I downloaded and installed VectorLinux on my machine last night, because I had been told that installation takes 30 minutes, and it runs quicker on older computers, which is good because the machine I installed it on was only an AMD 500 with 64mb RAM.

Firstly, the cd was bootable, which was an advantage, then your asked about the partitions on your harddrive. I understand partitions, but felt the way they were done was complicated. Never mind, I got past that stage, and got to the point where the files were being copied onto the harddrive. This went fine, but took roughly an hour, rather than the estimated 30 minutes.

Once the files were on the computer, it took me through setting up the network card etc, this went well, pretty simple.

I couldnt manage to get the harddrive bootable, so for the first boot I used the cd, then specified where the installed files where, and linux booted from the HD fine.

I was taken the the command prompt where I had the enter 'startx', but this just went blank for a second and then gave me a look of messages regarding a screen being found, but no useable display configured, so for the next hour or so I played around with the display settings using setup, but still no joy.

So I've gave up, I found this installation complicated, and wouldnt recommend it to newbies. So far the best installations were redhat 7.3 and 9.0.

I'm installing Slackware tonight, I've heard this is a bigger version of Vectorlinux. Am I likely to have the same problems with this installation, or will it detect alot of my hardware?

Thanks
Shaun

I would not compare Slack to anything else.
It's a unique distro.

The main thing with Slack is to follow the sequence at install and read the documentation to see what to do after the install.

My very first try at Linux was VectorLinux 1.8 on a pent.1 @166Mhz with 16Mb of ram. It was a little cyrptic and hard to setup but after doing alot of online reading I finally got it all working. I learned a lot more from Vector then i did from redhat or mandrake but that's just my opinion.

Bubba169

Vector is based on Slackware.
Bootloader and Xwindow problems are not uncommon with any Linux install.
It is unfortunate Vector did not work out, although you may be happier with Red Hat if you are okay with the speed.
While I hope your post does not entirely discourage someone from trying Vector, I think your report is accurate and opinion valid.
Good Luck