hi, i was just wandering if it were possible to download pre optimized kerels for althlon xp's. im running slack 9. i noticed that my SuSe 8.2 distro has a 2.4.20 athlon kernel..... if i cant download a kernel, could i use the suse one? thanks

compiling your own kernel isnt anywhere near as scary as it seems. theres a great guide in the slackware forums for it, follow that and its a piece of cake.

Well, i have been following the guide.and yes it is great, but i keep messing up somewhere. im going to keep trying, but yesterday i ended up re installing slack 13 times. i hope i can figure out what the hell im doing wrong. i just want my dvd drive to be recognized.....

heh, welcome to the wonderful world of slack

the thing with choosing slackware is that you have to be prepared for an insane learning curve. slack is a minimalistic distro, they diliberately didnt do multiple kernels like the other distros, cause a slack user compiles his own anyways.

for compiling the kernel, my best advice is that if you dont know what it is, read the helpfile. (if your using make menuconfig, press ? on an option)

if your having specific issues, post em, people here are super helpful. if its just your dvdrom, it could just be a simple matter of editing /etc/fstab. dont expect everything to be up and running straiight after a slackware install, with my pc anyways i alwas gotta spend a good half hour tweaking stuff. learning what to do to get stuff working took a looooong time, but in doing so, i learned allllllllllllllot about how linux works. just dont give up, slack has alot to offer, not the least being a true understanding of the linux OS

Just to point out, it isn't really a good idea to compile the kernel for athlon anyway. In my experience, it causes problems with unresolved symbols. Just compile for 686 (PIII Cu).
If you want to compile for athlon, then do so, but if this is the problem you have, consider switching to some other CPU setting.
Also you could post the nature of the problem you're having, so we could help you through it.
How far do you get in the setup, and why does it cause you to re-install slack? That is something that really shouldn't happen. Definatley not with a simple kernel update.

thanks for wanting to help. i just slackware reinstalled again lol. the problems that i am having are post compile. my sound and ethernet cards are not detected. i dont know why either. i think i enabled them in make menuconfig... i know my ethernet card uses the tulip driver. about the dvdrom, after a fresh install with the bare kernel there is no entry for it under /mnt. there are however a "cdrom" (burner) a "floppy" and a"hd" i am pretty convinced that when i do "make menuconfig" im messing everything up. i've went through and read all the helps on each option and half of them i dont understand what the hell they're talking about. are there any sites or is there anybody here that can help me out by insisting on what i should install?

mattman - your probably right about the fstab thing, i'll look into that thanks

oh and i wont give up, i'll get it someday <----

heh, i got it. my ethernet works.... but my sound still doesnt work... "Error while inilizing the sound driver. Device /dev/dsp can't be opened (no such device)" but before that, when i was loading linux up it said something about ac97_codec error. i dunno. anyway, my athlon xp 1900+ machine is super fast now. i went ahead and used the athlon kernel option instead of using the pIII option. so any suggestions about the sound prob?