ok, so I've got my "hello world" program, written with nano, copied from a book.

I try to compile it by typing this:
gcc hello.c
and I get the message as follows:
/usr/lib/gcc-lib/i486-slackware-linux/3.3.6/../../../../i486+slackware-linux
/bin/ld:crt1.o: No such file: No such file or directory.
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status.

It's not my hello world program which is making the mistake, because other people sourcecodes make similar ouputs.

Through doing a bit of reading I found that ld is something that attaches files to my program. Anyway, I'd have thought that these files would have been included with the distro or with ld or with the compiler?

How do I remedy this?

crt1.o is part of glibc package and should be located in /usr/lib/
Does this file exist on your system?

hmm, I just looked, and there's a whole load of ".o" files missing from the directory.

where do I get these files? p2p?

I guess you don't have glibc package installed, use your slackware cd1 or obtaint the package from a mirror

Well, I copied the archive into /usr/lib/, tarred it out (it put all the files at the right paths itself, no?)

and yet the problem occurs
Could I be using the wrong version of glibc? or is there something else I'm doing wrong?

If you got the tar.gz file from your slackware install cd, you should use pkgtool or installpkg instead of manually unpacking it.

Sorted. Thanks!