How to Install Slackware: A Complete Tutorial

How to Install Slackware- A Complete Tutorial by Matt Ireland ([email protected])​

Hello! This guide is aimed at people who have a moderate knowledge of computers and want to get started with Linux. I personally think Slackware is a great place to start because it introduces all the main principles of Linux as well as being relatively easy to install and incredibly useful to use! If you don't know anything about Linux, I recommend reading the guide located at

So, to get started, we need to download it. Linux is all free and open source (i.e. you can edit the actual code) so downloading is really easy and free! Slackware seems to want you to bit-torrent the files so as to reduce bandwidth on their server (bandwidth is how much data the server allows users to download in a time interval – usually in a month). As they are providing a great operating system and support free of charge, I suggest that you respect their wishes and bit-torrent. If you've never bit-torrented before, a good client that I would recommend is uTorrent (google this and download the application – it's totally safe and to my knowledge virus free). Once installed, just leave it there – you'll need it in a minute. According to NBR's 2007 vote for the best bit-torrent client, uTorrent was easily the best with 65.12%, a whopping 64% above ABC. Anyway, I digress. Now navigate to the Slackware website, located at http://www.slackware.org Click on the Get Slack link at the side, then click on the link to the torrents page at the top. You'll only need disks 1 and 2 and 3 for the basic installation. When it asks you if you want to open or save the torrent, click open and let uTorrent do it's work!

Once the files are downloaded, you'll need to burn the ISOs to a disk. Unfortunately, burning disk images is not a simple matter of dragging and dropping. You'll need a special burning program – I recommend InfraRecorder if your using Windows and using the disk utility on Mac. It's so simple on Mac's I shan't explain it here, but you'll be able to pick up the basic principles from my Windows guide. Download InfraRecorder (again google it) and then insert a blank CD or DVD. DO NOT FORMAT IT and just to be on the safe side don't let Windows do anything with it either. Open up InfraRecorder, select Menu --> Actions --> Burn Image, select the ISO and then burn it!

The next step is to actually install the Linux distro. Restart your computer and make sure that CD-ROM drive is first in the BIOS boot priority. (This is really important as otherwise the system will boot up your current operating system and not Slackware – if you don't know how to do it then press the key that you are instructed to press to enter setup on startup; there should be some sort of thing saying change boot device priority hidden somewhere under one of the menus (maybe boot?) and just have a little play around with those). Having ensured this, insert the CD and DVD and restart again.

So now instead of Windows (or Mac) starting normally, you'll get a nice lot of text which you can completely ignore and just press enter. Next a load of text will come up too fast to read which generally means you don't have to read it. Press 1 (and then return) to configure your keyboard map at the next user-inputted option and as I'm using a UK Qwerty keyboard, I'll scroll down to qwerty/uk.map (surprisingly far down with US just below it) and press enter. It will now give you a chance to test out your selected keyboard layout. It's a good idea just to press a few signs like the dollar sign and the pound sign as well as the double quotation marks and @ sign just to ensure everything is set up correctly. Once your happy, delete all your previously typed stuff, type 1, and press return.

