OK... Just a short talk for those of you who have a form of DOS.
When you first install Linux, there are three ways to do it: (A) boot
directly from a CD-ROM, (B) Use a DOS program to boot the CD-ROM for you,
or (C) Download from the Internet, and use DOS to either boot Linux or to
write floppies to boot Linux.
Typically, if you come across something like Slackware's ZipSlack
distribution, you'll find that it is compressed with a compression format
known ZIP compression. This compression mechanism is native to DOS
computers, although it has been ported to many other types of machines.
Anyway, DOS is unlike Linux in that it doesn't come with the utilities you
usually need to do things such as decompress files, because of DOS's
history as a closed product (hopefully, FreeDOS will change this history).
You need to go to http://www.simtel.net/ and search their archives for the
program called unzip.
Many of you who are familiar with DOS will ask, "Why can't you use PKZip?"
True, PKZip is the famous product that is available at
http://www.pkware.com, and I invite you to try it. For small (i.e., less
than 8mb or so) ZIP files, it's just fine. However, PKZip is a 16-bit
program, and as such, it cannot allocate the memory for archives much
larger than that. unzip, which is a UNIX program that was ported to DOS,
is a 32-bit compression program, it is a command line program, like PKZip,
_and_ it can handle extra large ZIP files (such as is the ZipSlack
distribution, at 35.5mb, if I remember right).
End result, is you have to download the program, becuase it is not
available on a DOS system to start with.
If _anyone_ needs more information on the unzipping of things, find the
archives for this mailing list and search 'em. It's been talked about
extensively for awhile.
- Mike
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Trausch [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.wcnet.org/~mtrausch 100% Microsoft Free on a PC!
Linux: Because rebooting is for adding new hardware!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Thu, 8 Apr 1999, Blue Ink Press wrote:
BIP>Date: Thu, 08 Apr 1999 15:04:48 -0400
BIP>From: Blue Ink Press <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
BIP>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
BIP>Subject: unzipping Slackware
BIP>
BIP>After you download files from a Slackware mirror site, you can't just use
BIP>the boot and root disks and install them from your harddrive without
BIP>unzipping them, they have to be unzipped in dos, first? If so, what unzips
BIP>them, and where do you obtain it? And what would be the DOS command to do
BIP>this?
BIP>
BIP>________________________________________________________
BIP>NetZero - We believe in a FREE Internet. Shouldn't you?
BIP>Get your FREE Internet Access and Email at
BIP>http://www.netzero.net/download.html
BIP>
