Slackware 8.1 on the Dell Inspiron 4100

David van Popering
http://buoy.com/~dutch

Copyright (c) 2002 David van Popering
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

This document describes the procedure of installing and configuring Slackware 8.1 on a Dell Inspiron 4100.


I bought my Dell late Dec 2001 and got it the second week of January. I was quite mad because I paid for 2 day shipping and should have had it by Christmas - Dell screwed up, lost it through UPS, didn't admit to it, blah blah blah...their service left me wanting but the Laptop is quite nice.

Now, although still not tuned to perfection, when I look at my laptop with a working version of Slackware on it, I feel like it really is mine because I made it work where it hadn't before. What a great feeling. I hope this document helps to get you to that feeling of success too.

Partitions

My Dell Inspiron 4100 was shipped with Windows XP. I soon wiped ALL partitions, ending up with the following:

dev/hda1.......Bootable.......Primary.......FAT32.............7871.60 MB
dev/hda2.......Bootable.......Primary.......Linux ext3........11901.99 MB
dev/hda3............................Primary.......Linux swap.......230.31 MB

I used the Slackware 8.1 CD I had booted from that and went into cfdisk where I made my partitions. Why use the Slackware CD to setup partitions? I knew it had cfdisk on it and it left me at a prompt soon after booting up (I love Slackware!). It was here that I ran cfdisk. 100 ways to do it, this is just what I did. After that, I saved the partition table, re-booted and did a fresh, customized re-install of XP.

Overall Procedure

There are basically 6 steps to getting Slackware installed on a system.
  1. Check your system requirements
  2. Decide on which general software packages, or sets, to install (development, Gnome, KDE, X, Networking, etc)
  3. Select a Bootdisk image (I booted right off the CD. If asked though, I'd choose bare.i)
  4. Select a Rootdisk image (again, this came right off the CD automatically. If asked, I'd take color.gz)
  5. Partition your hard drive (which I had already done)
  6. Run Setup Here I chose Menu

Install

The install went very smoothly.
I chose to let Slackware "see", that is, have access to, my windows partition which I named /dos.
After that I just followed the on-screen messages such as choosing a target drive (hda1), source (CD Rom), and when it came to the actual install there are several ways to go.

During the Setup phase, I did these 3 things:
  1. Chose my Target to install Slackware to
  2. Chose my Source which was the CD Rom
  3. Chose which Series to install (ie. I don't use Emacs so I unselected that one)
  4. Then finally the Install section. Here I went with Menu
    • To chose Full seems like a waste to me at this point because I've been using Slackware enough to know what I do and do not need/want.
    • Newbie is too verbose for my impatient nature because it stops at each package letting you press OK or skip. Very Time Consuming
    • Menu is just right for my needs now and its what I usually use. All the packages that make up the set are presented to me in a list and I select [X] or de-select [ ] them at once. Then click OK. When that set is done, I repeat this for the next one. For instance, I unselected the editors JED and JOE, but made sure VIM is selected. I also added in Python since it wasn't selected by default but I do use it.
    • Menu lets me choose groups of packages from an interactive menu, Expert lets me choose individual packages which is far too much detail for my needs.
    • Someday I'll set up Tag Files and which is like a pre-setup list of what to install, then leave it with the computer to handle it without you having to be there.
  5. Finally comes Configure which is where you set your root password, LILO configuration, network configuration, XFree Setup, Time Zone and a few other things. I like the screen font setup and choose style M - I just think it looks cool :)
  6. Then yer done!

PKGTOOL

is a great tool for managing all your packages; install, remove, upgrade, rpm2targz, etc...see the official Slackware site for more detailed help with PKGTOOL.

Now on to that monster we call X...

Getting X to work was a bitch with Slackware 8. However, with Slackware 8.1 it is a no-brainer because of a neat little program called xf86cfg. Just type it in at the prompt and let it do its thing. It auto-detected all my video settings and wrote the config file for me. A the prompt I typed startx and there was good old WindowMaker greeting me!

xf86cfg writes the XF86Config-4 and sticks it in /etc/X11

Acknowledgments

Anything I may have gotten wrong or did in a round about way, is by no means a reflection on those who helped me.
I am open to comments or suggestions: dutch@users.buoy.com
© 2002 David van Popering