Dying Pussie update. 04-27/08
I stopped updating this to spend more time with my last dying cat.
New new laptop, a toshiba with a t2330.
Saw an interesting website since last time, someone
asked about whether they should buy a laptop based around
tl-58 or t2330. The advice overwhelming claimed the t2330
would vastly outperform the t2330. My actual experience
= the opposite! If these = real customers they need blame
only themselves for bad markets in computer hardware.
latest discs: [ all tested on my toshiba laptop with a t2330 inside. ]
SABAYON 3.5RC2 x86_64 not even a splash screen but lots
of free grease on the bottom of it I know I didn't
put there.
SABAYON 3.5 LOOP2 did get a splash screen but lacks
the obvious grease spots of RC2_64 for obvious scrape
marks on edge of disk. Did someone grab and sabotage
these at some installfest?
KNOPPIX 531 Live gave ethernet [many distro don't figure
it out]. Looks great overall. My XGalaga Hyperspace gam
e went super but neither version of FreeCiv worked.
[ctrl][alt]+ failed totally so if some site does its
critical print as tiny graphics you must fumble with
kmagnify or other horrid kludge!
KUBUNTU i386DESKTOP 8.04 BETA KDE4 adjustments of panel
totally failed, critical deficiency. [ctrl][alt]+
failed totally so if some site does its critical print
as tiny graphics you must fumble with kmagnify or other
horrid kludge!
SIDUX PRE KDE LITE X86_64 20080317 3L= +eth. missing
many apps. [ctrl][alt]+ failed totally so if some site
does its critical print as tiny graphics you must fumble
with kmagnify or other horrid kludge!
UBUNTU 8.04 BETA DESKTOP i386 3L= +eth. Total lack of
KDE for some bloated, under actual instrumentation,
window manager. [ctrl][alt]+ failed totally so if
some site does its critical print as tiny graphics you
must fumble with kmagnify or other horrid kludge!
KUBUNTU DESKTOP 8.04 BETAi386 ok KDE [ctrl][alt]+ failed
totally so if some site does its critical print as tiny
graphics you must fumble with kmagnify or other horrid kludge!
KUBUNTU 8.04BETA AMD64 DESKTOP on my Intel 2330 cpu laptop=
+eth. ok KDE. [ctrl][alt]+ failed totally so if some site
does its critical print as tiny graphics you must fumble with
kmagnify or other horrid kludge!
UBUNTU 8.04BETA DESKTOP AMD64 on 3L, -KDE,
[ctrl][alt]+ failed totally so if some site does its critical
print as tiny graphics you must fumble with kmagnify or
other horrid kludge!
Other topics come after :New Laptop [ er, older new
laptop entry. ] [ forced to do a quickie return in
Feb., bad power circuits. Disappointed
they gave me my money back vs a delay and a fixed laptop. ]
LINUX ON MY NEW ACER TL-58 BASED LAPTOP =L2=2
Linux distributions rarely configure My Extensa properly
Out Of Box. I'm doing more work per install than my usual
OOB review/s.
Going through some disks 2008.01.21:
ANTIX MEPIS 7.01, = small MEPIS w a flux= clumsy light
wm not KDE. I prefer KDE. Found wireless but not eth or
sound initial screen was 1024x768 vs 1280x800 native.
Flash worked. Got wireless, res looks good w CA+ too.
-sound -eth,
DREAM LINUX , a deb but not KDE. Found sound but not eth
or wireless on L2. Mac-like xfce, gave [ctrl][alt]+,
possibly even full 1280x800. Appended itself to bottom of
some of the menu.lst files in the other distributions
partitions. Surprisingly good.
MINT Linux 4 Debian Alpha, maybe fixable after an install
and KDE transplant.
MINI PCLinuxOS, a better Mandrake than Mandriva. Got sound
and [CA]+ only. Mini PCLinuxOS didn't get resolution right
despite claims from its display resolution applications!
GRANULAR, based on PCLinusOS flunked res. Not as bad as
expected. Not near the PCLinuxOS standard.
OPEN SUSE 10.3 an rpm. Got sound eventually but lost it.
Poor vid res. Annoying GRUB graphics. Too Bleeding edge.
OPEN SUSE 10.3 -res X-org.conf may fix -sound -CA+ -eth
-wireless , suppossedly a good distro when dealing with
really new laptops.
SIDUX with kernel 26.23. Use apt-get from root shell to grab
more applications from sid. Sound took effort. Ethernet worked
and Daniel got 14.4kbps driver working with its winmodem
but few U.S. providers allow dialup under 50kbps. [ Dialup
USA finally dropped under 50% of households in 2005; update,
its at 47% in 2007. And if the state of dialup in these
distributions seems o.k. to you , you have not really
considered the implications. Why's dialup so high? Price
Gouging as the telecoms just bribe congresstraitors to make
their business model work. [[ Hint re: those dialup stats.
in 2005 your rejecting 50% of possible customers unless you
do support dialup.]] ] Daniel suppossedly got wireless too.
Got native resolution of lcd. -CA+.
SIMPLY MEPIS 7.0, a deb with KDE. My old fave returns
to Debian as its base vs Ubuntu due to important problems
getting ignored. I'm thrilled as the buntu family wiped out
its partitions literally hundreds of times on my boxes, they
= banned here now! Problems similar to mine keep disappearing
off the buntu forums and others have written about how they
no longer submit bug reports to buntu due to poor treatment.
Unless buntu fixes their policies, expect to get kicked
when you're down with any problem beyond the trivial.
Wireless works but not eth. Don't have sound working yet.
Largest screen = 1024x768. Until I stole the xorg.conf from
Anti-X, now its missing the extra malfunctioning mode from
Anti-X but has all the others. Worked on sound but no good.
Got wireless. MEPIS uses
ndiswrapper.
KANOTIX 2007.rc7 'thorhammer' [ctrl][alt]+ worked but not
1280x800 res. Sound after Alsaconf. Dark Penguins theme
looks good. Ethernet communicated out but not wireless.
GRANULAR res was 800x600 unfixable, got sound . PCLinuxOS based!
2007.10.11 Many Linux dial up diary ; But first ,
my social reform crap.
[ just formally became president of EBLUG 2007.06.21. ]
FAME , "Invent a great saying & your name will live forever" ,
-- Anonymous!
E-PRIME = an efficient English variant where the verb = =
eliminated in favor of more active verbs. vs
EBONICS uses be as a substitute for the verb =.
=BONICS, I'm writing in it now or I= writing in it now,
demonstrates the transition to E-Prime by retaining = as a [
contractions allowed ] or the [ contractions not allowed ]
version of the verb =. Mostly Black Private Schools like
E-Prime because it really = more efficient. Witness the many
languages lacking the verb = until American 'English' finds
and pollutes their culture.
LATIN VULGATE generates the languages Spanish, french etc.
English and Esperanto efficiently dump most of the different
verb forms or at least dump some irregularity.
ESTROGEN, The bodies of female Homo Sapiens Sapiens who
indulge in nutrition make too much of this. Thus , according
to recent research 2007.10.11, those attractive women need
to get pregnant before age 25; OR they face extra risk of
breast cancer from all that estrogen. A 2nd pregnancy =
recommended to give the body another vacation away from all
that estrogen. I recommend 24 mo.s of lactation too. Since
the man's brain evolved next to her body it receives the
signal ~ "fill my womb immediately" on sight of her 2ndary
characteristics even if her brain resists. Recent research
confirms my expectations formed from evolution theory again.
