Installed Linux (Slackware v. 4.0) Kernal 2.2.6 but need help with modem
 

Hello All,

I have recently installed Linux Slackware v. 4.0 on my laptop computer. My laptop computer is an IBM 600X Thinkpad laptop.

I installed Slackware v. 4.0 and everything went well. I can sign in and navigate folders. Other than this, I am lost. I am completely new to Linux and am unsure on how to identify hardware specifications.

I am looking for assistance to do two things:

1. How do I connect to the internet? [Note: I have a phone jack port on the side of my laptop computer.]

2. How do I obtain and install the package files for the X Window environment?

Thank you for the time and attention to these questions,

Brian Gallagher

Good god. When I started using Linux in high school, I think it was already past kernel 2.2.6. The way to do anything you've asked about is to install a modern operating system! Check out slack 12.2.

Jameson Williams,

Are you sure about that? I thought that the whole point of Linux was a flexible OS which could meet the needs of all users. Can't I use something like pppsetup or "whatnot" to get to the internet?

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks,

Brian

You'll solve a lot of problems by installing a modern distro.
You can install slackware 12.2 from www.slackware.com

Hi Brian

Always good to see someone getting into slackware, but I have to say that many of the folk on this forum won't be able to help you much with such an old version because either they didn't use slackware back in those days or they're not able to remember that far back!

Installing 12.2 would be much easier.

Hi achillspirit,

The other posters above are entirely correct in suggesting you try a more modern release of Slackware (or of any distro) because the hardware support and drivers available will be much greater.

One are however where a more modern kernel/OS *might* or *might not* help is with your build-in dialup modem. It is notoriously tricky getting what are usually Windows-compatible-only (Winmodems) modems to work under Linux. I'm not saying it can't be done, because it sure can, *most* of the time, but not all of the time.

If you insist on trying to use Slackware 4.0, please advise us, and those of us who can (not necessarily me, as I don't know if I was even born when Slack 4 came out :D) will try to help.

Again though, anything you want to do will probably be easier and more likely to work properly, with a more modern distro.

Sasha

It's hit or miss for sure, but the modems in a lot of older laptops will work with Linux; can't hurt to try. Agreed, though, a somewhat more recent version of Slackware(maybe 11? I had good results on a few laptops with that one) would be a good idea.

Slack 4 X
 

I can faintly remember Slack 3.something.

The Disks or CDROM that you installed from should have XFree86 included. As I recall X was setup using the same menu system as the the initial installation.

And as far as modems go, I used an external modem which was accessed by making an entry in /etc/inittab. Kind of set it us as a terminal using that method.

You have really jumped onto the way-back machine. Good luck

Agreed -- and on the very subject of that modem, if the OP could tell us what kind of modem it is, we can point you in the right direction.

The command 'lspci' given in a console as root should give us some info to get started.

Sasha

I just looked it up: Slack 4 was the first Slackware above a 2.0.* kernel, and was released on 05/17/1999. My first distribution was Mandrake 7.1, released a year later in May, 2000, so the OP's distro officially predates my use of Linux!

Is anyone curious where the OP got version 4.0?????

Any chance this is a joke?

You can get old Slacks from quite a few places. I had 3.5 running in Qemu last year, or earlier this year. So, no, it's no joke.
Here:
http://slackware.cs.utah.edu/pub/slackware/
and here:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/historic-...ons/slackware/

Slackware 4.0 has a live version too!

PS. I've always been wondering what the slackbook meant when it said the 2nd disc is a live disc, but haven't investigated it further.

The laptop is a pentium III 500mhz, so I would probably run Slackware 10 or 11 on it. There is also the option of getting a modern lightweight live cd so that you can test all of the hardware, with up to date drivers.

samac

I have Slackware 4.0 running on a laptop - a 486 processor with 20MB of RAM and a 300MB hard disk. And no, I am not joking.
It is not a computer I use every day, but I fire it up once in a while and access it via SSH.
It is connected to the internet through a 3Com PCMCIA card (10Mb TP to my LAN).

@GrapefruiTgirl: You were born already when Slack4 came out... Unless you are less than 10 now :D

If this *is* a serious request, I can try to offer some help, but I do not have the Slackware 4.0 installation with me right now, so I'll only be able to check things at night (Rio time)