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I am an experienced NeXTStep user. I have just installed SLS Linux for the first time. Here is some description/advice to others who are planning to do the same: [1] I grabbed the SLS distribution from a mirror to sunsite.unc.edu, and read the Linux-Installation-Howto by Matt Welsh (no relation). I copied the files using a parallel port transfer under DOS to install from hard disk. (I only wish NeXTStep had this one, too.) [2] Creating boot and root disks was straightforward, and worked (I used the scsi.gz boot disk). Than, once logged on as root, I started "setup." As I found out, the Linux setup program is very finicky. First, it did not mount the DOS partition for me. So, I had to handmount the DOS partition (after the boot, accomplished by "/bin/mount /dev/hda1 /somewhere"). Then, I had to run "setup" again. setup is finicky about specifying (source) filenames. Make sure that there are not one-too-many slashes in the combination of the directory and the mountpoint. Specifying "/somewhere/" and "/sls/" for example fails. [3] The basic SLS installation was rather straightforward. I had a crash on basic installation, but think I was done already (although I do not have tset, so perhaps I am still missing some). Restarting setup for other packages, I wish it had not asked me for the system font, because I liked the standard one, and it was not clear which one it was. Somehow, I also had to twice install LILO before it worked. Don't know why. [4] I then booted, and Linux either complained that it was read-only or that it was read-write but wanted to be read-only at first. I figured out that this was because I was missing an /etc/fstab entry. Here it mine now: /dev/hda2 / ext2 rw 0 1 /dev/hda1 /dosd msdos rw 2 3 /proc /proc proc defaults (The last line is necessary for top and ps to work. I don't know why, and I do not care.) [5] Now, I moved loadlin to the DOS partition, and unpacked it. It took me a while to figure out that I also needed to copy the linux kernel from the linux partition to the DOS partition. (A bit strange to have a Linux kernel on a DOS disk, I think, but that is what it took.) Unfortunately, I screwed up on the disk naming convention (need to use /dev/hda2 of course), so Loadlin was waiting forever for a UMSDOS partition. Once I rebooted, I fixed this, and loadlin worked. [6] It also took me a while to figure out that I did not want to give a vga= argument to loadlin. It only screwed me up. By the way, I never managed to get the console into 100*33 mode (or any mode other than 80*25). This is a pity. [7] Now, I tried to follow Jeff Friedl's (excellent) instructions on how to get X up. BUT---the latest SLS distribution does not come with the latest X. So, I first needed to download this one, too, from sun-site. Installation comes in elf and a.out format. Eventually I figured out that I needed the "a.out" format, because SLS is still built on it (on elf format, the elf-X looks for a missing libm.so). So, I build this X again. The build itself was straightforward untarring and replacing all files in /usr/X11R6 with my new files. (Note: one needs to untar staff both in common and in a.out.) [8] I killed the gpm program to get control of my mouse back, and started X. It came up. Great! So, I logged out, started DOS, changed mode "ps2 mode3x on", and ran loadlin. After login, X still ran, and all it took was to figure out how to make the numerical pad work. It took first a Shift-NumLk, and then a ctrl-alt-minus (on the ; key) and a ctrl-alt-plus (on the / key) let me switch to 800*600 resolution. Now, please do not ask me for anything else---as I stated, I am a novice myself. This however may help some of you doing the same thing. Good luck, /ivo