Next you'll get a chance to login. Root is the administrator account that you should only use for doing administrative stuff (which you are doing now) for security reasons and also because you have the option to seriously mess up your computer. So type root and then press enter. Next, is possibly the trickiest part of the installation and really depends on how you want to install it. If your on an old computer and your fine with getting rid of Windows on your old computer as well as all your data then it is somewhat easier. If not, it is somewhat harder but I'll try and guide you through it. Type cfdisk and then press enter. You should now get a screen with your current partition listed as well as hopefully a bit that says free space. If you don't, it is most probably because it has automatically seleted the wrong disk drive (hard drives in Linux are basically written as /dev/something where something can be hda, sda, By default, the computer selects /dev/hda for cfdisk (as you can see written at the top) so if you have, for example, an IDE CD drive and a SATA hard disk, cfdisk will automatically select the CD drive to format – don't worry if you don't understand – if it doesn't work try cfdisk /dev/sda or cfdisk /dev/sdb until it does work). The command /dev/sda works fine for me so great! Now if your OK with erasing EVERYTHING on your hard disk WITH NO OPTION OF RETRIEVAL then great, just go up to the first one on the list (probably with an NFTS or possibly FAT32 filesystem) and press the side arrow to get to delete. Bye bye everything! Alternatively, if you want to duel boot Windows and Linux then click resize to make the partition smaller and then accept the changes. Now, whatever method you used, you should see a bit at the bottom which says free space – yipeee! Select this and create a new partition (using the up and down arrows) then use the left to right arrows to select new, again use the left and right arrow keys to select logical and then press enter. You are currently creating a swap partition which acts a bit like your RAM (how many books you can keep open on a desk at once), so should be approximately double your memory size, for example I have 2GB RAM so I want my swap partition to be 4GB. I happily enter 040000.00 (on the numbers at the top of the keyboard – NOT the numberpad – doesn't work for some odd reason) and then I select beginning to make it fastest and then press enter. Hallelujah – it's all worked! Back at the main cfdisk screen but with another partition. It may be useful to note down what they're all called for future purposes. Just a few alterations to make to our swap partition quickly before we make our main partition – you'll need to select type (press the right arrow key lots of times) and then you'll need to make it a “Linux Swap” partition which is number 82. Type in 82 and then press enter to return to our main little screen that you should be getting quite used to. Now create a new partition of whatever size you want. I want to be doing quite a lot of stuff with Slackware so I'm going to use up a whopping 10GB of my drive (shock horror). I shall select New, press enter, select logical again (but if you are NOT dual booting Windows select primary here), press enter, I shall type 100000.00 and then press enter. Again, I am going to select beginning to make everything nice and fast. Again we need to select the type. This time, we are going to select 83 as our filesystem, because this is a lovely Linux filesystem. Advanced users may select something different, depending on exact needs, but we'll just go with 83 for now. We need to make this partition bootable as well so just toggle the bootable button so it says “boot” in the flags column. Wondering why everything was so quick when it takes hours to save a big word file? That was because we were just typing the stuff into word and haven't actually saved it yet. In effect, we'll press Cntrl + S to write the changes to the disk by selecting write now – press the right arrow key a lot of times to get there and then press enter. Type yes just to confirm and away we go. Just make a quick note of the names of your hard partitions e.g. my Windows one is sda1, my Linux swap is sda5 and my Linux is sda6 – this may come in handy later. Writing may take a while. Go get a cup of coffee. I'll have my breakfast.

So when you've come back and the writing has completed (it shouldn't take too long but will definitely take longer if you've had to resize a partition). A confirmation message saying “Wrote partition table to disk” should come up and then you can quite cfdisk by again using the right arrow key which should now be bald along with the enter key. At the prompt, typing setup will begin the main chunk of the slackware installation. You now get a nice blue screen with lots of options. This may look confusing but don't worry – there's a lot more of them to come so you'll get used to them soon enough. I'd start by adding a swap partition. Select ADDSWAP (pressing the A key will take you there quickly). It should detect your swap partition (in my case /dev/sda5 but this may be different for you). Personally, I should select yes when checking for bad blocks, so do this. It might take a while though. I'm going to get a cup of tea. I like two teabags, don't like sugar and it isn't proper tea with milk. I like to leave it brewing for ten minutes. It tastes very nice. When you come back you get a nice screen saying swap space configured and that the information displayed will be added to the /etc/fstab. There's a lot of Linux terminology that you don't really need to know at this point but you'll gradually pick up over time. Hit return to exit this box.

Next you have the option of selecting the partition to use as a main partition. This should be the one that you configured earlier and should be a Linux partition. Press enter to select it. There should only be the one. It will now give the option to format the partition. Go ahead and do this. I personally again would go for the check just to be certain. Press the C key to skip straight to this option. and then enter for OK.

Now you have to chose a filesystem. This is an important stage in the installation. Ext2 (or second extended file system in full) is older, slower and not a journaling filesystem. A journaling filesystem basically just a filesystem that logs all changes to a journal before writing them to the main filesystem. This is good because it is less likely to corrupt stuff if the system crashes or there is a power failure and you do not have a UPS (a battery that gives you a bit of life after power goes to give you time to save your files and everything – a worthwhile investment in my point of view). Ext3 is faster and is a journaling filesystem. It is also more popular and for these reasons we are going to use it. The setup will now proceed to format your partition using the selected filesystem.