TESTOSTERONE , poisons men's brains such that they tend to
do crimes etc.
HARSH ENVIRONMENT , thats why Female Bodies walk the
dangerous line between estrogen induced cancer and
malnutrition or a lack of success in 'marriage markets'.
EYES , creationists used to say god must exist because eyes
are too complicated for evolution. But 'evolutionists'
proved even more complex things can reasonably evolve.
TAMPER EVIDENT SEAL , I have trouble explaining how that
evolved on the human body so maybe god exists but shrunken
down to that one body part? Except that its to her advantage
to look un-tampered.
ECONOMICS , how rich people justify oppressing poor people.
ECONOMISTS , disgusting whores who give the lovely ladies of
the evening a bad name by lying to oppress poor people for
rich people.
PROSTITUTION , the first thing female Capuchin Monkeys do
after experimenters introduce a system of monetary coinage.
CAPITALIST COLLAPSE , thats why young men get extra
testosterone to induce risk taking behavior. Women prefer
men who will make superior resources available to her
children. It's more evident when one remembers that the
poorly regulated markets of the ancient world include
polygyny. By studying the gas law [ which collapses when we
change the random assignment of all collision energy to
assign up to the smaller energy - thus modeling the yardsale
economy ] we know its not just Marx, the founder of
MARXISM , an excuse to implement
STALINISM , a brutal dictatorship named after an abused
child; who used the communist idea of a 'dictatorship of
the proletariat' to justify his/its crimes vs humanity.
JUNK , things other people confuse with your stuff.
STUFF , things other people confuse for junk.
TERNARY , there = 1 0 kinds of people in the world; those
who know what ternary = , those who can't care & those who =
reaching for their dictionaries.
BINARY: there = 2 kinds of people in the world starting with
those who believe there = two kinds of people in the world.
FREE SOFTWARE , nobody has incentive to make it work right.
PAY SOFTWARE , providers have incentive to sabotage it.
AMPHETAMINES , something US soldiers occasionally get
ordered to use but casual use = illegal.
HONORARIA , how 'law firms' pay back judges for weird
rulings that create many billable hours, research confirms
game theory in U.S.A.
VOTE COUNTING Algorithms, go to the MAMcalc site & look
around. This approach meets both Condorcet criteria &
Immunity from Majority Complaint , using first - past -
post voting in the USA = continuing disaster. Given the
definitions, Dodgson should work great [ most accurate by
definition ] but calculating it gets difficult and it does
not evaluate well [ crappy vs strategizing too ] . Look out,
even the wiki entries have some glaring errors on this
subject.
RANDOM BALLOT TIEBREAKER = great defense vs strategy.
REDISTRICTING , just use the algorithm from an issue of Dr.
Dobbs Software Magazine.
FIRST PAST POST stinks as a vote method when # of candidates
exceeds 2. [ The USA uses even worse methods to count votes
]
SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE mimics first past post elections
with progressively fewer candidates until a "majority"
emerges. Much less accurate vs
CONDORCET VOTE COUNTING METHODS because they mimic a series
of first past post elections with only 2 candidates per
election, the only scenario where First Past Post gives
accurate results.
TRUTHINESS, used to mean the better approximation of truth.
I rarely used it until The Colbert Report reversed it to
designate what someone feels the truth should =. The U.S.A.
fell so far from honesty in it's habits that we need this!
THE VERB MAY exists , don't use the verb can as a substitute
word beyond its generalized meaning of ability. Standardized
tests constructed by dolts who fail to make this distinction
spread the error ; disastrous according to the part of the
laws of physics called information theory : especially when
they fail to handle the suffix ", solely in that you're
physically able" correctly.
THERMODYNAMICS tells us that natural language overloading of
the verb can as more may stinks in a 'self evident' way !
'SELF EVIDENT', what B. Franklin did to 'Just and Proper' in
the draft declaration of independence from T. Jefferson
after the Founding Fathers realized they needed a bigger
bribe to 'hang together' with 'the common he' or 'we shall
surely hang separately'.
JUDGES , If their appointments don't ultimately hinge on
well informed elections ( using procedures like MAM ) : the
part of economics called game theory says we can trust them
to reliably enrich lawyers.
INTERPRETER , one who tells both parties suffering a language
barrier that the other party said what it benefits the
interpreter for the other party to have said. In computing ,
whats replacing compilers in hybrid form.
CULT = a small, unpopular religion.
RELIGION = a large , popular cult.
HISTORY , the shared delusions forced upon schoolchildren to
brainwash the lower classes that they share a common
interest in society. "Schooling indoctrinates those
subjected to it to obey those with more schooling"
Buckminster Fuller & others.
SLAVERY , something the church profited from but condemned
after Vikings started taking second sons of the nobility
from monasteries as slaves. Jesus and Paul both reinforce
the authority of slave owners. Prior to that check out the
Midianite Slave Girls at http://evilbible.com under rape.
BUCCANEERS, from the Arawak Indian word for their meat
drying racks; enters English meaning the folks who used
them to sell dried meat to passing ships. Then some turn to
piracy for better profits; causing the Spanish to run off
their cattle on Hispanola etc. Causing the rest to turn to
piracy [ sound social planning guys! ] or starve. [ part of
why their democratic traditions inspired those of the U.S.A.
]
MONOTHEISM , a religion of low explanatory power for people
so poor they only have one god.
POLYTHEISM , religions of potentially infinite explanatory
power AND COMPLEXITY !
SERIAL MONOGAMY , why the USA = not a monogamous society, see
Donald Trump & Marla Maples.
POLYGAMY , a marriage tradition that can really exist but
under the usual Polygyny the man must endure the special
punishment of marrying more than one woman.
GENDER RATIO , whats with all these extra men ? Has nobody
heard that extra male births = higher crime, even the
animators of GENESHAFT knew that .
TONY CURTIS = why we live so long.
PORNOGRAPHY , a term invented by poor quality Catholic
Priests of high birth because they didn't like peasants
correctly using the cheap new Gutenberg bibles to notice
when the priests lied. ( check GURPS Medieval for an easy
reference ) Should only exist for its inventors.
STATISTICS , an excuse liars use over 70% of the time.
CORRUPTION , the usual form of government. The genius of the
USA = restricting corruption to CAMPAIGN BRIBERY.
PROGRESSIVE TAXATION , an efficient form of financing useful
government services.
REGRESSIVE TAXES , something the rich will tolerate.
POLITICIAN , a lawyer hired by rich people to pretend to
represent poorer people.
LAWYER , rhymes with liar because thats what they do
professionally. One who enriches self while pretending to
represent a client.
COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS , a useful policy analysis tool that
snuck many right wing ideologies into policy under the guise
of objectivity.
COMMUNISM , a lie that someone poorer than you wants you to
believe.
CAPITALISM a lie someone richer then you wants you to
believe.
SOCIALISM = the wave of the future for over 90 years now, I
see nothing changing this!
CONTROVERSIAL = someone's willing to lie about it.
HARDWARE , what software's for.
SOFTWARE , what hardware's for.
TAUTOLOGY , a short logical loop that really explains nothing.
