First, sorry for my english.

During installation of slackware (15 minutes or so) are not loaded modules necessary to control the frequency of the processor (the necessary modules are not even on the usb boot disk). If you can not force a lower frequency or disable cores in the BIOS is possible the processor to overheat. Once installation is complete there is no problem because the /etc/rc.d/rc.modules file is responsible for loading the modules to control the frequency of the processor (I always modify this file by changing the line where it says CPUFREQ=battery by CPUFREQ=on for that modules be loaded even if the machine is a desktop and not a laptop).

If you're running into overheating issues while installing Slackware, you have more issues than just a lack of power management during installation. I'd suggest you attempt to clean the heatsink and fan of the laptop by at least using some canned air to blow it out, if not completely taking apart the laptop and during a more thorough cleaning.

I've left my laptop crunching information at 100 utilization more times than I can count (try compiling a kernel on a slow 4 year old Atom computer), and I've never ran into overheating issues. A laptop should be able to run at 100% pretty much indefinitely, although it will fly through your battery and it will heat up (but heating up is different than overheating) and could eventually cause your fan to wear out prematurely, but that's over the course of years.

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Thanks for your answer. The laptop where I saw the problem has a AMD A6-4400m. This processor has a TDP of 35W (a atom family procesor has TDP 3-6W. The problem is that these processors in the TDP 35W range are inadequated for a laptop if is not activated the frecuency control and the processor is running a long time. In laptops with this class of processors, even after you have installed slackware and the frecuency control is active, I have a limit the max frecuency. In the case of the A6-4400m the frequencies are (Mhz):

900, 1400, 1700, 2000, 2400 and 2700. With turbo mode (that I turn off), there are too 2900 and 3200 Mhz.

The max frecuency I use is 2000 Mhz with ondemand governor. With this configuration I have 40 celsuis idle and 55-60 celsius full load.

I have noticed that anothers distributions (archlinux by example) have activated the frecuency control during the installation process.

I've owned plenty of laptops that are not Atom based and I have yet to see one that can't handle the stress of running the processor at full bore with the frequency at the highest stock setting. Sounds like you either have a really crappy laptop, or your airflow is seriously cut off. Are you seriously saying that your laptop can't run at full speed with the processor maxed out for 15 minutes? Are you even able to compile a kernel on that laptop?

And I don't think the Slackware installed actually does that, since I'd imagine most the activity is with the hard drive (sure, there's some uncompressing the files, but not enough to peg your processor during the full installation).

Also, I am pretty sure Slackware uses the huge kernel when installing, so the modules won't be available, since they're built into the kernel. What you're likely missing is the needed programs that control the processor's frequency installed into the initrd that Slackware loads.

The trick with installing Slackware on overheating laptops is to do a minimal install (eg. just a/ and ap/), which should be able to complete before it gets too hot, reboot into the new system (with the real kernel, which has CPU frequency scaling), and then install the rest of the system that way. Ideally the install disc would just include frequency scaling as well (and not having tried with recent versions of Slackware, I can't say for sure that it doesn't, but older versions certainly did not), but you should still be able to install Slackware without it.