Officially Google Hangouts doesn't support Slackware Linux, limiting support to "Ubuntu and other Debian based Linux distributions". Realistically, what one is after is the Google Video and Talk plugin, but this also isn't strictly available for Slackware. Of course Google, being a little more evil that they think they are, does not release the source code for this enviable technology. What is a poor Slacker to do?

Well Google does offer .deb and .rpm packages - and Slackware does have tools which converts these to Slackware packages, i.e., using either rpm2txz or deb2tgz. Thus simply download the file and run installpkg. These are the steps I did:

Save package from https://www.google.com/tools/dlpage/hangoutplugin/thankyou.html?platform=linux_fedora_x86_64 to ~/Downloads


$ rpm2txz google-talkplugin_current_x86_64.rpm
$ su -
# cd /home/lev/Downloads
# installpkg google-talkplugin_current_x86_64.txz
Verifying package google-talkplugin_current_x86_64.txz.
Installing package google-talkplugin_current_x86_64.txz:
PACKAGE DESCRIPTION:
Executing install script for google-talkplugin_current_x86_64.txz.
Package google-talkplugin_current_x86_64.txz installed.


Note that this was a rare instance where I did not immediately use the otherwise excellent Slackbuilds script mainly because there's less point if you don't get the source, although this works as well, with the following process.


# pwd
# /home/lev/Downloads
# wget http://slackbuilds.org/slackbuilds/13.37/multimedia/google-talkplugin.tar.gz
# tar xvf google-talkplugin.tar.gz
# cd google-talkplugin
# wget http://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-talkplugin_current_amd64.deb
# chmod +x google-talkplugin.SlackBuild
# ./google-talkplugin.SlackBuild


... and get the following error message.


tar: google-talkplugin_current_i386.deb: No such file or directory
gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now


That's pretty slack, rather than Slack, iykwim. Seriously people, it's 2013.

Modify the build file and replace i386 with amd64 for the ARCH variable and execute again.

At the end of it the following message (or similar) will appear noting Slackware package is created, which then has to be installed.

Slackware package /tmp/google-talkplugin-4.9.1.0-x86_64-1_SBo.tgz created.


installpkg google-talkplugin-4.9.1.0-x86_64-1_SBo.tgz


Yes, the first method was easier.