I dual booted windows xp pro with slackware 10 so in total I have 5 partitions:

hda1 = windows
hda2 = extended
hda5 = data disk
hda3 = slackware
hda4 = linux swap

To begin you can either setup your partitions through partition magic or through cfdisk (just before the Linux setup). if you are dual booting, i recommend using partition magic if you only have one current partition on your hard drive. cfdisk will require that partition to be deleted and all information will be lost if you do it that way. if the disk has two partitions then you are set to go; just split the 2nd partition into your Linux partition and your swap partition. it’s also a good idea to create a fat32 partition for data transfer between windows and linux. ntfs is currently read-only for root. to be able to read ntfs as a user, add:

umask=002,uid=user#,gid=group# to /etc/fstab where # is the user and group numbers.

Kernel

If you’re upgrading the kernel source after an installation of slack 10.2 you do not need to install the kernel source on the cdrom (2.4.26). just copy the file linux-2.6.13.tar.gz to the /usr/src directory as root and use the following command to extract:

#tar xfvz linux-2.6.13.tar.gz now create a symbolic link:

#ln -sf /usr/src/linux-2.6.13 /usr/src/linuxnow you are ready to apply patches and to recompile!

The following list shows the location of the options in the menuconfig/xconfig process:

acpi: “power management options (acpi, apm) > enable acpi support”
dvd/cdrw: “ata/atapi/mfm/rll support > include ide/atapi cdrom support”
ethernet: “device drivers > networking support > ethernet(10 or 100mbit) > eisa,vlb,pci and on board controllers > etherexpresspro/100 support (eepro100, original becker driver)” and ” etherexpresspro/100 support (e100, alternate intel driver)”
pcmcia: “bus options > pcmcia cardbus support > pcmcia cardbus support > cardbus yenta-compatible bridge support”
sonypi: “device drivers > character devices > sony vaio programmable i/o support”
sound: “sound > sound card support” and “alsa > intel i8×0/mx440…”
usb/memorystick: “device drivers > usb > uhci hcd” and “ehci hcd” and “ohci hcd” and “usb mass storage support” and ” usb human interface device support” and “usb device file system”