Next: 2.3.6.1 Installing Slackware with Up: 2.3 Installing the Linux Previous: 2.3.5 Creating the filesystems

## 2.3.6 Installing the software

Finally, you are ready to install the software on your system. Every distribution has a different mechanism for doing this. Many distributions have a self-contained program which will step you through the installation. On other distributions, you will have to mount your filesystems in a certain subdirectory (such as `/mnt`) and copy the software to them by hand. On CD-ROM distributions, you may be given the option to install a portion of the software on your hard drives, and leave most of the software on the CD-ROM.

Some distributions offer several different ways to install the software. For example, you may be able to install the software directly from an MS-DOS partition on your hard drive, instead of from floppies. Or, you may be able to install over a TCP/IP network via FTP or NFS. See your distribution's documentation for details.

For example, the Slackware distribution only requires you to create partitions with `fdisk`, optionally create swap space with `mkswap` and `swapon` (if you have 4 megs or less of RAM), and then run the `setup` program. `setup` leads you through a very self-explanatory menu system to install the software.

Use of `setup` is described in detail below.

The exact method used to install the Linux software differs greatly with each distribution. We're hoping that installing the Linux software should be self-explanatory, as it is with most distributions.

- 2.3.6.1 Installing Slackware with setup

Next: 2.3.6.1 Installing Slackware with Up: 2.3 Installing the Linux Previous: 2.3.5 Creating the filesystems