I just ordered the two Slackware CD's from Amazon.com. I want to parition my drive from SLAX using QTParted. This is what my drive looks like now.

No. Partition Type Status Size Used Start End
1 /dev/hda-1 free Hidden .03 MB N/A 0.00MB 0.03MB
2 /dev/hda1 fat32 7.32GB 5.05GB 0.03MB 7.32GB
3 /dev/hda2 ntfs Active 67.23GB 40.57GB 7.32GB 74.55GB
4 /dev/hda-1 free Hidden 13.29MB N/A 74.55GB 74.56GB

Partition 2 is the HP recovery partition. 3 is my main XP install. I want to dual-boot so I'm thinking change 3 into 2 smaller. One 8192MB ext2 and then a 512MB swap. Will that work good, like, are the partition names going to be good? Then I'll install Slackware to hda3.

Is ext2 good? I want something stable. What do I use?

Once I install Slackware, can I boot it from the CD? Can I type something like boot /dev/hda3? I don't want to do LILO yet and I don't have a floppy drive. Maybe I'll do LILO later but I don't trust it yet.

Thanks and sorry for all the questions.

If you want something stable, I would go with a journaling filesystem. That keeps track of the file changes in a "journal" so that if any of them are missed due to, say, a power outage, they will be re-applied the next time you boot -- automatically.

You could go with ext3 or reiserfs (or probably others). I just switched from ext3 to reiserfs and am quickly becomming a fan. (I find it a bit faster than ext3.)

If you want to skip lilo, you should be fine booting off the slackware cd. Just watch the prompts and read the suggestions. When it gives you the option to type the kernel name, you would use something like

> bare.i root=/dev/hdaX

where X is the partition number of your root (/) partition.

Garry

I'd go for ext3 or reiserfs as well. My personal preference is reiserfs.

i'd go with reiserfs....stable, quick..journaling...

you can boot from the slackware cd...at the prompt, just type:

bare.i root=/dev/hdax noinitrd ro
(like garry said, "x" is the number of your slack root partition...so if it's on partition 3, it would be /dev/hda3)

and it will boot fine for ya... i used that for a bit before i got lilo (then grub) configured...

reiser on boot/system mounts, xfs on data shares. (xfs is blazing fast with smaller files, such as MP3s)

So I went ahead with QTParted, and made my NTFS smaller. When you hit commit it tells you to unmount all partitions. So I quickly go umount mnt/disc0part1 and /mnt/disc0part2. Then, I commited. I restarted, and Windows wouldn't boot. So, I reinstalled from my rescue CD's (thank goodness for them) and tried again. This time, I thought to unmout the /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda2. This time it worked. So I kinda screwed things up, I had all my docs and downloads, pictures and music saved but my saved games and programs are all gone. Oh well! You don't learn but not taking risks do you! So, now I can go ahead installing Slackware when it comes. Finally I can do it!!!!

congrats!!! part of the linux experience seems to be messing up and learning from mistakes...dunno how many times i've installed and reinstalled and stuff...first thing i did when i got this pc was burn the recovery disks for xp so i could rebuild...lol.
the number one rule is BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP anything important!!! which you've already done...so you're a few steps ahead already

Exactly as detpenguin said.

I administer Linux servers as a profession, I still destroy stuff. Backup Backup Backup. (It doesn't hurt to have a few testing systems around either )