In Slackware, the instructions for enabling WiFi can be found by viewing two Unix man pages:

• man wpa_supplicant
• man wpa_supplicant.conf

Your system may be different, but for my system I had to do two things:

• Create a wpa_supplicant.conf file in /etc
• Edit /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf

My /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file looks like this:

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# allow frontend (e.g., wpa_cli) to be used by all users in 'wheel' group
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=wheel
#
# home network; allow all valid ciphers
network={
   ssid="homenet"
   scan_ssid=1
   key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
   psk="9u7YFG523ah2jqmM"
}

The appropriate entry in /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf looks like this:

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IFNAME[4]="wlan0"
IPADDR[4]=""
NETMASK[4]=""
USE_DHCP[4]="yes"
DHCP_HOSTNAME[4]="linux"
WLAN_ESSID[4]=homenet
WLAN_MODE[4]="Ad-Hoc"
WLAN_RATE[4]="auto"
WLAN_CHANNEL[4]="auto"
WLAN_KEY[4]="9u7YFG523ah2jqmM"
WLAN_WPA[4]="wpa_supplicant"

With these settings my WiFi is automatically enabled during the boot process, and its ready to go when I login to my account.