The Linux Distro Thread (maybe)

[ej-solutions]

Thought I'd start this one off, rather than continue on another thread.

As a quick catch up for others:

Have a look at Unetbootin, as a means to try out different versions of Linux, without producing numerous coasters (unwanted CDs).
I haven't tried the method of installing to hard drive, only the USB flash drive method (so far).

---

Just skimming the surface

Opinions/guidance expressed are intended to benefit the reader (mostly) but no responsibility should be assumed for the accuracy and no warranty is implied/expressed or given - so eBay may pull this post

[otherego]

Interesting stuff. I've got Mandriva linux one 2009 GNOMR running quite happily in VBox. Unlike Windoze attempts, it even lets me use full screen.

No sound, however. It looks as if I need to install "Guest Additions," if a spot of googling is correct - whatever "Guest Additions" might be!

This is fun. I'm seriously wondering about getting a bigger HDD for the creaky old Compaq desktop, though - a 40gb drive is evidently going to be eaten up very quickly. (Hard drives for messing-about purposes are something I'm quite happy to purchase second-hand, lest that sounds extravagant.)

More RAM night also be a good idea when I'm feeling extravagant. The present 768mb is works pretty hard at times, and I'm not sure I could allocate more than 256mb to VBox without upsetting the Mint host system.

A shame about all the activation/wga etc with more modern versions of Windoze, as this could be a great way of trying things out without trashing one's main installations (like trying out various firewall/AV/antispyware combinations for instance.)

But an excellent way of comparing Linux distros, and an alternative to Unetbootin/flash drives for trying distros out - without any persistence problems, if one keeps a distro for more than a session or two. Easier to see what else can be installed on a distro than when one is trying one out on a flash drive, too.

Presumably it'd be useful for peer to peer sites, too. If anything nasty should happen, presumably the rest of the system is untouched.

Time to step away from the computer for a while - but a most interesting afternoon. So far, the colonels haven't delegated the task of really annoying me to Major Catastrophe...

[otherego]

GNOMR = GNOME!

And I didn't try this out with a view to exploring "interesting sites" even if my comments in the last post may have hinted at that.

I promise.

[trufflington]

Using Puppy from a live CD - can someone tell me in reasonably simple terms how to set up an ftp to my website server to move some inmages from an old HDD (no OS on it).

Puppy can see the HDD/Partition and the images OK and connects OK.

[grumpy-cook]

I believe Puppy comes with gFTP, although not absolutely certain it's there on the LiveCD. If it is, this link should tell you enough to use it -

http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/62165

---

Click on logo or me for free Apps, Utilities, Antivirus Removal and System Backup Tutorial

[grumpy-cook]

😮 Bottom of page two! I'd better bump with an update of my Mandriva/Virtualbox adventures.

It's actually working fine now and I find the ability to quickly get into XP (usually to try something out or test something) very useful and it keeps me on Mandriva nearly all the time. I had to mess a bout quite a lot to get USB working on the VB system and had to do things to fstab, but it's all working fine now.

However (there's always one of those), the Mandriva updater has presented me with a virtualbox-kernel update and I'm not sure whether to apply it or not. All the problems I had setting it up originally revolved around mismatched kernels so I'm understandably reluctant to change anything now it's working well. What do you guys think?

---

Click on logo or me for free Apps, Utilities, Antivirus Removal and System Backup Tutorial

[ej-solutions]

Switch to Mint 😛

[Would be wise to keep kernel & Vbox in synch.]
If feeling adventurous (personally, I'd wait for RC2):
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mandriva

---

Skimming the surface

No responsibility should be assumed for the above information - no warranty is implied/expressed or given. Firefox "Safer Browsing" pack available: follow my page for the link to my website.

[otherego]

One has to give credit where it's due, I suppose. I updated Open Office to v3.1 on the XP desktop, which also has MS Office 2003. Just for fun, I compared the memory demands of OOo Writer and MS Word. Writer - nearly 62.5MiB; Word - 12.7MiB. Writer uses nearly five times as much RAM as Word on that computer.

I then fired up Writer on the Mint desktop - 21.9MiB. Still more than Word on the XP box, but only 35% of what Writer chewed on that machine.