This shouldn't take too long but all the same I enjoyed my last cup of tea so much that I think I need another one. That's better. Now that I've had my caffeine boost I'll just entertain you by bringing you up to speed on filesystems. If your a Windows user you'll no doubt be familiar with NTFS. This is the default Windows filesystem and the operating system most certainly likes it the best.

Once the formatting is done, you'll get a message much like the one for the swap partition saying that the displayed information has been added to /etc/fstab. Again hit OK for this. If you are dual booting Windows and Linux you will now get a message saying that partitions of type NFTS and FAT have been found and asking you whether you want to add these you /etc/fstab. I'm going to select no here simply for the reason that I won't be interchangably using the operating systems and I forgot to backup before starting the installation so I don't want to risk any data.

As we've previously downloaded the installation files onto a CD and we've been running the installation so far from a CD, we obviously want to install from a Slackware CD or DVD. Select this. Whilst you can manually specify the CD or DVD drive by device name (/dev/hda in my case) I'm going to select auto just for fun. I recommend that you do this also. You will get a message saying that it is searching and then after a couple of seconds it will say that a drive has been found (hopefully). Jolly good.

Next you get a list of software that you want to install. If you've got a load of hard disk space (more than 1GB) you might as well do the lot. I'm just going to run through a list of packages and tell you what they are, for interest's sake.

At the top of the list is the Base Linux System. This is absolutely essential as it contains the kernel and a load of other things. Do not deselect this, whatever you do. If you didn't know already, a kernel (is a member of the universal set – forget the set theory joke – I'm a sad mathematician) is the central part of an operating system on which most of the rest of it is based. It manages most basic operations such as managing the processor load across applications, handling hardware-dependant functions and being a central part to booting up in the first place.

I'd recommend that you install AP, it's very useful and contains most of the applications that you'll need to do useful stuff in Linux. I do a heck of a lot of programming in C and C++ so I'll definitely need the D series, but if you don't think you'll be using Linux to do programming then this is not essential. Just select the E series, I shan't go into it now. The F series is a bit like the help files in Windows, I recommend selecting these. K is pretty much essential, especially if you want to modify the kernel, which you never know, you might become addicted to this sort of thing and want to get maximum performance for your needs and enjoyment out of this sort of stuff, a bit like me. X is the graphical bit of the operating system, a bit like Windows when your not using Command Prompt, which is most of the time, so anything to do with X, you should probably select, hence your going to also select KDE. If you can't understand English (then why are you reading this?) but the KDEI support may be of use for you but otherwise you don't really need it. If your more comfortable with a different language then maybe you should switch this on. I, however, am going to leave it unchecked as default. The System Libraries again are essential, most of the rest of the system can't run without it, much like forgetting to include in a decent C++ application or something like riding a bike without the chain (don't worry if you don't get this – it just basically means that you definitely need it and I'm making myself unclear). If you want to use internet with Slackware (which isn't essential if you just want to see what Linux is like but it's pretty essential if you do want to do anything with it) you'll need to install the networking protocols contained within the N series. TeX is a typesetting language. It is used to create highly structured documents with a lot of maths in them. The popular LaTeX is probably the most popular TeX package. I'd recommend installing these too. You'll need to TCL series to do quite a lot of things so tick this box too. The X Windows system is also necessary for using the graphical user interface system that I mentioned above. X Applications include things like a writer and Firefox web browser for use with X so I'd say these were pretty much essential for the first time Linuxer. I personally gave up playing games of any sort on the computer after I found I'd wasted way too much time on Counterstrike and Half Life so I deselect these to avoid temptation but if you want a bit of fun they don't take up too much space so you might as well include them. So with pretty much all of the packages selected, hit enter to continue! When I tend to select features 1 by 1, I tend to want everything and so space saving isn't really an issue for me. If you are really low on space then select the newbie option but this will take a heck of a long time (I ended up holding down the enter key for most of it when I did it for experiences sake) so I don't recommend it. I'll go with the Slackware guys and do the full installation here.

Sorry if I rambled a bit in the last paragraph but I thought that it was necessary to get an idea of what Linux involved. In my opinion, doing something isn't really worthwhile if I don't understand it hence in this tutorial, I'm trying to give you the best possible understanding of Linux as well as just how to do it. There's a heck of a lot more to learn that is in this tutorial but at least it's a good start. So once you've gone with the full installation package, prepare to spend a heck of a lot of time watching the screen. I like to try and read all the messages that come up and indeed I can on some systems but on my OC'd system with super-fast hard disk it's just painful to look at the screen. It's not really necessary either. You'll get an understand of most of the stuff on there afterwards anyway.

