I have been considering moving from Mandrake to Slackware and am looking for some advice. My system is a dual boot with Windows XP. My wife will not consider a move to linux - she currenlty feels that she has figured out Windows and is completely scared of linux which means I must retain the dual boot. Basically, what has led me to want to move to Slackware is, believe it or not laziness. Essentially, if I have to go and figure something out I will, however, I find with Mandrake the lazy side of me wins out and I let the stupid tools take over and, hence, really never dig under the hood. I kind of feel that Slack would get me away from this and would allow me to learn a whole lot more.

What I am wondering most at this point is the actual install. I am currently happy with the partition scheme I have under Mandrake. If I install Slackware will it recognize and write over these partitions thereby taking away the necessity to repartition what I already have. Also, will the install overwrite the LILO setup I have, or should I get rid of the one I have now first?

thanks.....

which question to answer....


for lilo, yes it will re-write your MBR but you can back up your lilo.conf if you like...


the install is straight forward... not pretty colors but still simple....


as for partitioning, you can do it however you like, just create your swap, and main partition, then partition the rest and assign mount points in fstab.

I never agree that this is a good reason to switch distros, but you know yourself better than I.
I do not short someone a whole lot if they prefer using the GUI tools a distro has to offer.
What I did to rub my nose into the gritty parts of Linux some was to build the Linux from Scratch system with Mandrake 7.1.
If you want to make it a little tougher, do everything from the command line, including downloading the needed files.
Just doing things like using the command line to install packages and such can be a good start. Reading through LQ posts on a good evening can also give you ideas of things to try.
And yeah, I do think the command line is easier that the GUI tools that are created to be easier.
And now I will exit stage right since you posted this in the Slack forum...and I am suggesting....

Thanks for the responses guys... sorry I didn't get back to them more quickly last night, but I have an 8 month old who was calling. I think I will go ahead with the Slack installation. Been wanting to try it out for some time now and am curious.

I would like to make a simple suggestion. Before you install Slackware, make a copy of your XF86Config-4 file (I think you will find it here:

/usr/X11R6/etc/X11/XF86Config-4

New Slack users often have problems setting up their display settings, (Slackware calls this file just XF86Config), so as Mandrake has already done it for you, keep this file handy, and you can use some of the settings within to get you going. Dont just overwrite though, as Mandrake uses a different font server setup If I remember correctly.