So MS Word wins on memory efficiency compared with Open Office, and Open Office on Linux beats Open Office on XP hands down. Opening a spreadsheet from within Writer only increased the total soffice.bin memory useage to 38.5MiB.

The Mint desktop still has Open Office 3.0.1, but I'd be surprised if this makes a significant difference.

Does anybody know whether any Linux-type tricks could be applied to tame OOo's memory consumption on a Windows computer? It works fine, and is only slightly slower to open than Word, so this is of largely academic interest (but could prove a problem if I opened much else on a half-gig of RAM).

On the VirtualBox front - got Windows 2000 working properly at last, with the addition of "Guest Additions" - can now use almost full-screen, and have more than just 16-bit colour to choose from. Mandriva continues to run perfectly contentedly within VB.

The host system is Mint. I'm filled with admiration for G-C's successes on Mandriva, but slightly relieved that Mint offered me no opportunity for "war-stories" - so far, VirtualBox has "just worked" with Mint.

(And if that comment isn't tempting fate, I don't know what is.)

[ej-solutions]

:^O @ last comment.

I suspect (though guessing) the memory allocation may be due to the DLLs used by Open Office, to allow for its' porting from Linux to Windows. The handling of fonts may be one area that memory could be saved. I wonder if the spellchecker is integral in Writer but not in Word.

You've actually stumbled(?) upon the better testing criteria: What happens when the application is loaded with data? Try a substantial sized document. 😉

Guest Additions is a bit of a guddle but handy to get working. I only use it for my XP virtual machine and it can be ignored when running Live CDs, for example.

Mint can be a bit slow to catch up on the latest releases (though it's improving). In the past I've installed OpenOffice and Firefox manually to get the latest (beta) versions. Different distros have varying policies on when to accept a release as being 'stable' enough: bleeding edge or stable as a rock, if not something in between. :-)

---

Skimming the surface

No responsibility should be assumed for the above information - no warranty is implied/expressed or given. Firefox "Safer Browsing" pack available: follow my page for the link to my website.

[otherego]

Really a bit of a bump, as I'd hate to see this particular thread vanish - but a bit of a question about Mint update. I tried Synaptic>Reload>Mark All Upgrades. To teach me not to be lazy, it has given me back Open Office 2.4.

Sigh.

Confirm it's better just to leave it to Mint's auto-update? (And to actually have a look at what's on offer if one must fiddle...)

(I'm now trying Mint Update to see whether it has any better ideas.)

I tried this rather foolish update-via-synaptic as I've sparked up the old Thinkpad with Mepis, and could find no other way to update that. At least it gave me Open Office 3.1 and Firefox 3.5. Thought it would be interesting to try the same technique with Mint. Oops.

Quite impressed with Mepis/OpenOffice/Firefox - all working quite happily with 256mb of RAM and a 1.13ghz CPU. Still prefer Mint, on the whole, but may play around with this over the next few days. I installed it ages ago and rather forgot about it. Looks like a useful full-size distro for older and slower machines.

[ej-solutions]

Strange, my Mint update today installed Oo 3.1 (at long last ;-))

Try
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get check

[Either paste the above into console or use up arrow key and alter, to save typing]

The try mint update, if no joy...
sudo apt-get update

Must admit that I tend to do a Synaptic Reload & Upgrade Updates - too impatient for Mint Update. 🙂
Whilst in Synaptic, you might like to choose Settings,Preferences, Files, Delete... after installation.
(saves on disc space and only really needed for re-mastering etc.)

---

Skimming the surface

No responsibility should be assumed for the above information - no warranty is implied/expressed or given. Firefox "Safer Browsing" pack available: follow my page for the link to my website.

[ej-solutions]

Try Mint 6 Fluxbox edition on low powered machines... and Mint 8 is getting closer by the week. 🙂 Along with the Ubuntu 9.10 (in Beta).

---

Skimming the surface

No responsibility should be assumed for the above information - no warranty is implied/expressed or given. Firefox "Safer Browsing" pack available: follow my page for the link to my website.

[otherego]

The truth of the matter is stranger and more embarrassing than I first realised.

