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Journal jawtheshark's Journal: No iBook 16

Journal by jawtheshark
So, I have no iBook.... I don't have a laptop for the moment, so let's use that desktop I bought a year ago which I never use. You know, that lowly Dual AMD Athlon 2400+ I have lying around. Yes, it runs W2k, but that isn't fun.

Pushed in the CD of my favourite Linux distribution, which is Slackware 9.0 (very close to BSD, and I *like* BSD) and let it go through the install. Partition, then reply some questions (Huh? WTF is *that* package again?) and then I get root prompt. A little xf86cfg later I'm running WindowMaker, surfing Slashdot on an old Mozilla 1.3 (fonts are ugly), and then I decided to mount one of my NTFS partitions read-only on /mnt/harddisk/trash. I launch XMMS and play the tune I gave you guys a couple of days ago, Uhm, guys, this all works....and this is goddamned Slackware! Not Mandrake or SuSE or Red Hat... Slackware! You know for the masochists....

Heck, installing Windows 2000 on this machine took a weekend! (In order to get it to my taste) Well, I still won't say it is ready for the desktop.... Simply because I know desktop users too well. However, if the 31337 version of Linux is so easy to install, I really will have to move to LFS, Gentoo or perhaps even FreeBSD.

(Note for those that got worried in their Windows world: W2k detected the fact that I have 2 CPU's and that I have a scroll button mouse. Slackware didn't. Scrolling the mouse doesn't work and cat /proc/cpuinfo only gives me one CPU.... So, no, it isn't perfect, but this is exotic hardware after all)

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  • I'm running Gentoo now, and I'd guess it's probably not leet enough to challenge you. It does run really well, though. The portage system works too well to make software updates any sort of real work. "emerge -u world" and you're done -- well, after lots of automagic compiling, you're done.

    I think Gentoo managed to recognize all of my hardware without any trouble, but my rig is not so fancy.

    Just to cause myself a little pain, I'm going to try to get a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse from a Mac running o

    • Gentoo was indeed one of the other ones I'd like to try. It's all the compiling that keeps me off it. I don't mind compiling some packages (heck, I have done this a lot in my Peanut Linux days), but I just can't see me compile XFree86/KDE/Gnome or -god forbid- OpenOffice. ;-) Well, I assume my rig will be able to cope, but I don't like it running overnight because you can imagine that the machine sounds like a jet taking off.

      I didn't use "Slackware" to be 31337 or so... I use it because I know BSD, and

      • I'm a gentoo user and I run some SMP boxes, and my server (dual pentium II 266) and backup server (dual Pentium Pro 200) both run it and run smoothly at that. I do compile my own kernels during install, so having SMP enabled. works great from there.
  • Your install CD may not support SMP. I ran into that with my Dual Pentium Pro 180 installing Debian.
    • That's probably it... You can probably tell me: is it enough to recompile the kernel with SMP support, or do the applications have to be recompiled for it too (I think of "top" for example, which is supposed to show some stats if you have more than one CPU)

      Before I started installing Slackware, I looked at the alternate kernels, but none mentioned SMP.

      • You'll get a lot of benefit just from building the SMP kernel, I think. That's especially true if you run Gentoo, because it can "emerge" packages on one proc while you enjoy using the other one.

        I just need to figure out how to convince someone to give me a free dual Opteron or Athlon64 system for home.

        • That's especially true if you run Gentoo, because it can "emerge" packages on one proc while you enjoy using the other one.

          That is what I mostly do on W2k. Play GTA3 while crushing Seti@Home packets. Affinity rules ;-)

          I just need to figure out how to convince someone to give me a free dual Opteron or Athlon64 system for home.

          It won't be me... For the moment I advise against such systems. I have this pilot at work who mainly runs Microsoft Flying Simulator. He thought of buying a 64bit system.

  • Cut my teeth with the old RedHat Mandrake knockoff that they did with McMillan publishing back in like 97 I think.
    I've installed just about every wortwhile Linux on the box (Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, Gentoo, Peanut and Slackware) as well as FreeBSD.
    Pound for pound, Slack was probably the easiest install. No shit.
    My only gripe was the sound config didn't work. And that, from what I understand, has always been an issue (until now I believe).

    So now I've got the one box that's for the wife running XP Pro and
    • Peanut

      Cool! Somebody else that knows Peanut! I used Peanut extensively on my old laptop (before I bought the iBook). That was before my DSL days, and Peanut was compact enough to be downloaded over ISDN and installed on a 1.3Gig harddisk. Did all kinds of nifty stuff with it, including running MySQL (small DB obviously)

      I've got the one box that's for the wife running XP Pro

      I standardized my family on Windows 2000 Pro. I like Windows 2000 Pro. Never ever said, I didn't ;-) I just miss my Un

      • tell me...would Peanut work well on a pentium laptop with no CD drive? I'm working on ways to get linux on that bastardly piece of crap.
        • It worked fine on a P120 laptop with 32Meg RAM. It did have a CD-Rom but that was not mainstream in the days these laptops were high-end. Trash KDE thouh, it will get you nowhere: with WindowMaker and Opera as a browser you have a fine surfing station.

          You could also check out Vector Linux, which is what that infamous P120 ran until a few months ago.

          • sounds good. i'm documenting all I do, i'll have to give both those a shot. WindowMaker was my intended WM for this box, so that should work out alright. Hopefully the disk will boot, this particular model ThinkPad seems a bit disagreeable when it comes to linux booting from floppy (according to the pages I've found online).

  • Debian (Score:2)

    by ces ( 119879 )
    I've recently gone back to Debian and I'm liking it a lot. Just about anything you want has probably been packaged for Debian even if the "stable" version might be a bit out of date.

    It isn't quite the pain to install it used to be and it is really easy to add new packages and their dependancies using apt. Similarly security updates or updating to the latest version of debian can be done in a single command.

    One thing I really like about Debian other than the ease of updates is how utterly rock solid it is.
  • Yeah, Slackware is just fine, and not hard to install. My home fileserver is still running Slackware 7 and Linux 2.2.x.

    But, in way, that Slackware 7 box illustrates the problem I had with Slackware. I don't keep it up to date except for kernel updates (and 2.2 updates don't happen very often anymore). I found Slackware to be difficult to maintain, because I had to know what I was doing. It got to the point where I'm kinda scared to mess with it. For example, I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to s

    • Slackware...ah yes. Installed it in, um, '97 I think when I first got into Linux. Still running it on my web/mail server. Love love love.

      Sorta-leet: I installed it via floppy on a 486SX laptop w/8MB of RAM I picked up on eBay for $20. The original drive was 120MB. I've just installed a 4.5GB drive I inherited,and I'm trying to install Slackware on it using tar and Tom's Root Boot. Why? For some reason the Slackware install floppies wouldn't write correctly on the built-in floppy drive, and it's

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