I haven't heard of the term "mirrors" until tonight as I searched for a way to boot Slackware Linux from a flash drive... I searched http://www.slackware.com/ for this version of Linux and came across this term. From what I've come to understand they are just ?download links? with unnecessary red tape (I say unnecessary red tape because people have been posting links for me to follow to a page full of more links, or mirrors if that's what they were, that I have no idea how to navigate, when they could have simply posted a link to what I was looking for in the first place). The reason I ask about these "mirrors" is because I could not find a way to boot Slackware Linux from a flash drive. I keep running across the term "mirrors" and have no idea how to use them to find what I'm looking for. I figured if I knew more about what the mirrors are and how to navigate them I could find what I am looking for, both now and in the future.

mirrors are a way of spreading the download bandwidth around .
And to speed up downloads by using someplace that is near you

for example
Centos 6 uses all of these
http://www.centos.org/modules/tinyco...ndex.php?id=30

every one of those has the install dvd and the software repos
have a look at the wikipedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_%28computing%29

I'd get a live disk of Salix Linux. That is simply Slackware with lots more software. It also has a very good guide which will tell you how to get installed:
http://people.salixos.org/tsuren/doc...tml/index.html

Wrong. It is based on Slackware, with a lot less software by default, and is a bit easier to install.

So from the wikipedia link, I read that mirrors, basically, allow people to access information from different servers than the original. So how do you find your way around these sites that show what mirrors are where? I have no idea what I'm looking at when I see mirrors... I click a link taking me to a site with mirrors to Slackware distributions. From there I have no idea what I'm looking at. I see multiple links to several things I do not recognize, since I'm new to Linux AND mirrors, and have no idea what to do from there. I've tried learning what's what by clicking and seeing for myself, but everything from that point is just more unfamiliar stuff.

I'm sorry, I know I mentioned Slackware in the original post. I am looking for information pertaining to mirrors though. The mentioning of Slackware was just to show that I am actually trying to do something with the knowledge I gain from whoever helps me with the understanding mirrors. I plan on posting a thread on Slackware if I cannot figure out what I am supposed to do on my own.

Though Slackware IS a very good OS
it is not really that good for " new to linux ( and computers in general ) people ".

but if you do want to do a lot of studying ( yes as in School ) , it could be a good learning experience .


for the most part you build the source code and ( though there are prebuilt


http://www.slackware.com/install/
http://www.slackware.com/install/softwaresets.php
http://www.slackware.com/install/setup.php

from the slack site
http://www.slackware.com/getslack/
- i would use the torrent
and at the bottom of the page
ues this torrent file to download the iso to burn to dvd
http://www.slackware.com/torrents/sl...ll-dvd.torrent
h??p : / / w w w . slackware.com/torrents/slackware64-14.0-install-dvd.torrent


However a distro like Linux Mint 13
is target user is a " new/newish linux user
http://www.linuxmint.com/

Slack it more targeted to the VERY VERY experienced linux user

think of it this way
-- using the USA school system
a "new to linux ,and computers in general, user
one might place them in the 6th grade , maybe 9th grade ( k-12 )

slackware in a 300 level collage course ( 3d year of a 4 year program )

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back to mirrors ( without slack )
to use the CentOS example ( from above )
i like "Arctic Region Supercomputing Center"( i use it foe many things and NOT just Linux operating systems )
you might want to read the front page for the "about ARSC "
http://mirrors.arsc.edu/

-- such as NASA's blue marble
-- http://mirrors.arsc.edu/nasa/

the pages are NOT your everyday web page
http://mirrors.arsc.edu/centos/

but the standard text based page for FTP ( though the above is in HTML )
ftp://mirrors.arsc.edu/centos/

it is the way the web works, once you remove all the junk and garbage that make up most sites

it is basically the folder layout on the server
or your home computer

the install images for 32 bit and 64 bit
http://mirrors.arsc.edu/centos/6/isos/

the link at the top "Parent Directory" moves you UP in the folder subdirectories

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Thank you for taking the time out to help me out. I realize I have a lot of information to look into, but I figure the harder I try the better the end result will be. Thank you again. All of the information you have provided me will be very useful down this long road.

A great place to start is http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz