Hail Eris!

Because I'm contrary, I'll go with the latter one first. The update manager is giving me this error message, whenever I try to update my packages:

E: Malformed line 1 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/local-repository.list (dist parse)
E: Unable to lock the list directory

Here's what the referenced file says:

deb file:///usr/share/local-repository katya

I just installed it -- Linux Mint 11 -- within the past few days, so I haven't really had time to add massive amounts of confusion to it, as yet (and I can't use Synaptic to install my favourite browsers, either, so I've been holding off downloading my backup files from DVD). This is an Acer Aspire 5551-2468, AMD Athlon II X2 processor P320 (2.1 GHz) notebook, with 4 gigs of DDR3 memory, and a 320 GB HDD. I have two primary partitions (160 gigs for this one, and 155 for the as-yet-unused SlackWare64), and a swap partition.

As for my SW64 install, I think I need a boot disk, but damfino how to create one according to the instructions on slackware.com. After installing it three times without the bootdisk, I'm fairly sure I need it, now. Well, that, or possibly just a lobotomy-by-bullet, because a fourth fruitless reinstall will likely push me over that edge. Fortunately for me, that's purely theoretical, since I've never owned a gun in my life.;-{P}

By way of belated introduction, I'm Pope Snarky Goodfella of the undulating cable <snip the extremely lengthy list of abbreviations>, but I just go by the nick at the bottom. I've been using Linux, off-and-on, for nearly seven years (constantly, from January 2005 to May 2008, and constantly again since last summer (inconstantly, in the intervening period, but far from "not at all") -- I gave both WinVista & Win7 fair chances to be reasonably good, and they ultimately failed), after more than five years running Win95/98/Me. I blame M$ for my receding hairline.;-{P}

Snarky

All Hail Discordia!
Can't help you with the Mint, never tried it - yet. But somebody who knows will be along in a few minutes/hours/days, hopefully.
As far as Slack is concerned, that about the boot disk is outdated. Have a look at the SlackBook, here:
http://www.slackbook.org/html/index.html
Praise "Bob"!

Kallisti!

My problem with SW64 is that I keep getting stuck, after loading, in the shell, without moving on to the graphical login screen. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, at that point.

Snarky

Do you mean you don't know how to get to a desktop environment (KDE, or whatever)? If so, run startx at the prompt for a per session solution (as your normal user), or to make it permanent, edit /etc/inittab as root, like this:
then:
then change the 3 to 4 in this line:
Then next time you boot up, you should get a graphical log-in screen + KDE (or whatever).

Hail Eris!

OK, I got in to KDE, but now I can't get SW to go online (and of course my ISP only supports Windoze & Mac users). Together with Mint's package update woes, I'm beginning to think I should try a completely different distro...Besides Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, SlackWare, Mandrake, and FreeBSD, that is.

Snarky

Plug in your ethernet cable, install slackware. When it asks do you want to configure your network answer yes. When you boot to giu firefox will go on the internet.