These are root-install disks for Slackware 3.5 (version 3.5.0) You will need one of these disks to install Linux. 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 do not need to decompress these disks -- the kernel will do that as it loads them. The disk images must be written to 1.44MB floppies. Note that if you plan to mount the rootdisk instead of loading it into a ramdisk (using the method outlined in LOWMEM.TXT for machines with only 4MB) then you must use one of the smaller "obsolete" images, and must decompress the image with GZIP.EXE before writing it out to a floppy. Here's a description of the choices: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- color.gz: A root-install disk using an easy-to-use new full-screen color install program. NOTE: This version of the install system is not forgiving of extra keystrokes entered between screens, so type carefully. pcmcia.gz: A version of the color install disk designed for installing to a laptop using a PCMCIA ethernet or scsi card. umsdos.gz: A version of the color install disk using UMSDOS - a filesystem that allows you to install Linux into a directory on an existing MS-DOS partition. Not as fast as ext2 or xiafs, but it works, and you don't have to repartition your drive. [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 DOS partition to install Linux. ] There's also this non-installation rootdisk: rescue.gz: This is a rescue disk for Linux. It is a reasonably complete mini-Linux system running from a four megabyte ramdisk. It contains an editor (vi), lilo, and other utilities useful for fixing your Linux machine if you ever get locked out for some reason. It's built with libraries and utilities from Slackware 3.5, and includes basic TCP/IP utilities such as ping, telnet, and ftp. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------