Every few years I download a pile of linux distros and give 'em all a
whirl. And this was the week for that! From listings on Distrowatch I
decided on four LiveCDs to try:

Hardware: AMD dual core (I think) 2.5GHz, 4GB RAM (DDR400), Asus
mainboard, two nothing-special video cards, 40GB PATA HD and 60GB SSD.
It rather outperforms what I expected, considering it's the oldest of
the three "new" frankenputers by several years.

On with our show! Up on the twirly-whirly we find:

PClinux -- would not boot

Mageia -- hung in various creative ways before it got fully booted

OpenMandriva -- annoying in various other ways and finally hung

Mint (Cinnamon) 17.2 -- Hmm. This one might be a keeper. For the very
first time, everything appears to work out of the box (except far as I
can tell, it only sees one vidcard). They've gotten rid of the most
annoying parts of Ubuntu/Gnome and kept the more-usable parts (tho some
useful config stuff has vanished). It also radically outperforms the
others I've tried over the years, and not just because this is faster
hardware -- Mint only loads a fraction as many modules: about 20 vs the typical 100+. When I looked in whatever it calls running processes, it
was -- ONE, instead of 50 or so. Well, that would do it; cuts way down
on needless overhead.

Plugged it into the DSL modem/router and internet magically worked. So
its networking is alive and running. But now how do I get it and the
WinXP machine (let alone the *spit* Win7 box?) to see each other?

Use very small words, preferably of no more than five letters and one syllable. <g>
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Hello Ky,

Mint (Cinnamon) 17.2 -- Hmm. This one might be a keeper. For the very first time, everything appears to work out of the box (except far as I
can tell, it only sees one vidcard).

Seems to be popular. You'll likely have to manually edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf with the setup for two video cards. I've only ever used one so I don't know the details.

Plugged it into the DSL modem/router and internet magically worked. So
its networking is alive and running. But now how do I get it and the
WinXP machine (let alone the *spit* Win7 box?) to see each other?

You have to install and setup samba on your linux box, it has all the networking goodies windows expects.

Have you tried the Knoppix live cd? That's what I use if I need a live CD. I usually put it on a usb drive so it runs a bit faster than from CD/DVD. You can boot it with command line options like TZ=America/Vancouver (or whatever you need) and what desktop you want to boot. You can choose between gnome, kde and lxde and maybe others I have forgotten.

http://knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

Ttyl :-),
Al

... My modem isn't slow- it's "baudily challenged!"
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ALAN IANSON wrote:

Hello Ky,

KM> Mint (Cinnamon) 17.2 -- Hmm. This one might be a keeper. For the very
KM> first time, everything appears to work out of the box (except far as

I

KM> can tell, it only sees one vidcard).

Seems to be popular. You'll likely have to manually edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf with the setup for two video cards. I've only ever used one so I don't know the details.

Ah. I'll look in there and see if anything makes sense. I'm not sure I actually have any use for 2 vidcards, but this particular motherboard
has dedicated dual video slots, and someone gift me a matched pair of
cards (which the motherboard requires for it to work; it doesn't like unmatched cards), so I figured this was a good place for 'em.

That's probably where you can edit workspace colors too, in that
neighborhood somewhere. There's no way to do it thru the GUI but I saw somewhere that it can be set manually. (Now to find the info again!) I
can't use a white application workspace for very long (hurts my eyes),
but none of the themes has anything else, other than the inverted white-on-black which wasn't really any better.

KM> Plugged it into the DSL modem/router and internet magically worked.

So

KM> its networking is alive and running. But now how do I get it and the
KM> WinXP machine (let alone the *spit* Win7 box?) to see each other?

You have to install and setup samba on your linux box, it has all the networking goodies windows expects.

Okay. Should be listed in the package manager thingee, right?

I detest Firefox but SeaMonkey was not listed, and for the life of me I couldn't make sense of the workaround "how to install" info I found. So
I did what I'd do in Windows... downloaded and unzipped it, then just doubleclicked the main executable.

And it RUNS! with no issues, far as I can tell.

But now how do I make it a desktop icon, or better yet taskbar icon?
(like Firefox and Terminal have)

And can I move its directory from where I unzipped it, without breaking anything? (Location was kinda arbitrary because I didn't expect it to
run.) It found my Home directory and made a profile for itself, and I
suppose that will stay put regardless.

The problem with all the Mint helpfiles and forum is that it either
stops short of any real info, or assumes you already know the previous
step. They're trying, and they've done really well at making stuff easy
to use far as it goes, but don't seem to have actual experience in
supporting newbies who want to learn what's going on in there without dedicating their lives to becoming *NIX gurus. :/

Have you tried the Knoppix live cd? That's what I use if I need a live CD. I usually put it on a usb drive so it runs a bit faster than from CD/DVD. You can boot it with command line options like TZ=America/Vancouver (or whatever you need) and what desktop you want to boot. You can choose between gnome,

kde

and lxde and maybe others I have forgotten. http://knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

Ah, thanks, I'd forgotten it exists. I don't recall seeing it on
Distrowatch last week, but they're hardly an exhaustive list. I think I
did use a Knoppix liveCD back some years, when I was prying files off a mangled hard disk and finding a LiveCD that could also write to a CD was
not so easy (USB was still an Adventure). They seem to have a lot of
versions now, I'll have to figure out which one I want to look at.

ILink's own Peter Todd used to keep a really comprehensive distro list,
but it seems to be no more. (Tho his name is on some documentation
pages. Cool; he was like 11 years old when we first knew him!)

I didn't care for LXDE last time I looked at it, but appears to have
matured a lot since then.


It would be nice to have a boot launcher that goes on a USB stick, and
could pick from all the LiveCD ISOs stored on the stick and let you boot
from any of them. Is there such a thing??

.. My modem isn't slow- it's "baudily challenged!"

Likely it needs to take some bits off. ;0

Who knew this was such a baudy hobby? :D
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KY MOFFET wrote:

linux makes me mutter to myself:

It would be nice to have a boot launcher that goes on a USB stick, and
could pick from all the LiveCD ISOs stored on the stick and let you boot
from any of them. Is there such a thing??

Maybe this??

http://knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html
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Hello Ky,

Ah. I'll look in there and see if anything makes sense. I'm not sure I actually have any use for 2 vidcards, but this particular motherboard
has dedicated dual video slots, and someone gift me a matched pair of cards (which the motherboard requires for it to work; it doesn't like unmatched cards), so I figured this was a good place for 'em.

I don't think you need much in xorg.conf. I just put enough in mine to load
the driver (nvidia in my case) so it loads that driver instead of the default, just about 10 lines or so. X.org uses default for the rest and it works good for me.

There is also a GUI setup that is installed with the nvidia driver that can be used to setup your xorg.conf. IIRC there is a setup in there for more than one monitor but I have never used it.

That's probably where you can edit workspace colors too, in that neighborhood somewhere. There's no way to do it thru the GUI but I saw somewhere that it can be set manually. (Now to find the info again!) I can't use a white application workspace for very long (hurts my eyes),
but none of the themes has anything else, other than the inverted white-on-black which wasn't really any better.

Maybe, but I don't think so. That'll likely need to be setup through your desktop.

KM> its networking is alive and running. But now how do I get it and

the

KM> WinXP machine (let alone the *spit* Win7 box?) to see each other?

You have to install and setup samba on your linux box, it has all the
networking goodies windows expects.

Okay. Should be listed in the package manager thingee, right?

Yes, a lot of desktop apps either depend on it, or will give you more functionality if it's installed (and configured). It's not as plug and play as windows, when I ran it it took a lot of edits to get things working.

On slackware the package is simply samba, on some distos it's more modular and there is more than one samba-???? package depending on your needs/wants.

I detest Firefox but SeaMonkey was not listed, and for the life of me
I
couldn't make sense of the workaround "how to install" info I found. So
I did what I'd do in Windows... downloaded and unzipped it, then just doubleclicked the main executable.

That package might be called iceape (a debian thing).

And it RUNS! with no issues, far as I can tell.

Yep, you can do it that way, or sometimes I plonk things like that in /opt.

But now how do I make it a desktop icon, or better yet taskbar icon?
(like Firefox and Terminal have)

The desktop files are all in /usr/share/applications. Those will be
overwritten if you reinstall or update a package. I put my own desktop files in /usr/local/share/applications. Those will be included on your desktop in the same way as the others but won't be overwritten.

You can also put desktop files in your home directoy like /home/kmoffet/.config/share/applications/iceape.desktop

And can I move its directory from where I unzipped it, without
breaking
anything? (Location was kinda arbitrary because I didn't expect it to run.) It found my Home directory and made a profile for itself, and I suppose that will stay put regardless.

Probably/maybe! :)

I usually unpack firefox or things like that in /opt. You can also use /etc, /usr/bin and the like if you want. I find it simpler to just unpack those type of things in /opt and create a desktop file for them with the full path to the exe in case I want to delete them later.. but as long as it works.. :)

The problem with all the Mint helpfiles and forum is that it either
stops short of any real info, or assumes you already know the previous step. They're trying, and they've done really well at making stuff easy
to use far as it goes, but don't seem to have actual experience in supporting newbies who want to learn what's going on in there without dedicating their lives to becoming *NIX gurus. :/

Yeah, I still have questions that I know are answered somewhere, but where?

Have you tried the Knoppix live cd? That's what I use if I need a live
CD.
I usually put it on a usb drive so it runs a bit faster than from CD/DVD.
You can boot it with command line options like TZ=America/Vancouver (or
whatever you need) and what desktop you want to boot. You can choose
between gnome, kde and lxde and maybe others I have forgotten.
http://knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

Ah, thanks, I'd forgotten it exists. I don't recall seeing it on Distrowatch last week, but they're hardly an exhaustive list. I think I did use a Knoppix liveCD back some years, when I was prying files off a mangled hard disk and finding a LiveCD that could also write to a CD was not so easy (USB was still an Adventure). They seem to have a lot of versions now, I'll have to figure out which one I want to look at.

It was the first (one of the first maybe) live CDs that worked. It has good hardware/system autodetection. I like to try live CDs from time to time and see a lot of failures but knoppix has always booted for me. I tried the ecs live os/2 cd a while ago. Looked promising but no network support for my box.

ILink's own Peter Todd used to keep a really comprehensive distro
list,
but it seems to be no more. (Tho his name is on some documentation
pages. Cool; he was like 11 years old when we first knew him!)

I must have missed him. Maybe he'll post a new list one day.. :)

I didn't care for LXDE last time I looked at it, but appears to have matured a lot since then.

I use xfce and that is not included in Knoppix. That's the one thing that
fails in knoppix for me. xfce is very lightweight like lxde but has a more conventional look. I like lxde too, but I prefer xfce.

It would be nice to have a boot launcher that goes on a USB stick, and could pick from all the LiveCD ISOs stored on the stick and let you boot from any of them. Is there such a thing??

There probably is a thing like that, if you can find it.. ;)

.. My modem isn't slow- it's "baudily challenged!"

Likely it needs to take some bits off. ;0

I was thinking I should take those modem tags out of my tagline file.. but I just couldn't do it.. :)

Ttyl :-),
Al

... Don't argue with he who buys ink by the gallon.
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ALAN IANSON wrote:

Hello Ky,

<looking around> Oh! Howdy!

KM> Ah. I'll look in there and see if anything makes sense. I'm not sure

I

KM> actually have any use for 2 vidcards, but this particular motherboard
KM> has dedicated dual video slots, and someone gift me a matched pair of
KM> cards (which the motherboard requires for it to work; it doesn't like
KM> unmatched cards), so I figured this was a good place for 'em.

I don't think you need much in xorg.conf. I just put enough in mine to load the driver (nvidia in my case) so it loads that driver instead of the

default,

just about 10 lines or so. X.org uses default for the rest and it works good for me.

I don't even see a brand on these cards. Nor anything obvious on the
BIOS boot screen either. Heatsink permanently attached over the main
chip is not helpful.

<boots into Mint>
<looks in display settings hoping it IDs the vidcard>

And.... at that point it locked up solid before display settings window finished loading up. No mouse, no keyboard response, no
three-finger-salute, no HD activity, nothing. After a while I gave up
and hit the reset switch, which seems to have totally killed Mint, cuz
now it says:

error: attempt to read or write outside of disk 'hd1'
(which would be the physical drive it lives on)

and then

entering rescue mode
grub rescue>

which looks like a prompt, and I can type at it, but isn't useful.

ls lists the various hd* (filesystem), which isn't useful either.

this apparently is the fixit process, http://askubuntu.com/questions/142300/fixing-grub-error-error-unknown-filesyste

which I am not about to do.

This looks saner http://www.supergrubdisk.org/wizard-restore-grub-with-rescatux/

BUT...

Any OS that can suicide from a lockup/reset is not stable enough to use. Especially when said gun-in-the-mouth lockup resulted from merely
running one of its own internal functions.


<stumps off muttering about how Windows has NEVER done that to me, and
do we see yet why linux never got beyond 1% desktop-market penetration?>

There is also a GUI setup that is installed with the nvidia driver that can

be

used to setup your xorg.conf. IIRC there is a setup in there for more than

one

monitor but I have never used it.

It is (er, was) "using no proprietary drivers" and I don't know if
nvidia is among those or not. There doesn't seem to be anything like
Device Manager.

KM> That's probably where you can edit workspace colors too, in that

Maybe, but I don't think so. That'll likely need to be setup through your desktop.

Been there, looked for that, asked someone on IRC, was told there IS no
such place in the configuration doohickey, and they don't know about
elsewhere either. I know KDE could do it, and I think Gnome did too, but Mint-Cinnamon does not.

>> You have to install and setup samba on your linux box, it has all the
>> networking goodies windows expects.
KM> Okay. Should be listed in the package manager thingee, right?
Yes, a lot of desktop apps either depend on it, or will give you more functionality if it's installed (and configured). It's not as plug and play

as

windows, when I ran it it took a lot of edits to get things working.

Turns out Samba was installed, but non-obvious. I installed a front end
via the package manager and that made life easier, or at least it did
things that looked like it made a network share. I hadn't got around to figuring out what I had to do on the WinBoxen yet.

KM> I detest Firefox but SeaMonkey was not listed, and for the life of me
KM> I
KM> couldn't make sense of the workaround "how to install" info I found.

So

KM> I did what I'd do in Windows... downloaded and unzipped it, then just
KM> doubleclicked the main executable.

That package might be called iceape (a debian thing).

What the heck kind of name is Iceape??!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation_software_rebranded_by_the_Deb an_project

KM> And it RUNS! with no issues, far as I can tell.
Yep, you can do it that way, or sometimes I plonk things like that in /opt.

If it's up to me, I'd make my own installed-software directory tree so I
know where everything is.

KM> But now how do I make it a desktop icon, or better yet taskbar icon?
KM> (like Firefox and Terminal have)
The desktop files are all in /usr/share/applications. Those will be overwritten if you reinstall or update a package. I put my own desktop files in /usr/local/share/applications. Those will be included on your desktop in the same way as the others but won't be overwritten.

Oh. So I should look in there and see what's what. If it ever boots
again....

Yeah, I still have questions that I know are answered somewhere, but where?

Nowhere obvious, that's for sure.

>> http://knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html
KM> Ah, thanks, I'd forgotten it exists. I don't recall seeing it on
It was the first (one of the first maybe) live CDs that worked. It has good hardware/system autodetection. I like to try live CDs from time to time and see a lot of failures but knoppix has always booted for me. I tried the ecs live os/2 cd a while ago. Looked promising but no network support for my

box.

That might be what I'm remembering, that it was better at making itself
at home on strange hardware. And mine is stranger than most. <g>

KM> ILink's own Peter Todd used to keep a really comprehensive distro
KM> list,
KM> but it seems to be no more. (Tho his name is on some documentation
KM> pages. Cool; he was like 11 years old when we first knew him!)
I must have missed him. Maybe he'll post a new list one day.. :)

This is like 15 years ago by now!

KM> It would be nice to have a boot launcher that goes on a USB stick,

and

KM> could pick from all the LiveCD ISOs stored on the stick and let you

boot

KM> from any of them. Is there such a thing??
There probably is a thing like that, if you can find it.. ;)

Hahahaha. Find. Hahaha!

>> .. My modem isn't slow- it's "baudily challenged!"
KM> Likely it needs to take some bits off. ;0
I was thinking I should take those modem tags out of my tagline file.. but I just couldn't do it.. :)

Me neither!
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Hello Ky,

error: attempt to read or write outside of disk 'hd1'
(which would be the physical drive it lives on)

That is really bad news.

and then

entering rescue mode
grub rescue>

I've seen that before and could never do anything with it. When that happens I boot a live cd and try to reinstall grub. If that fails, mkfs.??? is the only solution I know.

which looks like a prompt, and I can type at it, but isn't useful.

Linux geeks can go there, but they don't want to.

This looks saner http://www.supergrubdisk.org/wizard-restore-grub-with-rescatux/

That looks better. ATM, I use slackware and if I need to boot from outside I use the install disk.

Any OS that can suicide from a lockup/reset is not stable enough to use. Especially when said gun-in-the-mouth lockup resulted from merely
running one of its own internal functions.

Right, I wouldn't go any further.

<stumps off muttering about how Windows has NEVER done that to me, and
do we see yet why linux never got beyond 1% desktop-market penetration?>

Not exactly marketing genius's are they! Maybe linux would do better if they charged $100.00 for the install disks.. :)

It is (er, was) "using no proprietary drivers" and I don't know if
nvidia is among those or not. There doesn't seem to be anything like Device Manager.

Nvidia is proprietary. I use those drivers becuase I am a gamer and need them. There is also the nouveau driver for nvidia cards, it's open source and part of xorg. It works quite well but has no 3d accelleration. I have run it and tried to play a few games with it and it works quite well. On one of the maps in one of my games there is a dark corner with a metal elevator pad. When I use the nouveau driver that pad looks like a mirror with the sun shinning on it, ruins that map but overall it does good. I can see a day coming when I don't need the nvidia drivers.

KM> That's probably where you can edit workspace colors too, in that

Maybe, but I don't think so. That'll likely need to be setup through your
desktop.

Been there, looked for that, asked someone on IRC, was told there IS no such place in the configuration doohickey, and they don't know about elsewhere either. I know KDE could do it, and I think Gnome did too, but Mint-Cinnamon does not.

Yep, gnome and kde have been around forever, very robust. Cinnamon not so much.. yet!

>> You have to install and setup samba on your linux box, it has all
the
>> networking goodies windows expects.
KM> Okay. Should be listed in the package manager thingee, right?
Yes, a lot of desktop apps either depend on it, or will give you more
functionality if it's installed (and configured). It's not as plug and

play

as windows, when I ran it it took a lot of edits to get things working.

Turns out Samba was installed, but non-obvious. I installed a front end via the package manager and that made life easier, or at least it did things that looked like it made a network share. I hadn't got around to figuring out what I had to do on the WinBoxen yet.

Probably nothing, if those windows boxes are already sharing.

KM> I detest Firefox but SeaMonkey was not listed, and for the life
of
me
KM> I
KM> couldn't make sense of the workaround "how to install" info I

found.

So
KM> I did what I'd do in Windows... downloaded and unzipped it, then
just
KM> doubleclicked the main executable.

That package might be called iceape (a debian thing).

What the heck kind of name is Iceape??!

I have no idea where that came from. When I started using debian years ago firefox was firefox, then this...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation_software_rebranded_b y_the_De bian_project

Then it was Iceweasel and still is.

KM> And it RUNS! with no issues, far as I can tell.
Yep, you can do it that way, or sometimes I plonk things like that in

/opt.

If it's up to me, I'd make my own installed-software directory tree so I know where everything is.

Yep, that works. Places like /opt are good for making software available globally without giving anyone access to your home direcory.

KM> But now how do I make it a desktop icon, or better yet taskbar
icon?
KM> (like Firefox and Terminal have)
The desktop files are all in /usr/share/applications. Those will be
overwritten if you reinstall or update a package. I put my own desktop
files in /usr/local/share/applications. Those will be included on your
desktop in the same way as the others but won't be overwritten.

Oh. So I should look in there and see what's what. If it ever boots again....

Yep, once you have a look it'll be obvious (mostly). You need to use full
paths to files not on your path.

I must have missed him. Maybe he'll post a new list one day.. :)

This is like 15 years ago by now!

OK, he's discovered girls!

Ttyl :-),
Al

... My computer has a nut loose on the keyboard.
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