PARADOX , an inherent feature of open logic systems; the only
one's that can explain anything. Paradox makes logic
incomprehensible and unresolvable; I'm lying to you right
now.
CONVERSE = something that must look obviously true or you may
not include the statement in technical documentation. A
converse = always true when iff = correctly used over if ,
otherwise it must = false at least some of the time. "Never
include a statement in technical documentation if it's
converse = obviously false."
VICTORY -- the evil BUNTU fell to PCLinuxOS's ascension as
#1 on the http://www.distrowatch.com hit rankings ! I use
PCLinuxOS but prefer MEPIS when they have their act
together, faster for starters.
STAMP COLLECTING , how modern university Linguists publish
enough to keep tenure ; thus rendering them opposed to using
logic to communicate as this would render them jobless.
REALISM , a foil used to abandon any hint of game balance in
an RPG.
GAME BALANCE , a foil used to abandon any hint of realism in
an RPG.
YOU'RE NOT AN EXPERT , an excuse to make GNOME desktop user hostile.
WE TARGET NEW USERS , an excuse to make GNOME desktop user hostile.
YOU DON'T REALLY UNDERSTAND EVERY WORD OF OUR INCOMPREHENSIBLE
GUIDELINES , an excuse to make GNOME desktop user hostile.
KDE , a beautiful free desktop new users love to use on Linux
etc. with less code bloat then GNOME despite its reputation
for more.
FULLY FREE , an excuse to make GNOME desktop user hostile.
FDA , Bureaucrats who lie about food safety to get industry
jobs later.
DELUSIONAL, "no longer marginal. It has come in from the
fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office &
Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology &
theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington." - Bill
Moyers, 2004.
SCHOOLS should inflict E-Prime and the verb MAY on their
charges vs causing a reversal of the meaning of the words
truthiness and can in many sentences. Through a negligence
that supports the 'self esteem trumps all' movement.
RAID = an excuse so vendors ship crap vs hard drives.
SMART = an excuse for the drive to tell the OS its
replacement time because the vendor wants good drives
replaced after n hours to increase vendor profit.
SATA = an excuse to charge more for cheaper cables.
SCSI = an excuse to charge lots more for more expensive
cables.
GIGABIT ETHERNET , a faster way to ask a 99kbps 2 phone wire
connection for more bandwidth.
When code & comments disagree , both = wrong.
CIVIL SUIT , Early Feb. 2008, I wom one vs some US educated
Indian Lawyer regarding the genocide of insisting I meant may when
I said can. Large corporation = very happy they got off with what my lawyer
called "a generous settlement".
"ALL INFORMATION NEEDED TO JUDGE THE DECISION'S SOUNDNESS = there when its made." all competent deciders .
The advanced optimization rule for advanced experts only =
don't do it yet. - needs attribution
Looks like a lot of social needs reform.
Linux Distributions:
Read the latest top ten article at
http://www.distrowatch.com/
= best small blurb yet. Also check the linuxmafia.com pages
about philosophy & Linux distributions. Linux gets used in
everything from Supercomputer Networks to things smaller
than a cell phone.
Why this page exists?
Honestly, dial up sunk under 50% of households in 2005 but
Linux developers started acting that way half a decade early
[2007 update, dialup now at 47% of households! ] . Testing
software sucks & many distro reviews happen in a vm or give
it a drive & tray. Other users also support w98 legacy
software & will benefit from going mostly Linux like we did.
I review using a multi boot grub menu to support real users
under real conditions. Having really used partitions beyond
hda37 , I hate this back to hda15 = max idea. Flopping back
to sda vs hda occasionally seems dysfunctional too.
If you really wanna know more about me, I'm Jane_ikari on
http://rationalwiki.com .
2007.04.24 - Going through my disks:
[ no i wont review all 99+ distro on distrowatch.com]
Latest
2007.09.24 Main desktop still PCLinuxOS like last year, MEPIS betas based on Debian elsewhere;
rest = L aptop by default.
Fixed MEPIS beta3_32 on L it even did internal wireless. but I have to reboot as root for vid.
2007.09.24 Formally banning all future installs of buntu
family of distributions, we can't afford the post-install
partition wipe-outs probably caused by [ which buntu grabbed
from Debian Experimental after author gave up after 5 years
of not fixing the fact that this file benchmark speedup tends
to wipe out partitions post-install :]"some hd just don't
get along with Ubuntu".
2007.09.21 got MEPIS beta3 working very fine 2007.10.11.
, 4 looks awful and 5 looks promising. 2007.11.22 MEPIS beta6 looks okay.
2007.08.30 MEPIS 6.96 b1 firmly entrenched and almost updated to b3 sabayon=long gone. Entire buntu family banned from my drives now due to several suspicious partition wipes. Suspect=code they sucked from
debian experimental - its worse than Etch.
2007.06.21, got Presidency of EBLUG, too ill following neighbors
return to enjoy my pay from him, Latest Stable Sidux acts
haunted when using touch pad under iceweasel on Laptop.
Correctly gives 1280x800 only, thus missing all [ctrl][alt]
[+] resolutions ? I'd really like 640x400. I found 640x480
etc. buried under the control center in Linux
Mint Bianca ?2.2, I'm writing from it now, still a bug and
getting back to 1280x800 gets hard without scrolling.
ZEN linuxes , I tried them once & they flunked but might
have improved.
YOPER 3 didn't work on L.
YOPER totally unstable, was my top distro long ago.
XANDROS , fond memories but often the free stuff beats it.
xuBUNTU, my preferred buntu as apt-get install kubuntu-desktop usually
works & xfce has a text command tool i like on its panel. The buntu's
used to get hda2 after install of all others, making multi boot 0
steps away but no more.
VMware , I have a couple old disks of it but never got much
from it despite my need to support w98 in a vm.
WHAX , I keep it around as a tool but never got good install
from it.
WINDOWS 98se, for my legacies, Intellicad, Paint Shop Pro 5.0,
Word Perfect 8, some games. Discovered formatted empty on
2007.05.04 after putting 9 disks on my boxes. Oops! Gonna vm
around this with k, qemu.
VLOS has a pretty gentoo GNOME in one version but SABAYON
dwarfs it now.
VIDEO , looks promising but my version didn't find my mouse.
Vector SOHO 5.8 20070704, new prime distro on L, fast,
pretty, gives correct+640x480 resolutions after fiddling,
does not get throught to MetroFi-free on own, I use 5min. of puppy 212 to initially prime
internet access. Opera gets no packets from MetroFi-Free. 20070707
got seamonkey to kill the app after hang telling me the script for my
googlepage was slow 23+++ times, this process started about a day ago
and I've done many things during this time.Wiped out by , Ubuntu family
picky about hd syndrome = primary culprit.
VECTOR promising fast slack based distro that convinced me I want
KDE. Easy install does modem.
SOHO = KDE version of Vector, free version/s often buggy , old and
ignored my FAT32. Slower than Pardus 2007.1 which stole its thunder as
an easy kde slack install. SOHO 5.8 rc's 1,2,3 didn't boot on most of
my boxes. Enjoy the new June 2007 version on x as not handling vfat
right doesn't matter - lame excuses show up under /media and /mnt
about it.
