'homie'...u must [need] read the handbook:

http://doc.slitaz.org/en:handbook:start

http://doc.slitaz.org/en:guides:start

alright I'm doing it now. the installer seems to be stuck at 50%, says "executing mkfs.ext3 on /dev/sda1" should it be doing this for this long?

now it boots but when i log in it says "unable to execute login command"

ok i got it, logged in as root it worked

ok my desktop isn't showing? no icons no picture just blue, windows show up and i can run everything but not desktop background or icons

ok i got it, logged in as root it worked

me2!

so how do i get my desktop to show? i keep looking at stuff but can't seem to get it to work

go to menu --> preferences --> desktop wallpaper

4icons         --> preferences --> desktop icons

*sigh*

No, the problem is that Jake is using Cooking. There is 3 major problems with/in cooking:
1. Creation of the user account is BROKEN. It copies the files to the /home folder instead of your user folder within /home. Because of this Openbox's startup doesn't work, which means pcmanfm (the file manager that also manages the desktop) doesn't work like you'd think.
2. Network settings don't always get updated properly and defaults to the default network name rather than the one you choose. This can break connections like ppp0 because hostnames can't be resolved to IPs.
3. The cooking you see still uses the older linux kernel (2.6.34) instead of the newer one which is version 2.6.36. This breaks stuff that's dependant on the linux kernel.

There has been countless dicussions about this and solutions have be offered to help you out. So don't hesitate to search the forum for them.

Another possible solution is to stick with the Stable version for now. It doesn't have the above issues, and runs pretty stable considering.