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Slackware is a registered trademark of Slackware,Inc. and Patrick Volkerding

you are free to copy this file under the terms of the GPL

slackware setup ( Slackware 8 )

The setup program is easy to use, but you will want to do this at the beginning:
go to series >a< and select one kernel to install use expert mode for this.

Be familiar with the fdisk program, basic directory structure, file system used by Linux, and your particular machine's hardware. It would be a good idea to have all these details written down or memorized before you start the installation and the process will be fairly easy. I can't stress this enough. If you know the exact nature of your hardware you will have very little trouble with the installation. If you don't have a bootable cdrom drive on your machine you can create installation floppies..There are a large number of bootdisks ( over 50, see list below ). The most common one is bare.i. If you are installing on a laptop you will probably want to use bareapm.i, as it has advanced power management support. These are all on the cd so I would suggest looking on the cd first to familarize youself with what is avaialble in case you have "non-standard" hardware. A very good way to learn this is to use an old computer to get the "feel" of the installation program. This is possible with Linux because you can install it on a machine with as little as 16 megs of ram, and a 500mb hard drive. These are minimums; I would recommend 32 megs of ram, a 2 gig hard drive and an old svga video card even a pci would be fine. It is relatively easy to find this kind of a setup -- for free, probably. This is what I did and it made the installation process very easy. Probably 32 megs would be best for a mimimum. (I used an old Dell 166 with 32 megs of ram that I got for $10.00.) If you are used to installation programs you should be able to catch on after 2 or 3 trail runs on an old PC. The end result of having this system on your machine is well worth the effort.


This is from the Slackware 8 CD:
Q: There are so many bootdisks! Which one should I use?

A: Here's a little table to help you decide. In each box, the best choice
   will be at the top of the list. Other disks you might try if the recommended
   choice doesn't work are preceded by a (*). If you can't install directly from
   your CD-ROM, you might consider copying the disk directories onto your hard
   drive on a DOS partition and installing from there.

   -- Pat


----------------\          Target hard drive type:
Slackware        \   
source on:        \  IDE              SCSI                       MFM
-------------------+----------------+--------------------------+--------------
 Hard Drive        | bare.i         | Use a SCSI controller    | xt.i
                   |                | bootdisk from the list   |
                   |                | below.                   |
-------------------+----------------+--------------------------+--------------
 SCSI CD-ROM       | Use a SCSI     | Use a SCSI controller    |
                   | controller     | bootdisk from the list   |
                   | bootdisk from  | below.                   |
                   | the list below.|                          |
-------------------+----------------+--------------------------+--------------
 IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM  | bare.i         | Use a SCSI controller    |
                   |                | bootdisk from the list   |
                   |                | below.                   |
-------------------+----------------+--------------------------+--------------
 Aztech, Orchid,   | aztech.i       | old_cd.s                 |
 Okano, Wearnes,   |                |                          |
 Conrad, CyCDROM   |                |                          |
 non-IDE CD-ROM    |                |                          |
-------------------+----------------+--------------------------+--------------
 Sony CDU31a,      | cdu31a.i       | old_cd.s                 |
 Sony CDU33a CD-ROM|                |                          |
-------------------+----------------+--------------------------+--------------
 Sony CDU531,      | cdu535.i       | old_cd.s                 |
 Sony CDU535 CD-ROM|                |                          |
-------------------+----------------+--------------------------+--------------
 Philips/LMS cm206 | cm206.i        | old_cd.s                 |
 CD-ROM            |                |                          |
-------------------+----------------+--------------------------+--------------
 Goldstar R420     | goldstar.i     | old_cd.s                 |
 CD-ROM            |                |                          |
-------------------+----------------+--------------------------+--------------
 Mitsumi non-IDE   | mcdx.i         | old_cd.s                 |
 CD-ROM            |                |                          |
-------------------+----------------+--------------------------+--------------
 Optics Storage    | optics.i       | old_cd.s                 |
 8000 AT CD-ROM    |                |                          |
 ("Dolphin")       |                |                          |
-------------------+----------------+--------------------------+--------------
 Sanyo CDR-H94A    | sanyo.i        | old_cd.s                 |
 CD-ROM            |                |                          |
-------------------+----------------+--------------------------+--------------
 Matsushita,       | sbpcd.i        | old_cd.s                 |
 Kotobuki,         |                |                          |
 Panasonic,        |                |                          |
 CreativeLabs      |                |                          |
 (Sound Blaster),  |                |                          |
 Longshine and     |                |                          |
 Teac non-IDE      |                |                          |
 CD-ROM            |                |                          |
-------------------+----------------+--------------------------+--------------
 NFS               | bare.i with    | Bootdisk for your SCSI   |
                   | network.dsk    | controller (see list     |
                   | (in rootdsks)  | below) with the          |
                   |                | network.dsk in rootdsks. |
                   |                | scsi.s may also be tried |
                   |                | but is discouraged.      |
-------------------+----------------+--------------------------+--------------

 SCSI controller bootdisks:  3ware.s 7000fast.s acard.s advansys.s aha152x.s
      aha1542.s aha1740.s aic7xxx.s am53c974.s buslogic.s dtc3280.s eata.s
      eata_pio.s fdomain.s gdt.s ibmmca.s in2000.s initio.s
      iomega.s megaraid.s n53c4xx.s n_5380.s n_53c7xx.s n_53c8xx.s no_kbd.s
      no_pci.s no_smp.s old_cd.s pas16.s pci2000.s qlog_fas.s qlog_isp.s scsi.s
      seagate.s servraid.s sym538xx.s tekram.s trantor.s ultrastr.s usb.s

 If you have no idea which SCSI controller your machine has, you can also
 try the generic SCSI bootdisk "scsi.s".  You can determine what controller
 type you have by watching the boot messages.  Then, you should make the
 bootdisk that matches your controller and use that to install.  (Since the
 scsi.s kernel is loaded with SCSI drivers, it consumes quite a bit of memory
 that the disks designed for a single SCSI controller do not, and also 
 contains only the more popular SCSI drivers due to kernel size limits)



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