I tried that Slax Live CD thing that insyte pointed me to. And I love it . I couldn't get it to boot straight away because when it got to the part about detecting hardware or something it hung, but I managed to muddle my way through it and ran guifast because it wouldn't run gui without crashing. The refresh rate was too slow (59hz yuck) but it was good. It didn't find any of my hardware though not my graphics card, not my ethernet (so no internet) and no sound. I did how ever get a little taste of linux. The kind of apps etc. I even managed to access my windows partition and leave a little present on my desktop (a screenshot of slax )
Is slackware pretty much the same as Slax, just installed to the hard drive rather than running from the CD? If it is then I'm installing slackware

Yes, it's the same system with the added bonus that you can make it use your hardware.
I guess you chose a good approach for your evaluation and made a good decision in the end. Happy slacking! 8-)

Slax is a nice live disk.

The one thing I will caution you about is that they put a little extra hardware automation in. OR getting to the windows partitions, with Slax its automatic but with slackware you have to actually know how to mount them.

I just started seriously at the beginning of this year and I've gone through pretty much every major distro and many minor. In my view the fellow above who reccomended SUSE for begginers is right on. Though if you don't wanna buy it help can be a little tough. When I was searching for info on problems here and there I seemed to find nothing but German documents for many of my problems. But for first time linux users there are no better configuration tools that I know of than those in YAST. Suse also designs a very attractive desktop and its just the most comfortable distro.

At this point I use SUSE on my desktop and Slackware on my laptop. I really have a hard time deciding between the two. When it comes down to it I guess SUSE being more bloated is a little nicer on my higher performance desktop while leaner Slackware is just the thing for my laptop.

With Slackware the benifits are that its lean and well documented. Often when you read general Linux books or documentation online you find that things don't work exactly they way they are supposed to. Most ditros add compexities to improve the product that often just serve to make it more complex. Not so Slackware. Its harder to learn but once you start to get the hang of it everything makes more sense. Slackware is how you can really learn Linux. But then the training wheels are'nt there when you need them. Well, exept for demo scripts that is.

If you have enough hard drive space you may want to give each a partition on your hard drive and check them both out to see wich is most comfortable.

If I have a problem with Slack I give SuSE a try, if I have a problem with that then I'll give fendora a try

I've been reading through this forum and I'm a bit confused now. Linux needs more that one partition so can I do this....

hda1 Win XP FAT 32 - 5GB
hda2 Storage space for windows programs, my docs etc FAT 32 - 115GB
hdb1 Linux boot
hdb2 Linux swap
hdb3 The main part of Linux.

hda is my new 120GB drive and hdb is my old 20GB drive. What sizes should I make each partition on hdb? Also is FAT 32 ok for a 115GB partition or should I break it down into smaller partitions?

Should I partition everything using partition magic and then install XP and set it up. Then install slack? or slack first?

I would recommend only 2 partitions on hdb, just root and swap because it's the default config and easier to follow. You can do the partitions with partition magic or using cfdisk during slackware setup, i would recommend u to use partition magic
You should install Win XP first then slackware. Oh btw, one think i'd recommend if it's your first time is to install Win XP, then unplug your win hard disk, install slackware (when it comes to lilo choose mbr). Plug in your first hdd again and setup slackware to be able to boot to xp too. That way if you have a problem with lilo you can just boot from the other drive because winxp boot loader will be there
I hope you get it, i'm very tired and i'm not writing good :P

How big should the partitions in hdb be? 10GB on each? Isn't one of them supposed to be the size of your memory or am I getting muddled up with something else?

Is there a step by step tutorial on setting up a dual boot with XP and slack some where?

Well if you have 512 or more ram your swap can be of the same size of it or more, if you have less it's recommended that it's at least twice big as ram, that's for swap partition, the other can be anysize, you need at least 3gb to install slackware (a full install).

You should be able to setup a dual boot by reading this two great slackware guides: http://shilo.is-a-geek.com/slack/ and http://www.insyte.uni.cc/ (by order of creation so authors or fans don't fight :P)

Ok according to the insyte.uni.cc website I could do it like;

1st 120GB hard drive
5GB Win XP
115GB Storage that I can move files from linux to windows with

2nd 20GB hard drive
512mb linux swap, because I have 256mb memory
then the rest of the drive for the main linux partition.

I found this on a MS website
Does this mean if I format my 115GB FAT32 partition with linux. Win XP will be happy with it?

Yes, also I think that Partition Magic could do the job on Windows too (I guess MS's doc is refering to Windows format program and not one working under that OS).

After reading this thread, I'll throw my 2 cents in...

It all depends on why you are installing Linux.

Are you looking for a quick and relatively painless migration from Windows? Are you primarily concerned with running your own desktop?

Or, are you looking to discover some of the "nuts and bolts" of Linux on your own time so that you can ultimately deploy Linux in any situation...perhaps in both server and desktop roles...and maybe in a business setting?