This does take a long time. I recommend leaving it going overnight – it usually takes around 4 hours. So I went away, had lunch, had dinner and now I'm ready to continue. You should get a prompt asking you to continue or quite. After all this time I don't expect you to want to quit!!! Disk 1 should automatically eject so take it out, put disk 2 and then select continue.

Wait a couple more seconds and then it will install some more lovely packages. You should be getting fed up of these by now. There's enough of them! We're nearly done though so don't lose your enthusiasm or excitement! When it prompts insert disk 3 and then get ready for some more cool packages!

The next step is to make a boot disk. I DEFINITELY recommend doing this as when you mess up your boot table (and yes it will happen if you continue with all this Linux stuff!) you'll need to boot an operating system. It's tricky if the LILO boot loader isn't there! If you've got a floppy drive, you can create a floppy boot disk or if you haven't, you can create a boot disk of a USB stick. Either is just as effective but I tend not to like to waste a USB stick on it when I could use a floppy disk for much less money. Insert the storage medium and then hit enter and away you go! Hopefully, it will pick up your USB stick and write all the necessary stuff. You will get a screen saying NEW DEVICE DETECTED giving the size of the flash disk and the location (mines /dev/sdb – the locations of Linux USB sticks are much like that of Linux hard disks – and is just a different way of writing what might be an E:\ drive in Windows). So hit OK and away we go! It should write all the necessary stuff in about five seconds flat. You don't need to make another one – it's pretty much pointless in our case as we're just needing it for this and on this computer. We won't be needing them in mass. I recommend you keep your USB disk somewhere safe where you won't lose it like a keyring or sellotape it to the back of your computer. Note that if you couldn't be bothered to read the on screen text, you've now lost all of the data on your disk before the boot disk creation and I wouldn't advise using it for anything else. Select continue to continue.

If your part of the modern civilised world, you'll have broadband and so won't be using a modem. If however, your old fashioned, then you'll need to select a modem. It should say in the in instructions what you have – if it plugs into a PCI slot on your computer then it's a PCI modem, if not it's one of the others is a basic answer but you'll need to refer to the manufacturers instructions for exact details.

LILO boot loader is the thing that allows you to select what operating system you boot up into. Even if you only have Linux installed on the system, you do really need it. If you have Windows and Linux then you DEFINITELY need it. At bootup it creates a nice little screen that lets you use the up and down arrows to select what you want to boot. Simple works and my experience is that if it works then use it. This is why you are going to select simple here.

In my opinion, the cool penguin logo at the bottom of the LILO boot loader is essential so unless you have an older computer that can't handle it (anything P3 or above will have absolutely no problems) select whatever you want here. I'll go with 1024x768x256, but you may or may not want something different.

You (hopefully) don't requite any extra parameters for the kernel as it's worked so far and you didn't enter any when we first started off so don't enter anything here, just hit enter and your kernel won't go into panic.

I'd select MBR here but you can also select root if your just using Linux. Next it gives you the option to select what mouse your using. Most modern mice use a USB or PS/2 so select the relevant one. If you don't know whether your using a USB or PS/2 mouse your probably not quite ready to be using Linux (have a bit more of a play with your computer and read a few more books) but email me if you really do need assistance.

I think it would be a very good idea to load the GPM program at boot time so let's do it! It stands for General Purpose Mouse and is what allows you to use the mouse at the command line. Although you don't really need to use it as the keyboard has all the necessary things on it for the command line, it's sometimes useful when copying and pasting error codes so let's go for it!

You can always configure your network later, but it's easier to do it now and you might as well get on with the internet ASAP! However, most people's networks are different, as are what they want out of Slackware so I'm not going to talk you through this. However, as a competent computer user you should be pretty happy with configuring these quite easy options. Again, if you do need any help, please do feel free to email me. I'm always here for advice.

