October 2003 - WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

Re: [Wlug] Picking a distro (was: 1st posting: Worcester ISP? Distros? LAC?)

by John Stoffel

Charles> Well, Red Hat 9 meets all your requirements above, except the Charles> one that says you don't want Red Hat :) You didn't give any Charles> good reason why you wanted to stay away from Red Hat other Charles> than you "want to change try to stay away from GNOME". Well, Charles> Red Hat 9 has KDE too, and you can always get WindowMaker, Charles> Blackbox, Fluxbox, XFCE, or something else if you want a Charles> ligher weight GUI. http://freshrpms.net/ is a good place to Charles> find such addons. Well, part of it has been that I've been using it for so long, it seems like I should try something new and see how that goes. Another issue is that I haven't been wild about some of the system configuration tools they provide, but it's not a big deal. I dunno, it's more of an urge to do something else, not a true desire to move off. Also, I have noticed that alot of packages are still staying with 7.3 or 8, and that 9 hasn't seemed to be as popular. Hard to tell... Charles> The Red Hat Linux distro that we all know an love <g> is Charles> turning into the Fedora Core community supported and Charles> developed distro. Its direction, shape, package selection, Charles> etc. will be very much driven by what the community wants. Charles> In this way, it will be more like the Debian Project, which I Charles> believe will alleviate some of the reservations people may Charles> have had about using Red Hat in the past. E.g. WindowMaker Charles> and those other GUIs will be able to come back into the Charles> distro if the community desires it. Charles> Fedora Core will also support apt-get, yum, and up2date with Charles> third party repositories of software. This will include Charles> Fedora Core itself, updates, Fedora Extras, Fedora Charles> Alternatives, and Fedora Legacy (for those who want an older, Charles> more stable distro to be supported for a longer time). See Charles> http://fedora.redhat.com/ for more info about the project. But none of this exists right now, and I want to rebuild my system this weekend if I can. :] Of course, nothing says I can't play with this stuff later one. Also, some of the rpmbuild and rpm commands have really ticked me off, since I consider the syntax and errors messages to be really baroque and unhelpful. Especially when trying to build a SRPM package, and it dies for no frigging obvious reason. And since I'm planning a fresh install, I've got the Debian and RH9 disks to play with. So maybe I'll just go with Debian for now and see how it goes long term. Thanks for the input. John

Oct. 3, 2003

Re: [Wlug] Picking a distro

by John Stoffel

Josh> Anything in particular? Just curious. I suspect I'm one of Josh> those people who is really used to how APT works, so I like it a Josh> lot. I like apt too so far, but searching for packages seems to have been a bit painful. That is until I learned about the -a flag to apt-show-versions, but since I haven't read my about the apt-get philosophy, I've probably just missed something. Josh> Are you not aware of the apt-cache command? Nope, nor have I used it. Josh> Use the bf2.4 installer -- it will install a 2.4 kernel by Josh> default. Hmmm... any examples? Is this part of the 3.0 CDROM image? Josh> Well, I would recommend using Debian/unstable (unless testing Josh> has new enough packages for you), if you want to play with the Josh> newest software. I may be biased, however, :) I'm leaning towards debian unstable, if only because apt-get has been useful and simple once I've learned more about it. John

Oct. 3, 2003

Re: [Wlug] Picking a distro

by Josh Huber

"John Stoffel" <stoffel(a)lucent.com> writes: > I've been playing with Debian 3.0 (stable -> unstable -> testing > (for XFree86 4.3)) on a laptop, and while I like apt, and how well > it does for getting packages and setting them up, it's not perfect > either. Part of that might just be getting used to how it works, > and of course used to how apt works. Anything in particular? Just curious. I suspect I'm one of those people who is really used to how APT works, so I like it a lot. > Finding packages can be a pain at times... Are you not aware of the apt-cache command? > and I'm annoyed it installs a 2.2.x kernel by default. They're > slipping behind the times I feel. Use the bf2.4 installer -- it will install a 2.4 kernel by default. > [snip stuff about using the latest software] > So, what do you all think is the next best distro to go with now? Well, I would recommend using Debian/unstable (unless testing has new enough packages for you), if you want to play with the newest software. I may be biased, however, :) -- Josh Huber

Oct. 3, 2003

Re: [Wlug] Picking a distro (was: 1st posting: Worcester ISP? Distros? LAC?)

