I have now installed Slack 10 on my pc dual booting with win XP. First attempt at linux and all went well first time It boots in a way that I'm quite happy with, with no floppy in the drive it goes straight to windows, with the floppy in the driver I can select Linux. I'm happy with that

A few problems though;
1. When I boot linux I have to type nohotplug for it to boot, otherwise it hangs at the part where it gets to the hotplug. What is hotplug and how can I stop it hanging? Does it matter if I don't use it?

2. I've got the hang of moving around the file system but how do I open files to edit them, EG xorg.conf? Just the command will do.

3. I *think* I've installed my radeon driver. There was a thing on the ati website and I needed to know what my xfree86 version (or something) was. I read here that slack doesn't have xfree86 it has xorg instead so I just downloaded the driver that uses the highest xfree86 version because there wasn't anything said about xorg on ati's website. Now that I have installed the driver, how do I get into gnome or kde?

4. What files do I need to edit to set everything up?

Thanks

2. To edit files you can use several editors.
For the beginning I´d recommend you using mcedit, which is the very easy to use editor of midnight commander.
To edit your xorg.conf type: mcedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Make sure you apply the right settings for your monitor/mouse/keyboard......
Later when you are more experienced, you can start fighting with the mighty vi ( vim ) or emacs
Pico and Joe are also good and easy to use editors.

3. I can´t help you with ATI because I never had any. To start X, type startx.
This will start your default window manager or your default desktop environment. ( or it will give you a nice black screen or some funny errors if you have missconfigured your xorg.conf )

4. this depends on what you want to do ( networking, sound, server...... )

I get command not found when I try mcedit, pico etc and when I type startx I get command not found. (Logged on as root)

try /usr/X11R6/bin/startx to startx as root and try vim to open file, you will have to learn a little how vim works though or you can use joe, maybe it is more easy for you (ctrl +k +h for help)

@mouldy_punk
make sure mc and pico are installed ( pkgtool will give you an overview of all installed packages, and it lets you install/remove packages )

For starting X, normaly it should be startx to start your default wm. If this does not work, try /usr/X11R6/bin/startx

Actually if you get command not found for startx it does not sound like you installed the x packages. I take it you did not install all of the packages. What did you install or not install? It is hard to even tell you why hotplug is hanging without knowing this. Hotplug is a program to automagically load the modules you need to use your hardware. Sometimes it tries to load one that is wrong and that module has to be added to the blacklist. The other alternative is to turn off hotplug and load your own modules by editing your rc.modules.

Ok. I did a full install last time, with ALL the packages, even the KDE international (which is pointless but I have the disk space so who cares) but loads of errors came up saying that it couldn't install such and such a file because its corrupt. It said that for everything in the AP part, some of the N part and some other parts. I just tried reinstalling just then, same thing.

I'm downloading the ISO again and I will burn it again, at a slower speed, and attempt to install. Disc 2 came up with no errors though so I'm only downloading Disc 1.

It probably wasn't the speed of the burning (although if you have a crappy burner it might be it). Normally when that sort of stuff happens it means the files you downloaded got corrupted or just didnt download properly. After the redownload and reburn it should work.

As for hotplug hanging... Out of curiousity what is your setup like. I'm on an older processor and hotplug takes a little while to load on my pc. Probably not the problem but just a suggestion to let it run for maybe 30 minutes to at most an hour. If that doesnt sort it out theres something funky goin on. Although the fresh install should make it work smooth now thinking of it......

Anyways don't mind me I just felt like a ramble...

My CD writer is actually a new DVD writer, it had good reviews but I'm going to burn it at a slower speed, just incase it makes a difference.

My specs;
Athlon XP 2000+
256mb memory
1 120GB 7200 Hard drive
1 20GB 5400 Hard drive
128mb Radeon 9600
I think that's all that would make the slightest difference.

I left it to do the hotplug thing for like an hour or something while I had dinner and watched a bit of TV, but I came back and it was where I left it. Could be because not everything was installed.