🚀 go-pugleaf

The first time I installed linux it went somewhat like this:

Conditions:

o	Dos/Win3.11 system with two 500MB drives.
o	14.4K baud serial connection to the internet using Trumpet Winsock
o	Slackware 2.0 from sunsite.unc.edu via FTP.

Procedure: 

I read the installation and getting started guide and a few other things
to decide on a distribution.  Since I lived in a rural area and had no
friends that used Linux, I decided to use Slackware because most of the
documentation available at that time seemed to be based on that distribution
and I was going to have to rely heavily on documentation from the net. There
were a couple of new distributions called Red Hat and Debian but I decided
to stay with the better documented one.

Downloaded FIPS and rawrite so that I could prepare my disks for Linux.
Got rid of all files that I did not need, backed up what remained, moved
everything from the second drive to the first, defragmented the first drive
and ran FIPS to split the disk into two partitions. The second partition
would be a DOS partition where I would store the Slackware distribution.

I started the download of Slackware and went to bed.  The download stopped
at some point in the night and Winsock placed the line back on-hook after
the inactivity timeout interval had passed.  After arriving home from work
that evening, I restarted the download (phone rates are cheaper here in
the evening and it was a long distance call to my provider) while making
the boot disks from the images that I downloaded the night before. The
download continued as I went to bed.

By the third eveniong, I had enough to begin installation.  I did not
have the X set or the games but that was OK.  I then inserted the boot
disk, booted the system, loaded the root disk and initialized the
second drive as my linux disk.  The installation program gave the 
option of installing from a DOS partition and that is, of course,
what I did. 

The installation program also gave the option of having a dual-boot 
system.  I could enter dos or linux at the LILO prompt on boot-up and
the system would continue booting the desired operating system.  

Now that I had the system installed, the second partition on the first
drive could be freed up for use as a linux partition to make room for
X and some other stuff that I passed over during the initial install.


Closing comments:


CRDOM drives were rather new then and very expensive.  The telephone
time was cheaper than the drive.  Now I would buy a used 1x or 2x CDROM
that sells in this area for US$10 or so and install from CDROM.

I saved that disk images from that installation partition on floppies and
it was a good thing that I did because a couple of months later I horribly
wrecked my filesystem and had to do a low-level format of the linux drive
and reinstall.

It was frustrating at first but I got a lot of help from the folks in the
newsgroups.  Everything fell into place.  One important thing that I would
instruct anyone installing Linux to do is keep a notebook of important
configuration settings and .file settings.  You will likely forget in
a few months all that you did and if you have to re-create a system it
makes it a lot easier if you have your notes or printouts of the files
involved.

In article <339295bc.0@hades.ndirect.co.uk>,
	kingding-a-ling@ndirect.co.uk (Nao Yoshino) writes:
> If you have any tips on how I can install Linux
> on my i386 Compaq, from my desktop (with a CD-ROM of course!),
> I would be very greatful.
> 
> 
> nao.
> kingding-a-ling@ndirect.co.uk
> 

-- 
George Bonser
grep@oriole.sbay.org, grep@concentric.net