Few small questions about Slackware
 

I'm fairly new to Slackware, but I've been using it for a little while. I'm getting along fine for the most part, but there are a few things I'd like to know.

One thing I thought was nifty in Ubuntu and Mint was the ability to mount an .iso file by double clicking it. Is there any way something like that can be done in Slackware? It doesn't have work exactly that way, but some way to quickly and easily mount an image aside from using the command line. Another thing I'd grown used to was being able to format a flash drive by right clicking an icon and choosing format. Again, can I enable something like this in Slackware?

Finally, is there any real benefit to using a generic kernel as oppoosed to the standard huge kernel?

Greetingz!

The double-click-to-open-an-ISO-file is a feature of the "Windows Manager" that's in use. So for Slackware, it depends entirely on what "Windows Manager" you're using (Gnome, KDE, so forth) and/or what "File Explorer" (Nautilus, for example) you're using.

Same thing for formatting flash drives - All depends on the "Windows Manager" and/or "File Explorer"

As for the differences between 'generic' and 'huge'...it's been a few years since I've run a stock kernel...I *think* the 'huge' has support for over 4GB of RAM.

Slackware's documentation is what drew me to it many years ago...there should be a doc somewhere on your filesystem for the kernels.

Failing that, boot each one and look for /proc/config.gz (a compressed copy of the kernel's configuration).

Hi there, welcome to Slackware!

What you're looking for in terms of "right-click -> mount" and "right-click -> format" may exist in some Desktop Environments or Window Managers (Slackware comes with many!). However, if a neither of these does not already give you these options (or similarly easy options), then unfortunately you will have to mount manually using the command line.

However, you can edit right-click menus for certain window managers, desktop environments or even other menu programs and add the command for auto-mounting or formatting as you see fit, so it is possible.

The generic kernel is smaller, and has fewer modules built-in to the kernel for certain advantages over the huge kernel. However it requires an initrd and the modules must be manually loaded (via modprobe usually). Although there are some rc.* files in Slackware that automatically modprobe various modules for you.

Those features were probably a part of nautilus (Gnome's file manager) or one of its plugins, which are unavailable for Slackware unless you install one of the Gnome distributions. Depending on whether you're using the dolphin file manager (KDE) or Thunar (Xfce), you'll need to manually set it up. Here are two links that might help:
Dolphin
Thunar (you'll need fuseiso from SlackBuilds.org)

As for formatting a flash drive through the file manager, a quick google search didn't bring up anything, but someone else might know how to get this working (if it's possible). As a last resort, you could just use gparted from SlackBuilds.org.

I haven't noticed a difference between the generic and huge kernels in terms of performance. The loading time at boot is a little shorter, I guess, but I don't really have an answer as to why you should use a generic kernel over the huge ones. Perhaps take a look at this thread.

Hope that helps. :)

It all depends on what desktop environment/window manager and file manager you're using.
If you're using KDE then you could try this for a ready-made solution or this link which also explains how KDE menus work and how to add a custom action to mount an ISO file.
You could install gparted or use an app like this one, although it's not updated.
huge kernel comes with a lot of modules built in the image of the kernel, while the generic "flavor" has few buitin modules. The memory footprint of a generic kernel is potentially lower of a huge one, which is most useful during installs (all hardware support is builtin in the kernel and needs not to be loaded from elsewhere).

Thanks for the information, I'll take a look at fuseiso. As for formatting flash drives, if I get tired of using the terminal to do it, it's not like I constantly format flash drives anyway. I also believe that I'll use a generic kernel since there doesn't seem to be much reason to use the huge kernel unless I require it for a specific purpose.

/usr/doc/Linux-FAQs
/usr/doc/Linux-HOWTOs

Slackware-HOWTO is on the root of the installation DVD/CD. This explains the difference between HUGE and GENERIC kernels. It has nothing to do with memory, that depends on 32bit vs. 64bit kernels.

I must be missing something, I'm attempting to create an initrd for a generic kernel. I used the mkinitrd_command_generator to generate a command which was:

I ran it, everything checked out okay. I then added an entry for it in lilo.

After that, I ran lilo but met with an error that read "Fatal: open /boot/vmlinuz-generic-3.2.23-smp: No such file or directory". I've been following along the README.initrd, but did I perhaps miss a step?

I think that should read
image = /boot/vmlinuz-generic-smp-3.2.23-smp

This is wrong. They are only two terms referring to two different configurations of the Linux kernel: one which has most modules builtin (the huge one) and one which has most modules loadable on request (generic).
This implies that a huge kernel has an image bigger than a generic one. If you look at the kernel packages (under the a/ category), you can see that (referring to Slackware64 13.37) the huge package is 6151KB while the generic one is 3166KB.
This has nothing to do with 32 bit vs 64 bit, PAE kernel or not.

Thanks, that was it.

I'm actually testing Slackware in VMs right now, I'm about ready to install Slackware on my hard drive but I wanted to do a bit more testing first. In one VM, I upgraded Slackware to -Current while using a generic kernel (2.6.27.6). It suggested updating lilo since my kernel image had changed, so I did so. However, I was met with "Fatal: Setup length exceeds 31 maximum; kernel setup will overwrite bootloader". I wondered if it had anything to do with 2.6.27.6 still being listed in lilo so I removed that entry and updated lilo again. However, I still got that error. Any idea what it is?

It has nothing to do with 2.6.37.6 being listed in lilo, it's because the version of lilo included in Slackware-13.37 can't handle more recent kernels.

So, upgrade the lilo package itself (use "upgradepkg" or "slackpg upgrade" or "pkgtool") before running lilo again.

Are you sure about this?
I'm happily running kernel 3.4.4 on a Slackware 13.37 stable machine...

If you were to google that error message, you will find that it is because the version of lilo you ran is too old.
If you have correctly upgraded to -current, then a more recent version of lilo will have been installed. Try specifying that version of lilo by preceding with the full pathname.

Edit- Too slow!

Yes I am sure. The problem is not the kernel version but the lilo version you run, so if you use the lilo version included in -current you can install even Linux 3.6-rc1 on Slackware-13.37 ;)