I am by no means simple person but I don't understand this 'definition'. Actually this 'definition' does not meet requirements of what is 'definition'. Basically 'definition' should refer to notions already being well-defined. Otherwise it is logical error. And this 'definition' is good example of such senseless statement. But it looks cool, sounds cool. So let be it. And is sooo complex - for sure it gave great pleasure its creator to state.

The only requirement of a definition is for the subject to be defined, there are no qualifications as to the extent or the simplicity. If a reader does not understand a defintion, this can either be because the subject is not in their sphere of knowledge, lack of linguistic cognition or poor wording on the part of the author.

Let me give you some examples. For instance, here are the current Wikipedia definitions of a lepton and a radical:

Without further research, I have no idea what these mean. But this is not because they are bad definitions necessarily, but because they are not in my area of knowledge.

Now, let's look at the definition of C:

This may make a little more sense to you, it does to me, because this is closer to my area of knowledge. However, there are some parts I don't understand. To the uninitiated though, it may look like complete gobbledygook. I'll try something a little close to home for me, see what you make of it. This is the definition of Çârgâh makam:

Now, I completely understand this, but I imagine a lot of people on this forum wouldn't. It isn't a bad definition because it's accurate and it covers everything nicely, but it may make no sense to you because it's not your area.

The point is that sometimes the notion of "explaining everything to an individual like they're a five year old" doesn't carry much effectiveness, since in order to do so one has to omit so much detail that the essence of the subject is lost. There are certain technical terms that must be employed for the subject to be covered accurately. For instance, there is a Youtube video where a researcher tries to explain blockchain to a small child, and all she's able to transmit is that it's a way of trading on the internet. But that says nothing about blockchain specifically. It doesn't say anything about hashes, ledgers or peer-to-peer, it doesn't even say anything about authentication.

The Wikipedia definition of the simplicity of the Unix philosophy is not a bad definition in my view, because it is not wrong, it is also a simple definition which is straightforward and sensible. It is also quite a good definition of Slackware. I would venture, since I know you are quite an experienced Linux user, that you just don't agree with the statement, but that does not make it a bad definition. Additionally, if you think you can provide a superior definition which retains sufficient meaning while also being more widely-applicable, you can always edit the article appropriately.

2 members found this post helpful.

Oh dear! I dd'd that image to my memory stick and it copied over without reporting any errors. But I could not get it to boot, despite selecting usb boot from the BIOS boot menu. Actually from my experience with installing Crux from the same stick, it ought to have booted even without that; my BIOS seems to give priority to usb drives. And before anyone asks, yes I did copy to the whole drive (/dev/sdg) and not to a partition. After all, I've done this before a few times though admittedly only with iso images.

I've just mounted it in LFS out of curiosity and checked the visible contents and they are what I would expect. The syslinux.cfg file shows that I should have got a welcome message followed by a menu of three kernels plus memtest. Instead I got taken straight to my LILO menu on the hard drive.

There were no reported boot errors. The drive was just ignored. I notice that it has an EFI boot directory on it. That makes me wonder if it presupposes EFI and doesn't use the MBR.

dd it again? Sometimes I get a bad transfer and it works on the second go.

Done that already! It was the first thing I thought of. But I've had another idea that would be worth trying: suppose I copy the kernel and initramfs to one of my boot directories and add them to LILO? Then I can boot and run the installer from the hard drive.

You could also try Alien Bob's mini iso. It's a little over double the size and I'm not sure what's different between the two, but maybe this will work better.

http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackboot/mini/14.2/

2 members found this post helpful.

OK, done that. I'll try it in the morning.

This brings up an experience that may or may not have anything to do with your project.
With the last few -current .iso-s I've burned to DVDs, I've had to use the efi option to get it to install.
Let me explain.
I would hit F8 to get the BIOS boot menu. If I picked the DVD drive containing the iso, the installation would start, but eventually fail. It would just stop somewhere along the line.
After a few tries, as I've always done in the past, I noticed the last entry on the BIOS boot menu was for a...
forgotten exactly, but it was labelled something like uefi/name-of-the-DVD-drive-containing-the-iso.
I went with that and the installation was successful.
When it present the elilo menu option I told it to create a standard lilo boot configuration and install it to the MBR.
The installation booted correctly and that is the procedure I've been using every since.
As previously mentioned, this may have absolutely nothing to do with what you are trying to accomplish.

1 members found this post helpful.

I don't think it works that way. You can't just dd an image to a USB stick and have it boot.

Eric has written a script called 'iso2usb.sh.' You can find it here: http://www.slackware.com/~alien/liveslak/

1 members found this post helpful.

I was surprised to discover it can indeed work that way. Blew my mind.

2 members found this post helpful.

It wasn't Eric's Slackware Live, it was a usb boot image provided by Pat on the install media. The instructions specifically state to use dd.

And you can use dd on the Slackware Live images, the usb stick will just be read only, which means any changes won't survive a reboot. To enable persistence, you would need to the script you mentioned, iso2usb.sh.

1 members found this post helpful.

You could also use the usbimg2disk.sh script in the same directory, which was also written by Eric.

I've had good success with it in the past.

That's not been my experience. I've dd'ed many an ISO image to USB and it booted just fine. The command I've always used was:

NOTE!!!! Do not use partition numbers; for example, /dev/sdd1. dd has to be able to access the entire stick to be able to write the boot code in the MBR, therefore use only /dev/sdd. (These device names are just examples; use whatever device name Slackware assigns your USB device).

I went and dd'd it to a usb stick and boy does it ever boot slooooow. After a good long time it finally ended with kernel panic so no joy here with that one, Just had to check and see for myself

1 members found this post helpful.

Depends on the bios and the boot device block size. The provided dd scripts never worked properly on my machine, because wrong block size.
So I format the device with FAT that starts @64 (not @2048 or @4096), install syslinux on it, copy the kernel and the repository, and it boots fine, loads fast, and has extra storage space.
I figure my boot device is too old to support the default block size, it takes 20 minutes to boot if I use the usb2* script to make a filesystem.

1 members found this post helpful.