As this is my first post it would be rude no to say Hello first,
so Hello All.

I am a self admitted newbie, but I'm a reasonably quick learner.

I'm trying to go for the smallest Slackware 8.1 installation I can with a view to running a webserver on my "soon to be installed" static IP ADSL.

My many questions start with what packages to install.

I'm don't need Xwindows as the machines gonna be tucked away in my roof (with me accesing it by SSH on my LAN).
Also I dont want to waste Hard disk space on anything I absoloutly don't need.

I want to compile Apache, Mysql, PHP and OpenSSH from source (so I actually learn how to).

So I ask everyones advice, what is the most basic confinguration I can go for?

Cheers in Adavnce

You need basic packages like kernel, libc etc, bash or another shell plus gcc (to compile programs) and maybe mc (to make you life easier). Should not take more than 100MB.

How big is your hard drive? What I would do is install via the Expert Mode, and deselect packages that dont want, like the X, KDE, GNOME stuff. I would not leave anything else out. Another option would be to browse thru all the install text files in the CD and make a list of unneccessary pkgs. I'm beginning to think if BigSlack could be a good choice, too.

Cheers for the advice guys.

What I've done is installed the pre-selected items in packages A D & N on a Connectix Virtual PC on my windoze box.

I'm gonna play around on this for a little while till I'm satisfied (it has an undo button ) and then go for a proper install on my real box.

I hope this suggestion won't be considered heresy in this forum, but you may want to look at Linux From Scratch (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org).

It's come quite a long ways towards being newbie-friendly and since you actually compile the entire OS (don't be too put off, it only takes about 3-4 hrs), you can choose exactly which services are installed.

The instructions in the 'book' have explanations of the dependencies of each program, so you can decide what is and isn't necessary; and explicit instructions which you can simply cut-and-paste to compile each section.

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere

cheers cerbere, i was thinking of trying that route as well but i wanted to get something up and running first and then try LFS.

I have moved from the connectix phase to the real box phase and so far so good jus gotta install Apache, Mysql, PHP and see if it works.