Well, i'm totally new to linux and am craving the unparalled reliability and speed that users tout that linux provides. I am, however, encountering some difficulty with my slackware 11 install, and the 30,000 posts in the slackware distro forum tells me one of two things: either it's the most popular or the most troublesome.

What happens is that the computer is semi-consistantly hanging when one is running kde and applications within it. it seems to work best when i have the harddrive formated ex3 with 1 inode per 1028 and running one of the many provided versions of kernel 2.4.33.3. The computer runs worst (hangs after 5 min-30 sec) with ex2 1 inode per 4000 or whatever bytes and running kernel 2.6.18.x it seems that no matter how I set it up, i can't seem to get it to run quite right, and this is not even touching the issues i'm having configuring samba and other network resources, not to mention the confusing, descriptionless array of kernels avaliable w/ the slack 11 cds.

the cd set is from the .isos from slackware.com, computer is older 600 mhz off-brand pc w/ I think some intel innards, but I know the processer is definitly not a pentium. has about 128 mb of ram, older 4x cd drive and a 40 gig harddrive.

it is possible that it might be a harddrive problem, as i've suspected the harddrive in question of causing problems before, but never anything with concrete evidence. hdd is ide; ps2 mouse and keyboard; on-board everything.

I would really appreciate some insight into this; particularly whether there are more help resources for slackware to begin with, but also whether my course of action will be harddrive related, kernel related, or even if I should go with another distro that is easier to use.

thanks

There are plenty of resources ... the slackbook in my sig for one. The kernels are all described very descriptionfully either at 'bootdisks/README.TXT' on you Slackware install CD/DVD or here:

http://www.slackware.com/install/bootdisk.php

Also, how exactly does it crash ? Can you press 'Ctrl-Alt-F2' and get to another console ?

I don't see any reason to suspect HDD failure just yet. You can try some utils to possible diagnose it:

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/hdutils.html

Can you post some logs, check '/var/log/syslog'.

Hehe, Slackware is neither the one nor the other. Other distros are more popular, Slackware sticks since years at about place 8 or 9 on distrowatch.com - and it's very stable and easy to configure you once have understood it.

From your computer specs my guess would have been that KDE will have problems to run. It's an old, rather slow computer with not too much RAM and KDE is really really big. If I was you I would try fluxbox for example or xfce. As normal user type "xwmconfig" and choose one of them, then restart your X server. See, if it resolves your problem.

I don't think that another distro is over all easier. They might seem easier at the beginning, but all have their good sides and pitfalls. With your old hardware you should stick with Slackware I think because this forum here on linuxquestions.org is superb!

Definitely the combination of low RAM and high demands of KDE. XFCE ought to run ok and Fluxbox would run good. I wouldn't bother trying Gnome as it's almost as demanding as KDE.

Slackware is one of the oldest survivng distros, but is not the most popular. Other distros attract new users by offering lots of automation and graphic tools to make it easier for those who don't know or are afraid of the commandline.

And it's not troublesome, but without the automation that the other distros provide Slackware can be intimidating because some hardware might not work out-of-the-box in which case you would have to track down the driver. It also doesn't come with a lot of software packages so if you need something that's not provided on the cds you'll have to track it down.

In summary, Slackware is more work than the "popular" distros but it's more rewarding in the end because you learn more and you get a lean, fast, stable operating system.

The suggestion about the ram definitly makes sense. it hangs in the sense that absolutly nothing works, I can't even change "numlock" on the keyboard, for example, no mouse or anything. I haven't tried Ctrl-Alt-F2, however i doubt the machine would be able to register the keystrokes. I'll go ahead and try fluxbox for now and see if that resolves the hanging issues. I'm glad to hear the reviews about slackware, too. I just wanted to make sure because the way the install cds are set up is kind of hodge-podge, or perhaps I just haven't figured out how everything works yet, and thats why it's confusing... thanks very much for the help, thought one question: if I install more ram for now, do you think that would allow kde to run correctly, or would the processor speed hamper things as well?

Did you set a swap partition?

If you have to ask this question, have a guess what the answer is going to be...

yah, a 2 gig swap partition, just to make sure, but it will hang without having to load anything into it

On 1 out of 3 systems here, my PCIe video cards will irrecoverably hang slackware without the proper drivers. might wanna check on issues there.

My :
- add more RAM (128 > 256 MB);
- use reiserfs and 2.6.17.13 kernel (if you use ext3 file system, leave the default inode size - 4096);
- after you boot the new installed system, stop any unnecessary servers, before you start X server;
- stop hotplug daemon;
- don't use KDE (or change it in a minimalistic way - no visual effects, no folder background, KDE Classic icons, .NET style, etc);
- don't use kdm if you don't really need;
- after you start KDE, type a top command and watch the top processes;
- edit /etc/rc.d/rc.modules-2.6.17.13 to fit your hardware (probably no agp and others);
- check your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.