These are root-install disks for Slackware 7.3 You will need one of these disks to install Linux. (You'll also need a bootdisk to be able to boot any of these disks -- see one of the bootdsks directories for those) The disk is created by writing the image out with RAWRITE.EXE under DOS. For example, to make the color.gz rootdisk, you'd put a formatted floppy in your floppy drive, and then run this command: C:\> RAWRITE COLOR.GZ A: Normally you should not decompress these disks -- the kernel will do that as it loads them. The disk images must be written to 1.44MB floppies. Here's a description of the choices: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- color.gz This is the default Slackware installation disk, used to install Slackware Linux to its own partition. The name color.gz comes from the color menus used to install Slackware. This is the installation disk most people should use. NOTE: The 'dialog' program used by the install system is not forgiving of extra keystrokes entered between screens, so type carefully. umsdos.gz This is similar to the color.gz disk, but installs using UMSDOS, a system that allows you to install Slackware into a directory on an existing MS-DOS partition. This isn't as fast as using a native Linux filesystem, and can use more drive space because of limitations in the way DOS stores small files. The big advantage of using UMSDOS is that you can try Slackware without repartitioning your hard drive. This is much easier for the beginner, and a lot less potentially dangerous to your system. DO NOT use 2.4 kernels with UMSDOS! It does not work, and may damage your partition. [NOTE: If you want to use UMSDOS, you might want to consider using the ZipSlack installation found in the /zipslack directory. This is a little easier way to get started -- just unzip a file on your FAT or FAT32 partition to install Linux. ] There's also these supplemental hardware support disk images, used in conjunction with one of the disks above: pcmcia.dsk This supplemental disk provides support for laptop devices. It allows installing through a network or CDROM drive card. To use this disk to scan for PCMCIA devices (this is only done if you need to use them DURING the installation), you enter 'pcmcia' after logging into one of the primary install disks (color.gz or umsdos.gz). network.dsk This supplemental disk provides support for ethernet cards. To use this disk to scan for network devices (this is only done if you need to use them DURING the installation), you enter 'network' after logging into one of the primary install disks (color.gz or umsdos.gz). NOTE: If you are using one of the 2.4.5 based bootdisks, you will need to use one of these replacements for the supplemental disks: pcm245.dsk PCMCIA supplemental disk for Linux 2.4.5. netw245.dsk Network supplemental disk for Linux 2.4.5. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------