Ed's Adventures in Linux

You can get them for about 40 on ebay.

Wil

lesson 1 learnt, damn small linux is not a good idea, even though it runs of hd it still loads a big chunk of itself into a RAM disk, and the memory overflows and processes drop off, like ssh or the xserver. So attempt number two, with debian.

Gentoo is definitely good for installing on a minimal machine - it's very easy to just install the stuff you want and nothing else.

My current project (and this is a fun one) is getting the retarded Yahama OPL3-SA3 sound chipset thing to work with Linux

I've got one; it works fine with ALSA on a 2.4 kernel. Not tried 2.6, but I'd imagine it will be fine with that too.

There. I said it. I feel better.

Generally, I like Gentoo because you can really get your hands dirty. But, the support forums and emerge in general don't let you get too bogged down IMHO.

http://www.macosrumors.com/

(scroll down a half page to see the Linux item)

Also I am being tried by trying to set the time using date, it doesn't want to play ball as detailed in it's man page. Is there a little dohicky to sync the clock with a network time server?

Even now Mac OS X is the best *nix distro around. I just can't afford another mac box to be the server, afford at the moment is anything more than free.

rdate ntp2b.mcc.ac.uk

(yes haha very funny)

However, I have been won over by gentoo, time to install again, minimum system to start with, as long as I can get ssh and screen running I can do the rest remotely.

Aaah, you ask that Mark, you ask.

date MMDDhhmm
hwclock --systohc --utc

Ed: I use Gentoo on a P266. Installing the base system took about 3 days.

Unfortunately, I think you only get that with the installation kernel. To get it to work on a normal kernel requires quite a bit of hacking - at least, it did the last time I thought about setting that up.

It's not too difficult, just add some kernel compilation flags for framebuffer, pass some arguments in grub, emerge bootsplash and a couple of other tweaks that are mentioned in a Gentoo framebuffer tutorial that I'm forgetting. I've got it going on mine with a custom background.

More to the point, configuring your system can be a serious pain. Anyone can upgrade a driver in Windows, but I'm not sure how many average people want to learn VI or Emacs or whatever and then change runtime mode so they can set up their graphics card for X.
And I don't blame them.
I've just moved to Linux myself, after being a Windows user since '94 or so (whenever Windows 95 came through)
I'm quite enjoying it for the most part, mostly thanks to the shell-scripting and the overall smoother running. But goddamn can it be a pain sometimes.

Installing Flash in Mozilla Firebird took like two days before it finally worked. Grr!
But, of course, if someone sets up the system and you never want to do anything more than use the programs that come with it to browse the net, send emails and write some documents, it'd do. I just think Linux in general demands more of its users than Windows does... Not that this necessarily is such a bad thing, but it's a definite showstopper as far as starting this "*nix desktop revolution" that slashdotters are so convinced is at hand.

XPOst:
It's not too difficult, just add some kernel compilation flags for framebuffer, pass some arguments in grub, emerge bootsplash and a couple of other tweaks
I seriously thought you wrote that as a joke at first :)

homophobe 8) i've been using it since 7.0 and never had any trouble with it. apart from supermount.

> I got to spend this weekend in package dependency hell, rpming endless shared libraries

urpmi is your friend. it's mandrake's rpm tool that works like apt, does all the dependancies for you. apt for rpms is also available from various places.

and i'd recommend fluxbox as a lightweight window system. kde is very nice to look at etc but i find it sluggish on my 1GHz p3 so...

setting the date? 'alevt-date -set' sets it to teletext time 8)

andy

This is why Gentoo is a good thing. Just type emerge program and it works out all the dependancies for you. RPMs are a nightmare when it comes to that.

*cries and cries*

Ok, it is done -- I have upgraded to Hardy. And I have seen the light. I understand now that most if not all of my issues were about the graphics driver. You see, I'm one of the lucky ones that has an ATI graphics card, and as some of you may have had experience with, ATI will not release any of its drivers, so any one you use is just basically a hack. To boot, apparently Gutsy 7.10 had issues with that particular driver that neither the previous version nor the next version have. My graphics driver up and quit the other day after I popped some new RAM into my machine. I guess the already lean-to driver structure just COULD NOT HANDLE the extreme stress of getting more RAM. Pissy little bitch.

Anyway. Hardy runs great. I did a clean install, wiped the drive. It's... very pretty. :)

(Still though, fuck a wobbly window right in the ear.)

