which iso do i NEED. i see that 1+2 are for install and 3+4 are sources. what are on 3+4 and what are they for?

Discs 1 and 2 are for the install and discs 3 and 4 is the source code.... You already answered your own question...

You don't NEED the source code to install. Just the binaries. Discs 1 and 2 are just the binaries.

And if you're really hard-core, you only need disk 1, because all that's on disk 2 is GNOME and KDE, so if you're setting up a basic server that doesn't need a GUI, or you're only interested in a window manager and not a desktop environment, you can get by with only one CD.

Discs 3 and 4 exist because the GPL and LGPL require that the source code be included with any binary distribution of software. Since Slackware's package system is a binary method of distribution, largely for 3rd party apps distributed under GPL and LGPL (and in some cases BSD or MIT), the source has to be available.

You don't need discs 3 or 4. They're just there because Pat has to make that stuff available. (though an interesting side-note... KDE runs a whole lot faster if you compile it yourself, because you have the option of going through the code and getting rid of all of the errors to stdout. You simply don't need all of that reporting to stdout, especially in runlevel 4, because you're never going to see them anyway.)

really....... I'll have to try that. thanks.

Personally I only used disk 1, although I didn't realise that the others had the decent GUIs on at the time, but this resulted in me only having Dropline Gnome and a set of really basic GUIs, which i think was probably best. My advice is to install the first disk and then set up your internet connection on one of the basic GUIs (I used darkbox or something like that) and then get the dropline gnome installer from http://www.dropline.net/gnome/files/...9-i686-4dl.tgz
use installpkg and then... well... wait.