Once you've created the partitions for linux, you can double check them. If you're going to do like I suggested above, it's going to be:
/dev/sda1 (your windows)
/dev/sda2 (partition for your slackware)
/dev/sda3 swap

However, if you've got some kind of hidden windows partitions, it might be:
/dev/sda1 windows hidden partition
/dev/sda2 windows
etc.

In any case, you're going to focus on the last two. Ideally, when you're installing it, log in here from some other
computer (if you have access to one) and we will be happy to guide you.

Thanks folks :)

I'll be installing tomorrow when the DVD iso is down. I'll remove the D: partition and see what boots. If Win7 continues to boot, then all will be fine. If not, I'll use the restore disk and try again. I suspect I'll need help after installation - I'll be definitely logging in :)

D.

Yeah, it would be better if it was unallocated space. During the Slackware installation, after it asks you to log in as root, type cfdisk, this brings up a partition editor where you can create your linux partitions.

w00t! As they say...

Removed the second partition with the windows disk management tool, then rebooted with my freshly burned Slackware 13 64bit DVD in the drive.

Used cfdisk to create a 5GB swap and 65GB linux partition, then ran "setup". I have to say, it's not a job for your average internet-n-email guys, but that is probably more due to my choice of distro than any slight on linux. After a few minutes running through the installation options (unlike windows, it pays to read what the dialogs say!), it went off and installed. About half an hour later, it was done!

So I'm sitting at a command prompt, wondering what to do next. On a whim, I entered "startx" not really expecting it to work - I'd just installed, and not configured anything at all. To my amazement, it started up fine! Correct screen mode for my widescreen monitor, soundcard working fine!

I am, quite frankly, blown away at how easy it was, and this is supposed to be one of the more difficult distros to get running if the guys on IRC are to be believed...

So now - I need to go away and research some things. I have no internet connectivity, so need to look at getting the wireless running. I also need to make myself a user account, as I don't feel comfortable running as root all the time.

Anyone any pointers to these issues? I'm gonna go google and search the forums, but if there's any shortcuts I'd like to know them!

Thanks for all your help folks, you've made a scary process very easy indeed!

D.

Add a "regular" user, so you're not root all the time. Run this:
Accept the defaults, except when it asks for groups, then press the up arrow key, and add lp (for printing admin., etc).
When you've done that, logout as root, login as the name you chose, then run startx.
If you want to boot into a GUI and not a CLI every time, edit /etc/inittab:
Change the 3 in this line to 4:

The complicated thing about Slackware is that it won't automatically install dependencies for you.

In most other distros, if you want to install a package that requires dozens of other packages to work, they will be installed automatically.

In Slackware, you have to figure out and install each of them yourself.

BTW this is a great tutorial:

http://linuxcommand.org/

Congrats on you first Slackware system:)

Full Slackware install gets you a nice working system that should suffice for most people. If you need more packages, please visit: slackbuilds.org

Dangerous and interesting. You loose some fancy stuff and you gain a full development operating system with any programming language compiler you ever wanted, for free.

Correct. Erase the D: disk tino free space. Then make logical partitions:

- a swap partition twice the amount of RAM you have (with a maximum of 9 GB)
- a root partition of 12 GB
- a /home partition of the rest

All partitions can be of the logical type. None need to be bootable. So just keep your Windows partition bootable. Use cfdisk for the partitioning. Then use setup to install everything. Format everything in ext4 or the journaling version of ext3.

That ought to do the trick.

In the remote case that you cannot boot windows anymore (when Lilo makes an error) do not panic. A few lines with a text editor will rescue you.

Please read some chapters here: http://fruttenboel.verhoeven272.nl/linux/index.html since I am using Slackware for some time now and I put most of my experiences online.

Thanks Fruttenboel, I've bookmarked your site.

I'm still spending some time in windows, because it's all familiar territory for the time being (and until I can migrate my bookmarks through to the linux install!).

I erased the D: partition, and set up a swap/linux pair of partitions. I booted the DVD, and let it do it's stuff - when done, I typed in "startx" and bingo, I was looking at a rather nice, swish desktop. There was no wireless manager installed, so the helpful chaps on this very forum pointed me to wicd, and after some head-scratching (it's amazing how many times that damned case-sensitivity has tripped me up today) I have a pretty stable OS installed.