FAT32 & AUTOMOUNTING , its easier to subtract junk from fstab etc.
than to add it, Vector & MCNLive & some others take note!
UNTANGLE:Aug.2007:great idea: Does no multi-booting! both discs failed on X.
UNDERGROUND 022= a nearly painless arch Linux that insisted on a primary partition & reiser4fs. RR4 killed everything past that hda3
inclusive causing a 9 distro rebuild over 3 partial days back when a
buntu would instantly make it all multi boot. Kicked RR4 off system
permanently. 029 Underground didn't work as well as 022.
ARCH = a binary distro like gentoo thus better because its binary.
Currently needs more tweaking than Gentoo.
ULTIMA = F last time I tried it on bx motherboard.
UBUNTU tends to hate some hd, causing wipeouts on my L. Avoid!!
TUQUITO 2.0r5 L very good, KDE .deb got resolutions right , 2nd panel
= there extra work localizing unless yo hablo Espagnol argentinio.
Seem to have fixed worst of permissions problems and I find brushing
up on my Argentinian Spanish pleasant enough, maybe the new top
distro on L ! 20070802 You probably want better English localization.
TRIXBOX 2.0, L saw installer. Phone, etc., not a conventional distro.
TOPOLOGILINUX , gotta try it both ways, normal & under windows,
sometime. Mint's installer found a way to boot this partition install
on x, should work elsewhere too, net problem/s(slack).
SUSE: Aug. 2007 update: Last version didn't boot L!
SUSE = a once good family, now bloated slow patent criminals.
SLAX , a run from cd distro based on slackware. I tend to use a floppy
imitating USB install of puppy instead. Often runs faster from cd
than Knoppix. Got 6.0rc3 on 07.05.16, I think.
STUX , mostly as SLAX.
SME, I should keep one of these around as a server tool but don't.
Simply MEPIS 6.5 lost to PCLinuxOS 2007 before June for not scanning
with kooka correctly o.o.b.
SKOLELINUX 20070805 about, L, mucho work getting [ctrl][alt][+]
SKOLELINUX _64, 2007.08.04 working good on x after new repositories,
-sound
SIDUX _64 2007-02 didn't upgrade successfully and install suffers
diagonal screen striping crash syndrome with [ctrl][alt][del] lockout
at random times!
SIDUX from kaNOTix , initial dev release looked good on my 64x2 when
that box was hooked up, not using the dev now. Got w98 working under
vm player & still takes data from cd. Gotta fix those drivers to let
software installs work in there. 2007.06.28 SIDUX on L, supposedly not
a dev release but needed wrestling for dhcp internet access. Hope next
reboot has flash etc. working better. This is actually working well if
changing xorg[x11] to fix haunted synaptics behavior works out etc.
Maybe I will succeed at getting good experience from 1 distro on all 3
current boxes. KRandRtray stinks vs [ctrl][alt][+] working properly !
SCIENTIFIC 200706 switched to KDE for me but Didn't figure out my L
resolution, used 1024x768 instead, too much fiddling .
SAM 2007, light PClinuxOS, lacks KDE, working on x and b, no x11 on L.
SABAYON 3.4F, these just keep getting worse - didn't boot L!
SABAYON, more recently - packager stinks too bad!
SABAYON amazes me on my 64x2 box w 2g ram & 6100sm-m board. Too good
at getting wireless etc. on Laptop. Most recent sabayon was trouble.
64 bit version lacks software unless you compile.
I tend to use it over knoppix as a rescue cd. The mini does my wireless
easiest.
SABAYON 3.26 on L, dumped the /etc/X11/xorg.conf from knoppix511 here
and got 640x400 working auto via a 515resolution file in /etc/init.d/.
So I have movies and everthing working here as my prime distro after
changing a gentoo emerge setting that makes the conf file issues easier.
Occasional haunted trackpad syndrome but does what I ask ,
still 2007.07.25 will try 3.4 soon.
RAYS actually worked OK, knowing Chinese not required, a good rpm overall.
RO FREESBIE , couldn't get past passwd issues.
RUBIX didn't work out long ago.REACT OS , not a Linux but supposedly works great in vm.
QUANTIAN = now defunct. May replace with Scientific. on its dvd RW.
PUPPY 217 Still prefer 212, didn't even get 1280x800 from cd.
PUPPY 216 Colors too muted, prefer 212.
PUPPY 215, community bloated and ugly vs 212 on L, other boxes don't
boot from usb. Great for Solitare when taking Dad to Hospital.
PUPPY 212, my usb drive distro despite running as root.
PPC distributions for when you get better hardware.
PCLinuxOS , was my top distro at version .92. .93 was a dog 2007 = no [ctrl][alt]+ but finally got modem working. default boot on b.
PCBSD 1.3? Ports took too long to keep trying to MAKE 915resolution
deliver 1280x800, had extra vid modes, [ctrl][alt][+].
PAI PIX August 2007: kdesu didn't work for same password as su root!
PAI PIX was a good Portuguese DVD-RW but defunct till late Aug. 2007
PARDUS latest as of 2007.07.25 didn't wow me and become new prime
anywhere.
PARDUS 20070611 gets used for b/u sometimes , it also doesn't handle
the vfat fat32 partition "correctly" by default , my main user doesn't
like trivial changes to the Kdesktop either.
PARDUS 2007.1 tested scanner, both printers after root shell &
http://localhost:631/admin , Fast like slack & installs like MEPIS,
if it stayed working I'd use it as prime. Re-installed, will not
inflict on users yet. Can't add anything from repositories without
conflicts. User hates how it handles vfat.
OVERCLOCKIX got flash playing but no sound on my laptop.
NIMBLEX, stable 2007.10.01 worked but I didn't find any
installer. Fast boot, tiny kde, missing stuff. I like.
NIMBLEX , booted laptop not b or a , hated it. Neat idea.
MUTAGENIX can't handle 17" monitor properly from 64x2 box. MUSIX never worked well for me. 200706 Musix may work better for
people who remember how to change keyboards, I remembered shhift 0 = '=' and got it installed but ice window manager, I think its ice, is only good at wm-ing.
MUNJOY same.
MINT=banned w other buntu's! [ many suspicious partition wipes
that don't recur anymore ]
NINT XFCE commu. 20070707 Trying , didn't play dvd before initial
upgrade thats taking many hours [ i shoulda excluded mo stuff ] , ok
overall but ice = a better light because you can quickly move panels
from top/bottom to sides. May try to get xfce modified to my
preferences at some installfest , given availability of experts.
Suspect ext3 incompatibility syndrome remains in this buntu derivative
as it did fsck the recent vector SOHO install's partition. Grabs data
from other distro fine. Saw warning about kernel upgrade for some
intel chipset so im not abandoning my upgrade when that fails this
time. Setting mplayer to x11 got dvd playing !
MINT 2.2 KDE wow, it sets up good enough faster than MEPIS! Finds
other installs better than them sometimes, topologolinux, need to add
data partitions, typical media enabled buntu derivative. Boots slow
and gives good web. 20070602 prime on L despite a boot problem as
overwork on flaky MetroFi-Free wasted my Knoppix 5.x .s
2007.06.29 Mint Bianca KDE got problem fsck can't solve again, am
trying sidux now.
MINT2 booted my laptop.
MEPIS beta5 looks promising, 3 works great incl. 2007.10.11
built in wireless for the first time ever on L aptop.
MEPIS 2007.09.02 beta3 I used synaptic to upgrade so I have
got k3b and movies working again by switching to debian
testing repositories.
MEPIS, 2007.08.25 beta1, based on etch, Replaces the Sabayon and I
don't need to keep Konqueror in background to use firefox. [ctrl]
[alt][+] works, including 640x400 after 915resolution tweaking.
MEPIS "6.5.0.32" on L 20070731 can't get [ctrl][alt][+] working from
live cd; and I WON"T install it as all of my instances of partitions
getting wiped out involved a member of the buntu family! Maybe that's
why MEPIS will switch back to a Debian base. Ubuntu refused to work
for years on any box unless you changed the 99% common default PNP
os setting - so its the same old egotism as far as I can tell [ the
hd problems started over a year ago ] .
MEPIS 6.5 Unlike most distro. On L 6.5 got my 1280x800 screen right
but doesn't toggle other resolutions. On b kooka doesn't scan.
MCNLive adds a great text entry tool like xfce's to the KDE panel but
flunked on my bx motherboard.
MANDRIVA , its versions tend not to work on my boxes. A worse
MANDRAKE then PClinuxOS or MCNlive.
MANDRIVA FREE 2007 from LXF DVD 87, L saw installer.
LLGP, never tried this game cd seriously.
LG3D, okay on x, crappy on L, silly idea.
KRUMIN LIGHT 7.0 , Didn't USA for me on L..GRML = text only.
KNOPPIX 511 from magazine DVD, won't kdesu or otherwise let root do stuff under X unless login was console for root. Ditching it for Sabayon despite getting 640x400 working with 915resolution.
KDE 4 ; horrid U.I., don't try this - it's even worse than SUSE!
GPARTED = 0346 , I use it often to partition. May try the ext3cow file
system despite its bugs if its ever offered on Gparted.
GRANULAR 20070709 didn't boot L at all.
GOBO , looks good, I haven't figured out its packaging.
GOBLINX , untried
GENTOO 2007.0, just downloaded 05.17.
FREESBIE worked great way back then. Hard to install multi.
Other BSDs = same problem.
FREESPIRE , didn't work out on several tries.
FRUGAL , started installer on x and L, can eth0.
FEDORA 7 won't attempt a multiboot install as taking its warnings
literally it will always want you to redo your whole disk - handed to
me as a special recommendation by some nut - unless this is a
"distribution release" vs a "development release" .
FEDORA 4 worked well , I hated it.
FEDORA sometimes works well , I dislike it, may need permission
fiddling. My current , ~6, didn't L.
FEATHER , no ui on L.
ELIVE usually not worth its eye candy.
EASYS 3.0 didn't boot L.
DEBIAN installer usually not worth its bother vs MEPIS especially.
DSL 3.3 worth it this time? No net on a. Bad on L.
CENT OS 5.0's needs too much fiddling. doesn't let me have KDE when I add it. system>admin>login screen does nothing 20070605.
CAE LINUX , -L, -x ie; didn't work on either my laptop or my 64x2
BLAG 6001 & 5000, my favorite RHEL derivatives for USA. 20070605 Greetings from then Gnome of BLAG6001 at 1024 on my 1280 L aptop. This Gnome = good ! but wrong res=crappy esp w no extra resolutions, am now downloading 915, KDE etc. Certainly complements MINT 2.2 KDE. Need extra resolutions, expect my L aptop to have 1280x800, 640x 400 and maybe no more. As 640 is less than700, a 1440x screen would merit more than 1 extra resolution. Lack of [ctrl][alt][+] is a bug !!! Then Firefox started paging backwards for no apparent reason - Removed BLAG
from L before download of KDE etc. finished .
BERRY .79 from FEDORA , I love playing miss driller from live cd.
prior attempts installing berry got japanese, this got blinking red
light.
BINTOO 2007.1, shockingly good gentoo derivative with some SLAX, Great
if you know exactly which of 99 boot services you want, tends not to
boot otherwise.
AUSTRUMI uni140, didn't USA for me on L.ANTIX MEPIS 6.5 rc5_32 June 7 2007, live only kde not default.ANONYMOS , a live of OPEN for anonymous surfing.
ARTISTX 0.4 -L, 64x2 got to text but no Xorg.
ALIXE 09-ice, my bx worked. I liked it.
ACCELERATED boots fast but doesn't see hda1 for starters.
"Absolute 12.0 486": 2007.09.21: didn't boot L.
ABSOLUTE 1202 L install gave [ctrl][alt][+], -kde, 1280x800 native,
net - a showstopper whengoing root didn't fix.
ABSOLUTE 1103, L saw the installer, gave flux or ice wm on slack
without modem on b. An expert at getting net on slackware linux might
succeed. I liked it but not practical when you want quick installs..
64studio386 11-20/06, f on my socket A 1.6g v2dp box w 512m, 133pro
chipset. Didn't work on x.
:Revisions of this will replace the rest of my page:
so HARDWARE = L, compaq c301nr laptop w celerom 430 at 1.7g,. a = my
socket a box w v2dp motherboard. b = my bx chipset abit slot 1 be6r2
w a p3 at 600MHz (dial up where my others use free metro-fi ). these
usually have 512m of ram. All boxes with built in video use that as
summer mode, winter mode rarely used for reliability but = nvidia 5200
graphics cards w 128m ram . I own some tertiary backup bx boxes. Yes I
am triple redundant via my new box x plus my three bx boxes as backup
for the old phone line. 64bit = new direction & more distro to
test. Will do some vm stuff too, kqemu looks good.
PRINTER/s = Canon s400 for slow color or really cheap black,
Bought a gallon of quality pigment 3 inkjet printers ago. 2nd canon
s400 not rigged as RAIP yet. Canon ip2000 as friends printer =
continuous print system candidate over s400 as they = mega slow but
pretty since ip3000 broke due to lack of gimp-print driver. Canon's
physically here use bci cartridges which predate chipping movement
thus give lower ongoing cost. Cheapie HP still sealed in box. Both
lasers & s400's were free when friends upgraded, other surviving
printers were cheap after rebates. Use bc[something]6000 driver for
canon's for more speed but s400 still = slow, faster than its makers
w98 driver though. Now use only pixma ip1700, will use hp g95 multi.
I seem to like kde .deb distros that live boot and install.
Latest additions :20070417
Pardus 2007.1 , Great except no local printing until I used
http://localhost:631/admin from kdesu konqueror via konsole. Hope
everything survives reboot & someday this distro learns how to
finish shutting down. May replace simply MEPIS 6.5 but = loses
the ability to startx often.. did not try full install on L.
newest SABAYON worked well on my 64x2 cpu , booted laptop. Also good
on my bx -modem but not my a. Gotta get a vm working to handle my w98
legacies as primary user wont abandon those apps & I love those old
games. did not try full install on L BUT it saw my wireless gear, best
security uses no wireless. Doesn't even have openoffice.org in mini
64 version, use to host vm.
simplyMEPIS 6.5 works well enough on b , a , & x = my new amd 64x2
3800+ , 2g of ram w nvidia 6100sm-m board w graphics sound etc. 1
problem w board = even if you install graphics board into its 16x
slot you will only get 8x. I find built in graphics fine anyway.
Mepis 6.5 does not shut self down reliably on my desktops. did not try
full install on L yet. It's my top distro again. Primary senior citizen
user
is swearing at it now, 20070508.
KNOPPIX 5.1, probably 5.11 works great on my laptop, even kqemu. - but
that one finally died and re-installs of whatever disk I didn't give
away
don't work as well. But I can get 640x400 etc. working.
YOPER 2.95 didn't work on b, didn't try elsewhere.
2007.03.28 Rebuilt simply MEPIS DVD install on my v2dp socket a board
a few times before I wiped all partitions physically earlier than the
last one but added at a later time, this caused wipe outs in the past
too. Do most work on laptop w knoppix 5 dvd installed.
2007.02.04 NimbleX 2007 +L worked well , got vertical scroll from
orange line on right edge of my c301nr 's touch pad -bx didn't get
to kde with my 128 meg. nvidia video card.
2007.01.30 new Sabayon DVD = worse than last one , put MEPIS on sda3
over Sabayon but its behaving poorly overall a redo with an upgrade
before adding pysol etc. may help, hope I finally got my 915resolution
problem fixed....
2007.01.13 A buddy dumped KNOPPIX DVD over the MEPIS , wiping out my
porn collection , strangely I actually miss the terminally cute Fawn
and rabbit picture that would have slaughtered any diabetic viewing it
- its TOO sweet more than anything else. The KNOPPIX = working GREAT
!
2007.01.06 Dream didn't get past text on any of my boxes .
LG3d booted but SLOW , didn't find any, desperately needed, installer.
2006.12.28 Elive 0.6 revolution = too slow on cd & i can't find any
installer , booted on bx & L aptop . Pity too as it let me select
1280x800 up front . didn't find any modem tool so about 1 of 3
households = out of luck as that fraction only got below .5, 50%, in
2005 .
Puppy Linux 212 still impresses me , my redo with no installs where i
ignore missing dependencies works fine . Got flash9 working here too
but adding stuff just = not working out . tried 213 & 109 on usb,
hated them ! Downloaded 215 or new 1g lash drive, may try it someday.
Firefox runs pale force NBC fine after switching in flash9 . Amazingly
, I just watched 2 videos from yahoo under MEPIS . Maybe yahoo finally
fixed their vid or maybe my work finally paid off . [ Most of their
stuff still FAILS ! ]
2006.14.12 Underground029a replaces FC6 replaces Sabayon on my
Presario c301nr Laptop next to MEPIS . [ that didn't last long ]
Not seeing the ext3 MEPIS partition from the reiserfs either .
Wonderful small distro from arch from crux [ MEPIS = from kUbintu
from Debian too , notice a pattern ? ] but maybe it can steal Gentoo
Portage apps , I like kworld clock .I ditched XP from the Laptop for a
reason but . does not have kworld in repositories , i WILL dump it
for this reason .
DISGUSTING
Thats the state of reliability for most Linux distro today . Currently
if I don't say yes you should assume trouble if your hardware
resembles mine .
MEPIS scored great on my new laptop & many other distro do too -
thus my disgust as my
perfectly capable hardware gets near orphan treatment . don't expect
much in updates as Metro-fi & Google both = flakes .
2006,11,18 : Absolute & GnewSense both didn't give me vid in the bx
box . I refuse to do the junk I'd need to get FAT - 32 working on some
slack derivative & will try mint , an ubuntu derivative that
comes with flash > 7 to play the huge amount of content that
non-experimental Linux software won't .
I do an actual install vs using a vm because the vm = too likely to
work , please make sure your distro will get found easily by the
buntu derivative I put on hda2 after loading your distro onto hda34 or
higher & my chance of getting to your distro goes up . [in 2007 most
fail, I think the buntu ' s changed. ]
2006.11.03 : triumph of simply MEPIS 601 DVD over PCLinuxOS for not
printing. Switched boxes & the new primary os = MEPIS 601 despite a
pointer type mismatch 07 around irq 10 & 11 - only crashes on multi
tasking . I won't necessarily cover modem issues as free broadband
based Ethernet works so well . [ on rebuild that MEPIS's lack of gimp
print got different driver selected & killed my loved canon ip3000.
Chip less ink cartridges make great printers.
MY DISTRO WINNER distro family . kUbuntu was a tweaker distro totally
unsuited to less experienced users but along with simply MEPIS 6.0
that = THE distro family to use right now . What changed ? I tried
using 45 partitions & separating /home & /tmp on their own shared
partitions . 90% of desktop distro 's fail to get permissions right so
only root can run KDE 2006.08.09 . HD installs should never run as
root & separating /home & /tmp works better , much better when
doing my many distro evaluations . If you know you will never want
to do /home & /tmp separate from " / " the rest of this page retains
some value . I have not evaluated how well my winner family works
with modem & printer on current production box because they're on
traveling box now . ( but i should do more work making sure about
account configuration when /home gets separated . i will do it after
fixing the w98 partition i need to support intellicad , wp8 , and
photon paint plus the recent enough ie version to see certain
websites made by STUPID people . )
WARNING::: non-sculpted text ahead !
This page = done on an editor after grabbing the old text from
the web page . Then , after edits , [ctrl] ac & [ctrl] av dump the
new version into googlepages & if googlepages makes it ugly - it
stays ugly .
LINUXWORLD : its less than it was in almost every way & thats all I
need to say .
HEATWAVE HARDWARE special , because some boxes didn't survive .
Google " tom's hardware DIY gaming rig dual core 775 " to see a
buying opportunity like the old celeron 300a slot one CPU with 440 bx
board provided me , I'm typing on that board now . Normally I would
recommend socket 939 because AMD usually delivers more goodness per
dollar . After Tom started writing about it , the 805 CPU prices rose
to where a special at Fry's in Sunnyvale with it & a board went for
less than the current market price for a separate CPU . I'd recommend
the Asrock 775 Twins over the ECS RC410L/800M board but previously
ignored Intel's product improvements so I lack further advice . The
939 boards may still get the better CPU's as one would expect for
(939-775) more pins to the motherboard but the new AMD socket/s make
this less likely . If you lost both CPU & M/B , don't let the
presence of your old ram change your decision unless you have lots of
good stuff . I remain shocked at the price of socket A CPU's ,
someones gotta = hoarding or something .
NOW OBSOLETE , mostly just check compatibility on that hot deal
including ram matching. Avoid SIS, LEXMARK.
20070607, intels dual core 6400 seems a swet spot for performance
without overclocking but usually AMD gives better value and I expect
the extra data integer width to eventually pay off for amd64.