You will then be given an option to have certain services start themselves upon starting the system. Again, these can be configured later, but it's much easier and less hassle to do it now. As with last time we had a multiple choice list, you can just select them all but I'll talk you through what they all do. Firstly, you'll probably notice the Apache web server at the top. If your not going to be using your computer as a server, you probably don't need this put I do quite a bit of PHP web development and I need a server on my computer to be able to test my work. With that in mine I'll be enabling this option. The BSD Inetd daemon

Trying out the custom screen fonts is just pointless. I like trying new things out and even I think it's pointless – so don't bother. You know what your clock is set to better than I do so select the appropriate option here. My hardware clock is set to UTC so I'll select this option. Again, you know where you live better than I do so select the appropriate option here. I'll select Europe/London as this is the most accurate description of where I live.

The next screen asks you to select the default window manager for X. This isn't half as complicated as it may or may not sound. It's just choosing what the graphical user environment looks like. For example on Windows you have a start bar at the bottom for which you select your programs and on Mac OSX you have a handy bar which you can click on. However, on Windows the extent to which you can change how it looks is changing the colour of the start bar, changing the text on the start button and even if you can be bothered to (which I could on my notebook but I really, really couldn't on my desktop – it's too much hassle for almost no result – a bit like trying to change the boot screen). My favourite is KDE but I also like the fluxbox Windows manager. I went with fluxbox last time so I'm going to go with KDE this time. This is pure personal preference and I suggest looking for images of each on google just to see which one you like the look of most. That done, press enter to continue.

Next you'll get a screen warning you in those big yellow letters that really aren't scary that you've not set the root password. Hopefully, you'll never need to log in to the root account much so I suggest making this password long and complicated and something that you'll never remember which is why you are going to use a random password generator, print off the password, enter it correctly and stick it to the back of your computer. This prevents crackers (the bad type of hackers) from getting in to your system (bad). The blue screen will shift up a bit (much like it does when you've been programming in QBasic – older people may know about this – don't worry if you don't) and leave you with the black screen asking you to enter and re-enter a new password. Whenever you are entering passwords like this, you won't see that little white cursor moving along or any indication that you've actually typed anything so don't worry and if you think you've made a mistake just delete the whole thing and start again – better safe that sorry. That done you'll get a two word sentence saying password changed.

Following this, you've finished the basic installation. There's still a bit to do but at least you've finished the main bulk of stuff. Rejoice. Thank your computer. Your now an official geek like the rest of us. But as I said, there's still a bit to do so hit enter and then when you return to the main menu screen hit Cntrl – Alt – Delete to restart just like it says to. (At this point, when you selected in the BIOS to primarily boot from CD, change this and also take the CD out of the drive and put it somewhere safe). If your just running Linux, it should boot directly to this upon startup, if your running multiple operating systems, you'll have to select it from the list. It will ask you to do login. Do this entering root as your username and enter the password that you set previously. However, I'm sure you don't want to be entering that long and horrible password which you can't possibly remember every time you login. Neither do you want to risk messing up your system every time you make a mistake. For that reason, I'm going to talk you through setting yourself up a new user's account, much like on Windows.

At the prompt, type in

useradd -m -G users [your username without square brackets here]

This will add a new user. Simple as that. Even easier than in Windows! I've entered matt as my username so I'm going to use this in any further examples. Type in:

passwd matt (relpacing matt with your username)

And then it will tell you to enter the new password which can be a minimum of five characters and a maximum of one hundred and twenty seven characters. Again, I'm going to use a random password generator for this, for added security. So called 'dictionary' passwords (passwords with words in them) are bad because people sitting at a computer in China can easily crack them with a 'dictionary' hack. You don't want this. They will mess up your computer for you free of charge. How kind of them.

Next let's set up the graphical user interface (aka X). This is quite important as if you plan to do things like browsing the internet and image editing, then you'll definitely need to be able to move your mouse around and see what you are doing rather than typing in commands and the prompt telling yourself that your hardcore and in reality just getting nowhere.

Unfortunately, I lied about never having to log in as root. You'll never have to log in as root after today would be a more accurate statement. You need the root account with full administrative permissions; logout by typing “logout” without the quotes and then log back in as root and read the rather amusing quote.

There are two ways of setting up X. You can either type xorgconfig or xorgsetup. I personally prefer the latter as it gives you nice onscreen instructions e.t.c. so I shan't insult your intelligence by going through it step by step. After setting this up, you'll get a nice prompt where you can type startx to begin!

