Is it safe to install and use RH networking utilities on a Slackware system?

[Kevin Buettner]

On Apr 27,  8:03pm, Rick Rosinski wrote:

> Is it safe to install and use RH networking utilities on a Slackware
> system?  I plan on building a LAN and connect it to the web, and I
> have seen screenshots of the RH netconfig (whatever it is called),
> and I like how many things can be configured by that.  I am worried
> about whether or not the actual network configuration files
> (/etc/hosts.conf, /etc/rc.d/inet1.d, etc) are not compatible between
> Slackware and Redhat systems (and whether or not they are stored
> elsewhere on the system).  If all is good, and I can install it,
> would it be safe to convert the RPM's into TGZ files and install
> them manually (I don't want to bother with an RPM database and
> package manager).  This would be cool to play with.  Please let me
> know.  Thanks in advance.

It could probably be done, but I imagine that it might be more than a
little painful.  It has been quite a while since I've had a Slackware
system, but my recollection is that Slackware and Red Hat have
significantly different initialization scripts / facilities.  I have
from time to time attempted to use a facility from one distro on a
different distro and it usually ends up being more work than expected.

In my opinion, you should either continue to use the Slackware
facilities or you should just install Red Hat.

FWIW, I don't use graphical configuration tools on any of my systems. 
I usually just edit the files in /etc by hand.  I don't find the
desire to run RH netconfig to be a compelling reason to switch
distributions.

However...  if you're really determined to try it, I suggest you
install rpm on your slackware system (if it's not installed already)
and use the --root option to install the packages in some place other
than where rpm would normally install it.  That way you won't mess up
your working slackware system.  Also, you'll be able to see exactly
where everything gets installed.  (You'll have a skeletal /, /etc, /usr,
/usr/lib, /usr/bin, etc. when you're done underneath the place you
specified with --root.  The good thing about this is that only the
things installed by rpm will be in this tree.) You'll have to create
the directories where rpm wants to put its database by hand.  But
that's okay, because it's also in the same tree that you specify with
--root.  Then you can move things piecemeal to more suitable locations
for your slackware system.  (I recall doing this very thing when I
wanted to install a Red Hat RPM on my slackware system long ago.  I
ended up with a sort of hybrid system that was neither Red Hat nor
Slackware.)

Kevin