How many cd's for slack?
 

Hey there...long time ago I tried to test out Slack 10 but it did not have "out of the box" sata support. Now with 10.1 it is here and I would like to test it out again.
My question is, how many cd's I need to download. Slack comes together in 4 cd's. As my bandwith is limited I am interested to download the stuff I only really need.
I need complete setup with as little as bells and whistles as possible. Graphical user interface is also needed, something lightweight.
thx!

I've got 2. Cds 3 and 4 are sources, if I remember correctly. 1 and 2 are binaries. You can go with no 1 only and then download the extra packages you may need.

Installation ISO disc 1
Installation ISO disc 2 (GNOME/KDE/KDEI, /testing)
ISO disc 3 (Sources part 1, /extra , Slackware book)
ISO disc 4 (Sources part 2, ZipSlack, /pasture)

You could just donwload disc 1 but then you'll have to use fluxbox or some other window manager becuase gnome and kde are on disk 2.

Solution to this will minimizing the stuff is just download disk 1 and if you want kde just download the individual packages at

http://slackware.com/pb/browse.php?q=10.0/slackware

you need kdebase-3.2.3-i486-1, kdelibs-3.2.3-i486-1, and qt-3.3.2-i486-2 packages in the kde section for a minimal kde. I think this would be the best way to go for you. If you really wanted to go with gnome you'd be better off just downloading the entire cd 2 becuase you need practically all the packages in gnome to get it to work, unfortantely. kde is nice though, i use it myself along with fluxbox and directfb.

Disk 3 and 4 are the source code to linux. it also has the testing 2.6.10 kernel in there but since you are on dialup if your really wanted to test it out just download the source at kernel.org and build it yourself. will save a lot of bandwiddth. otherwise, just stick with the 2.4.29 kernel which is on disc 1 and the default for slack.

thx for replys guys!

I dont like gnome...it is so system heavy! Flux is cool but with kde I will have less pain getting it up and running the way I like and of course having more fun altogether. Is flux really available in cd1?

Another thing I am worried is installing my GF4 Ti4200. If I remember correctly, to install nvidia drivers you need kernel source..is this also case with slack or drivers are aleady integrated?

thx!

ouch forgot...another fast noobie question from me if you allow:
How far is the slack 10.1 with NTFS support?

My plan is to use in my main comp slack (compositing & 3d)...another pc is windows xp based to run the stuff what makes lot of pain in linux and is maybe impossible to run on linux. So the communication between these two PC's has to be seamless and both need to have good acces to my data partition what resides in linux box.
As I remember correctly then FAT is not good for large files and large data hadling?

thx!

for your geforce 4, check the nvidia README and make sure it's supported. if it is, the kernel-source is on the first cd. install it, after the source is installed, go to /usr/src/linux-xxxxx and:

make dep

to configure the kernel with the slackware configuration. you should have no problems building the nvidia driver from there.

NTFS, ??. read-write mode is experimental ( this is with all distro's). read-only is fine.

Oh ok..the kernel source is included in first cd..thought it is also in 3d or 4th cd. thx

Yes, fluxbox is really on the first CD. You can also use it temporarily to get kde up if you like. Saves a CD.

thank you everyone for helping out!
hopefully you dont mind another nooby question. I have always caused problems for me with it. Given too much space or too less. What would be the sufficent size of the system partition? Slack...X..maybe KDE...oO suite. Trying to keep the bells and whistles minimal since I am planning to run resource heavy applications.

as I understand /home needs to be configured to another partition anyway?

is the swap disk thumb rule still same like in windoze world, generally 2,5x ram amount? (I got 1,5Gb)

thx!

I hear for swap it's twice your RAM size but 500 to 1000 would be enough. Not sure though.

You don't have to put your /home on a different partition but it's easier to keep stuff seperated that way.

For your root partition it depends on what you're going to install from KDE. A full installation takes a lot of space. OpenOffice is quite big as well. Can't give you a real size though.

What is the size of your HD? Is it 5GB? Do you want to dual boot slack and xp?

The minimial amount of partitions needed is 3. One for root partition (/), one for swap (2x mem should be fine) and one for xp. You don't need to have /home on a different partition. Having /var on a different partion is good because the file change so much in there but don't worry about that now until you get use to slack and get a feel for how big to make them.

If you have the room make a 5 GB parition for slack. 2xmem for swap. and give the rest to xp should e fine.

No Win XP in this pc...my main goal is to carry over my most system hungry applications(3D & Compositing) from win pc to the linux pc to avoid unstable sys etc. Tho for native windows apps(2D) there is another pc for compatiblity reasons.

74 Gb WD Raptor is for system disk.
My initial plan was to give 15Gb for slack..
25 for 3d work data...
15 for temporal post processing data
19 for personal(storing system settings and keeping personal data) [this of course could be all given to /home if I think now about it]

another slower disk is just for static data storing, for backuping raptor and it will be mirrored to the one of the other pc's...

I brought this up cuz always I tend to give too much space for my linux partitions what in end is unused when I could use it for other things. Right now I am wondering that even 15gb is too much :/
If I would know the guidelines how much slack needs for to store its system..that would help already much I guess.