If, as I did, you selected the KDE environment upon installing Slackware, you get a nice little setup wizard called KPersonalizer. I'll take you through this step by step. If you're from the USA then you can just leave both of the boxes at the bottom of the window as they are, but as I'm from the UK, I am going to look at the flyout by Western Europe and select United Kingdom. This will handily change the language to British English. Click next to get onto the system behaviour section. I like both Windows and Mac. I do, however, prefer my Windows layout for this sort of stuff and my Mac for image editing and typing guides on how to install Linux e.t.c. so I'm going to select Windows here. This doesn't affect the programs you can open at all – just the way the desktop looks really. Don't select the motion impaired users options unless this does really apply to you.

I've got a lovely Core 2 Duo (which I've overclocked to make it go faster). If you haven't got a very good processor or are crazy about performance but not about the way to looks then push the arrow to the slow processor size. If you click on the Show Details button you can check what you do and don't want. This can be quite fun. I'm just going to slide the arrow all the way over the the right side just for the fun of it. Click on the Next button to continue the fun!

The next step is to select the theme. This is the way that the desktop looks. It really doesn't matter what you choose here – it's the way your computer will look so it's totally up to you. I personally much prefer the Plastik theme – but that's me! So you've now finished and as it says you can always change these by either refining what you've done in the Control Centre in the K menu or going into the Desktop Settings wizard in the K menu – easy enough! Press finish.

It will now start to load the desktop and you'll get a nice useful tip and a lovely desktop built to your specification. If you don't like the tip then you can uncheck the Show Tips at Startup checkbox and close the tip. I always think that there's something new to learn to like to leave this selected! The K menu that we mentioned earlier is located in the bottom left if you selected the Windows layout like me. If you didn't, it can be easily found – it's just a little square button with a K on it.

If you just have a little look through all your applications, you'll notice that you have the Gimp graphics editor for image editing – this is a really good program that I'd definitely recommend. You have Firefox, Thunderbird as a mail program and gFTP for server FTP operations if you require. Pidgin instant messenger includes MSN Messenger, AIM and loads more (unfortunately not Skype) so don't look any further for instant messenger tools – I even use Pidgin on Windows. You may like KWord for word processing or you can always download OpenOffice if you want something closer to the MS Office environment. Have a little play around with X and when you next start up your computer, if you want X to start without you having to type startx in, then simply type in pico /etc/inittab at root and then change the run level (the second one) from 3 to 4 and then save and exit by pressing Cnrtl and X.

So that's pretty much it for Linux. I'll create a more advanced guide for when you've got your heads around all of this that should be some even greater fun! At this point, you should be able to at least do some basic Linuxy stuff though. Have fun!

If you have any corrections or suggestions for this guide please feel free to email me: [email protected] Thank you!

 

Wow, you clearly put some time into this.

Its a good guide, however a bit too wordy. Some pictures would have been nice, if not perhaps less cluttered formatting?

Nevertheless thanks for a job well done. Rep given

 

Great effort! But yes, perhaps some formatting when you get time! rep given also.

 

Good job, i also agree that it should have some formatting though.

 

Great job, I've been wanting to install Slackware.

 

I would def try to install it
but that is really long and i would never read it
No offense or anything
Its a novel

 

My suggestions;

- The part about uTorrent; users need to know what to do with the .torrent file!

- Include some graphics, where possible. Obviously they are not absolutely necessary.

- Break those blocks of writing into paragraphs. Whenever you reach a new subject in your writing, start a new paragraph.

- Sort the paragraphs even further with titles according to steps in the process. ex, "Getting Slackware" followed by paragraph 1, 2, 3. Then, "Installing Slackware" followed by more material.

Other than that it looks great. Obviously you've spent a lot of time on this, and I'll take a look at Slackware myself. Thanks!

 

Wow, that's intense. I'll definitely keep this handy, as I would like to install Slackware. :smile:

 

Thanks very much! One of the reasons I posted was to get some suggestions for how to improve it so I'm really grateful to everyone!

Next time I format (probably about 2 weeks or so) I'll get some pics in and I'll also break the text up and put in some sub-titles ASAP.

Thanks for all the rep. I've returned it for the helpful comments.

Thanks again,

Matt. I