I guess I'm a Karma Whore.

After my Fedora issues and failed attempt to install SUSE 9.1, I decided to try out Slackware 10 and I was quite impressed for the most part.

Slackware claims to be 2.6.x ready, but I never found the 2.6 kernel anywhere on the install CDs, so I just installed bare.i, which is 2.4.26. I noticed that not only is Slack 10 2.6 ready, but it even has all those stupid Alsa apps I fought with installed and configured correctly. I then downloaded the 2.6.7 source, grabbed my old 2.6.5 config from my workstation, removed OSS stuff, and configured it to use Alsa. "make install" is somewhat broken, so I had to manually install the modules, move the kernel from / to /boot, and configure Lilo. The only problem I had was when I forgot to copy lilo to the Windows partition (I use the NT loader to boot).

Things I like about Slackware 10:
1. A distro thats actually 2.6 ready, as opposed to Fedora which is just a patched up 2.4 distro.
2. Most of my apps are already installed and are not crippled, unlike Fedora (no mp3 support, no movie player, generic desktops, etc)
3. KDE actually looks like KDE
4. Only 2 CDs

Things about Slack that annoy me:
1. Lilo (it's not that bad, I still remember how to configure it)
2. I hate rc scripts
3. WTF happened to pkg*?
4. I haven't even tried to mess with ATI's driver, since it probably won't work with the xorg server.

I decided to install Fedora Core 2 on my Windows machine, despite warnings from the community about it trashing the MBR, since I usually install the boot loader to the first sector of the root partition and use the NT boot loader to bring up Linux. In addition, I used SuSE Live CD 9.1 to partition and format my swap and root, so there would be no reason for Fedora to touch the MBR. Sounds like it would work, right? Nope.

Abit BH7
P4 3.06 with 533 Mhz bus
512 MB Crucial PC2700
ATI Radeon 9500
Maxtor 20GB Drive, autodetected

"NTLDR Missing" is the only thing I get. I boot the XP install disk again and go to repair console and try everything. FIXBOOT, FIXMBR, BOOTCFG, nothing works. I boot a 98SE rescue disk, I can see NTLDR with attrib, but it won't run. WTF?

I give up shooting blind and search Google and go to the first hit, some O'Reilly weblog with a similar rant as mine. He didn't have the fix, but a comment there reminded me of one I saw when the issue was first exposed on /.: set the drive from autodetect to LBA. It works, and I go about cleaning up my boot.ini and playing with FC2.

Bedides kernel 2.6.5 which I already installed on a Core 1 machine, I see nothing special about FC2. It still has no visible movie player, no mp3 support, and they've butchered KDE to look like Gnome. It seems the higher the version number gets, the more bloated Red Hat/Fedora gets, and the more features dissapear. I find myself spending more time installing stuff like Xmms and Xine than I do installing the OS.

I decided to upgrade my main workstation running Fedora Core 1 to kernel 2.6.2 some time ago. After going through gconfig and learning kernel configuring all over again, I see that OSS is "depreciated" and that I should use ALSA. I've heard of it before, so I assumed it was mature. HA!

I leave out all reverences to OSS in favor of a straight up ALSA setup. Big mistake. All the init scripts in Fedora reference the old modules, and even after changing them to the new ones, and editing modules.conf, I still get strange errors looking for sound-x-x. So it works now, right? Nope.

All the correct modules are loaded, XMMS recompiled, and still no sound. Probably the mixer. Tried to run it in the GUI, but that won't work with ALSA. Aumix is dead too, so I search around for an ALSA compatible mixer. I find the most retarded unintuative buggy apps ever. Example: Master Volume? Sure, it's there, but it doesn't do anything. You have to horizontally scroll through the 20 or so broken sliders until you reach something-pcm-0 or some crap. I suffer with it for about a week, then recompile without ALSA and with OSS. So much for progress.

                (\(\
    `======     (^.^)
    //`         (")")
    ~

Mod me up or the bunny gets it!

Compiling a kernel on a stock non-smp Fedora Core 1 system results in a compile failure, usually involving active_load_balance or some shit. This is probably unrelated to the broken xconfig issues I've experienced with stock kernels.

The quick fix is after 'make menuconfig' and setting everything up is to 'make oldconfig' which fixes the .config file. Alternatively, you can either run 'make menuconfig' twice (loading and saving the old config), or manually wipe out these two lines in the .config file after running it once:

CONFIG_SHARE_RUNQUEUE=y
CONFIG_MAX_NR_SIBLINGS=2

I love obscurely documented bullshit.

<reverse psychology> I would like my comments to be taken out of context and modded as Troll wherever I post no matter how on topic or informative my post may be, then mod any replies, no matter how stupid, up to +5. Never read the comments I reply to either, that way my comments appear even more offtopic.</reverse psychology>

Not that I really care. I have karma to burn.