I tried reinstalling via Synaptic, even though that insisted I had the new OOo - opened it, and was greeted with the 2.4 screen. Cussing noises, then looked closer at the open new document- it sure wasn't 2.4. Sure enough, "about" revealed that it was the new version 3 in disguise.

Restarting the computer cured it. Weird. But if I'd actually looked closely at what had opened, or even glance at it with a little more concentration, it would have been clear that it was only the OOo splash screen on opening which was wrong.

Whilst in Synaptic, you might like to choose Settings,Preferences, Files, Delete... after installation.

Thanks, ej - I'd not noticed that, and will give it a go.

I've played with Fluxbox, and quite liked it - but it seems to have more trouble with wireless and graphics drivers than I'd have expected. The distros I'm most taken with seem to be those that least like my machinery.

(Some sort of a metaphor for life there, I suspect.)

Bedtime, before I confuse myself any further - and a little more playing with the update process tomorrow. I've never really given it any thought, and it's obviously worth taking a little more trouble over it.

[otherego]

Before I venture out for some much-needed fresh air - I've been playing around with an ancient laptop, and this has led to some interesting additional reading.

The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite 320CDT - 233Mhz Pentium 1 (I think) and a mighty 96mb of RAM. It came without a hard drive but eBay to the rescue, as usual. It now has a mighty 6gb HDD (I couldn't FIND an original 3.8gb version without spending serious money), and the total twenty-odd quid has provided even more entertainment than the equivalent value in Dr Tennent's tonic would have done. (Absolutely no practical justification for the whole thing. 'Tis fun.)

Using the machine's restore discs (CD and floppy - a new experience for me - doubtless brings back memories/shudders for all you experienced cybernauts), I reinstalled Windows 95. This only took about five hours - no exaggeration. Perhaps the CD drive is on its last legs or something.

It works amazingly well, and is surprisingly quick. No ways was I shelling out for a suitable version of MS Office, so I installed the last version of Open Office that W95 could handle (thank goodness for OldApps.com.)

Much battling got a PCMCIA ethernet card intalled and even allowed a brief connection to the internet. Early Windoze+networking seem to = This Isn't Fun Anymore. After four attempts, Avast! was installed. Which brought everything to an effective halt, even with just one provider.

My plan was to try Linux, anyway. W95 only used 2gb of the HDD (something to do with FAT 16 apparently), so the remaining 4gb was split between ext3 (in retrospect perhaps a bad move - ext2 might be better on such a slow machine?) and linux swap. I've never seen the GParted CD take so long to load, but it did work eventually.

DSL and Puppy both ran reasonably from live CDs - unclear whether they were using the 256mb of swap. Installation proved a different matter.

DSL just wouldn't install. I suspect someone with command-line knowledge and confidence might force the issue. Installing from the GUI opens a terminal, anyway - after a while this simply vanished; no further activity and no sign of anything having been written to the hard drive.

Puppy did eventually install (I chose the "retro" version in deference to the vintage of the equipment.) It took ages, though, and is nowhere near as fast as it is on any other computer I've tried (eg the blistering T22 with its 800-odd mhz CPU and 256mb RAM.) Both Firefox and SeaMonkey take forever to open and to load pages, and one gets frequent warnings of unresponsive script - even after resetting things in about:config as per Mozilla's suggestions.

Interestingly, installing NoScript has actually speeded things up and reduced the number of unresponsive script warnings - which strongly suggests that the frequent advice on this board to speed up browsing with NoScript is very sound. The result is more dramatic with an ancient machine.

It does look, though, as if Linux and old machinery don't necessarily mix. Giving credit where it's due, the older versions of Windows (95 and 98) are incredibly modest in their hardware requirements. They just seem to crash a lot, demand the insertion of the installation CD any time one tries to do anything, suffer "fatal exceptions" and "illegal actions," and lots of bluescreens/freezeups/the sulks especially when forced to restart following a neurosis attack.

Found a very interesting read here:

http://techpatterns.com/forums/about597-10.html

dealing with these matters. It seems that Linux's superior stability comes at a price in terms of performance, if I read it right - see the comments about Windows's "unified system" with the GUI communicating directly with the kernel etc vs Linux's more modular approach.

