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Small Linux for newbie to start with?

Just wondering what people recommend for a small install thats easy to install, newbie friendly, and is a small d/l size (around 100-150mb for 56k dialup) but can be expanded at a later date by adding packages and gradually change over to using it as a primary OS from Win2k

So far Ive used DamnSmallLinux, Cygwin and Minsys so Im not a total stranger, but Ive been trying to install Zipslack and cant seem to get it working at all.

Also would it be possible to eg d/l only the crucial parts of Slackware needed for a basic install, and fetch the other packages later after configuring my sys?
If so, which parts do I need for this?

thx

The stage 3 gentoo iso is only 98mb. It's a pretty minimalist install to start with, but you can easily add only the packages you want by downloading one at a time or in small batches.

a/ d/ and n/ directories

IIRC. That should do it on an ultra basic slack setup, you grab those, install, and then you can 'installpkg' from there ;)

Cool

I could be mistaken but ZipSlack's not going to work with Win2K because it's probably NTFS and I *think* ZipSlack requires true DOS mode (Win9x or DOS itself) - mine's using the friendly hosting services of Windows 95. *g* I figured ZipSlack would be simpler than trying to cobble a Slack together in parts. But in your case, what MasterC says or maybe try Vector. Gentoo *might* work but I suspect that's more than you want to tangle with as a transitional OS. Could be wrong, though - maybe Gentoo's easier than I think.

Think I'll go with the ultra small slack then :)
but what is IIRC?

When I installed Zipslack I was trying to boot it in a dos partition first (got a 98 boot disk + now a linux boot disk too)
heres the thread I posted about the problems:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=83320

IIRC=If I Recall/Remember Correctly. If you've got Slack, or go get the program, there's this great thing called 'wtf' that prints out

Code:

|--digiot@slackath Tue Aug 19 04:05:52

|--bash 2.05b ~ $ wtf is iirc

IIRC: if I recall correctly

:D

That's bizarre - yeah, ZipSlack's a UMSDOS system - nothing to do with Reiser. Are you sure that wasn't maybe just a message scrolling by at boot? What exactly did happen - because it should work with Win98 no problem.

The ReiserFS msg line was just before the Kernel Panic line, thats why I thought there was a connection.

Seems to get further into the boot but now gives 'No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel'

Another weird thing with my sys. I got the one HDD:

Previosly I had c,d,e,f,g NTFS partitions.
I had space at end of f for zipslack so I made a h partition
So now it goes c,d,e,f,h,g
But DSL CD shows:
hda1 = c
hda5 = d
hda6 = e
hda7 = f
hda8 = h
hda9 = g
what happened to 2 - 4?! And - is it possible for different bootdisks/linux distros to give different results for devs?

All the 5+ partitions are extended. 2-4 would exist if you had more primary partitions - and, not so far as I know - all devices will be called the same things. Grub will want you to call them weird stuff and cdrecord and scsi emulation can complicate issues, not to mention uses devfs, I guess... but *basically*, that will be consistent. So you probably made the two partitions with Windows tools and sliced up the rest out as logical volumes in the extended. So that looks right. It's possible there's a discrepancy between Linux and Windows, though. Try passing... I forget the right syntax, but it's like 'root=/dev/hda8' or, as it says, 'init=/dev/hda8' and if that doesn't work try hda9. But like I say, that drive needs to be formatted as FAT32, I'm almost positive. And, I mean, probably more than that. You need the computer to actually be in DOS mode. I'm not sure running the Slack batch file to execute loadlin will even work under NT. (Assuming you're using loadlin.) NT has a DOS box but it doesn't really have a true DOS mode. Maybe I'm wrong - I never tried it on NT, just figuring it wouldn't work.

On the slackware site theres instructions for converting from FAT32 to ext2 or 3, so I know it should be possible in theory.

My worry is if this 'loopback' thing is different to normal linux distros it might be a problem later on if I want to upgrade or something. These .{xx files are scary ;)

I think d/ling the bare minimum of Slackware and seeing how that goes is probably a better option at the moment.
Let you know how it goes...