I've heard several reports of Vista sp1 actually breaking drivers that previously worked perfectly, so it sounds like Ubuntu has the upper hand there too.

feature I am loving: hot corners. Being so used to this Mac feature (Exposé, named in true silly-ass haute-computerese style), I am always jamming my mouse pointer into a corner and expecting it to do that magical thing where it shows me the desktop or all my open windows, and have a half second of confusion when nothing happens. No more!

i like hardy... still have a lot to get nailed down and moved in. for me it's a double bonus because the new box is much beefier, so i get speed boosts and a clean, new OS that feels better than xp.

Is it Hardy specifically that feels better than XP, or just Ubuntu in general?

oh I have a quick and ready answer to that, just guess what it is.

oh wait, strike that, I did not read carefully.

Vista is gorgeous but functionally it's an abortion.

Microsoft did its usual trick of hiding anything omgdangerous from simple users, and as a result you can't find anything.

ok but anyone new to linux is going to argue that Ubuntu does this 10x worse than microsoft, even though they prolly just don't know better, and any microsoft developer or even devoted low-level IT dude who's used to MS will have a ready (and surprisingly long!) list of reasons why microsoft is awesome and you are LIVING IN THE PAST, despite the fact that you are both nearly 100% verifiably living in the present moment. Microsoft devotees baffle me more every day.

And I agree -- Vista gets just about EVERYTHING wrong, except for that nice glassy look. It's the first attractive MS OS. But guess what?... heh

Agreed. Have you tried changing the window theme in Vista? You open Control Panel and it's buried somewhere completely illogical.

Change is good if it's for the better or even makes sense. Gnome, kde, xfce all have everything exactly where it would make sense to put it, even if it takes 2-3 goes to find it the first time. MS has gone so overboard with its oversimplifying everything for dumb people and making changes just to obsolete the previous version that it's disappeared well and truly up its own arsehole.35

This post is four years old, but change a few words and we're right there again:

I don't think installing Linux is the problem with putting it on the average desktop.
It's using the god damned thing. Someone wants to install a program in Windows: they download an exefile, run it.
They want to download something in Linux.... Ooops dependancies, oops learning RPM (though rpmdrake etc helps a lot when the files are available through it)
More to the point, configuring your system can be a serious pain. Anyone can upgrade a driver in Windows, but I'm not sure how many average people want to learn VI or Emacs or whatever and then change runtime mode so they can set up their graphics card for X.
And I don't blame them.
I've just moved to Linux myself, after being a Windows user since '94 or so (whenever Windows 95 came through)
I'm quite enjoying it for the most part, mostly thanks to the shell-scripting and the overall smoother running. But goddamn can it be a pain sometimes.

Installing Flash in Mozilla Firebird took like two days before it finally worked. Grr!
But, of course, if someone sets up the system and you never want to do anything more than use the programs that come with it to browse the net, send emails and write some documents, it'd do. I just think Linux in general demands more of its users than Windows does... Not that this necessarily is such a bad thing, but it's a definite showstopper as far as starting this "*nix desktop revolution" that slashdotters are so convinced is at hand.

So yeah, for the first time in history it's 100 percent accurate to say that Linux works better than Windows.

xp The line is blurred now that you have to edit .ini files in Vista just to get some hardware working. And don't start me on vulnerability to exploits.

I've loads more to say about this. I'll do it when I get home and have a proper keyboard.

Okay.

The pundits forget this: Most people use Windows that's already installed on something. This is why they don't have trouble with it. If they bought something with Ubuntu (say) pre-installed, including browser config and Flash plugins and all that nonsense, they wouldn't have trouble with it either.

The better modern-day Linux distributions are rock-solid. I'm going to wipe Gutsy (née Feisty) off this and install Hardy from scratch, but only because I choked it with unstable packages (1-2 small things are a bit wonky). Yer average granny won't do anything with her Hardy installation that would necessitate a rebuild, any more than she would with Vista or XP.

Now.

I think one of the blocks to Linux getting market share on the desktop is that it's free. People are sceptical of free things. They think free means not very good. Windows costs $nnn, therefore it must be better.

I don't know how you rectify this, apart from putting Linux on slightly cheaper PCs before they ship or charging an arbitrary amount like some distros do. But I've had people give me funny looks when I explain that it's free. They expect it to be all in Chinglish or blow up or something.

I believe the addage goes, "Free software is only valuable if your time isn't worth anything."

