I am replacing 14.0, with 14.2 on my laptop in a day or two.

I am wondering if there are some tips that might help.

Things Like:

If I want a new printer, what is a good brand to buy,
and maybe, if I should have it on and running when I
install, that perhaps the installation will find it
and save me doing it separately.

Is there something I can do that makes my wifi internet work
without a bunch of configuring after the installation?

Any thoughts on how I should set up my wifi, wicd, networkmanager,
wapa supplicant?

I uninstalled all my packages on 14.0, should I delete
other things also? I could just do a mass delete, I suppose.
Any advantage in doing or not doing that?

Right now, my linux install is really barebones, cannot see
my extra keyboard or mouse for example.

I looked at my lilo.config and made some notes on where
windows and linux are now mounted, so when I set up lilo
I have the right targets to give it.

I suppose 14.2 lets me use lilo, right? I don't want
some nasty surprise like grub. Grub would not work
on one of my computers, but that computer is probably
gone now.

If I wanted to install it on a flash drive, how big should
it be? Also is it going to give some sort of booting
problem from the flash drive?

Any other thoughts you might have will be appreciated.

Printer? check the HCL.

If you deleted your 14.0 packages you're ready for fresh install, let it fly and ask questions then for what you don't get, like a lot of others do, you might answer your own questions first and have less to ask about later.

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Printers:
Always check http://www.openprinting.org/printers/ against the model/brand.

Wifi:
I prefer wicd. networkmanager doesn't respect my hardware switch. It can be "OFF" during boot-up, but the card is somehow still active under networkmanager. wicd does not behave badly in my experience. It's found in /extra on the install disk, though there has been talk of removing it.

The forums have ample threads on installing to USB sticks.

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As others have said, just make sure you check the printer before you buy it. All brands have some printers that won't work. Personally, I've always been an HP person and I've had all my HP printers work under Linux (all 3 of them... I don't have a vast experience with a ton of their printers).

By default, Slackware comes with Network Manager pre-installed. During the setup process, you can select Network Manager to be your default, well, network manager. There's a lot of vastly different opinions on how to connect your computer to the internet. Personally, I would use Network Manager for simplicity's sake unless you run into problems. One common problem with Network Manager is it can be problematic with dhcp clients. Pat found that dhcpcd worked for more people, so he made that default, but if you experience frequent disconnects, it may be worth switching it to dhclient. If you find Network Manager unsuitable, wicd can be installed from the extra/ folder on your installation media.

You can't go wrong with doing a clean install. Many times, I may move all the hidden files and folders in my home folder (where most of your personalized settings for programs are stored) to start fresh there too. I'll keep them all in a separate folder so I can restore certain things if needed (like my akregator feed).

Hopefully 14.2 will support these out of the box, but if not, we can try and help you get them working.

Yes, by default, Slackware 14.2 still uses lilo for BIOS and elilo for UEFI, however, grub2 is preinstalled for those who prefer it (but there is no choice to pick your bootloader during setup... it will only prompt you for lilo or elilo, depending on your bootloader.

As for Linux and Windows, the Slackware installer should automatically set up your Slackware partition for lilo as well as any detected Windows partitions. I am not sure if it will handle multiple Linux installs automatically as I've never dual booted between multiple Linux installs.

Depends on what your intentions are. A full Slackware install comes in over 8GB, so if you want everything, I'd recommend at least a 16GB drive. However, with careful consideration, you can have a minimal Slackware install in under 1GB, so it all depends on what you want to do with the install.

Overall, I'd highly recommend using Eric's (Alien Bob) Slackware Live for usb drives. If you use his iso2usb.sh script, it will create a full blown install that allows you to install packages, add users, store files... and it will all persist through reboots. You can also use dd to copy an ISO over, but it will be read-only and after a reboot, any changes will be lost.

https://docs.slackware.com/slackware:liveslak

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I used wicd on a previous machine and it worked fine, but I
had trouble getting it to work on this 14.0 install. I
tried networkmanager as a result of recommendation. It worked
fine for a few months, providing I used a browser that showed
the icon to activate it, which most browsers did not. But
after a few months it stopped working, and I never did figure
out why it quit. Windows was still able to get on the internet
with this machine.

A few thoughts to add:

HP has the best Linux printer support hands down.

I prefer wicd for my wireless network manager. Among other reasons, it has a ncurses interface (wicd-curses) that you can run in a terminal without starting the GUI. I've also found it quite stable, though network manager has improved since the last time I used it regularly.

The Slackware installation CD/DVD/ISO includes a readme file on how to upgrade versions. It's not a terribly simple process; you may be better off backing up crucial data and installing new from scratch.

Indeed, I started running --Current so as not to have to upgrade an install (the one time I tried to do the upgrade, I ended up putting Debian on that computer). I have encountered occasional issues with --Current, as is to be expected with a testing version, but, on the whole, I have no regrets. Only two of the issues have been significant enough to qualify as actual annoyances and both were remedied in a reasonable time, and that's over a period of about five years.

Also, if you are not already doing so, create a separate /home partition. If, in the future, you wish to upgrade versions, it makes life easier, as you can do so without touching your /home.

Just my two cents.

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I was thinking I might install from the distribution DVD straight
to a USB thumb drive. After that I could boot it by just changing
my bios boot order, I suppose. Or if I want dual boot, then
I am guessing I would use elilo. Is that right? Does the install
program have the intelligence to offer you the right boot program
for where you installed?

What you made to suppose that the Slackware distribution DVD could be installed straight to a USB thumb drive?

Also, from where you obtained the information that the Slackware distribution DVD could be installed straight to a USB thumb drive?

