So this is how I started. After I checked www.slackware.com and saw that Patrick Volkerding seems to be alive and doing well, which I concluded from the fact that Slackware 12.0 had been released just a few weeks ago (congratulations, Patrick!), I decided to give Slackware a chance.
So I downloaded the DVD ISO and toasted it on a DVD. It's a great thing to have a bootable DVD, that contains all the basic software you need, to get a Linux box running. And I like Slackware because it keeps to good old standards, so it is easy for me to find startup scripts - which are always in /etc/rc.d, to find out what's in a package - because it's a tarball, and I know the basics of the tar-command, and, as I found out, even the installation scripts are easy to read - you find them in .... (to be filled in :).
The latter I found out, because the first install failed! I had decided to install all packages, including the only pakcage that was not checked by default: the internationalization package - because I feel pretty international - and it prompted for the root password too soon, and after some error message. I was worried at first, and went on reading the installation script, but didn't want to dwell on it, so I tried again, without this package, and then it worked perfectly!
I had totally forgotten about this package, which I still want to install someday, and see if it works. Even more, I wish to find out what went wrong and maybe improve it.
After having successfully installed the all but one package, I rebooted and had my Linux system running.
Talking about booting, let me describe the ways of booting into Linux.
At first, I can boot from DVD, which will load one of the standard kernels, in my case hugesmp.s, and, if I give the parameters hugesmp.s root=/dev/sdb2 rdinit= ro , it will mount the Linux disk as the root filesystem, so after booting, I can use all of the system on hard disk, and with the kernel in RAM, it works fine.
This way of booting can be useful, if I happen to mess up the kernel on disk.
Secondly, after I had installed LILO on my secondary hard disk, I was able to boot the kernel on disk, by switching the boot order in BIOS.
And now finally, after I told the Vista bootloader to come up with a boot menu at startup, I am able to switch to Vista or Linux, at startup time.
Instructions for configuring the Vista bootloader can be found here.
