I am not a salesman or anything but Ive been using linux for a few years now (& im still a beginner..as im always learning stuff). I have experimented with several free distributions including debian (I got the free cd with a book). The installation was not easy, to say the least.

Personally i think that your asking for trouble with a slackware distribution if you are a beginner.

If your going to change distribution as a beginner, i would highly recommend Mandrake 9.1. The installation is automated for you - your network card & everything else will be automatically detected & you will be able to have the linux experience without the frustration of all this.

I would personnally invest in buying the package (the price varies from about £25 - £50 sterling). By buying the distribution on cd you will be indirectly supporting the developers. Belive me once you get it up and running the huge range of applications that you will have makes you realise how brilliant linux really is.

The X windows system is much much more powerful than microsoft windows. (someone told me that microsoft stole the idea of windows from the unix X window software). It is easy to use too.

Spare youself the trouble & invest in Mandrake 9.1

I agree with mr. neilcppp as a fairly new user of Linux,Mandrake would be a good choice for some one just getting their feet wet.I loaded Mandrake 9.1 on 3 different PC's and on a Dell laptop with very few problems. Only the regular stuff like sound card and winmodem, and those problems were resolved quite easily.But everyone has a favorite distro, and Mandrake just happens to be mine. But there all better than windoze.

I tried installing slackware, and I got an error when trying to load LILO into the master boot record. The computer would no longer boot. I had to reinstall windows completely, i mean from scratch. So...that was a learning experience I don't want to repeat. Every time I tried to boot it would would just say "LI" and froze completely. and when LILO didn't install correctlyduring setup process of Slackware, it would tell me I have to boot from floppy and make changes to lilo.conf. ????? What happened?

Should I try this installation again. What are the odds of LILO not being able to load correctly again.??

Also, the thought of paying for Linux doesn't really appeal to me, but it might come to that. I just figure if all these people can do it free, I can as well. Who knows? I might break down and buy it.

Thanks

When you install LILO in the Slackware install process, make sure you select to do it the "expert" way. You then get a new menu, which you should trvaerse from top to bottom. Well, not completely to the bottom, but that's quite obvious. You start out with creating a new LILO header (installing LILO to the MBR, e.g. /dev/hda), then you add a Linux partition (e.g. /dev/hda2), then you add a DOS partition (e.g. /dev/hda1), you name all of 'm whilst adding them to LILO, and then you select to install the configuration you just made.

Did you already do all that? If so, can you post your lilo.conf file? If not... please try it and report back.

-zsejk

what i did was install it to floppy then edit /etc/lilo.conf myself to make sure nothing went wrong - safe and easy. also, just a note to those above, i had to install mandrake 3 times before i got it working the way i wanted. once i had a proper slackware cd that booted, it was a breeze. i think most of it just comes down to individual experience. i've read posts of people having problems in every major distro, so as far as i can tell it's 6 of one half a dozen of the other. i got frustrated with mandrake because it didn't have some basic commands (i think it was missing lspci and some other stuff like that). also, slack uses a more standard file tree. mandrake sometimes puts things in strange places. for someone who has some time on their hands and wants to learn the inner workings of their system, i would recommend slack.

but that's just me

zsejk,

I haven't done that, but I will. Is it going to wipe out my current partitions like fdisk does or is this how I proceed to have a dual boot Windows/Linux machine. I'll wait for your reply before I go off and do it. Thanks

By the way, what do you mean by create a header, add a linux partition?

FYI. I have two partitions. ext 2 filesystem for Linux root. And one partition dedicated to Linux swap.

whichever boot manager you choose to use lives in the MBR of you primary hard driver, whether it's window's boot loader (i don't know the name), LILO, or Grub. you have to have one of them there. when you run

lilo

from the command line, it looks at /etc/lilo.conf to find out where you want it installed. this is the 'header' zsejk was talking about. if you want to install to the MBR, you need the line boot=/dev/hda. then it looks for additional options like timeout etc, and then for the different images you want options to boot to. the path is specified in lilo.conf. when you run lilo, it saves these paths to whichever boot= you specified (ie, MBR or whatever), so changes you make to the file won't start working until you run lilo again from command line.

installing it to the MBR is pretty safe in my experience, and yields easy dual-boot.

here's a good link for info on lilo which you should check out:

http://www.control-escape.com/linux/lilo-cfg.html

i hope that helps you out.

