Yes, further to the previous post if you've got partitions you can install over one of them, you don't need to partition your drive.
If you want to look at your partitions just type this after you've booted from the 1st slack install CD and logged in as root

fdisk /dev/hda (type enter)

then type p

That will give a display of all existing partitions.

btw, http://www.slackbook.org/ is an excellent resource

Get Slapt-get from here:

http://www.linuxpackages.net/download.php?id=7419

then open terminal

su
password

installpkg slapt [hit tab twice or so]

slapt-get --update
slapt-get --upgrade

slapt-get --install [package = foo]
slapt-get --remove foo

slapt-get --clean

more stuff on man pages

man slapt-get

add more repos

/etc/slapt-get/slapt[hit tab twice or so]

SOURCES=


Can anyone recommend some good repos?

I was pleasantly surprised about the Slackware installation, and how the setup program deals with partitions. It shows you the existing partitions, and asks you which ones you want to use, and where you want them to be mounted in the filesystem.

These may not be unique to Slackware, but here are some areas where I ran into problems with installing or configuring Slackware.

• ATA RAID controllers might not be supported (Promise FastTrack, etc.)
• SATA controllers might not be supported, or a bit confusing
• Sound card drivers are a bit daunting
• Mouse button or mouse wheel configuration
• Configuring X-Windows for the video card
• The GART support for AGP cards
• KDE Help file search index (still can't get this to work)
• KDE "linux" font installation for KONSOLE
• KDE KICKER crashes on logout depending on panel menu configuration

I agree with the comment about knowing your hardware configuration. If you have a SATA or RAID disk controller, make sure you know exactly which one, and check if Slackware has a standard driver. Some SATA or RAID controllers can be supported by drivers from the manufacturer's web site (Promise FastTrack RAID).

The drivers for SATA controllers were a bit confusing to me, because there are two different drivers that will work "piix" and "ata_piix". The "ata_piix" driver is preferable. If you have a chipset or controller that supports both SATA and PATA drives, it wasn't clear how that is supported, or if it is supported.

The ALSA web site is a good resource for setting up your sound card. Different sound cards each have their own set of peculiarities and requirements.

A mouse with a wheel, and extra buttons may require some rearranging of button code numbering in the configuration. Otherwise the wheel or the extra buttons may not work.

Make sure you know exactly which graphics adapter you have, and also the type of graphics chipset on the adapter. You may have to use either one of those to select a graphics adapter for X-Windows. Also, the cards and chipsets are not strictly in alphabetical order. The nVidia GeForce is hard to find in the list, but it is there.

On some of the newer Intel chipsets, you may have to force the GART driver to load, since it doesn't recognize the hardware.

Trying to generate the KDE application manuals search index results in the error, "htdig failed". So far as I know that is a bug.

I had problems with the linux font in KONSOLE. I had to install some of the kDE fonts manually. That corrected the problem.

The KDE KICKER program has bugs that cause it to crash on logout. Some people reported system crashes, but I've only seen KICKER abort without causing other failures. Disabling the "System" menu in the extra menus makes the problem less frequent.

Hi! If you are wondering about using slackware I will tell you a couple of things..

I consider myself a linux newbie, started using win95,98,me,2000,xp.. as you see I've used all windows versions there is, and gone deep into how it works. But all of the time I didn't seem to come deep enough of what I would like to do! Then I tried linux from a friens adwise. Started with mandrake 8.0. At the beginning everything saw very hard and difficult.. Reinstalled windows over and over again.. The main thing for me was the lack of games and multimedia programs for linux that made me go back to windows! Then when the intrest of using servers, linux got back strong. Then I used a linuxserver sharing files to winclients using samba. This works great, viruses and that sort of stuff is nothing to worry about! I'm very pleased with that.. After trying many distros for desktop use I downloaded the 4cd-set of slackware 10.2. Looks great with kde 3.4, though it is a text install, unlike fedora and mandrake, it installs fast and all works.. Partitioning my harddrive was done quickly and easily! Took only a couple of minutes before it was up and running.. Sometimes its all about the command-line, but this is learned very fast.. I am used to the "click&pray" method coming from windows, but command-line isn't that hard, you can read your way through it!

AMD ATHLON 64 3200+ 2.2 GHz
1024 MB RAM
CDROM&DVDROM
200GB DISC
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT 256MB
Windows XP PRO
Client

AMD ATHLON 2100 1.7 GHz
512 MB RAM
CDROM
80GB
NVIDIA GeForce 5700
SLACKWARE 10.2
Client

Compaq Armada M700
P3 750 MHz
128 MB RAM
DVDROM
15GB DISC
Ati Mobile Graphic (8MB)
SLACKWARE 10.2
Client

AMD DURON 1300 1.3 GHz
256 MB RAM
CDROM
15GB+160GB+160GB DISCS
Linux MANDRIVA 2006.rc2
DHCP SERVER, SAMBA, SQUID, Router/Firewall
Server


This setup works great for me, wanting to learn more of linux, uses it on two clients!

I got my Slackware CDs yesterday evening.
Installation was not difficult at all. I installed it over my xandros installation. Everything went on smoothly.
I had some problem getting my wheel mouse to work. It works now but the scroll-wheel is not working.
Thanks to anonymo, I have installed slapt-get successfully. I am now into slapt-get --update. My only growse is I am running kernel 2.6.12 on my Debian install but it is still 2.4 in Slack.
There is one more issue that has to be sorted out. There seems to be some problem with display because the display is shaking. Even in text mode, the display is shaking.
Thanks to all of you to have helped me out in installing Slackware on my system. You people have been very cooperative, friendly and knowledgeable.

adityavpratap, welcome to Slackware!

<I had some problem getting my wheel mouse to work. It works now but the scroll-wheel is not working.>

In /etc/X11, edit xorg.conf, Input Device Section by adding
the lines

Option "ButtonNumber" "5"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"

If you don't need 2.6.x oder udev features I would leave it this way. Else you can get a 2.6.x kernel (plus appropriate alsa packages etc.) from the testing directory -- you find it at every Slackware mirror or on the 3rd cd of the box set. There are instructions to get it running in this directory. Slackware is prepared to run with a 2.6.x but 2.4.x is still preferred due to stability.

And congratulations to installing Slackware

Thanks guys, I finally got the mouse to scroll and upgraded to 2.6.10 available on the second CD.

Congratulations, you're now a Slacker!

Well done! Welcome to Club Slack!