About

The root disk is the second diskette needed to install Slackware Linux. This disk holds the setup program and all of the necessary utilities to get Slackware up and running on your system. You create the root disk in the same manner as the boot disk. That is, pick an image and dump it to a floppy. The list below explains the different root disk images available.

install.1, install.2	These are the Slackware installation disks, used to install Slackware Linux to its own partition. To load the installer from floppy disk, you'll need to write each to these to a floppy disk, and use a bootdisk to load them. NOTE: The 'dialog' program used by the install system is not forgiving of extra keystrokes entered between screens, so type carefully. :-)
install.zip	This is an *EXPERIMENTAL* UMSDOS-based Slackware installer. It is a UMSDOS version of the Slackware installer rootdisks.

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 loading the 'install' disks and logging in.
pcmcia.dsk	This supplemental disk provides support for laptop devices. It allows installing through a network or CD-ROM 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 loading the 'install' disks and logging in.
rescue.dsk	This is a BusyBox-based rescue disk for Linux. It is a reasonably complete mini-Linux system running from a four megabyte ramdisk, and contains an editor (vi), networking tools like ifconfig, route, telnet, ping, and wget, and other tools that might be handy for fixing your Linux machine if you ever get locked out for some reason, or any time you just need to boot Linux to "edit something quickly".
sbootmgr.dsk	This nifty little tool allows selecting various devices to boot from a menu, and even allows booting a CD-ROM in machines where the BIOS doesn't support it (or it's supposed to support it, but it just doesn't work). If you have trouble booting the Slackware CD-ROM, you might try writing this image to a floppy, booting it, and then selecting your CD-ROM drive as the boot device. The SBM installer is available as a Slackware package (called "btmgr") in the extra/ packages collection.