Rovanion wrote:

Is it really so that the package mananger doesn't satisfy the dependencies of an application when installed?

You are correct that Slackware does not resolve dependancies, and for your information it also does not have an official repo utility similar to apt or yum.

Package managment is more difficult with slackware because you have to manually install packages in which many applications are not available pre-packaged. However without the web retrieval and dependancy resolution the administrator has more fine grained control over the installed applications because they are familiar with every component on the system and any startup errors that may occur.

I personally detest dependancy auto-resolution for the following reasons:
[ul]
[li]There will always be issues with the version numbers of the dependancies [/li]
[li]Who validates the depency list to guarantee that you are installing only the depencies necessary for your intended use of the applciation.[/li]
[li]It seems unsafe to allow someone to just click ok to agree to install multiple depandacie applications without knowing the basis behind each app and whether or not one of the dependancies is going to break another component.[/li]
[/ul]

There are apps like slapt-get and swaret to allow slackware users to run apt like functions to retrieve from a repo and there is an app called sbopkg that utilizes the slackbuilds.org scripts to allow the users to compile apps very easily in a slackware format, but to my knowledge none of these apps is officially endorsed by Pat and the slackware team.

I do not necessarily frown upon users of the "user friendly" distros, each individual is entitled to their own preferences. My preference is to know exactly what is happening with my system to simplify any modifications and simplify problem resolution that may come. The lack of simplicity and headache that is felt whenever an error occurs on a "User friendly" distro is exactly why I continue to be a user and whenever possible a contributor to the Slackware project.