Hi
Basically i am getting a new HDD, and want to dual boot with xp home/slackware. Im downloading CD 1 and CD2 of slackware from the torrents page on the slackware site

I really would be grateful if someone could provice a step by step, but failing that, could you answer these questions --

- So i get my new HDD, plug it in, then what? I want to have 40gig partition for sharing files between xp/linux, so that has to be formatted to fat32, and the rest (~40gb) in what ever linux wants to format it in (but i dunno what that is, how i do it etc)

- Will it be an easy (and slow install like XP). Does it include most drivers for hardware?

- I have the following specs, can you see any thing that might go wrong:
WD Caviar 120gb SATA HDD (This is formatted in ntfs, and has Windows XP Home on it)
Std FDD
Old Hitachi CD Drive
Sony DVD/CD Combo
Asus a7n8x-e Deluxe
Barton 2800+ CPU
Asus 128mb 9600xt
A Hardware Modem
Speedtouch USB AdSL modem
A USB Keyboard (The Zboard)
Microsoft Exploter 4.0A USB/PS2 optical mouse
Hyundai ImageQuest Q770
Lexmark Z515 Printer
+ A 80gb IDE HDD Which i will be formatting for the first time jst before i install linux

- How do i set up dual booting (ie just after post)? Windows will be my main os (i really wanna know)

- How do i get a .zip set of drivers for my speedtouch 330 usb modem to linux, and how do i install them? they are .012 files. i tried stuff in knoppix (just on the cd) but couldnt work it out

Thanks

Also, I have a zboard that in Knoppix, when i hit enter (return) it also does the / sign. How can i get round this??

Thanks

You could just skip the lilo step and make a boot floppy so you will be sure to boot into windows
after slackware install, to boot into slackware, just put the floppy in the drive before boot

Once you know a little more about slackware linux, you could try to install lilo and do a dual boot
config

check shilo's sticky at the top of the forum or his site at
http://shilo.is-a-geek.com/

...and you can find a detailed install-manual here.:

http://www.bitbenderforums.com/vb22/...threadid=60154

egag

Before I got a dedicated box for my Slackware server, I used to dual boot XP and Slack. I found that it was a much nicer experience if you allow the Windows XP bootloader (NTLDR) handle booting both Linux and WinXP. Its pretty easy to do manually, but luckilly there is a util called 'bootpart' which pretty much automates the job for you. All you have to do is install LILO to the Primary Linux Partition and *NOT* the MBR. This is exactly the same step you would have done to do the boot-disk method described in a few posts above. Once Slackware is done installing and you reboot your comptuer you should immediatly go into WinXP, once inside windows go grab 'bootpart' at http://www.winimage.com/bootpa25.zip. It comes with a well writen readme file which explains how to use it with examples and all. Once all is said and done, the next time you reboot your computer, you will see the WinXP Bootmenu come up that will allow you to select between XP and Linux.

The nice thing about this is that Linux is all self-contained, loader and all, it its own partition. So if you decide that Slackware or even Linux is not for you, you need only wipe that partition and its history.

Thanks for the replies. But TBH I dont even know what a lilo is :P. Ill read those guides tmrw ,im half asleep now :P
the floppy idea sounds very very good. is it easy to do?

hi
I have a SATA drive (pratically full, 2 partitions, c:\ with windows, d:\ programs and documents, 120gb), and 1 IDE drive (empty, not formatted).

I am following http://www.bitbenderforums.com/vb22...?threadid=60154 to install it... I am upto the part where it says:

I do NOT want to partition, format or even touch my SATA drive (i will later once slackware is installed though, as i can read ntfs apparently from *nix). Shall i enter something like scsi.s, as i have a sata drive?

thanks

10.1 now has a separate sata.i for SATA drives.

If you use the bare.i kernel, then I think it would be able to boot your (P)ATA drive, but it won't be able to read the SATA drives. Therefore, I'd say choose the sata.i kernel.

The SATA drives may be seen as /dev/hde and above, or /dev/sd* (the latter is more likely if you have to use the scsi.i kernel). (P)ATA will be /dev/hda to /dev/hdd.

After you've selected your kernel, you could type the following commands before running setup:
and see what the outputs are. /dev/sd* are SCSI interface devices, /dev/hd* is IDE. (Don't confuse IDE with SCSI. Although Linux does muddy the water a bit here by using the SCSI interface for accessing some drives, like USB or sometimes SATA)

You should then be able to figure out which drive is which, and then go from there. (so, a drive with two partitions, such as your SATA one, would appear with three entries as /dev/hde, /dev/hde1 (the first partition) and /dev/hde2 (the second)).

Sorry, but i am a complete slackware n00b. Well complete linux noob. Is there an easier distro to install than slackware?

Before installing Slackware, you could try Fedora Core and Suse. These distros are easier to install.

Rather than steer you away from Slackware, I'm going to suggest downloading the iso for SLAX. It's a bootable CD-ROM version of Slackware. It'll let you get used to Linux without too much immediate complexity. Then, you can either go back and install Slackware in a more conventional way, or you can install Slax onto the hard drive.

Hi mrpete,

I would also suggest not to drop your Slackware idea. Rather you could partition your new harddisk so that you can install two different linux distributions. That is what I did in the beginning. Mandrake to have a system that takes some care of you and manages the things I hadn't never heard before, Slackware to feel real noob and discover the things and learn how to manage them by myself
So maybe you can create f. e. one swap partition, two home partitions and two for / -- and then you can triple-boot and check, which distribution you like most after the first steps in Linux.

Cheers,

titopoquito

Woa thats way to complicated. I managed to get slackware installed anyway, but I don't really like it. What is the fastest distro, that lets you do the following -
Use open office
Browse the web using FF
Run a local php and mysql server
Run a program to edit html/php

???

Slackware)
Sure you can do all these, but Slack don't come with OpenOffice and Firefox; if you want them you have to download the packages and install them (that's what I did...)