Michiel was telling me to download the source file using wget, which i hadn’t done before, and telling me to move the package after it had been compiled from /tmp/ to packages (I think i got that right) and Michiel was patiently sitting there saying to me “where’s the package” and i honestly felt like screaming back at him “WHAT EFFIN PACKAGE?!!!!”. *ahem*. I’m not the most patient and calm of learners at the best of times (yes, i know, Michiel.. thats the understatement of the century but i’m trying to be nice to myself, ya hear?). another time i’d just hit return on an installpkg command and he gasped like he’d just seen me make some terrible horrible computer killing mistake and … then said “nothing”. he got called a choice collection of names at that point i can tell you.
All joking aside.. we were finally compiling pingus, side by side, him compiling it for 12.1, me for 12.0, and of course, his being a rather better model of computer (dual core, just for starters) than mine (a slow, but patient little PIII) he finished first. And then he started to explain to me – within hearing of my PIII – just why my PIII is so slow!!! Poor thing. I had to cover its ears and whisper reassurances to it. Speaking disparagingly of my baby. how dare he.
and for all that.. I’m actually quite proud. I installed something off Slackbuilds. okay, i did it with a lot of handholding and i’d have to do it with handholding next time but.. i did it. without flaking out too much (I don’t think i will *ever* like working in root).
so.. go me!!! 
Posted by kethry 
