Is slackware too ambitious?

I'm a complete newbie to Linux, I've seen a knoppix live cd before, but thjat's about it. I've looked at them and for a while mandrake seemed appealing but I thought that slackware was a really good choice because I can learn from it, if you understand me?

An issue is I'm going to install onto an advent 7003 (old poo laptop) and this webpage is making me think maybe nothing's going to work. For a start, windows xp doesn't work for me with networking anyway :p so that's not a problem. It's a laptop I don't use really because I have a desktop and a portable one, so this is kind of a test laptop.

Looking forward to slackware :) just wondering about the boot disk thing now though. Do you just put the CD in when your bios is set up to boot from it, because on slackware's website there's lots of things you have to choose first which I didn't really understand :/ do you make your own bootdisk?

Maybe this should be in the newbie forum, but I'm pretty set on slackware. Even if I don't get it going first time, just try, try and try again right? As far as my experience with coding and things goes, the most advanced I've done is writing simple macros in excel and scripts for games!

What you only need to do is set up your BIOS so it does boot from CD.

Good luck!

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Originally Posted by serz

What you only need to do is set up your BIOS so it does boot from CD.

Good luck!

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I thought so. Having read a bit more a bootable floppy is for those whose cds don't work at boot so need the drivers installed or something, I think. Never used torrent before but I managed to download 600MB of the cds yesterday in just over an hour!

How would you advise me to partition my HDD? I understand you want a swap partition (comparable to a swap file in windows) that you label /, but you also want a /home and /user partition too. I don't get what they're for as on windows I just install windows onto one partition and store all my data on the other (for the day when windows inevitably stalls).

A swap parttition of maximum of twice your RAM, but if you have 512 MB RAM or more, once the size of RAM will be fine. A root (/) partition of minimum size of 5 GB, 10 is recommended and the rest is /home. The use of /usr is not encouraged by me, it could cause a lot of problems and does not add any value.

Go for Slack. I'd hardly call that an "old poo laptop", at least not in my interpretation of "poo"! The good points are these: you have another computer for web access and other needed use; you have some guidance as to how to deal with the specifics of your machine (that web link); it's a very decent machine, based on the specs; and you are motivated to get Slack. Just do it!

As for partitioning, with a 40Gb drive, you could put about 6 Slackwares on it. Actually, having 2 installs could be very useful if you want to learn: you'd be able to break one and then use the other to first figure out what went wrong and second, to fix it "from the outside" if needed. And you'd learn about multi-booting set-up. Sounds to me, from your description of where you are and what you want to do, Slackware is a great choice.

For swap partition do I leve that as unpartitioned space?

How exactly should I format? Do it with winxp cd? :p Or do it with a boot floppy disk? Or can I use the slackware CD as a boot device and then format the hdd from there? I'm still not exactly sure what partitions I need so anyone who could go through it in detail with me :)

I was able to setup my partitions with ym slackware cd, using fdisk. Ffrom what.

Not sure what to do, I'm at the cfdisk menu etc. and created 4 partitions but a) don't know which one to make bootable and b) not sure if I've done it right at all. Not sure of the size of each one, just have 3500mb, 500mb, 35000mb, and 1000mb

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Originally Posted by PaulStavanger

Not sure what to do, I'm at the cfdisk menu etc. and created 4 partitions but a) don't know which one to make bootable and b) not sure if I've done it right at all. Not sure of the size of each one, just have 3500mb, 500mb, 35000mb, and 1000mb

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Everyone has (or gets) their own opinion on what's best, but since you asked, this is what I would do:
hda1 100 /boot
hda2 3500 /
hda3 500 swap
hda4 (remainder) extended partition
hda5 anything or nothing: you can add this and more later as long as you create the extended partition. If you made hda4 a primary partition you'd kind of lock yourself in with partitions.

In fdisk, hit 't' to change the type for each partition: set the swap partition as type "Linux swap" and make the others "Linux". I think that will be types 83 and 82, respectively, but you need to check it yourself. As I recall, Slackware will ask you to identify your swap partition and if it does, Slack will take care of it. If not, you would need to "format" the swap partition with this command: 'mkswap /dev/hda3' and then 'swapon /dev/hda3'. Other partitions will also need to be formatted, and I think Slack does those, too. If not: 'mke2fs -j /dev/hda1' and so on.

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Originally Posted by drakebasher

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Originally Posted by PaulStavanger

Not sure what to do, I'm at the cfdisk menu etc. and created 4 partitions but a) don't know which one to make bootable and b) not sure if I've done it right at all. Not sure of the size of each one, just have 3500mb, 500mb, 35000mb, and 1000mb

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Everyone has (or gets) their own opinion on what's best, but since you asked, this is what I would do:
hda1 100 /boot
hda2 3500 /
hda3 500 swap
hda4 (remainder) extended partition
hda5 anything or nothing: you can add this and more later as long as you create the extended partition. If you made hda4 a primary partition you'd kind of lock yourself in with partitions.

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Thanks for that, I was just a bit confused as to what went where and so what they were used for. In winxp it's just all done for you really. Is there anyway to see your overall install status because at the moment it's coming up with the different package installs etc. it said something about pressing alt F2 and typing something to find disk space left etc. etc.