> -----Original Message-----
> From: PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Brendhan Horne
> Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2001 20:05
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [PCBUILD] Slackware
>
>
> Okay the gross Linux newbie is here. I am making another head
> first jump into Linux my first being with Corel. I never got any
> further than loading it. I have decided to go with Slackware and
> what I did was order the whole package including the text book.
> Yes I realize that all of this is available for download but with
> my luck my windows computer will crash and I will not have
> internet access. God I hope not I won't be able to read my email
> either. Now for the questions
>
> 1. Slackware talks about hejaz.dsk for the boot disk, what is
> this ?  A search on google only turned up three sites and two of
> them were for slackware and don't give a definition the other was
> in Japanese's, needless to say I don't.

        I'm not sure what hejaz.dsk is, but the .dsk tells me that it is a boot
floppy image, you would use rawrite to create this disk.

> 2. I use a program on my windows 98 se box called rawrite to
> create the slackware boot disk and the root disk. I had no
> problem creating the boot disk but every time I go to create the
> root disk . The rawrite says I have a bad sector. I have tried
> this with several different floppies and get the same error. What gives?

        I'm not sure why this is occuring, perhaps you have a bad floppy drive? I'm
not that familiar with Slackware but many Linux distros are now CDROM
bottable, have you tried botting from the CDROM itself?
        Personnally I recommend redhat linux for most people, especially newbies,
it is generally easier to install and easier to configure since it is more
popular and there are more help forums.

> 3. A biggie question here. I am looking to set up this Linux box
> with the bare minimum right now. A floppy drive, hard drive,
> CD-Rom, and a basic video card ( stealth diamond with an s3 chip
> the old standard. ). What is done with Linux if I decide to
> upgrade a piece of hardware or add one or even up the RAM. Please
> be easy when you answer this technical stuff could confuse me.
> And I will be force to ask more stupid questions. :-)

        Again, I don't know what Slackware does but it MAY have some autodetection,
I don't know. If it doesn't then you would simply have to change the driver
being used. For something like memory nothing has to be changed, Linux will
detect the extra memory and use it. A change in video card requires a
reconfiguration of your X system, this should be described in detail in the
book you have.

> 4. I would eventually like the Linux box to be my server for my
> home network. Does Linux have a built in DHCP setup or equal? Or
> is there an add on I that I must download to use Linux as a Server?

        It all depends on what packages you install, Linux supports about every
possible network standard that you can imagine.

> 5. Does Linux have a RAM limitation like Win98se ( 512 ) or does
> Linux behave better the more RAM I use with it?

        No, AFAIK Linux has no REAL limit with RAM (I'm sure there is some insanly
huge number of RAM that would cause Linux some problems, but your
motherboard will limit you before you ever reached this limit.

> I have Slackware 8 that I will be using and I am slowly reading
> through the manual and I am hoping to get a response from their
> forum but I figure the more people I ask the better my chance at
> getting an answer.

        As an aside, I'm wondering why you choose Slackware? I started with
Slackware but eventually went to Redhat because of it's better support. TTYL

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