Slackware :: Package Manager And Dependencies ?

I am a long-time Debian user (I use it since Woody) and yesterday, due to an unexpected problem on my hard drive and an inexplicable lack of a current Debian cd or a possibility to perform a net install, I had to choose between either stay without computer at home or install one of the two other operating systems I happened to have on cds: Free-BDS or Slackware 13.0. Since I do not have time to learn something that I consider to be more radically different from Debian, I went for Slack.

So, first impressions:

1. Quick and smooth installation, though I got a bit over-enthusiastic when it came to select packages to install and unselected many libraries that I later realised that were necessary for various packages and I had to install them anyway.

2. Configure my wifi was surprisingly easy. I had braced myself for overly-complicated configurations to be done while I'd not have access to google, however rc.inet1.conf was very straight-forward and it provided plenty of examples to illustrate basically every possible configuration. All I had to do was to copy my wpa_supplicant.conf from my Debian backup and it worked.

3.X: For some reason I expected I'd have trouble to properly install and configure X, however my window manager was up and running in a few minutes. I copied my ~/GNUstep folder from my backup gave me the exact same X environment I had in Debian.

4. Package managing and dependencies: (I think I am correct to presume that that has to be the main complaint of most Debian users). pkgtool is very easy to use but, yeah, it does not resolve dependencies.

However, and while I installed a system way more minimalistic than any Debian system I had, I was surprised to find out that:

-Firefox had only ONE dependency

-vlc had none

-xfe, on the other hand, has some obscure dependency that I cannot figure out where to get it (libGLU).

So, a question for more experienced Slackware users: How do you get around the dependencies? Is there a quick way to find out what additional packages you will need on beforehand, or you install the package and try to run it, so to see what libs you need when it fails to start?