The 12.1 kernel does not play nicely on my MSI Wind, both the huge.s and hugesmp.s, I have installed slackware under both kernels. I did find someone online that said he was able to boot with 12.0.

The major cause for error were two messages in the boot process.
The boot pauses for awhile, maybe 30 seconds, after giving this message:
"Clocksource tsc unstable (delta = -[numbers] ns)"
It then continues if you didn't shut down the computer and gives you this message:
"Module dependencies up to date (no new kernel modules found)"
And there it hangs indefinitely, it doesn't lock up, I can still type and press enter, but that's it.

To solve the first problem, I have booted with my Slackware usb, and added clocksource=acpi_pm and nohz=off to the kernel, no effect was observed.

There is at least one other person who has tried to install slackware on the MSI Wind:
http://forums.msiwind.net/post30230.html#p30230
I haven't tried installing 12.0, but with 12.1 we have the exact same problem.

So my current plan is to roll back my 12.1 install to the 12.0 kernel, because from what I've seen from other distro's this is a kernel problem.
The installation does give a warning: that if you are not using at least a pentium-pro, use the huge.s kernels instead of the default hugesmp.s kernels. I have installed both, both give the same errors. Is an Intel Atom (1.6 GHz) better or worse than an Intel Pentium=pro? The MSI Wind's atom is the diamondville processor, unlike the Atom silverthorne, it does support hyper-threading. Is the smp kernel for hyperthreading or just multi-core processors?

Here are the packages from 12.0
http://packages.slackware.it/search....0&t=1&q=kernel

SMP packages:
- from /a
kernel-modules-smp-2.6.21.5_smp-i686-2
kernel-huge-smp-2.6.21.5_smp-i686-2
kernel-generic-smp-2.6.21.5_smp-i686-2
- from /d
kernel-headers-2.6.21.5_smp-i386-2

Non-SMP packages
-from /a
kernel-modules-2.6.21.5-i486-2
kernel-huge-2.6.21.5-i486-2
kernel-generic-2.6.21.5-i486-2
-from /extra
kernel-headers-2.6.21.5-i386-2

So do I need the hugesmp.s or huge.s kernel?
What are the differences between the huge and generic kernels?
Can I safely, realistically remove the 12.1 kernel packages and install the 12.0 kernel packages on a 12.1 system, and not expect any problems?

Thank you for your help with this, everyone!

I don't think it's a good idea to just downgrade the kernel packages, a better thing to do is compile your own, but either an earlier or later kernel version. You can use the same '.config' file and possibly a few small changes.

Here's a good guide on kernel compiling:
http://wiki.alienbase.nl/doku.php?id...kernelbuilding

The huge kernels include almost everything built in so you can boot off of any filesystem and detect any hardware, good install kernel. The generic kernels include almost everything built as modules and thus require initrd with at least the filesystem modules to boot off your filesystem, good for everyday use, much faster to boot.

But that's the problem, I can't compile my own kernel to fix this problem when I have no idea what problem I need to fix. I tried the 12.0 generic + initrd, and managed to boot. I did reach one irregularity: PartedMagic's live USB reads my root partition as /dev/hda4, while slackware seems to see it has sda4.

Don't worry about hda vs. sda they've changed it many times during kernel releases, I think it's finally stuck with sda for SATA drives and hda for IDE drives.

I am having this exact same issue, trying to install Slack 12.1 on my new Intel Atom + Intel D945GCLF, so I doubt if this is a MSI problem. I am a little less versed in Linux though to really know what to do.

My full specs:
Intel Atom
Intel D945GCLF
2GB Kingston DDR2
Western Digital Raptor 150 GB
USB keyboard

There was a similar discussion a couple of weeks ago. I didn't read it, but it might be worth reviewing.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi....php?p=3248795

Also just to add: The installation works. LILO is auto-installed and works properly (as well as booting into Windows). I also just attempted to install CentOS 5.2 and could not even get into the graphical installer.

I can confirm that Slack 12.0 works fine.