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I decided to experiment with some other distros on the Dell,
largely because I couldn't make any of the 'recipes' in the Linux
Cookbook work. I was reinstalling Win2000 anyway as part of my MCP
practice so I just blatted all the partitions and spent a few days
putting new partitions and new OSes in, using various different
combinations, which was fun... Not your idea of fun? Ah well, it
takes all sorts! Part of the reason I was shy of just blasting on
with Slackware was the fact that it is quite different from most
other flavours. Trying some of the recipes in the Linux Cookbook
I found that a lot of them just failed to work.
Slack: Back
Firstly, I tried Slackware again but using KDE instead of Gnome.
I got much better sound card support out of it somehow, but don't
ask me how. Can't imagine it had anything to do with the desktop
manager, but that's what it seemed like... However, it was still
Slackware. A fine distro in itself, but, I was learning, not a good
thing to start with.
 Mandrake
Secondly, I tried to install Mandrake
9.2. Now this is a really brain-damaged installer. It booted
from the CD and then decided that it was unable to continue because
it couldn't find the CD drive...um...
(After writing the above, I discovered that there was actually
a bug in that version of Mandrake and that I'd actually been lucky
not to lose my CD drive completely. A lot of LG-built drives got
their firmware blatted by some rogue command issued by the installer.
Mandrake blamed LG, because of course it's always someone else's
fault. Anyway, that was a lucky escape!)
Debian
Next up was Debian.
Debian is another oddball distro but slightly less so (as far as
I can tell) than Slackware. It is quite well venerated by those
in the know, but I have to wonder whether that is due to its innate
superiority or just its obscurity (read: snob value). I didn't have
a Debian CD set so I had to download
3 ISO images and burn them all to CDs. There are actually 7
but the further along you go the more mad and obscure the software
gets so non-nutters need only get the first 3. BTW, these are iso
images so even though they may look like zip archives, you can't
just unzip them and transfer them to a CD using native Win XP CD
writing facilities. You need something like FireBurner or Nero Burning
ROM.
 In
addition, you may need to get a rescue
disk to boot from and a root disk to um... root from... um...
and a set of driver
disks (I didn't, as it happens - it depends on whether or not
you can boot from your CD drive). Make sure they are all from the
same installation set (i.e., get them all from 'safe' or all from
'bf2' or all from the folder without any prefix at all. root, rescue
and driver disks - all the same, otherwise it won't work.) The floppies
have to be written to the floppy using rawrite or some similar raw
disk copying utility (Such as these
ones if you're using DOS/Windows)
If you're using floppies, insert the boot floppy first and follow
the instructions as shown. It's basically the same as I've described
below but with some fiddly disk-swapping in between.
Boot from the CD and press 'enter' because you don't need to bother
with those pesky parameters... unless you do... You then get a list
just like the slackware menu. You choose the appropriate language,
set up the swap partition and the main linux partitions. I'd already
set up my partitions beforehand using partition magic, formatted
as ext3 (Not an option in the setup menu) so I used the 'alternate
1' option to skip formatting and proceed directly to mounting them
as /, /usr and /home.
 Hint:
If you're having trouble selecting the 'OK' option in the menus,
try using the 'tab' key!
Another Hint: When you're setting up the partitions you aren't
always presented with them in order. For example, Mine were listed
with HDA6 first and HDA4 last. This was a bit confusing, so if you
have any doubt which is which, choose the 'execute a shell' option
from the menu and type "fdisk /dev/hda <enter>"
and then "p <enter>" (without quotes!!!!) to get
more info about the partition table and the relative sizes of the
existing partitions. When you've done that, exit by entering the
command 'q' and then type "exit <enter>" at the
command line to get rid of the shell and go back to the setup program.
Yet another hint: If you have to try the installation more than
once you'll need to reformat the partitions in between, otherwise
you'll get everything in the wrong order. Trust me; it makes life
so-o-o much easier!
The next step was to install device drivers. I picked 'alternate'
first to install the pcmcia card (I didn't know many of the details
so used the defaults - why not, eh?) then returned to the main driver
section to install any extras.
Now, just to clear up any confusion, most of the drivers you need
have already been installed by the earlier part of the process,
so don't worry if some of the things you want to install don't seem
to be listed. More work will be involved if you're booting from
floppies. Using the CD as your install media will make the whole
thing much smoother.
Next up is network configuration. I gave the system a bog standard
ho-hum sort of name, and told it to use DHCP. Easy peasy! You may
need to use something more complicated depending on what you have
at home. Then you can tell it to install the base system, (basically,
this just means consolidating what you've done so far) and - if
you're that way inclined - making a boot floppy. The final part
of the first stage is making the system bootable. This can be done
in a couple of different ways. I decided to add lilo to the master
boot record. Lilo (linux loader) can detect the Win2K installation
so I can now safely delete the boot magic partition and just go
straight to a screen offering me the option of loading Linux or
Win2K. Lovely!
After rebooting, you get some of the obvious stuff like setting
the time zone, username, blah-di-blah, and then on to the best bit
of all: picking the software packages to install. I always feel
like a kid in a sweetshop at this point, presented with a wide range
of free stuff and the only constraint is what my hard disk can cope
with. Tasty! And the best bit of all - from my point of view - is
that after it had finished scanning the available CDs it just automatically
connected to the internet via my Windows shared connection to see
if there were any updates for the packages on the disks, with no
need for me to do any tedious configuration. Amazing! No amount
of threats or cajoling would coax Slack into connecting to anything!
I was impressed! Also, if you want to get additional packages not
included on the disks you're using you have the option of checking
the debian FTP servers for available updates.
Unfortunately, it spoils the fun by giving you a text-based thingy
called, um... dselect I think, which keeps trying to make you resolve
dependencies. God help us! This stuff is a world of pain and I defy
anyone to do it. After about ten minutes I got that deer-in-the-headlights
look and just told it to install everything and stop bothering me,
which it duly did.
Texttexttexttext....In the series of questions that follow you're
pretty much on your own. I have no idea what most of this stuff
means so I guessed at it. Again, I have an idea that as I learn
more about Linux I will be able to reinstall in a less haphazard
way. The only thing I was sure about was the identity of the graphics
card (Neomagic) Oh, and some of the stuff about screen res too.
Hm. Texttexttexttexttext...
The first disk takes aeons but it speeds up a bit after that. The
installer also seems to be a bit forgetful about the user's location.
I had to tell it about 6 times that I was in Britain which was a
bit tedious.
All is done and the system runs immediately without even needing
to reboot. Cool. Just a bloody shame, really, that neither the mouse
nor the sound card work. Bugger!
 Fedora
Core
Fedora is a sort of side-project
of Red Hat Linux. Red Hat itself is concentrating on enterprise-oriented
products and what's left of the desktop product - now called Fedora
- has been split off as a sort of hobby for its developers to fart
about with. I've always thought of Red Hat as a bad name with a
bad logo. It's also the most popular distro and all these facts
together make me resent and dislike it but a couple of disks appeared
on the cover of Linux Format Magazine at the end of 2003 and I thought
I'd give it a whirl. The main thing to note is that, as far as installation
goes, it is comfortably the easiest version I have come across.
It is arguably easier to install than Windows XP, assuming you know
a little bit about what you are doing (No activation for one thing!).
It'll even set up your partitions for you automatically if you ask
it. Personally, I didn't bother because I was concerned about what
it might do to my NTFS partition. As it turned out, I needed to
adjust the existing partitions though. The installer seems to transfer
the packages to the hard drive before installing them; consequently,
it needs a bit more space than would normally be the case. I gave
the ./ and ./usr partitions about 2.5 gigs each with a 400MB ./var
partition, 700MB of swap and - oh, what - something like 1.5 gigs
for ./home. that seemed to work out ok. I reasoned that it would
be possible to shrink the two main partitions later because a lot
of the space would only be needed for temp files during setup (Wouldn't
it???).
The default settings are pretty good. Obviously, change the monitor
type to LCD (the resolution of your choice!). The screen refresh
rates are within acceptable limits, so no need to change that either.
Peachy!
 Depending
on what you need, you can choose to install the OS as a basic desktop
and accept the default options, in which case everything will unfold
smoothly and, as I said, it'll be as easy as a Win XP installation.
Me, I wanted a custom installation which meant, firstly, that I
had to fiddle around choosing groups of packages, and, secondly,
that I was forced to download an iso image of disk 3 from the fedora
website and burn it to a CD. I'm not quite sure what was on the
third disk. Development tools and kernel source code, I think, but
I'm not sure.
Incidentally, although the default installation is easier, if you're
like me and using a laptop it's definitely worth the effort to sift
through the available packages and choose the best ones. After all,
if you don't have a CD-R drive there's no need to bother with a
CD burning package. It's a faff, of course, but you'll be glad of
it later.
 Annoyingly,
at this point, my newly-burned third cd turns out to have a defect
and the installation goes tits up. I must be the only person on
God's green earth who has installed Linux - of one flavour or another
- approximately 50 times and still doesn't know how to - oh, what
- save something to a floppy disk - under any of them! In other
words, I am a loser!
Debian Part2
While Fedora downloads again I reformat everything and have another
whack at Debian, launching it from the floppies (to get more control
over which device drivers to install) and taking more care to look
up the hardware specs carefully before filling in each part of the
installation dialog. I also look up ISO
country codes to find that my local region is called GB not
UK, which I should know. Should. I can't be bothered selecting different
packages this time since I only want to see whether it can be done
so I let dselect install everything ...textexttexttext...
Various things scroll by: hyperlatex (sounds like a fetish club);
konqueror (like so many kde apps, this browser would make a great
name for a heavy metal band; there would be a feature on them in
Kerrang in the mid-eighties, making the sign of the goat in a hotel
bar in Tokyo); xfonts (wasn't Fox Mulder baptised in one of those?);
yorick (What?) ...textexttexttext... Even the operating system itself
- Debian - uses a tag line for its latest release; Woody.
Seriosuly ...textexttexttext...
There is an error to do with gdm; something to do with a directory
already existing which shouldn't be a problem as far as I can see,
but gdm is only Gnome Desktop Manager so I guess even if it doesn't
work, I should still be able to get by with kdm (confusingly, KDE)
or XDM (the X windowing system). then there's a question about "netenv"
which means nowt to me so I tell it to use option 1. Well, it might
work...
Pleasingly, this time the mouse works, although the sound card
is still not co-operating. The browser actually does its job too
and I can look around the web from either Mozilla or the aforementioned
Konqueror. Rock on!
Fedora...Cor!
I have a feeling I could work with Debian. It's really quite nice
and installing soundcard drivers would be a challenge. I even found
a promising looking site called, um... Advanced
Linux Sound Architecture, but I want to be sure of my command-line
skills and the operation of a very basic, no-nonsense system before
I get to grips with anything wven remotely tricky. So, the next
day the Fedora disks finished downloading. I got all three fresh
off the server so they'd all be bang up to date. I tell you, I know
I ought to tough it out and try and get to grips with Slackware
or Debian or one of those leftfield progs but the ease of Fedora
is just irresistible! This is the only one I've used so far that
I've thought, in all honesty, "This is nicer to use than Win
XP!". All the hardware worked out of the box, getting it to
connect to the shared printer and internet connection was a doddle
and the whole thing is wonderfully hassle-free and configurable.
Admittedly, it's a tad slow just now, but that's only because I
have the server and everything else running. Once I find out how
to configure it so as to conserve system resources I'll be well
away.
Here's what Fedora looks like on the
CSx. I've tweaked it a bit to suit the way I like it. Mouseover
the various desktop items for an explanation of what each one does.
I daresay I'll go back and play with those other installations
in earnest later, but for now this looks like a good place to start,
at least until I get the hang of it... Oh, and by the way, it's
really true: My digital camera (a Fujifilm @xia iX-100) worked right
from the start with no need to install any extra drivers. I just
plugged it in and it worked. Windows XP, while admirable in many
ways simply will not play nicely with this camera, so I was very
impressed.
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