If the vista computer has the burner using that computer to download the iso would have been more direct. Given the problems you're having it might still be a good idea. Hope you have broadband.

The burnt cd should look much like that. One big .iso file would mean it was burnt as data.md5s can be checked in windows also. Not sure what burning program to recommend, some have had problems with nero but it has worked for me in the past.

The disk looks like it should be fine.

have you tried to boot it in another machine? i would try it in your wifes laptop and see if it boots in there. just booting it wont hurt her computer at all.

just a question, why are you using ubuntu 5.10 when that is a couple years old, I would get ubuntu 7.04 for starters

That is a good idea but it should make a difference because the cd boot process has not changed for like 10 years.

Hi everyone, I am typing this while in the Slax Knoqueror Internet. I realized what I was doing wrong with the CDs. When I downloaded the .iso file, it showed as a WinRAR file, so I was unpacking it, and THEN burning it lol. I realized when I read the comments after my post, that I wasn't doing it right.

Anyways, I went to Best Buy today because I needed an external HD so I picked up a CDburner/DVD drive while I was there. I burned the Ubuntu .iso, but it gives me some errors, and then goes to a DOS style screen. I was fiddling around for about 2 hours with it and I couldn't get anywhere.
So I decided to try the Slax cd, just to see if it would work and it does! I am very impressed with the layout of this. I am going to work with it bit by bit to get familiar, and then perhaps get rid of Windows all together, or even move it to my external drive in case I need it for something.

I am quite sure I will have even more questions about this as I get playing around with it, but I want to thank all of you who have helped me and advised me with this.

turnip.

Great news, enjoy. You will find yourself doing allot more of what most people avoided in grade school, (reading & writing), but it's actually a good thing.

Hey that's great to hear
Enjoy Slax, it is indeed a sweet little distro to play with, and works really well with a suprizing amount of hardware. Imagine how much fun you'll have with the 'Full Slackware Deal'

You may find it 'comforting' to keep Windoze installed somewhere, if you have the space to waste, just incase you absolutely cannot get something done immediately in Linux for a while, or for games, if you play them. It will take a while, more or less, to become accustomed to how Linux does things, and what to use to do various tasks, but there is SO much documentation around the net, most everything is explained somewhere

Enjoy! Looking forward to hearing how you like it.

Well I am quite pleased with how this works. I have tried this a few times now, and I like it very much. So now I do have a few questions about what I can do. I'm not too familiar with some of this stuff, so please bear with me.

First off, slower speed aside, I am thinking of putting Linux on my external drive. It is a 200GB drive, which is much larger than my 18GB internal drive. Can I format only a part of the drive for Slackware and leave some for my Windows related stuff? How much room is needed for an installation?

While looking around in Slax, I came across a fonts folder. Is installing fonts with Linux a drag and drop operation like Windows? Can I just move them from Windows to Linux? I have quite a few fonts that I have hunted down over the years that I would hate to lose.

That is all I can think of for now, thanks again from a

A full Slackware Installation is a little over 3 Gb, though that *might* include all the extra language support from disc three. Put it this way: a 5 - 10 Gb partition is plenty for the root partition. There are other things you can do with it later if you like, such as putting /home on a separate partition, which can come in handy should something happen to your installation; you won't lose or corrupt anything personal this way.
That said, my own root partition is a lot bigger than 5 Gb, though it's doubtful I'll ever use it all, but I have a 320 gb drive, and would rather have extra space than not enough.
You can also mount a few other pieces of the system on other partitions, but worry about that later.

Next, you should have a "swap" partition, which is like virtual memory. There's some basic formula as to how much swap space you should have.. Something like twice your RAM size or something. Googling 'Linux Swap size' should turn it up pretty quick. I have 512 MB RAM, and a 2 Gb swap space, which is something along the general lines of the formula.

I believe for the most part, if not the whole deal, Windows fonts are supported in a drag and drop fashion, particularly the TTF true-type fonts, of which there are a bunch that come with the Linux system already. Remember that what you are seeing on the Slax Live CD is only a fraction or what's included in a full distro. You may be pleasantly suprised by all the stuff there'll be including lots of fonts.
When adding fonts, the font-cache must be updated each time, but again, you'll read/learn about that later too.

onm thing to mention is that slax is only based on slackware, its a gret little live cd,

if you get on with teh full slackware then great!
if not then dont be afraid to try somthing elce,
most of us swapped form distro to distro when starting out before settleing on somthing we liked

Slackware has a higher learning curve for a newbie. The slackware install is non graphical which you might not like. You don't boot into graphical mode by default nor is a user account setup. I'd suggest you start with ubuntu or fedora or Suse. When you get use to those you can try slackware.

FWIW, Slax doesn't boot into a GUI either. It lands at a console login prompt.
And while Slackware's installation is technically text-based, non-graphical, it'd be hard to imagine it being any easier to understand than it already is . Pretty colors and graphics doesn't make installation & configuration any easier.

And Slackware has a nice community support for it.
Just thinking on putting Slackware on my brand new T60

But it's true that a lot of us 'distro surf' before choosing 'The Distro'.

Well I'm quite confused now about how to install Linux. I see I have to create a partition and a swap space. Do I do this with Windows? Will it erase anything I have on that drive?

Looking at the Slackware download site, I chose the 11.0 version from the download mirror. What exactly should I download? There were a ton of folders and files, I'm not sure what I need to get started.

Thanks again,

turnip.

You should download the CD ISO's from somewhere, like perhaps the LQ ISO place here (see links to the right) or from any number of places where you can get them. Then burn the images to CD. They will be in a directory called "../Slackware/Slackware_11/ISO" or similar.
The ISO images will be named something like 'Slackware_11.0.CD1.ISO' and are about 600MB approx, and there will be a corresponding tiny file with the same name but ending in 'MD5' which is a checksum, which you use to verify the integrity of the downloaded ISO to guard against corrupted downloads or tampering. MD5 can be checked from Windows, though I don't know how right off the top of my head.

To make the partitions, you ought to use Gparted, which you can also download as a standalone CD ISO which you burn and use, or it is included in such LiveCD's as Ubuntu and Knoppix. This is the best partition manager tool there is IMHO, though I have seen claims that partition magic also can/will work, but I can't say that from personal experience.

Slack 11.0 is the latest, so you are on the right track there.
If you currently have Windows occupying the entire hard disk, then you will have to resize your NTFS partition smaller. Gparted can do this. You should defragment it first though as NTFS is a rather messy filesystem by nature, so a defrag first will reduce the chance of a screwup.