Opinions Please

[havnblast]

nope dead too --- DNS issues??

[ross549]

I have it here........ internettrafficreport.com is showing four major routers down right now in North America. Maybe that is affecting some folks' internet?

[teacher]

Kelly The Distrowatch remark about the merging with Ubuntu was the reason I am not going with Gnoppix. I have Ubuntu already and am not impressed to the point of being worthy of adding to the list I keep up to date. It is a nice distro but has nothing that distinguishes it for me from any other distro. It is no longer in my Lilo and is a drive ready for a new distro.

[havnblast]

That's understandable - I have never tried or seen Ubuntu so I'm clueless on it today. I just remember trying Gnoppix out about a year ago.Good luck with Frugal - be interesting to hear how the saga goes.

Edited January 12, 2005 by havnblast

[darkstar]

BarryB, The problem MAY have been the infamous operator error. It seems that for some reason I had no swap partition defined. I reinstalled and all is well again.

Edited January 12, 2005 by darkstar

[BarryB]

BarryB, The problem MAY have been the infamous operator error. It seems that for some reason I had no swap partition defined. I reinstalled and all is well again.

I know OE very well..he and I have a long history . Glad to see all is well now....Like the 2.6.10 kernel..really has(for the system I have it on) increased speed. Encrypted DVD's working already...so I'm happy with the beta.

[SonicDragon]

What about the debian with the new installer? Is that included in sarge yet? I would love to know a little more about that.

[teacher]

I have been so busy playing with the laptop. I guess I need to burn some CDs and see what I can do. I will probably play with Frugalware on Saturday. As I think about it most of debian is very stable and I like to play a little more cutting edge.

[steel]

What about the debian with the new installer? Is that included in sarge yet? I would love to know a little more about that.

yeah i agree with Sonic , you should have a deb based Distro , rpm based on, slack based or we could wait for a bruno linux with a huge how to section seriously though Debian is great i dont think anything is easier then apt-get i ran woody for a long time, and everything was always unstable install cos i like suprises or should i say shocked .. only thing i found about debian was it was brutual install not easy well not for me anyway ..havent tried any other debian then knoppix i believe

[Bruno]

I think if you do not like Ubuntu, it will be hard to find a Debian based distro that is cutting edge . . . . ( sounds like you want dry water ) Bruno

[teacher]

I do believe I have talked myself out of anything Debian.

[linuxdude32]

I have been so busy playing with the laptop.  I guess I need to burn some CDs and see what I can do.  I will probably play with Frugalware on Saturday.  As I think about it most of debian is very stable and I like to play a little more cutting edge.

You can use cutting edge with Debian too (well, not the installer, but the rest of it). You'll just have to get the unstable version. Knoppix and SimplyMepis are both excellent Debian-based distros that are pretty modern. I know, you don't want any live distros.

[teacher]

I still am not a Knoppix fan. I quit even burning the latest releases because I never use them. I h ave run SimplyMepis and looked at it. I want to play with something new and different.

[steel]

I think if you do not like Ubuntu, it will be hard to find a Debian based distro that is cutting edge . . . . ( sounds like you want dry water )

yikkkess i forgot about that partition of Ubuntu cos hmmmm slack has me all confused and stuff hahaha, actually its more fin, and hmmmm my coffee is weaker then heck at 4;30 am moreeee coffeee neeeded

[teacher]

Sounds good. I guess it is time I can go fix my morning cup of coffee to get me to the gym to swim. It's a long drive without coffee.

[steel]

I want to play with something new and different.

ohhhh ok i think i got it and looks like fun this or that hmmm actually it sounds like something i would try too... gym at such an early time? heck i have enough trouble dragging my butt outta bed at this time let alone swim, actually i swim like a rock with a heavy achor

[teacher]

blackrhino and xbox. You did have fun looking those up.Yes, swim at this time. If I leave the house by 5:10 I can be at the gym when they open up at 5:45. That way I have my exercise done and I can still be at school by 7. It is very relaxing to have the whole pool to yourself and just float away whiel swimming. I plan to try Frugalware this weekend. If I don't like it I will look at something else. I went down the lists at nluug and basically looked at every distro that had a new release in the last couple of months.

[teacher]

    ohhhh ok i think i got it and looks like fun this or that hmmm actually it sounds like something i would try too... gym at such an early time? heck i have enough trouble dragging my butt outta bed at this time let alone swim, actually i swim like a rock with a heavy achor   

You do have a sense of adventure. I just looked up your links. :D :DA. BlackRhino is for a Sony Playstation. What on earth would I do with that? Play the games I don't want to buy???B. XBox is designed to run on an XBox. I don't have one of those either. :DDynebolic would be more my style than either of those. Guess I had better go burn the CDs I do have.

