@goossbear:
What about asking your more knowledgeable friend and providing us with the solution?
I myself have more familiarity with the Debian-based distros' dependency-checking high-level apt tools (apt-get, aptitude, synaptic), and its non-dependency-checking low-level
dpkg which all act upon .deb pkgs.
Porteus's USM is apparently "supposed to be"(?) similar to Debian's dependency-checking high-level apt tools. Native Slackware's non-dependency-checking low-level pkg-mgmt tool is
pkgtool and it acts upon .txz pkgs.
From using Salix and reading up on its package management from
http://guide.salixos.org/31PackageManagement.html,
slapt-get and
slapt-src (using SlackBuilds) are also similar to Debian's dependency-checking high-level apt tools.
So using
USM/slapt- tools --->
pkgtool for Porteus/Slackware is roughly comparable to using
apt tools --->
dpkg for Debian-based distros. Perhaps this is obvious to all?
In any case, a possible "solution" from my more knowledgeable friend is now in the thread 'Missing dependencies from USM?(2)' in the Community effort forum, link
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=4537
GO OpenSourceSoftware Bears!
Debian-based distros, Salix v14.1 XFCE, Porteus v3.1 XFCE....all on 32-bit PCs