Slackware 12.1 installation guide
This is a complete Slackware 12.1 step by step installation screenshots. It's not just a plain installation screenshots. There are description, explanation and suggestion in each step as a guide for a Slackware beginner. Some people say that Slackware installation is too hard for them. Well, you can see Slackware installation steps in these screenshots and decide for yourself. If you are going to install Slackware for the first time, then these screenshots are for you. Even Slackware now releases the 12.2 version, the installation steps are still the same.
These Slackware installation screenshots have been sort to two different groups. One group is a simple straight forward installation and the other group is expert choice installation. The expert choice such as configuring LILO and setup networking were put in different page. So Slackware beginner can follow the simple installation steps while other, who needs help to customize their installation can have it in different page.
This is the first installation screen you are going to see when the installer finished boot up. Slackware provides different kernels that you can choose if you have special hardware case. For an old machine (computer before Intel Pentium-Pro processor), Slackware recommends the huge.s kernel. You can press F2 for a complete list of kernels that Slackware provides. There is also a guide on how to pass special parameter to the kernel. See an example below:
boot: huge.s root=/dev/hda1 rdinit= ro
In the example above, /dev/hda1 is the / Linux partition.
If this is your first time installing Slackware and you are using current processor (Pentium-Pro or newer), the default kernel, hugesmp.s should be your choice here.
Just press Enter to continue using default kernel.
Here is an option to load support for non US keyboard if you are using one. Enter 1 to see a list of keyboards.
If you are not sure what type of keyboard you are using, check your keyboard for a special locale character keys. If you have a normal windows keyboard, just press Enter to continue.
Please read carefully and take notes of important information mention on the screen here. If you are not sure what to do, here is the list:
- You need to create hard disk partition for Slackware.
- Create a swap partition.
- Activate swap partition before running setup if you have low memory.
- Type setup to begin Slackware installation.
- Type TERM=vt100 if you have black and white monitor before run setup.
Now you may login to Slackware Linux installation disk with username root. There is no password needed.
Slackware 12.1 enter hard disk partition. There are two hard disk partition tools in Slackware. A user friendly menu driven, cfdisk and the traditional Linux partition, fdisk. Here are the commands for both:
To use cfdisk, enter the command below:
cfdisk /dev/sda
To use fdisk, enter the command below:
fdisk /dev/sda
Please replace sda with your hard disk name. Here is a guide for IDE hard disks name:
- hda - First IDE hard disk.
- hdb - Second IDE hard disk.
- hdc - Third IDE hard disk.
- The list continue.
Here is a guide for SATA and SCSI hard disks name:
- sda - First sata hard disk.
- sdb - Second sata hard disk.
- sdc - Third sata hard disk.
- The list continue.
To continue the installation, you have to create partition for Slackware. Head for the Slackware fdisk partition guide or if you already created swap and Linux partition, continue to the Slackware Linux Setup program to continue the installation.