Hi,

Why not try Slackware64 Live on that hardware;Be sure to checkout the documentation linked above.
Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

As above, to install on usb drive, this would be the way to proceed.

I use network manager. No complaints on a standard 14.2 install on a wireless home network. Easy.

I'd start from scratch with clean install. And note the advice on a separate /home partition. I use gparted from a (any) live usb to sort out the partitions before putting in the slackware install media.

I've found that lilo doesn't pick up other linux installs on my laptop. I'm certain it would if I persevered, but I'd need to tinker with it. Don't think that'll be a problem for you as I don't think you'll have other linux installs by the sound of it.

All the best.

Lilo will only work for BIOS based computers and elilo will only work for UEFI based computers (although, most UEFI computers have an option to for a BIOS emulation mode for backwards compatibility). For better support of multiple types of bootloaders, it would be beneficial to just use Slackware Live, as that uses syslinux, which works with both UEFI and BIOS. It is also much easier to set up than doing a regular install to a USB drive.

The installer will typically detect whether your computer is using UEFI and will then prompt you to install elilo instead of lilo. There is no detection after installation, so you couldn't easily take a harddrive installed on a UEFI based computer and put it in a BIOS based computer. It's not impossible, but it certainly isn't just plug and play.

This is why it's much easier to just use Eric's Slackware Live, as that takes all the guess work and difficulty away.

Umm... Slackware's been able to be installed onto USB drives (both thumbdrives and harddrives) for quite a while, however, it tends to be more difficult as you have to set up your system to use persistent naming (UUID, labels, etc).

In fact, a quick google search found [url=http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-installation-40/slackware-13-37-installation-on-an-external-usb-hard-disk-nano-how-to-919708/]a guide[/quote] that Didier wrote for installing Slackware 13.37 to a portable harddrive back in 2011.

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On this thread:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ve-4175593118/

5th post into the thread by arfon:
================================
That above install on the thumb drive is a great example
of a perfectly understandable instruction.

On the other hand, I understand absolutely nothing when
I read the page recommended here:
https://docs.slackware.com/slackware:liveslak

Hi,
What part of the doc do you not understand at; https://docs.slackware.com/slackware:liveslak

You just need this section.

Just download his iso2usb.sh script, grab the slackware64-live-14.2.iso, then run the following command to install it to the thumbdrive (replacing /dev/sdb with your thumbdrive... ensure it is right, because this script will erase anything on there).

If you do this on 14.0 or 14.2, you may need to install squashfs-tools as I don't remember if it requires it for creating the USB drive.

Look, while in theory is possible to install a standard Linux Operation System on USB Thumbdrive, I will explain you why that is freaking wrong.

First, a bit of theory. You believe that an USB Thumbdrive and an (USB) SSD are the same? Nothing more wrong, even both use flash chips to store information!

An USB Thumbdrive contains basically two chips: one being a USB controller and an interface to a flash chip, the second one. Let's suppose that they are high quality. Still, this system rely on a specific filesystem, usually FAT32 or EXFAT, and the (USB) controller to implement a basic protection against wearing.

What is wearing? The flash chips cannot be written endless, after some number of cycles go on errors, and usually die or go readonly.

Now the big problem: even you write to this thumbdrive a 100 bytes file, it will work over write pages, which usually have 1MB on those cheap thumbs. Also, the USB controller do no caching, on sake of simplicity and low price, so if you write 100 small files to thumb, which are on total of 100KB, in fact, is very possible a specific flash page to be read on memory and written for 100 times.

It is much? Maybe not, if your thumbdrive the data is written once, read often, as it is supposed to be. Additionally, the FAT32 with the cluster size of 1MB, aligned with the flash page, would help to distribute the operation of writing of data to different sectors, even you will be surprised that you cannot write same quantity of information, like on a harddrive.

BUT, if you format the thumbdrive on a Linux filesystem, able to support the OS, is very safe to assume that you fuck the data alignment, so you will slow down the thumb, and much more data will be written, going to double. That's WHY is better to preserve the original format of the thumbdrive, for the sake of durability.

In other hand, the formatting to a Linux filesystem, specially a journaled one, will wear the thumb freaking fast, because the huge amount of data written to partition metadata or journal, every time even you read a file from.

Long story short, a Linux filesystem, specially a journaled one, is a BIG NO-NO, unless you accept you thumbdrive to wear hundred times faster.

Additionally, installing the operating system on that filesystem, will make your thumbdrive to wear even magnitude faster.

So, what do a Linux LIVE, compared with the traditional ones, to be able to live relatively safe on those thumbdrives?

An educated Linux LIVE minimize at maximum the writing to thumbdrive, using multiple methods:

- It use FAT32/EXFAT as host filesystem, and a educated Linux LIVE should do NOT reformat it, but to speculate the already existent one.
- Its own filesystem is enclosed on read-only file(s), who are only read, and using a special technology, called UNION, it try to simulate the read/write state.
- To preserve its changes, it save the data on memory, but on shutdown, a special procedure is run, to save those differences to a file, eventually with encryption, on its host thumbdrive, which is loaded on next boot.

That's WHY you should use a Linux LIVE on a thumbdrive and NOT a standard Linux operating system.

Also, as plus advantage, an Linux LIVE have special methods to try to auto-configure and it is more prone to be able to run on different computers.

Finally, but very important: a thumbdrive is fucking slow, and a Linux LIVE will be able to offer a much better experience than the standard ones, because usually its files are written compressed on the filesystem, special caching is done be the usual suspect called SQUASHFS, and then much faster to load them.

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