Yeah, "add a header" is the section of the install that determines from where LILO will start (e.g. /dev/hda). This portion of install doesn't mess with your partitions anymore; it just determines where everything is so that LILO can see all partitions and load them when you choose to load them. So, the first thing you do in this part of the install (or when running "lilo" from the command prompt; see mcd's post) is create this "header" (i.e. the part where you say you want it to load from /dev/hda), then you add the DOS (i.e. Windows partition), then the Linux partition (all of which are already set with fdisk, so they don't get changed again), and then you save the configuration. After that you should be all set to go: you reboot, and if all is well LILO will show up (a little red square in the middle of your screen) giving you two options: Linux or Windows (or whatever other name you gave them during your LILO installation).

-zsejk

Hmm... this means you don't currently have a Windows partition set up. A basic partition scheme would look roughly like this (assuming Windows XP, Linux, and a Linux swap):

/dev/hda1 Primary Windows fat32 (or whatever)
/dev/hda2 Primary Linux ext2
/dev/hda3 Primary Linux swap

I don't quite remember what to do *exactly* after a fresh Windows re-install to use the free space on that for your to-be-created Linux partitions, but I think I remember there being an option like "Use free space on Windows partition" (I think this was in "cfdisk" and not in "fdisk"... though it might very well be in "fdisk" as well... you'll just have to go look for a similar command; but whatever you do, *don't* delete the Windows partition!).

But since your Windows partition seems to be gone now anyway (are you *sure* you only have 2 partitions?), how about you try getting LILO to work as outlined in the previous post (minus the bit about adding a DOS partition to LILO, since you now don't seem to have one), and then we can worry about your Windows later? 'Cause once you get the hang of how to get LILO going, it will be no trouble at all to redo things *with* a Windows partition (though I think Microsoft being the company it is, you will then first have to re-install Windows again, and then use its free space for your umpteenth Linux re-install). But I'm sure someone here will be able to explain exactly how to go about that. I wish I could, but it's been too long ago for me to remember correctly.

-zsejk

Ok guys, Here's my partition scheme

/dev/hda1 = Win NT (XP) bootable
/dev/hda2 = a partition i made with partition magic to store data for windows
/dev/hda 3 = Linux root partition (supposed to be bootable but not yet)
/dev/hda 4 = Linux swap
/dev/hda 5 = Windows swap space ( NTFS )
/dev/hda6/ = not allocated ( this is my screw up space )

I don't think they're numbered like that but that's the order they're listed in Partition magic. I think there are actually 7 parts, one is an extended partition.

When I open partition magic I see that the linux partition has stuff in it (the slackware I just installed)

so I think my options are :

1. boot with the linux boot floppy to Slackware and edit LILO there using "emacs /etc/lilo.conf" and add the header and partitions

2. Re install Slackware and do an "expert way" install when asked about LILO.

Is that right? which one is better?

Also, Slackware didn't detect my network card when it scanned ...is it easy to configure this later? It told me I had to edit some file later on.

Thanks, guys.

Ok, since trying to boot to floppy yielded a "kernel panic error" and made my keyboard blink over and over while freezing up, I think I have to reinstall and use my new LILO knowledge during install to do it the "expert way"

Hopefully, i'll be able to get into windows again to tell you how it went.

Here i go....

Hehe... I hope it worked! Let us know if everything got picked up on ok. Perhaps type "ifconfig" at the prompt and give us the results.

-zsejk

What's up everyone. I'm in Windows and I got here through....(sound trumpets) ....LILO! I'd like to thank you for all your help with getting that configured correctly.

Once again, the network card was not detected. Note, I don't have a PCI adapter for my LAN connection, it's integrated onto the Motherboard ABIT Ic7-G . I'll try ifconfig now

YAY!!!!



We're so almost completely there! Now that you have Slackware running, you can post a new thread in the Slackware forum if your connection is still not coming up. When you do post there, make sure you post the outputs of "ifconfig", "lspci", "lsmod", and "dmesg | grep eth0". Also mention your cardname (I believe you have an Intel card, but just mention the model number etc. as well) and anything else you can remember about your card (like that bit about it being integrated onto your motherboard).

-zsejk