20 Mar 1999 @ 5:00 PM 

Saturday

Continuing my adventures with Linux…

Well, I went ahead and bought a new video card to fix the video problems in Linux.  Since I hadn’t actually installed anything special in Linux, I wiped it and started over.  I added another 6.4 gig hard drive to my Frankenstein machine while I was at it.

So, I installed the 16meg Riva TNT card (only 78 bucks!), the new HD, partitioned, copied, etc.  This time, when I popped in the Linux CD, everything went smoothly.  Knowing I had to reboot a couple times to get the sound to work helped my headaches stay minimized.  Now, after about a week or so running this dual-boot configuration, I’ve installed StarOffice for Linux, and set up a few other things.  I’m reading Running Linux and attempting to muddle through.  My experience with Unix in Korea helps, but only a little.  🙂

I have about 3 gigs devoted to Linux now, and I’ve got Bootmagic set up to dual boot into either Linux or Win98.  While I was updating things, I set up IE 5.0 on the Win98 side, and I can’t tell much difference from IE 4, except I can actually read stuff in the status bar again.  They made it back to a normal size, instead of giving 3/4 of the space on the status bar to "Internet Zone" information.

Now, I plan to recompile the kernel, play with Afterstep instead of KDE for a while, and otherwise see if I can completely destroy the little free time that I have.

TTYL.

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 05 Jun 2004 @ 07:43 AM

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Linux?

 
 04 Mar 1999 @ 4:58 PM 

Thursday

Although I have tried Linux before, it seems to be the month of the Open Source, so I gave it another try recently.  WOW!  What a difference a year makes.  The installation I tried was a CD I burned myself (love those toys) of Linux-Mandrake.   Mandrake is really nothing more than Red Hat 5.2 with the K Desktop Environment thrown into the install program.

So, here’s my experience and impressions so far.  I downloaded the full ISO image of the CD (45 hours, don’t try this without some industrial strength download-resumption software).  Then, after I burned it onto a blank CDR, I ran Partition Magic to clear up some extra partitions.   I created a Linux Ext2 partition (500 megs) and a Linux Swap partition (80 megs).   Prepared, with all my most important data files backed up to a CDRW disk (toys, toys, toys!), I plunged into the install routine with hope and more than a bit of dread.   About 10 months ago, I tried something very similar with Debian (an older version to be fair) and ended up spending much time rebuilding my trashed partition tables and FATs.  This time, though, was very different.

After the CD booted (love those bootable CD’s), it started the Linux-Mandrake-Redhat install routine.  I stepped through the easy-to-follow (for a geek) setup and had myself a working Linux box in no time, with a dual-boot configuration to Win98 (scourge of evil but a necessary evil), and even had KDE running in a crappy 256-color mode.  My modem wasn’t recognized, and my printer would not print.  My sound card made one squawk and stopped.  ARGH!  After many trips to the HOWTO files from the CD, I got everything working, with the exception of my video.  I can SEE everything, but I can’t convince the X server that my video is capable of more than 8-bit color (currently using 16-bit in Win98, with on-the-fly to 24-bit).  And, more maddening, the video gives me little drop-out lines.  Totally undocumented by any other victim/user of Linux that I’ve been able to find with WebFerret, Slashdot, UGeek, or 32bitsOnline.   But, I have an old crappy video card, and that Riva TNT looks awfully nice, especially at $89…

More to follow.

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 05 Jun 2004 @ 07:43 AM

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