July update : [ Production box reduced to 8 Linux , to meet the limits
of the GAG boot loader , but I'm still using GRUB . ]
PCLinuxOS
PCLinuxOS.92 = best .rpm distro tested yet , I use synaptic for
updates & extras . First .rpm distro to beat out the .deb's in years
. Has flock for blogs etc. awesome execution , my current family dial
up OS winner , difficult multi boot because it uses lilo , I forget
the command to make it a partition boot but kUBUNTU 's installer grub
's it fine . Tends not to show additions to a directory until reboot
unless you dump some extra file from the desktop there too but no bugs
beyond that . 2006.09.21 need to try the big .93 of pclinuxOS .
simply MEPIS
The latest STABLE version of simply MEPIS , 3.4.3 on 3-21/06 lost to
PCLinuxOS.92 as my current winner as the family Linux dial up distro
again . Hoping MEPIS recovers its old form with v 6.0 as it used to
always win out . Selecting the keramic white color scheme gives me
yellow selections , unless some STUPID applications creates needless
cognitive dissonance by using grossly inferior choices . [ Given that
yellow highlighters outsell all others in bookstores etc. , all other
choices for highlighting hurt your users . ] Move Panel, menu bar, to
upper left as the Macintosh did it correctly until they blew it with
OS X . KDE on KDE behavior beats the alternatives . [ MEPIS 343 or 6.x
may work well if you don't synaptic the extras I did ] Fixed printing
by using ip4000 driver on my canon ip3000 pixus/pixma making MEPIS 343
viable except 4 the ever reappearing bookmarks toolbar - in Firefox
THUS still not viable . ] ; 2006.09.21 need to try 601 .
kaNOTix
STABLE kaNOTix & not knoppix because it gives good install vs ruining
from optical disk . Awesome at getting weirdo laptops to work , switch
language pull tab vs default German at their website via
http://distrowatch.com/ . Easter Edition didn't run KDE properly from
cd AFTER number of partitions on drive exceeded 30 . This FULLY FREE
distro has ugly browser fonts like all other fully free distributions
. Added accelerated to hd's for fun as another near knoppix & love its
fast optical boot but not the default Japanese .
Vector SOHO
Is getting a little old at 5.1
STABLE version of Vector SOHO , slack based so works on some 486 boxes
. Fast , gslapt works just like synaptic after kdesu from shell , has
barely enough applications to do the job well , newbies handle clutter
of double listed applications better than weirdo menu depth despite
suggestions from the gnome human interface guidelines . I look to the
slack based distro's for the future & put some on the next box
already .
K & X ubuntu
, but I don't run it , solely used to tie it all up initially as one
grub menu . Caused my WHAX to stop booting . These guys indulge the
weirdest ideas . Their graphical installer from live cd can't display
the continue button when it detects more than 22 partitions 2006.08 .
VLOS
VLOS 121 as an easy Gentoo , best of the gnome desktops , don't hurt
yourself that way with either gnome or gentoo . Its a masochistic
hobby for me trying these as sometimes 1.1 , 121 & 131 won't install
on one or more of my boxes . New Gentoo Live CD's may make this easier
.
UNDERGROUND
An easy way to get an arch distro on a primary partition , Arch = a
binary & thus better distro than typical Gentoo . RR4 wiped out
everything on my drive after Underground's reiser4fs once , costing
me a nine distro rebuild , you've been warned about these pioneer
distro & should expect to get arrows in yer back if you commit to them
.
Fedora4
Went on easy but I hate it & most .rpm distro's , preferring Debian
due to the social policies , check linuxmafia.com . 2006.09.21 need to
try remix DVD of 5.
Woot , my first run on sentence for this site = over & now
shattered into many fragments .
[ expect occasional revisions ] [ I need to get dial up working on w98
but forgot how except by browser activation. ] Actual mileage may
vary.
HALL OF SHAME :
These discs in my collection didn't modem as of 2006.06.26+ :
elive, LLGP, lg3d, Ultima , AnonymOS , PC-BSD, Video ,Pai Pix DVD as
of June 21, 2006 , Berry [old] , PCLinuxOS.93 mini-me . My latest
Yoper , blacksand , didn't do a / only install on my bx box.
August 2006 additions all go to the 1.6g v2dp box :
soon to get replaced.
Video Linux [ looks useful with wine & all , if I install more
applications like openoffice.org ] , accelerated [ was happy on hda10
but disliked my FAT32 file system . ] , w98se [ finally boots as of
31st ] , Simply MEPIS 6.0 looks good with careful install but I don't
expect it to break the PCLinuxOS stranglehold the way PCLinuxOS
displaced MEPIS , freespire [ difficult to do stuff around CNR & it
may not = free . ] , STUX looks good after modifications until it
stopped booting , SLAX looks good but defaults to root like STUX . I'm
behind testing as I've yet to fix the fstabs to give all distro's the
same /home & /tmp , nor did I get a final grub working yet as I have
44 partitions on this next box's 180g hd , 700+m DDR . I'd like to
try different file systems on different partitions of the same install
but some distributions freak when they see extra file systems , like
the latest KUBUNTU installer freezes . After installing older Kubuntu
on hda2 - lotsa distro have trouble after hda16 . Now I need to fix a
file system problem with hda3 & hda14 as /home & /tmp using ext2
and ext3 as some distro get confused dealing with a second type of
file system . I recommend using the Gparted disk for all partitioning
as working around the quirks of over 33 distro will get overwhelming .
VOTE ALGORITHMS STUFF
=mostly deleted, avoid ALL first past post variants, take any wiki about
it with some "grains of salt". Make sure your method meets both Condercet
Criteria and 'Immunity from Majority Complaint'. May put more vote stuff
on jane_ikari page at rationalwiki.com
I stopped updating this to spend more time with my last dying cat.
New new laptop, a toshiba with a t2330.
Saw an interesting website since last time, someone
asked about whether they should buy a laptop based around
tl-58 or t2330. The advice overwhelming claimed the t2330
would vastly outperform the t2330. My actual experience
= the opposite! If these = real customers they need blame
only themselves for bad markets in computer hardware.
latest discs: [ all tested on my toshiba laptop with a t2330 inside. ]
SABAYON 3.5RC2 x86_64 not even a splash screen but lots
of free grease on the bottom of it I know I didn't
put there.
SABAYON 3.5 LOOP2 did get a splash screen but lacks
the obvious grease spots of RC2_64 for obvious scrape
marks on edge of disk. Did someone grab and sabotage
these at some installfest?
KNOPPIX 531 Live gave ethernet [many distro don't figure
it out]. Looks great overall. My XGalaga Hyperspace gam
e went super but neither version of FreeCiv worked.
[ctrl][alt]+ failed totally so if some site does its
critical print as tiny graphics you must fumble with
kmagnify or other horrid kludge!
KUBUNTU i386DESKTOP 8.04 BETA KDE4 adjustments of panel
totally failed, critical deficiency. [ctrl][alt]+
failed totally so if some site does its critical print
as tiny graphics you must fumble with kmagnify or other
horrid kludge!
SIDUX PRE KDE LITE X86_64 20080317 3L= +eth. missing
many apps. [ctrl][alt]+ failed totally so if some site
does its critical print as tiny graphics you must fumble
with kmagnify or other horrid kludge!
UBUNTU 8.04 BETA DESKTOP i386 3L= +eth. Total lack of
KDE for some bloated, under actual instrumentation,
window manager. [ctrl][alt]+ failed totally so if
some site does its critical print as tiny graphics you
must fumble with kmagnify or other horrid kludge!
KUBUNTU DESKTOP 8.04 BETAi386 ok KDE [ctrl][alt]+ failed
totally so if some site does its critical print as tiny
graphics you must fumble with kmagnify or other horrid kludge!
KUBUNTU 8.04BETA AMD64 DESKTOP on my Intel 2330 cpu laptop=
+eth. ok KDE. [ctrl][alt]+ failed totally so if some site
does its critical print as tiny graphics you must fumble with
kmagnify or other horrid kludge!
