You just need a large supply of coffee/beer/cocoa. Take your time; you can't learn everything in one day. You might find yourself frustrated for a few days every week or so until you've learned enough.
First of all, ndiswrapper is so commonly used that most distros will have it on their installer disc, so read up on how to use Slack's package manager and use the package manager to locate and install ndiswrapper. Once that's done, then follow the instructions on how to load up the winduhs driver via ndiswrapper.
Of course at some stage you'll need that winduhs driver - and you may use a usb stick or a CD. This stuff is easier to do from the command line, so switch to a virtual console and log in as 'root':
[ctl][alt][F1] - switch out of X and to VC1
log in as root
Find out what devices are already 'mounted':
mount
In Linux, everything is attached to a directory ('mount point'); where you mount things is arbitrary to some degree. If you see something like this:
/dev/sdb1 on /media/usb type ext3 (rw,noatime)
that means 'sdb1' (first partition on 'sdb' - in my case this usually means a USB storage device) is mounted on the directory /media/usb. Such a directory may not exist on your system of course - as I said, it's somewhat arbitrary. Many LiveCDs tend to mount things in subdirectories in /mnt - for example, if a device 'sdb1' exists they create the directory 'sdb1' in '/mnt' and mount sdb1 to that, so 'mount' would show an entry like this:
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1 type vfat (rw)
Anyway - check what 'mount' says - is your device already mounted somewhere or not?
If it is mounted, you can change to that directory:
cd /mnt/sdb1 (just an example)
Work your way to the directory which has the driver (well, actually the *.INF file) and you can finish the driver installation from there.
Now if your device is not already mounted, you have to identify it first and then attempt to mount it. To identify it, 'dmesg' helps:
dmesg (prints system messages to screen; this may scroll wildly)
Near the bottom you should see some messages relating to the USB device that you just plugged in - usually you will see a name like 'sdb' assigned to it (or sda, sdc - whatever). Then inspecting what partitions are on the device:
ls -l /dev/sdb* (list all files/directories that begin with 'sdb' which are in '/dev')
You may see entries like: sdb sdb1 sdb2
Usually a USB stick will only have 'sdb sdb1' and it is 'sdb1' you want to mount. To mount it, make sure you have an appropriate mount point ready, then (just an example):
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt (attach sdb partition 1 to /mnt)
And there you go - your usb stick is mounted.
Now for CDs there is usually a 'friendly' device name (cdrom) and you just do:
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt
*NOTE* If you mount a USB stick, make sure you 'umount' it before pulling it out:
umount /mnt (assuming you attached it to /mnt)
When you've finished playing in the virtual console, log out (type: exit) then press [alt][F7] to return to the GUI (which is on virtual console 7).