by Charles R. Anderson

On Fri, Oct 03, 2003 at 09:43:09AM -0400, John Stoffel wrote: stoffel> So, what do you all think is the next best distro to go with now? Well, Red Hat 9 meets all your requirements above, except the one that says you don't want Red Hat :) You didn't give any good reason why you wanted to stay away from Red Hat other than you "want to change try to stay away from GNOME". Well, Red Hat 9 has KDE too, and you can always get WindowMaker, Blackbox, Fluxbox, XFCE, or something else if you want a ligher weight GUI. http://freshrpms.net/ is a good place to find such addons. The Red Hat Linux distro that we all know an love <g> is turning into the Fedora Core community supported and developed distro. Its direction, shape, package selection, etc. will be very much driven by what the community wants. In this way, it will be more like the Debian Project, which I believe will alleviate some of the reservations people may have had about using Red Hat in the past. E.g. WindowMaker and those other GUIs will be able to come back into the distro if the community desires it. Fedora Core will also support apt-get, yum, and up2date with third party repositories of software. This will include Fedora Core itself, updates, Fedora Extras, Fedora Alternatives, and Fedora Legacy (for those who want an older, more stable distro to be supported for a longer time). See http://fedora.redhat.com/ for more info about the project. -- Charles R. Anderson <cra(a)wpi.edu> / http://angus.ind.wpi.edu/~cra/ PGP Key ID: 49BB5886 Fingerprint: EBA3 A106 7C93 FA07 8E15 3AC2 C367 A0F9 49BB 5886

Oct. 3, 2003

Old hardware (Re: [Wlug] Re: Debian question)

by Karl Hiramoto

for the last few years. I've been running a 486SX-25 with 8M RAM and 100M HD here at my work as a print server. I rescued the box from a pile of garbage. I'm running slackware 3.6 with a 2.0.39 kernel though. Just setup samba and lpd to do the printing. The machine has excellent reliability. These old boxes work fine for print servers, routers, firewalls, Old machines work great to for automation of real world things. Set a voltage, read a voltage, set bit, clear bit control applications. here is the box: #df Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on /dev/hda2 97271 83435 8813 90% / # cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 cpu : 486 model : Cx486 vendor_id : CyrixInstead stepping : unknown, core/bus clock ratio: unknownx fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no fpu : no fpu_exception : no cpuid : no wp : yes flags : bogomips : 4.71 # free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 6684 6300 384 4500 1960 2200 -/+ buffers/cache: 2140 4544 Swap: 16432 536 15896 On Fri, 3 Oct 2003, Bob George wrote: > "Chuck Homic" <chuck(a)vvisions.com> wrote: > > Oh, hey... my Debian rant reminded me of something! > > > > I have Debian running on a 486-25 with 12MB of RAM. > > [...] > > Hey, mind if I ask what you use it for? The reason I ask is that I'm on a list > dedicated to old PC hardware users, which until recently equated to a base of > fanatical DOS holdouts. Slowly though, most are inquiring about Linux, so I'd > like to give them some useful info about using Debian as a "modern" > distribution on low-resource systems. Unfortunately, I've had to dump most of > my old systems, so can't speak from first-hand experience anymore. > > Stephen Darnold, the guy who put Basic Linux together, used to lurk there, and > there was often extensive discussion on what could be run on older hardware. > Yours sounds like the lower end of the spectrum, so I'm wondering how well it > works. Would it work well with Debian specifically as a firewall/gateway? Would > you say the benefits of running something current offsets the inconvenience of > those delays with installs etc.? > > Thanks, > > - Bob > > > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > -- ¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø Karl Hiramoto <karl(a)hiramoto.org> Work: 978-425-2090 ext 25 Cell: 508-517-4819 http://karl.hiramoto.org/ AOL IM ID = KarlH420 Yahoo_IM = karl_hiramoto ¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, for if you hit a man with a plowshare, he's going to know he's been hit.

Oct. 3, 2003

(OT) HP 49G graphing calculator

by Karl Hiramoto

Sorry a litte off topic, but i'm guessing there are some engineers on here who might like the HP cacluators. I'm looking for someplace local to buy a HP49G calculator. I need it fast, so i can't order online. Anyone have ideas? thanks -- ¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø Karl Hiramoto <karl(a)hiramoto.org> Work: 978-425-2090 ext 25 Cell: 508-517-4819 http://karl.hiramoto.org/ AOL IM ID = KarlH420 Yahoo_IM = karl_hiramoto ¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, for if you hit a man with a plowshare, he's going to know he's been hit.