If it is the first, then by all means, use something like Fedora, Mandrake, SuSE or Xandros. These are distributions that more specifically target the user who simply wants to get to work more quickly with Linux as the OS -- the user who doesn't want or need a distribution that runs on minimal hardware.

If you are in the second camp, and are looking to learn how to administer networks of machines, I think you would be better off by starting with BOTH Debian and Slackware to get a feel for general purpose Linux distributions, CLI administration, etc. They differ in their approach to initialization, package management, (PAM) and all that, but are similar in their minimal hardware requirements and bare bones administrative tools.

I would also suggest not "trying SuSE if I have problems with Slackware," in this second scenario. Be bull headed and work your way through the installation and configuration problems you encounter with the more spartan distros and then expand your exploration to include Fedora, Mandrake, SuSE, et al.

It might be a bit easier to move into Fedora from a Windows background, but over time, I also think you'll find it is easier to move between distributions like Slackware and Debian to more "automagic" distributions like Mandrake if you spend some time struggling with the basic general purpose distributions first.

That can be very handy when smoke starts pouring from your firewall and you have only an old 486 sitting on the shelf and it is 2:00 AM on Sunday.

That is exactly it. I plan to understand Linux and be able to control it from the command line, then someday I plan on setting up a couple of webservers and run a webhosting business. I'm up for a challenge, that is why I have chosen Slack rather than fendora, I'm sure fendora would be quite a challenge but I wanted to take it a step further . I'm keen to learn linux so I don't want a windows alternative.

I've just set up my new hard drive, had to confuse partition magic to let me have a FAT 32 partition over 32GB. I had to create 4 32GB~ partitions, then merge them. It wouldn't let me just create one bit FAT 32 partition .
I've just got windows up and running, I've downloaded CD1 of slackware and CD2 is on the way, the connection got lost so I had to start that one again unfortunatly. But its comming along. So as soon as I've got windows back to my "liking" I'll install my old hard drive as a slave and install slackware on it.

On partitions, I guess its too late know but I personally recommend not making your fat32 partitions any larger than 20gb. The reason is that when you load them down with lots of files they really get slow and harder to manage. At least that is my experience.

You don't need more than one prmary partition either. I have a 160gb drive with Windows on the first priary partition. Everything else is on a logical paritiion and none of them are larger than 20gb. The nice thing about Linux is that you can mount them in your file system anyway you want so it can all seem like one big partition with different folders.

I agree with bughead1: Don't switch your distribution just because you have a problem. Be patient and stubborn, instead. (From your last post I take that you are serious about Linux, so that's probably not going to be your problem).

However, there's one point that may justify to switch distribution, and that's when you need to use a device that's not supported by what you have.
Eg, SuSE was among the first distributions to support ISDN and DSL, quite a while before others did. They patched the kernel for this. If you wanted to surf the web a few years ago, your choice of Linux was then SuSE and not much more.
However, vendor patches have a downside: They introduce dependencies; between packages; between you and your distributor. That can make it difficult to install a newer version of a software package. Distributors don't upgrade all the application software packages as often as the original creators do. So if you want a new version of a given program, you either have to wait until your distributor provides a package for your distribution, or you might try to install the program from the original sources. Which can be difficult, when the version already installed in your system is more or less heavily patched and depends on patched versions of other software packages (notably libraries). Installing a newer, unpatched version, can easily break things in your system.
In practice this happens very rarely, and it's not too dangerous as it is typically a problem for applications, not so much for system components --- but it can make the whole thing tedious.

Among the top five distributions, Slackware is the only one that doesn't come with vendor patches --- almost all the packages including the kernel are unmodified versions from the original sources, just packaged for Slackware.

In my opinion it's a good strategy to explore how far you can get without patched distros, and only switch over, if you really need a feature that only a patched kernel or software package provides.

Looks you are on the right track. 8-)

gargamel

If it ain't broke, don't fix it .

I won't be patching anything unless the original doesn't work properly and needs a little patch to get it up to speed. But I won't just patch files ONLY to have the latest versions of everything. That is pointless.

@ AhYup : I only have one primary partition. I've changed the partitions again now any way. I have so far on my 120GB HD;
5Gb win xp Primary partition
31.2Gb partition for things like my documents and music etc. Logical partition
then the rest 18GB ~ for program files, again a logical partition. I'm planning on sharing the 31.2Gb partition with Linux so that I can get My docs etc in Linux.
On my second HD (20G) I will have 512mb swap partition then the rest for the main linux partition.

Right. 8-)
Now, if you follow the ten first rules of information technology, you'll have lots fun.

Rule 1: Backup your data.
Rule 2: Backup your data.
Rule 3: Backup your data.
Rule 4: Backup your data.
Rule 5: Backup your data.
Rule 6: Backup your data.
Rule 7: Backup your data.
Rule 8: Backup your data.
Rule 9: Backup your data.
Rule 10: Backup your data.

A couple of years ago I had considerable trouble because I had not payed enough attention to rule number 4.

;-)

gargamel