[teacher]

Linux Gurus! Help! Any ideas of how I do this one? I am not installing any distros that are unknown until I have a boot CD. I do not want to risk a distro that automatically writes a bootloader without asking. Until it is installed I won't know.How do I get around this:

Now I just have to figure out why I can't make a boot CD.  I am not installing another distro until I have that one figured out.

bash-2.05b# mkrescue --iso --kernel kernel-2.6.7-gentoo-r112880+0 records in2880+0 records outMaking filesystemmke2fs 1.35 (28-Feb-2004)/tmp/mkrescue-emu is not a block special device.Proceed anyway? (y,n) Filesystem label=OS type: LinuxBlock size=1024 (log=0)Fragment size=1024 (log=0)24 inodes, 2880 blocks144 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super userFirst data block=11 block group8192 blocks per group, 8192 fragments per group24 inodes per groupWriting inode tables: doneWriting superblocks and filesystem accounting information: doneThis filesystem will be automatically checked every 22 mounts or180 days, whichever comes first.  Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.Mounting filesystemmount: could not find any device /dev/loop#Copying files...`kernel-2.6.7-gentoo-r11' -> `/tmp/mkrescue-flp/linux'done.Running /sbin/lilo ...Ignoring entry 'boot'Fatal:  '/dev/' is not a whole disk deviceLILO version 22.6.1 failure.umount: /tmp/mkrescue-flp: not mounted

[ross549]

Looks like a device entry in lilo.conf is causing the error.

Edited January 13, 2005 by ross549

[Bruno]

Adam is right . . . and is there in initrd.img in Gentoo ?? . . and no vmlinuz ?? Bruno

[teacher]

Here is the applicable part of my lilo:

image=/boot/kernel-2.6.7-gentoo-r11        label="Gentoo"        root=/dev/hda13        append="devfs=nomount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda5"        read-only

No initrd listed. Lilo works fine and I booted with it three times today already as I was doing updates. My boot entry lists a config and a kernel and that is it for Gentoo.

[teacher]

The /dev error is that it says it can not find a /dev/loop! There is no entry in /dev that is labeled "loop"I just reran /sbin/lilo and had no errors and ran the "mkrescue --iso --kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.7-gentoo-r11" again with the same results.I guess I will have to live with chroot from the live CD if I trash my lilo.

[linuxdude32]

Are you trying to make the rescue disk from within Gentoo, Julia? It uses the lilo.conf in /etc and I don't think you want the one that's included with Gentoo if you're using this from within Gentoo.Btw, you could just back up your master boot record. You can always put it back if things go badly.See Backing Up the MBRIf you don't want to back up your partition table (it's part of the MBR), just the boot sector, then replace 512 with 446.

[linuxdude32]

Even though you don't need it to boot, but is there an initrd file for Gentoo anyway? I notice this in the manpage for mkrescue (emphasis mine):

--initrd <filepath> and --kernel <filepath> These options, which must be used together, allow specification of an arbitrary kernel file and initial ramdisk file to be used on the created boot floppy. Be sure you know what you are doing before you use these options.

I know it refers to boot floppy but the version with the ISO option may still need both files. Generally the initrd is used when certain filesystem drivers aren't built into the kernel. Gentoo is so customized that it's possible it needs it when making a rescue CD.

[teacher]

Are you trying to make the rescue disk from within Gentoo, Julia? It uses the lilo.conf in /etc and I don't think you want the one that's included with Gentoo if you're using this from within Gentoo.

Why would I not want the lilo from Gentoo? I know I am abnormal but that is where I run my lilo. That seems to be my most stable distro so I switched to keeping it there jus a week or two ago. Good thing I did because Drake 10.1 is trash. It comes up with so many errors it is not funny. They all start with a USB controller error and it goes downhill quickly from there. I tried running the backup with both the initrd and kernel. That ended up even worse than running it the way I posted. I started to install last night but was sidetracked working on my taxes on the other computer so I will probably play with this tomorrow since this evening is tied up already.

[teacher]

My Frugalware disks just landed in the trash! :thumbsdown:Reasons:1. The install set up lists every file and you must manually choose which ones you want. It would not be a program for new folks as you must really know what files you need and which you do not.2. I have made two install attempts. Both times were unsuccessful.3. My first attempt appeared to install but did not ask for any user names or passwords, much less a root password. When I went to log in I could not do anything because it would not recognize my keyboard or mouse!4. I received a "Fatal error" and it would ask if I wanted to reboot. This was on my second install. I made it all the way to disk two on this install. 5. When it did finish the first install the options for installing was grub only even though one of the files selected was a Lilo file. The options were to install grub on the master or on the first sector of the second hard drive - neither of which made any sense for me. I guess I will have to look at what I want to do again. I did not overwrite my Mandrake partition but put it into a new partition I added to the hard drive.

[BarryB]

I had almost the same result with frug, Julia...so I installed Vidalinux(gentoo based) instead...results are pretty good. I'm emerging the world right now...(funny thing is the AMD iso doesn't like the AMD machine I tried to put it on and the i686 went without a problem) anyway..I guess I'm now close to a real gentoo install(yea..I know I cheated )..at least I can say I have reps from each class...RPM,DEB,slack and Gentoo based one day...the real thing

Edited January 15, 2005 by BarryB

[teacher]

Glad to hear it is not just me. Very frustrating to say the least. Glad you found a way to have Gentoo, even if the easy way, it is still Gentoo.I am off to think about other distros again. Who knows, I could just leave it as it is but I doubt it!

[teacher]

That took a long time to think about. I am burning my second Buffalo CD and downloading Rubyx. Rubyx sounds interesting since it is a built from scratch using a different format and not a reiteration of another distro. Buffalo because it is a Vector/Slack cross so it has to be interesting.