I say "pretty stable" because it's thrown some wobblers - firefox has once or twice just sat there in the taskbar and then disappeared, and the google chrome package I installed appears not to work - does the same as firefox, only all the time. I'm sure I'll get these things fixed in good time.

Two more questions!

When booting, I am presented by the M$ boot selector, where I choose my Slackware install. I then get the LILO slackware screen, where again I have to choose Slackware, which then boots. How do I remove that second selection? And most importantly where is the file I need to edit to do it? Im loving this spirit of discovery, but if there's one thing that I've noticed, it's that most advice around the web is of the form "you need to edit your foo.conf" file without saying where it resides :)

Second question - why do I get two corrupted blue Tux images at the top of the screen whilst booting? And how do I fix that?

Cheers guys, I'm almost done!

D.

It sounds like you installed lilo to the partition rather than the mbr. The file you are looking for is You can just make Slackware the default if it isn't and do away with the timeout so that it's instant if you want. You'll need to then run lilo by doing in the terminal.

On the google-chrome front....

Did you use the slackbuild from SBo to build and install google chrome? By doing from the terminal you can see the errors which will tell you why google chrome isn't starting. Same goes for firefox.

What about Compiz? ;)

Once you are comfortable with Linux, you can switch to single-booting linux and install your Windows 7 in a virtual machine. Of course you could do it the other way around too, and install Linux in a VM hosted in Windows.

Advantage is that you can run both OSs without a reboot, if your hardware is up to it.

I personally presently have one copy of Windows 2000 and one copy of Windows 7 Pro up and running in VMs hosted in my Mandriva Linux workstation. Running Win7 this way has some significant advantages. I have Win7 firewalled from within Linux so that I can control its very strong desire to call the mother ship...and Win7 doesn't even know I'm doing it. I've blocked more than a dozen different M$ URLs that Win7 wants to call, and only sometimes allow it to talk to update.microsoft.com.

Makes Win7 much, much easier to deal with.

Thanks. Consult it when necessary. It cntains information and links. If ever you need Alien Bob's atention, just mail him, he's a nice guy.

Yeah. DOS is still case unsensitive after 30 years... Unix alwas has been. Most programming language of importance are as well. Society at large is too. So do your best and get used to it. Otherwise, ditch the 'Shift' keys from your keybored!
After some time with browsing the net and non-IE browsers, you will find that SOME websites are COMPLETELY written for one purpose: the IE browser. Your open source browser will just hang up. Just try to access the site with one of your other browsers. A dirty browser is Konqueror. You can set it up to act (and report itself) as IE 6, running from Windows Vista or XP, or 98, or whatever.
I myself am very fond of Seamonkey.

IF EVER you get a system hang:

1: repeatedly (5 - 10 times) click on the 'x' mark in the top right corner of the window and wait for the system message that asks you to confirm a kill of the out of control program
2: press Ctrl-Escape to change the cursor in a skull. Click any window to kill it.
3: try to get into a terminal (always have one terminal open in desktop 4) and get the process id from the task that hangs (with 'ps aux') and kill it with 'kill -9 pid'
4: try to kill 'X' with Alt-Ctrl-Backspace
5: try to kill the system with Alt-Ctrl-Del
6: if all others fail: bring your system down with
- press (and keep depressed) Alt-Ctrl and PrintScreen
- press and release 'S' (Sychronize disks)
- press and release 'U' (Unmount filesystems)
- press and release 'B' (reBoot)

You may never need option 6, but I get it a few times per year, when the browser s flooded with superfluous information. After SUBbing your system reboots as if you had a clean fresh first boot of the day.

A dual core CPU gives two penguins. If the colours are falsed, you have a problem with the selected framebuffer. Change it in /etc/lilo.conf (and rerun lilo). It may take some fiddling to get the right framebuffer. If you boot by the framebuffer device, your startx will also (again) use the same framebuffer setting. It may the cause of your 'X' behaving slightly odd.

Hang in there. As with everything else you learned: the start is the hard part. In a month, you will have gained so much knowledge that you'll be helping out the onther new guys (pentiti..). A week later you will be selecting the compiler for your new programming language.

A request from my kind. Can you please put your experiences online on a webpage? Like I did in fruttenboel. It's fine for you (a reminder that is always available) and for other newbies. There are only few people who write webpages like I do: I come with a problem and work myself through the solutions. I also publish the parts that went wrong. Especially THIS is very instructive to people. OK?