Oct. 3, 2003

Picking a distro (was: 1st posting: Worcester ISP? Distros? LAC?)

by John Stoffel

Hi all, I'm in the fun position of trying to figure out how I want to upgrade my main home system. It's a heavily patched and hacked together RedHat 7.2 system. I've not got a new pair of 120gb drives for /home and /usr/local (will be mirrored) and I'm ready to upgrade... but to what? As a professional SysAdmin, I'm not afraid of doing stuff by hand and hacking of stuff. As a dad of a 14 month old, I don't have time! *grin* So I'm hoping to start up a fruitful discussion here to see what other people have done in this type of situation. RedHat 9 isn't that attractive, mostly because I've been using RedHat since 5.2 and I want to change and try to stay away from GNOME since it's a slow pig resource wise. I also want to get updated in terms of GTK so I can run newer GNOME apps, like Gramps 0.9.4. I've been playing with Debian 3.0 (stable -> unstable -> testing (for XFree86 4.3)) on a laptop, and while I like apt, and how well it does for getting packages and setting them up, it's not perfect either. Part of that might just be getting used to how it works, and of course used to how apt works. Finding packages can be a pain at times... and I'm annoyed it installs a 2.2.x kernel by default. They're slipping behind the times I feel. I've also played with Gentoo about six months or so ago. Nice idea, I like the idea of emerge sync (apt-get update for debian folks) but it was also a bit crufty, though not horribly so. Maybe it's better now. I think I used 1.4rc1 or something like that. My main issue is that I want good support for my Matrox G450, USB doohickys (256mb SanDisk memory stick, CompactFlash card reader, etc), sound card (I have CS3236 builtin ISA sound, or ALS4000 PCI), and good LVM/DM support. Oh yeah, the latest libraries so I can run the latest packages like Gnumeric, OpenOffice (1.1 is nice!), etc. My RH 7.2 base is getting way too old. I'm happy to also compile and test kernels on here from time to time as well, just to try and contribute to the kernel developement with trouble reports and some hacking to keep old cards going. So, what do you all think is the next best distro to go with now? John

Oct. 3, 2003

Re: Debian question

by Bob George

"Chuck Homic" <chuck(a)vvisions.com> wrote: > Oh, hey... my Debian rant reminded me of something! > > I have Debian running on a 486-25 with 12MB of RAM. > [...] Hey, mind if I ask what you use it for? The reason I ask is that I'm on a list dedicated to old PC hardware users, which until recently equated to a base of fanatical DOS holdouts. Slowly though, most are inquiring about Linux, so I'd like to give them some useful info about using Debian as a "modern" distribution on low-resource systems. Unfortunately, I've had to dump most of my old systems, so can't speak from first-hand experience anymore. Stephen Darnold, the guy who put Basic Linux together, used to lurk there, and there was often extensive discussion on what could be run on older hardware. Yours sounds like the lower end of the spectrum, so I'm wondering how well it works. Would it work well with Debian specifically as a firewall/gateway? Would you say the benefits of running something current offsets the inconvenience of those delays with installs etc.? Thanks, - Bob

Oct. 3, 2003

Debian question

by Chuck Homic

Oh, hey... my Debian rant reminded me of something! I have Debian running on a 486-25 with 12MB of RAM. (Pause for laughter...) Okay. Now then. When I run dpkg (on its own, or via apt-get) it wants about 18M of RAM to work with. This causes a fair deal of thrashing, and if I just let it go, it takes about 30 minutes to install even the most basic package. My solution thus far is to use the NBD driver to mount a swap space over the network. This is actually faster because the swap and actual package install don't have to contend for precious HDD seek time, and I can install the most basic packages in about 10 minutes or so. Even so, it would be nice if it were a bit faster still. Anyone know what dpkg does with its RAM? Is it loading all the packges into memory to figure out dependencies and stuff? Any way to make it behave more efficiently? -Chuck

Oct. 3, 2003

Re: [Wlug] 1st posting: Worcester ISP? Distros? LAC?

by Chuck Homic

On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 09:57:58AM -0400, Gregory Avedissian wrote: > My experience with Debian 3.0 - > > The installer is archaic. First, you have to put in all four disks to be > read. Then you get to select a base package, then you get to fill in > more selections from a list of everything. You can use the arrow keys to > scroll up and down the list of over a thousand packages and the space [...] Ah, someone who hasn't learned the secret of dselect: Don't use it. :) To install debian, go and burn the bootable CD ISO image. After it installs the base system and launches dselect, find the key that exits immediately (I think it's 'x') and press it. (If you don't have access to a CD writer, you can put the base system on your FAT partition, and use the single boot floppy to access it.) You now have a bootable system with networking support. And you've done the hard part. From here on out, if you want anything just use "apt-get" (My first choice is usually "apt-get less" and other rediculously basic packages. Then, "apt-get x-window-system" which is an adventure and a half.) I like this method so much, because you have a system with only exactly what you want and nothing more. Which is good if your hard disk is 240M. But, of course there's a certain personality required to like Debian, because it certainly does nothing for you except install stuff with all its dependencies. Which is all I want in a distro to begin with. -Chuck

Oct. 3, 2003