A friend of mine recently told me of Slackware. I visited his house and tried Slackware out for size. Slack work EXTREMELY good with me, I liked it very much. So I asked my friend for a copy of the ISO to install it onto my computer...he did not fully inform me on how to install it...he told me to visit the Slack website and read the instructions. So I trotted (I didn't really trot :P) on home and read the instructions on how to install. Buuuut then I thought if there was anything very important to know on installing the OS that is not included in the instructions provided by the website. I tried to call on my friend but i remembered that he went out traveling. So now I ask upon the public, you, on if there is really anything important that I need to know before, when, and/or after I install Slack? Or do I just follow the instructions provided by the Slack website accordingly?

Well, not really ... if anything then
X might require some setup, since
Slack doesn't do anything in that
direction and assumes a VESA
compatible card. If you have a more
recent card with accelerated graphics
you'll want to xf86config X or (if it's
a nVidia) get their drivers, and manually
edit /etc/X11/XF86Config (but there's
heaps of threads on that topic on this
site ;} ... just use the search, in case)

Cheers,
Tink

Hmmm....I never thought of seaching
...and i'll keep that nvidia ordeal in mind if I do decide to buy one
thanks.

Also (considering the many recent questions about this) rawrite (using your Windows computer) the bare.i, install.1, and install.2 images onto floppies. Sometimes the Slack 9.0 CD won't boot, and with these three floppies at least you'll be able to install on through instead of having to come back here again.

(now there's a preemptive solution for ya... )

-zsejk

Well, this is my notes before I put the Slack's CD in the
CD-DRIVE, and boot for the instalation.

1. My harddisk partition design, e.g:
For personal usage, I simply need 4 partitions
* swap = 512 MB (2 x RAM)
* / (root) = 600 MB
* /usr = 2 GB
* /opt = 1 GB (since slack put KDE on this directory)

2. My Network IP (Ignore this if you dont have network), e.g:
IP = 10.0.0.100
Mask = 255.255.255.0
Gateway = 10.0.0.1
Name Server = 10.0.0.1

3. My time zone (lol, this one is easy)

That's information is enough for starting the installation.
* Go to computer BIOS, make sure it will bott from the CD
* Put the CD in the CD-ROM, boot
* Install: <enter>
* Login: root <enter>
* # cfdisk -> make your partition, change type to 83 for swap
* # setup -> just follow the screen.

Good luck

>> nvidia

nvidea support for Linux is closed source.
That's make a big problem for video intensive application like mplayer. Visit their homepage, there is a good coverage of video driver for Linux there.

Personally, I recomend matrox for high end video.
However, XFree86 is doing good with generic vx driver.
You won't be dissapointed with any descent video card.
Just install slack with generik vesa driver.
Then look for
$ man XF86Config (general information)
$ man <myvideo> (spacific driver information)


Some other hardware suggestions:
* Intel processor rather than AMD (I'm not Intel representative, but AMD has problems).
* Open Source Sound compatible for sound card.
* Full modem, Linux has problem with half modem (winmodem).

In general you want to gather as much info about your hardware as possible. Most books will tell you this and from personal expereince it is just good to do. Slackware will configure most things automatically, but for those pieces of hardware that aren't dectected immediately, knowing about them will help. Look in your bios for hardware info and If you have windows look in you device manager. Those are just 2 of the many place you can find info about your hardware. My 2 cents.

just to make the correction the swap space is of type 82 and not 83 ...