Slackware install
 

Hi all, I just got a used toy (computer) with icky windows on it, and I'm not putting up with that, so I am trying to install slackware 8.1 on it. I have put linux on other computers before, but it was red hat, which has the nice installer. However, in my quest for linux knowledge, I wanted to try another distro on this computer, and I am having some trouble with the installer. I boot from the CD-ROM, and I get to the prompt and log in as root. The hard part is the partitioning of the drive. I have made a primary / partition, which is most of the drive, and then I format the drive. The swap space is what I can't figure out. I have made another small partition ( about 200 Mb ) for that but I don't know what to do with it. In the setup program, there is a selection to set up your swap partition, but when I select it it tells me that I have not made a swap partition. I'm getting kind of confused with this one.

the swap partition needs to be type 82

To clarify what whanlard said, once in fdisk type
t
which will ask you for a partition # -> input the correct partition number as displayed by the partition table (p in fdisk)
then type 82, hit enter, write the table, then run setup.

Good luck!

Try cfdisk
 

Before you start up the setup program, use cfdisk to create your main partition and a swap partition. Should be about twice your memory in size. In cfdisk, there's an option to change the type of a partition. Use this to change the partition you created to swap.

Then, setup should recognize the partition.

Hope this helps.