Slackware Essentials book and CD set worth buying?

[Chess]

It is easy to dual boot various linux distros. There are tons of howto's out there on the net. Basically, you would install Slackware on another partition, leaving Debian intact, and then edit your Debian bootloader (lilo or grub) to add the new Slackware install. Just make sure to tell Slackware to install it's own bootloader in your Slackware root partition, and not in the hard drive MBR. I think Slackware defaults to installing the bootloader in the root and not the MBR just to be safe, so you should be fine.

If you used the test26 kernel that came with Slackware 10.2, the problem you might have encountered is that after rebooting for the first time, you need to install the 2.6 modules from the /testing directory which I believe is on CD2. Installing the test26 kernel during installation installs the kernel only, not the modules (hence the "test" in the package name).

Or, you could of course compile your own kernel from source in which case you'll build your own modules and install them as part of the compiling process.

[johnnywtllts]

Thanks Chess.

I forgot to add Fedora and Red Hat 9.0 to the list of distros I've tried up to this point. Looking forward to trying - and hopefully sticking with - Slackware again.

[johnnywtllts]

Thanks again Chess, I am writing this on my laptop with Slackware 10.2, a 2.6-15 kernel, and using my POS Netgear wireless card via Ndiswrapper.

Man!, I have learned a crap load doing this (including about 6 kernel compiles) and am happy as hell to be using a distro that runs so well on my ancient hardware (still loving the speed of XFCE - but have since found Fluxbox - of course even leaner and quicker).

I almost gave up and re-installed Debian (works, but not as fast as Slackware).

BTW, the last thing I had to do to get this all going was increase my stack size from 8k using ulimit -s 16000. (I actually think now that Ndiswrapper would have ran on the default kernel - I mistook the stack issue for a kernel issue )

[Jza]

Just a thought, have you ever tried to do a install of a linux within a linux. I know that LFS is pretty much that, install a and mount points of a distro within another one.

An0ther which I am n0t 100% sure, is using an emulat0r like Qemu which is basically AFAIK a c0mputer in a file which whatever y0u d0 y0u just mess up the file. Same g0es f0r VMWare.

S0 I w0nder if this will be a way t0 try slackware.

[Chess]

Thanks again Chess, I am writing this on my laptop with Slackware 10.2, a 2.6-15 kernel, and using my POS Netgear wireless card via Ndiswrapper.

You are very welcome -- glad to help. Good to hear everything is working!

Man!, I have learned a crap load doing this (including about 6 kernel compiles) and am happy as hell to be using a distro that runs so well on my ancient hardware (still loving the speed of XFCE - but have since found Fluxbox - of course even leaner and quicker).

Only 6 tries to a working kernel? I think it took me 20 times to compile my first kernel.

I find the learning experience involved with Slackware extremely satisfying. I have said it before -- I have learned more about Linux in the time I've used Slackware than I did in all my previous years combined. I have Slackware running on 3 systems at home -- my server, my main workstation, and my laptop -- and I'm about to add a 4th system for my kids. My wife still likes to use our Mac, though...

Personally, I enjoy building my packages from source. I am in the process of building mplayer from scratch even though there are good Slackware packages out there. I like knowing how something like mplayer is put together and what kind of options are available at config time. Since Slackware comes with virtually all the developer tools you could need, everything compiles without a hitch.

I also have found Fluxbox to be my DE/WM of choice with XFCE a close second. Once you get used to Flux, I think it's hard to go back to something else. I use adesklets to get a Mac-like bar with floating icons that grow and shrink as you mouse over them and a weather desklet thing and everything works great.

BTW, the last thing I had to do to get this all going was increase my stack size from 8k using ulimit -s 16000. (I actually think now that Ndiswrapper would have ran on the default kernel - I mistook the stack issue for a kernel issue )

I have not encountered any problems using ndiswrapper with Slackware when I used to need it. I now have an intel ipw2200 minipci card in my dell 700m so I use the open source drivers for that one, but yes, I think ndiswrapper should work fine on the default kernels.

Good luck and keep on Slackin'!