I am very much a Linux newbie (although in the past I've developed software in AIX, Ultrix, HPUX, even SCO and Venix) and I'm starting the process of setting up a Linux box to play around with. I do have a few questions about creating the installation CD's, particularly in a windows environment. Here's what I've done:

1. I downloaded just about everything but source and pasture from a mirror.
2. Reading the readme.txt in the isolinux directory I issued a mkisofs command excluding some of the recommended items (KDEI for example). However, this created much too large of an image for a normal CD. First question is: Are these instructions really intended for creating a DVD? Or is there a way to squeeze all this onto a normal CD?
3. When I finally got the image small enough to fit on a CD, I only had:

isolinux
kernals
slackware - excluding e, kde, kdei, gnome, t, and tcl

This seems to be able to boot a system, but it brings up a few questions:

1. I see mention of 2 main Slackware CD's, is there a list of what is on each CD?
2. When I want to add the stuff I left off, do I make a CD image in the same way (with mkisofs), and how do I go about adding the left off stuff? (Maybe this will be obvious when I get there).
3. Do I indeed have enough to build a basic Linux system on my current CD or have I left something essential off?

Thanks for helping!

Mike Witt

You could just make it easier on yourself and download the ISOs from here . Then all you need is a couple of 700mb CDs to burn. I'm not sure what's on the 2nd ISO. Probably extras.

Thanks ... that is a huge help!

Really you only need the 1st CD. The second CD contains GNOME, KDE, and some extras. The extras are easy to pick and choose to download off Slack's ftp, and KDE has been updated since Slackware 9.1 to the much faster KDE 3.2. And it's only a few more days till GNOME 2.6

Also good advice ... especially since my network advises me it will be another 7 hours before this download is done (of CD 1)

Thanks ... Mike

My question is, what if I want to make my own ISO's out of Slackware-Current? The readme for isolinux is from back when everything would fit on CD1. Does anyone have the script that the 'official' iso's are made from? The reamde for the isolinux wont fit on one cd anymore.