Zipslack Newbie questions
 

I'm trying to install Zipslack & having no prior experience of even 'mini' Linux operating systems, i'm not sure if i'm even starting the install correctly. I'll try to explain:

My computer:
Windows XP Pro
733mhz processor
256mb Ram
18 Gb HD (C: drive - Windows op sys)
DVD/CD Rom drive (D: drive)
CR RW drive(E: drive)
2.5 Gb HD (F: drive - installed for my zipslack install)

My first potential stumbling block is the initial unzipping of zipslack. I unzipped zipslack to my (empty) F drive using winzip & the unzipped file structure placed the entire contents of zipslack into a 'linux' folder. Do I keep this file structure? Or should I copy the contents of this linux folder directly to my F drive? I've read various FAQ's & Readme's on the booting & install of Zipslack & have yet to find a suitable answer to this very basic question!

My next problem is the initial booting of zipslack. I made a bootdisk (using rawritexp/bootdisk.img) & booted with it. Because i'm not using the common 'zip drive' boot option, i'm having to enter the boot info, i've tried many different variations of the line below but with no success:

mount root=/dev/hdc4 rw (boot always fails)


Is there a chart or table I can use to 'map' my drives to? Would I be right in assuming that, for example: hda1 would translate to be the 'first' partition of the first hard drive? Or am I completley off track with my understading of how linux maps drives? I feel that if I can at least make some headway with these early probs then i'll soon be up & running. I realise that these questions are very newbie, but I simply HAVE to ask them :)

I will not be a lot of help, but here goes...
My understanding is that Zipslack needs to be unzipped to a DOS partition. This would mean that your F drive needs to be a FAT partition and NOT NTFS. I have sucessfully got Zipslack running on old 486 PC with DOS. I had thought one could unzip it to a Linux partition and run it but my only attempt at this showed otherwise.
If Zipslack is on a FAT partition and a boot disk fails to boot it (try sticking a kernel image in either the / (root) or /boot directory, also) you may want to assume it is incompatable with XP and consider other options.
Why are you interested in Zipslack? It can be a very nice BASIC Linux install, but it is text interface only. No GUI.
If you are interested in a free minimal Linux install to try it out perhaps Vector Linux or Peanut Linux would be worth considering. Either can be installed to a 1GB partition easily, with a native Linux filesystem.
There are many other choices depending on what you are wanting to do.

Zipslack only works (as yet) on the FAT file systems. Most Slackers are frankly more interested in installing the whole system anyway and have no taste whatever for MS Windows.
Unzip the Zipslack file into your C:\ drive. Otherwise it will not work. Once the file is unzipped, you only need to adjust the root=/dev/sda4 rw line in the linux.bat file to reflex the location of your hard drive.
From C:\linux in DOS mode, type "linux" and it should work.
The GUI for zipslack must be installed by you. Download the x series and gnome or kde and then install them. Then, configure X and your ready to go.