So - perhaps one should be wary of recommending Linux for really low-spec computers (except to command-line fanatics who wouldn't be seeking advice here anyway.) RAM seems to be the major limiting factor, with 128mb a practical extreme lower limit for Puppy and 256mb for other lightweights - Slitaz flatly refused to run on this machine. CPU-wise, I'm still not sure - but 233mhz is less than wonderful.

Since this has turned into an essay, anyway - I did a little googling to find out whether Puppy was a security worry (seems to run in root and nothing else) - still haven't found the answer, but did stumble across "the first Linux botnet." It's fairly recent and doesn't seem huge cause for concern - just two of many articles:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/12/linux_zombies_push_malware/

http://www.itworld.com/security/77499/first-linux-botnet

All seems to reinforce the favourite tenet of senior members of this board that the most effective anti-virus is the one between the ears...

[ej-solutions]

A few bits to keep you busy:
http://wiki.kolibrios.org/
http://u-lite.org/content/requirements
http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/docs/miscellaneous/version_table_2.html
http://featherlinux.berlios.de/about.htm

http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/

---

Skimming the surface

No responsibility should be assumed for the above information - no warranty is implied/expressed or given. Firefox "Safer Browsing" pack available: follow my page for the link to my website.

[otherego]

Thanks for those, ej. I seem to be having a bad weekend with interrupted and corrupted downloads.

The last link is an interesting one - I've not come across that at all.

Still, that's the next couple of evenings taken care of!

[ej-solutions]

Amazing Stuff

VirtualBox OSE Settings
Name: kolibri
OS Type: Other/Unknown
Base Memory: 28 MB
Video Memory: 5 MB

Boot time: <5 seconds! 😮

Not that it's got many programs to run. Shows what can be achieved though. :-)

---

Skimming the surface

No responsibility should be assumed for the above information - no warranty is implied/expressed or given. Firefox "Safer Browsing" pack available: follow my page for the link to my website.

[ej-solutions]

A few experiments with RAM limited to 96Mb but responsiveness on a slow processor remains to be seen.

Feather (Knoppix derivative)
TinyMe (Mepis derivative)
Slax (Slackware derivative)

[U-Lite: waste of time :-(]

---

Skimming the surface

No responsibility should be assumed for the above information - no warranty is implied/expressed or given. Firefox "Safer Browsing" pack available: follow my page for the link to my website.

[otherego]

After the third attempt at downloading/burning U-Lite to CD, I'm inclined to agree!

The other three are all on the list, but Im intrigued by Kolibri. Can it actually be run from a floppy disk, or does it need to be extracted from the floppy and installed to the hard drive?

The old computer won't boot off the zipped files (even tried that!) and trying to extract the downloaded files to a floppy simply doesn't work - they don't fit.

Lots on the internet about Kolibri/Menuet, but I've found nothing at all about how to actually run it. The idea of a distro that'll run from a floppy fascinates me - but I'm beginning to think I've misunderstood something, and that's not what it is at all!

Meantime, Zenwalk is trying to start up on the antique - might try it again in safe-whatever mode.

[ej-solutions]

From the install.txt: (typed manaully, so abridged).
Minimal System Requirements for Kolibri.
Pentium, 5x86 without MMX, 100MHz
8Mb RAM
VGA or Vesa graphics

Install to Floppy:
1. Insert a floppy with no bad sectors
2. Write kolibri.img to it using any of 4 different methods (WinImage, for example)
3. Boot from floppy

It appears that the live-CD actually uses boot floppy emulation. Yes it can run from floppy disc :-)

---

Skimming the surface

No responsibility should be assumed for the above information - no warranty is implied/expressed or given. Firefox "Safer Browsing" pack available: follow my page for the link to my website.

[otherego]

Right - tomorrow's project. I may be back for further advice especially regarding point 2 - but I'll mess around a little first.

Slax proved too much for the old machine, which is now in cool-down mode - after about 35 minutes, the desktop was all there but unresponsive. Zenwalk never quite got going, either. Entertaining trying, though.