link ftp://ftp.unina.it/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-current/extra/ cosa serve Slackware Linux was first released before CD-ROMs became a standard in systems and before fast Internet connections were cheap. Because of this, the distribution was broken down into software sets. Each set contains a different group of programs. This allowed for someone to get the Slackware Linux distribution quickly. For example, if you know you don't want the X Window System, just skip all of the X software set. A - The base system. Contains enough software to get up and running and have a text editor and basic communications programs. AP - Various applications that do not require the X Window System. D - Program development tools. Compilers, debuggers, interpreters, and man pages. It's all here. E - GNU Emacs. Yes, Emacs is so big it requires its own series. F - FAQs, HOWTOs, and other miscellaneous documentation. GNOME - The GNOME desktop environment. K - The source code for the Linux kernel. KDE - The K Desktop Environment. An X environment which shares a lot of look-and-feel features with the MacOS and Windows. The Qt widget library is also in this series, as KDE requires it to function. KDEI - Language support for the K Desktop Environment. L - System libraries. N - Networking programs. Daemons, mail programs, telnet, news readers, and so on. T - teTeX document formatting system. TCL - The Tool Command Language, Tk, TclX, and TkDesk. X - The base X Window System. XAP - X applications that are not part of a major desktop environment. For example Ghostscript and Netscape. Y - Games (the BSD games collection, Sasteroids, Koules, and Lizards). Installation To install ZipSlack, all you need to do is unzip the file ZIPSLACK.ZIP on the DOS partition where you want Linux installed. To do this, you'll need an unzip utility. If you don't already have an unzipper such as PKZIP for DOS or Windows, http://www.pkware.com is a great place to get one. Boot Windows 95 and start your unzip utility1. If you are installing to a Zip disk, make sure it is formatted and in the drive. Open the file called ZIPSLACK.ZIP from within your unzip utility. Choose the Extract Files option and make sure that it is set to extract all of the files in the archive. When the program asks you to select a destination to save the extracted files to, give it the drive letter of the disk you are installing to followed by a backslash. For example, if you are installing to D drive, tell the unzip program to extract to D:\. The unzip program should extract the files in the archive and save them to the disk. It will create a \LINUX subdirectory on the disk. It is very important to extract ZipSlack to the top level directory of whatever drive you decide to install it to. If you have only 4 MB of RAM, you will also need to unzip FOURMEG.ZIP to the directory that you unzipped ZIPSLACK.ZIP. Follow the same process as above to unzip this file. You're finished! That's it. You now have a bootable Linux installation ready to go. Take a look at the Booting page for information about how to boot ZipSlack. 1 You must use a 32-bit unzip utility. One that is capable of recognizing long file names. The DOS version of PKUNZIP will not work. boot Booting ZipSlack There are many ways to boot a ZipSlack installation. The easiest two are described below. Using LOADLIN Loadlin is a DOS program designed to load the Linux kernel and boot it. In the \LINUX directory you'll find these files: LOADLIN.EXE The loadlin loader executable. LINUX.BAT A simple DOS batch file to boot Linux using LOADLIN.EXE. vmlinuz A Linux kernel, with support for SCSI and IDE devices. You can use the provided vmlinuz kernel (a generic kernel with support for many devices that will work for most machines), or you can use another Linux kernel of your choosing by copying it to \LINUX\vmlinuz over the existing file. Slackware includes a large collection of precompiled kernels in its \kernels directory, any of which will work. To boot the system, you'll need to edit the LINUX.BAT file, and make sure the root=/dev/XXXX statement on the loadlin line (the one that's not commented out with 'rem') is set up to use the partition where you unzipped ZIPSLACK.ZIP, such as /dev/sda4. If you're not sure which partition to use, just go ahead and guess. If you get it wrong, you'll still be able to use scrollback (right shift key and PageUp) when the kernel halts to go back and look at your partitions, noting the names Linux gives them. With this information, you should be able to edit the LINUX.BAT file correctly. Once LINUX.BAT is edited, you can try to boot the system by entering LINUX on a prompt while in the \LINUX directory. IMPORTANT: You'll need to be in DOS mode for the boot to work. A DOS prompt running under Windows 95 will not work! What you need to do if you use Windows 95 is shut the machine down, selecting the Restart in MS-DOS Mode selection. Then, you'll be able to use Loadlin. You can also make a Windows 95 Startup disk and boot from that, then run LINUX from the \LINUX directory. If it doesn't work, the problem could be DOS memory management. Sometimes both HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE are needed to get LOADLIN to load a large kernel. If you are having problems, try adding these two programs to your CONFIG.SYS file. You can also run LOADLIN directly. Here is a sample boot command used to boot Linux on /dev/sda4 in read-write mode using the kernel file vmlinuz: loadlin vmlinuz root=/dev/sda4 rw Using a Boot Floppy The boot disk provided with ZipSlack (bootdisk.img) uses the same generic kernel that LOADLIN uses by default. You are free to use any of the boot disks included with the Slackware Linux distribution. To write the image to a floppy disk under DOS, use the RAWRITE.EXE program: rawrite bootdisk.img a: To boot a Linux system in read-write mode on /dev/sda4, boot the bootdisk. On the 'boot:' prompt, you'd enter this command: mount root=/dev/sda4 rw