so, the first thing is to get yourself some slackware install cds. you can find them on the slackware site http://www.slackware.com/. i usually use BitTorrent to download it, and as soon as i'm not a poor newly graduated bum, i'll buy a copy… once you have those, hopefully your computer can boot from cds, and you can just pop in disc 1 and begin the installation. (i have to install slack on my laptop that doesn't have a bootable cd-rom, so i'll have instructions for that soon.)
assuming you have booted your computer with the slackware cd, the first thing you have to do is format your drive. i usually use cfdisk, it's pretty easy to use. i make 5 partitions, two of which are required. the two required partitions are the root / and swap paritions (make sure you specify the swap partition as being linux swap in cfdisk). / is the bottom, or first directory on your hard drive (like c:, but more general), and swap is the linux “pagefile” for helping with memory. if you have less than 512meg of RAM, then your swap space should be about double the amount of RAM you have (i.e. 32meg of RAM yields 64meg of swap space). for 512meg of RAM or more, you can just use 512meg of swap space. depending on your installation (full [3.5gig], minimal[500meg]), you should make your / at least 4gig for the full install. mine is 4gig (although, if you use a /usr partition, the root can be much smaller). it is a good idea to also use a /home directory (which is a subdirectory of /, but it is not required to make a /home partition). my /home is 4gig and getting full (/home is where i keep my documents, downloaded files, pictures, etc.). if you are going to compile your own kernel, it is a good idea to use a /boot directory (100meg is a good size). i also use a /usr partition - this is where most programs get installed to, so i use 4-8gig. so this is my partition layout:
/boot (100meg) / (3-4gig) /usr (4-8gig) /home (4+gig) swap (512meg)
the slackware page also has some installation notes on the slackware site http://www.slackware.com/install/, but if you booted from the cd, you don't have to worry about steps 2 and 3.
once your hard drive is partitioned, you can exit cfdisk and run setup. i go straight to option 3, which is “addswap” (enabling the swap space). the setup program then recursively goes through the rest of the options (i just don't need to read the help file or setup a custom keymap). after the swap space is added, you get to name your partitions that you made with cfdisk. i do the full install, but i'm working on fine tuning that…
after all the files are copied to your hard drive, the setup program asks you a few questions about the setup of your computer. i install lilo to the mbr (master boot record. one thing to note, if you're dual booting with windows, and you install or reinstall windows after installing linux, the mbr will get reformatted by windows, and you won't be able to boot to linux immediately, i'll have to include the fix for this **). then the network config is run, the kernel installation (for now install the bare image from the cd), etc.