Re: My Continuing Adventures With Linux



On Wed, 18 Jul 2007, BMJ wrote:

Straydog wrote:

<snip>

Did they give you an optino to make a boot disk? You should have done this.

I installed Ubuntu from its live CD. I haven't checked if there's a way to make a boot disk for FreeBSD.

There should be a command something like "mkbootdisk" and then you put parameters after it (such as fd0/blah and kernel version, etc.

I'll have to look for it.


Also there is a configuration file for Grub (something like grub.conf

There's a /boot directory with a /grub subdirectory. Lots of configuration files there. I edited menu.lst to allow the machine to boot into FreeBSD.


As a amtter of fact, there are a lot of config files, all ending in *.conf and you should look at them.

In any terminal or file manager, be careful what you click on because that's all it takes to start a process, and then funny things might happen.

Oh, I found out about that rather quickly.....



After conducting an Internet search, I found out how I could start either one from the same boot manager (grub for Ubuntu in my case). After editing a grub file, I was able to boot each one. It's not perfect and I'll have to adjust the startup menu, but things are promising.


Grub does not always work.

Apparently it's gaining acceptance over lilo.

back when I was into this, a lot of people were having trouble including me. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. That is why I went to "boot to dos" then use loadlin.exe. It never failed. And, its why they talked about it in the manuals, but they didn't talk about the bugs in lots of other stuff.

When I first tinkered with Linux over ten years ago, the installer often ran aground.

I have a feeling that they used the lowest quality CDROM disks and lowest quality burners. A lot of my linux distros had problems in some of my boxes but not others. But, then, I've also had non-linux CDROM disks be bad, too. Two of them came to me with absolutely no files on them, no directories, nothing. No OS I had would read them or find anything one them. I have one linux CDROM disk where the only time you can mount the CDROM drive is with a linux OS. If I try DOS, Win3.1, or Win9x it looks like an empty disk with nothing on it.

Things appear to have improved since then,

I would not use the word "improved". I would say "changed". For most of the newer SW you need high spec boxes and I'm just not going to go out and spend $1K or more getting more/new boxes and HW just so I can use the latest SW when all of my old boxes work fine, and I can do wp & spreadsheets & internet jazz to my heart's content.

though I did find the
initial steps of installing FreeBSD could have used better messages.

They have not changed that since a decade or more ago. It works, they are happy.

It
doesn't specifically specify when one should change from the initial boot CD to the first installation disk, so I found myself spinning my wheels for a while at first.


I know there are a number of
files that are loaded as part of grub's operation.

I got it to work on one of my boxes, but on
another, it does not work. There are still some hardware incompatibilities out there.


Maybe I was lucky.

Just like my first Caldera Linux install. Went beautiful. Then when I tried to do the install on a second box using the same CDROM disk, I ran into big problems.


Caldera = SCO, right?

I don't remember, exactly. But, they were the first to come out with a graphical install that took a lot of the techie difficulty out of the installations and their "OpenLinux" got a big writeup in one of the computer trade rags and that is when I decided to get on the bandwagon. I was thrilled to see my first attempt be successful (beginners luck). After that, then that is when I actually started learning what linux is and where the boobytraps are located (by trial and error), and the books don't talk about that stuff.

Because of its legal maneuvering, DistroWatch.com
stopped listing it in its database.

I think they gave up. There has been soooooo much linuxmania after RH had its mushroom cloud. There was a wannabe called VAlinux and that company had a meteoric up and meteoric down right afterwards. I think they got bought out by someone else (I dont' follow the biz side of this stuff).

And, I kinda got out of linux once the newer stuff came out that also required high spec boxes and all my old boxes work just fine and I have decent web browsers for Win98se that still work to _my_ satisfaction when I go web surfing (which is rare for me, but wifey does a lot and she isn't having any problems). Most web functionality is pretty mature and so I don't expect problems except maybe for malware developments but most of that is going to follow "changes" that come with evolution of OSes, etc., and so my stuff will fall into a category that just does not get attention any more.

Although I like linux/bsdnix, there are a lot of convenience features that you give up, too. Win98se was the first "modern" OS that MS made that was actually fairly stable (95 & pre-se98 were pure crap on my custom/builder hardware, despite some people telling me that their
pre-installed 95 & 98 were stable). For me, with Win98se I get: easy zip drive hookup (not easy in at least early linuxes), easy firewall setup with ZA (not at all easy in linux unless you read the book), easy anti-malware setup with various packages (AV not a problem in linux/bsd, but hacking is a big problem), easy install/uninstall (installs in linux are distro dependent), I get two floppy size access in win/dos (not necessarily easy in linux to get the 5.25 access, and I do use these), and I get, in a FAT-16 partition, dos/win capability which you can't get in any linux partition, and I get good defraggers for that FAT-16 partition while I have not heard about defragers for linux (at least not cheap). Linux runs a little slower than my dos/win, and most of the time the command structure is more complicated or much more complicated; directory structure (esp in /users ) in linux than FAT-16 software.

I did get BSD onto one of my boxes, but could not get the x-server to run. All the command line stuff worked, but no GUI. So I decided to abandon BSD.

I can make a list of things I like in linux (eg. no-nonsense filename behavior, and if I take a few minutes to look at the screen in one of my booted up linux boxes), and things I really hate in Windows (nonsense in filename treatment [eg. knockoff last three characters, capital first
character in filemanagers, etc.]), and the Microsoft-uber-alles
mindset/strategy. But, lastly, I favor FAT-16 sw over linux because all of my boxes, and my junkboxes full of spare parts (hds, modems, cards, floppy drives, cderom drives, cables, etc) will save me from spending bucks at the hw-sw stores for the rest of my life. Lastly, I have at least a hundred times as much experience with FAT-16 sw/hw compared to linux and know how to solve problems faster and that counts for a lot, too. This includes BASIC which I'm using now to write up a billing form printer to handle my wife's billing work and I'm 99% done with a first version that actually works, and that is all because I knew BASIC/Fortran from way in the past (and the Excel 4.0 macro language is similar, and so is early visual basic [I also have the VB professional edition developer kit to make aps for both win3.1 and 95, so, yet another reason to stay on the bus I'm already on]).

Out of pure curiosity, I did consider getting a Mac-mini ($500 ?) just to see what all the Macaholics are crowing about, but I kept coming back to the notion that "what I have works fine, so why mess with something new."
Of course, now, Apple is no longer a computer company but an entertainmeten appliance company and a Mac is not "just a Mac" but a PC (now that it can run Windows/vista, etc). So, the halo still floats but whatever is under it has -- approximately -- gone.

Then, I could tell you about my experience with IBM's OS/2 mostly warp 3. A total PoC. Well, maybe only 95%. I played with it for about 2-3 years, and decided....PoC....into the ashcan. Yes. Period. End of story. Reformated the disks from xdf to FAT-16, for data storage. Big waste of my time (but there are OS/2 diehards out there, too [everyone is free to be his own favorite kind of fool]).

That's my story. Nutshell.


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