I am trying to install Slackware for the first time (version 9.1). It will be going on to a older laptop (Compaq Presario 1220). It is 200 mhz with a 2 gig hard drive.

Will this work for familiarity uses?

This is where I am with the install(having trouble with partitioning).

Well I have booted to the install CD and have typed "bare.i" and logged in as root.

The next screen gives a few options and I choose to use "cfdisk" due to me not knowing what to do within "fdisk".

Well I partitioned the whole drive as one primary partition and set it to boot then typed, "setup".

Next the Slackware Linux Setup (version 9.1.0) and I selected "ADDSWAP"
Set up your swap partitions and a different window pops up telling me No Swap Space Detected, that I have not created a swap partition with fdisk.

So I know I need a few partitions for Slackware. I’m just not sure how many I need, and how to go about setting them up, and how to distinguish which are for what.

Any help setting up these partitions and installing Slackware would be much appreciated.

Thanks

A good rule of thumb for swapspace is 1.5x your physical memory. So if you have 256mb's of ram, you could setup swap to be 384mb's. Make your first partition to contain the os leaving enough room for the swap. Then create a 2nd one in cfdisk and make sure to select it, choose 'type', and set it to be a swapfile. I think it's # 82 or #83. You'll see it in the menu. Then do setup.

Swap is not *absolutely* required in a strict sense, but it pretty much is. Everything else is optional. So when using cfdisk, cut out 256 megs or so (given that we're working with 2 gigs total) and give the rest to root. Use cfdisk to set the type as swap. Then go on with the install. Slack will give you a chance to specify your root and will pick up and initialize your swap. You can do more complicated partitioning schemes but I'd go with that for now.

lol. 15 seconds apart

There is a tutorial that I wrote for installing Slackware on a Gateway 450X... The hard drive size is larger than yours but the concept is the same. There is a section in the tutorial called partitioning that might help you. It covers the SWAP stuff as well.... here is the link
http://www.wireless-linux.com/tutorials/slack9.1.php

Thanks alot guys, Im reading the tutorial as I go and I think my bigest problem was that I overlooked the choose 'type' option in cfdisk.

Ill let you know how it goes in just a few