Some other Distros?
 

My Knoppix is quite screwed (mainly tv and mounting...) and I'd like to install another distro...
Give me your experiences... :lol: :D

What's wrong with Knoppix :?:
Are you using version 3.3 :?:

-kwag

yes... I used it...
He wouldn't let me mount all partitions, only 3... (as root I could access all of em)

The TV Tuner Card wouldn't work

and some minor stuff...

I would go back to Suse... but Suse is soooo overloaded and thus it's slow :-(

You can't only mount partitions as "root". Not as a regular user.
But you can use the command "su" (Super User) or "sudo", to behave as "root" and once you mount your partitions, you drop back to regular user.
And remember that every Linux distro, is the same dog with a different collar :lol:
So Knoppix, Red Hat, SuSe, are all the same, with a different twist ( and a headache of different file structures and config files :lol: )

-kwag

Actually, you can, but you have to add the device and mountpoint to /etc/fstab and make sure "user" is one of the options. Plus the user(s) that are going to access the filesystem will need the proper permissions on the device (I think)... :)

This is the entry for my CD-ROM drive in /etc/fstab:

Hi Bob,

Yes, but I would NEVER give a "user" the permissions to mount a partition :cool:
No way :lol:
They might type: rm -rf / and bye bye :!:
And then they ask: Where's my filesystem :?: :mrgreen:

Edit: Of course, that is if the fstab has read/write enabled. It's normally set to "ro" ( Read Only)

-kwag

Oh, I wouldn't let a user (including myself) mount a hard drive partition. But mounting removable media (CD, ZIP disk, USB stick, etc.) should be allowed to make things easier (perhaps read-only, though)... Just noting that Linux/Unix gives you enough rope to hang yourself, if you want :twisted:

That's what permissions are for... so I have to agree that mounting Windows drives (where all files are owned by the same user) as non-root is BAD :)

EDIT: I should point out to the Linux newbies here that doing rm -rf / at any time is bad... it can possibly destroy all of your files on all mounted partitions...

But if they do it once, I'm sure they'll never do it again :mrgreen:

Or: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda count=10000 and then :grenade: and the user will :banghead: :lol:

( Actually, I do use that command, to erase MBR and the first tracks before I do a HD install :cool: )

-kwag

OK guys, you are scaring the heck out of me. I just want to do a simple and easy hd installation of knoppix, following the suggestions that kwag sent me a couple of days ago. But looking at what one command can do scares me to "contemplating suicide" :D ......But, being a newbie is a bessing in disguise, I only work with few commands, and may never reach the knowledge that you guys have....

I am assuning that the 5 giga partition that I have created with windoes should be more than sufficient for linux, is this correct? and, do I have to create partitions in my external drive? or eill a folder called libux be sufficient to store my linux files?

Thanks again. I should go back to trying linux tomorrow or Tuesday..
Regards

Otto

Hi Otto,

5GB is good enough for a Knoppix partition. And you don't have to create separate partitions on your external drives. Once the drives are mounted from Linux, you can access them.
However, they are normally mounted "Read Only", so you might want to change that.
In the UNIX world, you have what's called the "Manual Pages", or man pages.

So type: man fstab and that will give you information on the "file system table" file (fstab), where you can add your external drives so they "Automount" when you boot Linux.
This way, you won't have to be manually mounting read/write your external drives.
You'll have to edit the file /etc/fstab with one of the editors included in Knopix. My favorite editor is joe, because it resembles "WordStar" ( Darn I'm getting old 8O )
So if you ever used that editor, you'll feel at home :!:

Read the manual pages on fstab an on mount.

man fstab
man mount

-kwag

Don't worry, it's actually harder to mess up a running Linux system than a Windows system, since ordinarily you'd be running as a regular user and not root 8)

And, like kwag said, 5GB should be more than enough for a full installation. When I first installed Slackware Linux in 1997 I installed off of floppy disks and had lots of storage on a 300MB partition. Things have changed a bit since then, though :-)

No kidding, eh? I've used it since 1996; I noticed the system admin of my ISP used it (people with accounts on the webserver were allowed to login via telnet back then) so I started running it since it was easier to learn than either Emacs or Vi. Plus Slackware's Emacs install took up a few more 1.44MB floppies and I wasn't willing to spend the space on it :mrgreen:

Ahhh, memories :D
My first contact with Linux, was with 'SoftLanding Linux Systens (SLS)".
Remember that :?:
That was circa 1992, and I even bought a CD-R, which I still have :lol:
Look at the file ANNOUNCE, from my CD-ROM, dated 4/23/1993: Yes, joe it's a nice editor. There's also "pico", but I rather use joe, and "vi" ONLY if there's nothing else 8O :lol:

-kwag

I think in 1992 I was still using a Tandy 1000 SX... :-)

I'm trying to remember why I used Slack in the first place. Red Hat, Caldera, and Debian were certainly around, I think SuSE was still limited to Europe at the time, and Mandrake may or may not have been invented yet. It could have been the distro my ISP was using, and coming from an MS-DOS background I was probably looking for something command-line oriented. :mrgreen:

Check out http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/historic-linux/ for some nostalgia.

I learned vi since joe wasn't around on the UltraSparc systems we got to play with at school. Of course one of the first things I compiled was joe, followed by OpenSSH and xdoom :twisted:

Elvis has a nice HTML editing mode, and Vim looks nice in Windows, so I'm using vi more and more recently. Pico's pretty basic, I think it's the Notepad of the Unix world :-D

LOL :lol:
I remember that machine :!:
I wrote a program in assembler ( a TSR for a law firm back in 1986 ), that would collect real time data from a PBX, and store it for later processing of all daily telephone (incoming/outgoing) calls. That was my first real 8088 assembler commercial program :D and it ran on a Tandy 1000.
That little machine was on from 8:00AM to 5:00PM, and it was the secretary's word processing machine. So the machine was heavily used all day, and collecting data in the background via RS-232 at 300 baud :lol: . Great memories :)
Hey, I started programming on a Atari 800, back in 1982, and that was FUN :mrgreen: And they were really buggy at that time, with lot's of broken packages :lol: Oh yes, I've been there :) :lol: yes it is :mrgreen:

-kwag

I can imagine it being able to "multitask" a 300bps connection while word processing, but nothing much faster than that :-) I replaced the CPU in mine with an NEC V20 at one point, it was noticeably faster.

I even learned 8088 assembler on it, it was much more fun to optimize code back then... I can get prospective employers eyes to glaze over when I mention I can program in assembly language :mrgreen:

Me: I also know x86 assembly language.
Them: Huh?

Actually, it could have captured at a higher bitrate. The serial driver I wrote, was heavily optimized, and I actually did a lot of "Cycle counting" analysis on instructions for optimal speed. Then, using the ( gee I still remember :lol: ) INT 27 to terminate and stay resident. I guess you remember Borland's "Sidekick" program :?: I believe that was the first program to use INT 27, with all the pop-ups it had. I still have a 360KB floppy of it :mrgreen: I did that too :lol:
That was a good chip :!:
Also the V30.
If think the V30 was the 8086 version ( the V20 being the 8088) if I recall correctly. That was a Looooong time ago :mrgreen: Yes it was FAR more fun to program those processors. I did a lot of work in FORTH language, which was excelent on small CPUs and small memory foot prints. But that was back in my Atari 800 days :cool:

Edit: Hey, maybe I should open a "Computer Nostalgia" section, so we can all go cry there :mrgreen:

-kwag

Heh, I still remember using a debugger to stick the byte sequence 0xCD 0x20 (INT 20h) into broken programs to get them to terminate early... :-)

Never used Sidekick, but remember it as the "ultimate" TSR program.


Sounds about right. There were also the V40 and V50 (I think that's the right numbers), which were NEC's version of the 80188 and 80186 respectively. The only computer I can think of that used a 80186 was the Tandy 2000, and I've never seen one of them...

Programming for my Gameboy Advance reminds me of programming for old computers: flat memory access (and 256kb RAM :!: ) and memory-mapped I/O, but with the advantage of being a 32-bit ARM processor :-D

Good, that'll give me something to do in between KVCD encodes (which have been put on hold since the TV connected to my DVD player started smoking :grr1: )

Ha :!:
Well, that's better than the 6502 "Page Zero" :mrgreen: "Computer Nostalgia" forum is now open :cool: :D

-kwag