Hah. That was true 10 years ago when you had to fuck around with X11 for 49856345 years in order to get a desktop.

well two things there: 1) however many years ago it was that it was *more* valid, it's still at least a nice sound-bite-type argument, and that's all it takes usually. And even if it didn't sound so catchy, there's still the issue of 2) X11 is still a bit of a mess, and honestly has nothing like the stability of the Win or Mac desktop environments. Just kind of a fact, I think.

Absolutely. But X works 99% of the time now, whereas 10 years ago you had to configure the bastard manually and it still didn't work.

Anyone had any joy setting up their wireless card (Belkin) in AP mode on Ubuntu? This is pretty painless on XP but I can't find any instructions that make sense to a linux newbie.

If I could do that (and my other pcs and Wii etc could connect to the internet through it) I'd probably make the leap over to Ubuntu for most apps.

By wireless card do you mean wireless router? I think you need a wireless router if you want your Wii &c. to have a wireless connection.

Either way, this is a good starting point: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/?action=fullsearch&context=180&value=wireless&titlesearch=Titles

Oh, I've just discovered what AP mode is. Sorry.

Yeah. Basically I don't want to have to buy a standalone router when my desktop PC happily fulfils that role when using XP

like this:-

phoneline---adsl modem---Desktop PC with wireless card ~~~~ wii, laptop, upstairs PC.

I've searched on the Ubuntu forums before, but can't find anything that gives a recognisable answer. I'd have thought that what I'm trying to do isn't that uncommon?

Yeah, weird. I can't help you I'm afraid; I didn't even know this was possible until tonight.

no probs, thanks for looking :-)

Hah, the Ubuntu sites are down. Them people are crazy.

it's goofy, i see on digg this morning ... HERON IS OUT!

but it's been out for days.

so anyway... yeah, the ubuntu sites are being slogged by digg users no doubt.
m.

Googling this now.. but if anyone knows answer

"session_child_run : could not exec /etc/X11/xinit/Xsession default"

which is preventing me going into runlevel 5 if selinux is enforcing (but not if it is permissive). can go into runlevel 3 and run startx no problem with it still enforcing

(i dont have a ~/.xsession-errors file)

permissions on /etc/X11/xinit/Xsession seem ok

ls -l /etc/X11/xinit/Xsession

Never trust anyone who says that something "seems ok" in the world of computers and like stuffs.

unless they're just being honest about the state of computing/networking in general, e.g. "everything SEEMS ok but just you wait"

good point, 'seems ok' is never a good thing to say!

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3411 Apr 24 09:32 /etc/X11/xinit/Xsession

To be fair, that does seem OK.

I suspect the problem is: the user trying to execute it. If you go into runlevel 3 and run startx manually, you're doing it as an ordinary user. If you try to go in runlevel 5, it's being run by init, as root, and not from startx. I'm not a SELinux expert, but I suspect that's what it's objecting to.

the new Ubuntu tag line... "You'll never go back." Feeling saucy now, are we?

Saucy Snake: The next Ubuntu release probably.

You can indeed build X11 so that it's root-executable or not, yes.

Oh, and there's a subhead that says, "Ubuntu 'just works'"

hrm.

sorry my permissions should have been with a -Z i think

ls -Z

-rwxr-xr-x root root system_u:object_r:bin_t Xsession

Ok I think i fixed it. I noticed that the selinux permissions for /sbin/init were

root:object_r:sbin_t

so i ran "/sbin/restorecon -v /sbin/init" and it changed to

system_u:object_r:init_exec_t

it now boots up into runlevel5 no problem

I think Forest Pines, this is what you were saying, so it was the selinux permissions on /sbin/init?

Oh, and there's a subhead that says, "Ubuntu 'just works'"

hrm.

-- kenan, Friday, 25 April 2008 05:08 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

Without having used Hardy, I maintain that installing Vista would probably be more painful.

Oh and I waited until now to d/l Hardy because I didn't want a release candidate CD floating around the flat for six months. lol 5832 seeds 3909 peers lol

Couple of small problems on my Dell Inspiron 6400, but excellent otherwise. Really nice desktop integration.

^ (hardy)

I think Forest Pines, this is what you were saying, so it was the selinux permissions on /sbin/init?

Yep.

Hardy's network http lookups are SO SLOW. Five second delay every single time. I cannot work out what the fuck is going on.

Fixed with a dns cache.

Torrent downloads are slow. I cannot work out why. I tried setting up the whole port forwarding thing and it didn't work, but I almost bricked my wireless router FUCKING HOORAY. Networks can die.

Maybe yr ISP is traffic shaping? Torrents became ridiculously slow for me, even with a stack of seeders.

Nah, it's fine on the old Gutsy installation.