I am trying to get my ducks in a row for installing Slackware 14.1 on my laptop. The laptop is HP Envy with Win 7 64 bit and I want Slackware as a dual bootable OS.

The Setup screen gave me this warning:
When I use , I get output similar to this:
If I use :
Output from the command is something like:
There are no mountpoints listed in the output for that command, but I did include it in the command.

So, it appears that my computer does not use EFI. I have gone into BIOS and it says that it's running 'legacy' or whatever is not EFI. And the 'gdisk' command indicates there is not EFI/GPT. Why does 'setup' say that I am running EFI? What do I about this situation to go ahead with the install? Do I go to gdisk and flout the warning about possibly ruining the MBR and set up the EFI System Partition with EF00 code? Do I just go through the setup steps like it didn't warn about EFI?

Though mentioned in the same standard, EFI and GPT are two different things.

The warning from Setup is shown because as you started the machine withe the firmware in EFI mode, the kernel brought up an interface to communicate with that EFI firmware, that is a populated /sys/firmware/efi directory (this allows the OS to modify the firmware's boot menu, for instance).

Nonetheless, your disk was formatted using a MBR (aka DOS) partition table, not a GPT (aka GUID Partition Table) one, and that is allowed by the UEFI standard as a transitional measure. Hence the messages of gdisk and cgdisk.

The reason you see no mount point in the output of lsblk is because lsblk only shows mount points in use (i.e., partitions already mounted) and there is none when you start the installer.

As (and if) you have already populated Windows partitions that you want to keep I suggest that you don't take a chance and use the 'legacy' (aka BIOS) mode of your firmware and do not modify the partition table. The installer will just propose you to use lilo (not elilo) for installation and this is OK in your case.

If you wanted to wipe out the whole disk to install Slackware instead, then you could use the EFI mode and tell gpt to change the partition table (from MBR only to GPT + protective MBR).

There are several guides available to change a bios booting win 7 to uefi boot.
https://www.google.com/search?q=conv...=fs&gws_rd=ssl
I was able to the same with a win 8 bios install

[QUOTE=deretsigernu;5529083]I am trying to get my ducks in a row for installing Slackware 14.1 on my laptop. The laptop is HP Envy with Win 7 64 bit and I want Slackware as a dual bootable OS.
...(snip)

I bought a Dell xps 8900 that came preloaded with Win7. I would like to have a 2x4 handy if the people who created Win7 ever cross my path. OK, I think I got my point across; - I do not like Microsoft. I bought the tower not for the OS but for the hardware. It has a (per the Ad) a 240G SSD and a 2T HDD. Using the install disk from Slackware 14.1 (64bit) I went snooping around the Tower's "Innards". Turns out the SSD is considered sdb and the Hdd is considered the sda. Seems a bit backwards but what the heck. The Win7 install via Dell requires the use of 3 Partitions!. I used Slackware 14.1 to partition the 2T drive to my liking. All went well. Set my wishes in lilo.config and ran LILO. Removed the Slackware disk and rebooted and all was well. Ran a few tests was properly WOWed with the he speed.

!4.2 arrived and I began formatting the USB external drives. 0-2T seemed to have no problems. I used a 32bit Slackware as I have done numerous times in the past. Since I had 64bit going I tried partitioning the 4Ts as a single partition. One worked, on disk but not useable, and the others got crazy results. To top it off, the "L" command in 64bit fdisk makes a single column of output of choices and runs them right off the top of the screen. And Piping to more does not work. Seldom does with interactive programs. Went back to 14.2 on the 64bit and got different answers for the partitioning values. Same USB drive but different values on the screen. One set from the 32bit OS and another set from the 14.2 64bit OS and another from the 14.1 64bit OS... On the same drive. Looked up parted and things got worse. Using 14.1 on the 2T HDD had been simplicity itself. I had used the fdisk from 14.1 64bit. As for parted there seems to be a woefully shortage of info and examples. There are examples, but so simplistic as to be near useless in the real world. In my opinion. Also, I have not found the NEW vs LEGACY partition codes conversion tables. Like "c W95 FAT32 (LBA)" is e or ee and 83 Linux is 11 or some such and 82 Linux swap is some name that sounds nothing like it belongs in Linux. I tried different things and got lost in the permutations.

I have several shirt pocket sized USB external drives. Some are 2T and some are 4T. I would like to know what it takes to get these things back on track. I do not mind spliting the 4Ts into 2 - 2Ts. But these have to be readable by the large majority. "Cutting Edge" only does not cut it.

Norseman01