UBUNTU 8.04BETA DESKTOP AMD64 on 3L, -KDE,
[ctrl][alt]+ failed totally so if some site does its critical
print as tiny graphics you must fumble with kmagnify or
other horrid kludge!
Other topics come after :New Laptop [ er, older new
laptop entry. ] [ forced to do a quickie return in
Feb., bad power circuits. Disappointed
they gave me my money back vs a delay and a fixed laptop. ]
LINUX ON MY NEW ACER TL-58 BASED LAPTOP =L2=2
Linux distributions rarely configure My Extensa properly
Out Of Box. I'm doing more work per install than my usual
OOB review/s.
Going through some disks 2008.01.21:
ANTIX MEPIS 7.01, = small MEPIS w a flux= clumsy light
wm not KDE. I prefer KDE. Found wireless but not eth or
sound initial screen was 1024x768 vs 1280x800 native.
Flash worked. Got wireless, res looks good w CA+ too.
-sound -eth,
DREAM LINUX , a deb but not KDE. Found sound but not eth
or wireless on L2. Mac-like xfce, gave [ctrl][alt]+,
possibly even full 1280x800. Appended itself to bottom of
some of the menu.lst files in the other distributions
partitions. Surprisingly good.
MINT Linux 4 Debian Alpha, maybe fixable after an install
and KDE transplant.
MINI PCLinuxOS, a better Mandrake than Mandriva. Got sound
and [CA]+ only. Mini PCLinuxOS didn't get resolution right
despite claims from its display resolution applications!
GRANULAR, based on PCLinusOS flunked res. Not as bad as
expected. Not near the PCLinuxOS standard.
OPEN SUSE 10.3 an rpm. Got sound eventually but lost it.
Poor vid res. Annoying GRUB graphics. Too Bleeding edge.
OPEN SUSE 10.3 -res X-org.conf may fix -sound -CA+ -eth
-wireless , suppossedly a good distro when dealing with
really new laptops.
SIDUX with kernel 26.23. Use apt-get from root shell to grab
more applications from sid. Sound took effort. Ethernet worked
and Daniel got 14.4kbps driver working with its winmodem
but few U.S. providers allow dialup under 50kbps. [ Dialup
USA finally dropped under 50% of households in 2005; update,
its at 47% in 2007. And if the state of dialup in these
distributions seems o.k. to you , you have not really
considered the implications. Why's dialup so high? Price
Gouging as the telecoms just bribe congresstraitors to make
their business model work. [[ Hint re: those dialup stats.
in 2005 your rejecting 50% of possible customers unless you
do support dialup.]] ] Daniel suppossedly got wireless too.
Got native resolution of lcd. -CA+.
SIMPLY MEPIS 7.0, a deb with KDE. My old fave returns
to Debian as its base vs Ubuntu due to important problems
getting ignored. I'm thrilled as the buntu family wiped out
its partitions literally hundreds of times on my boxes, they
= banned here now! Problems similar to mine keep disappearing
off the buntu forums and others have written about how they
no longer submit bug reports to buntu due to poor treatment.
Unless buntu fixes their policies, expect to get kicked
when you're down with any problem beyond the trivial.
Wireless works but not eth. Don't have sound working yet.
Largest screen = 1024x768. Until I stole the xorg.conf from
Anti-X, now its missing the extra malfunctioning mode from
Anti-X but has all the others. Worked on sound but no good.
Got wireless. MEPIS uses
ndiswrapper.
KANOTIX 2007.rc7 'thorhammer' [ctrl][alt]+ worked but not
1280x800 res. Sound after Alsaconf. Dark Penguins theme
looks good. Ethernet communicated out but not wireless.
GRANULAR res was 800x600 unfixable, got sound . PCLinuxOS based!
2007.10.11 Many Linux dial up diary ; But first ,
my social reform crap.
[ just formally became president of EBLUG 2007.06.21. ]
FAME , "Invent a great saying & your name will live forever" ,
-- Anonymous!
E-PRIME = an efficient English variant where the verb = =
eliminated in favor of more active verbs. vs
EBONICS uses be as a substitute for the verb =.
=BONICS, I'm writing in it now or I= writing in it now,
demonstrates the transition to E-Prime by retaining = as a [
contractions allowed ] or the [ contractions not allowed ]
version of the verb =. Mostly Black Private Schools like
E-Prime because it really = more efficient. Witness the many
languages lacking the verb = until American 'English' finds
and pollutes their culture.
LATIN VULGATE generates the languages Spanish, french etc.
English and Esperanto efficiently dump most of the different
verb forms or at least dump some irregularity.
ESTROGEN, The bodies of female Homo Sapiens Sapiens who
indulge in nutrition make too much of this. Thus , according
to recent research 2007.10.11, those attractive women need
to get pregnant before age 25; OR they face extra risk of
breast cancer from all that estrogen. A 2nd pregnancy =
recommended to give the body another vacation away from all
that estrogen. I recommend 24 mo.s of lactation too. Since
the man's brain evolved next to her body it receives the
signal ~ "fill my womb immediately" on sight of her 2ndary
characteristics even if her brain resists. Recent research
confirms my expectations formed from evolution theory again.
TESTOSTERONE , poisons men's brains such that they tend to
do crimes etc.
HARSH ENVIRONMENT , thats why Female Bodies walk the
dangerous line between estrogen induced cancer and
malnutrition or a lack of success in 'marriage markets'.
EYES , creationists used to say god must exist because eyes
are too complicated for evolution. But 'evolutionists'
proved even more complex things can reasonably evolve.
TAMPER EVIDENT SEAL , I have trouble explaining how that
evolved on the human body so maybe god exists but shrunken
down to that one body part? Except that its to her advantage
to look un-tampered.
ECONOMICS , how rich people justify oppressing poor people.
ECONOMISTS , disgusting whores who give the lovely ladies of
the evening a bad name by lying to oppress poor people for
rich people.
PROSTITUTION , the first thing female Capuchin Monkeys do
after experimenters introduce a system of monetary coinage.
CAPITALIST COLLAPSE , thats why young men get extra
testosterone to induce risk taking behavior. Women prefer
men who will make superior resources available to her
children. It's more evident when one remembers that the
poorly regulated markets of the ancient world include
polygyny. By studying the gas law [ which collapses when we
change the random assignment of all collision energy to
assign up to the smaller energy - thus modeling the yardsale
economy ] we know its not just Marx, the founder of
MARXISM , an excuse to implement
STALINISM , a brutal dictatorship named after an abused
child; who used the communist idea of a 'dictatorship of
the proletariat' to justify his/its crimes vs humanity.
JUNK , things other people confuse with your stuff.
STUFF , things other people confuse for junk.
TERNARY , there = 1 0 kinds of people in the world; those
who know what ternary = , those who can't care & those who =
reaching for their dictionaries.
BINARY: there = 2 kinds of people in the world starting with
those who believe there = two kinds of people in the world.
FREE SOFTWARE , nobody has incentive to make it work right.
PAY SOFTWARE , providers have incentive to sabotage it.
AMPHETAMINES , something US soldiers occasionally get
ordered to use but casual use = illegal.
HONORARIA , how 'law firms' pay back judges for weird
rulings that create many billable hours, research confirms
game theory in U.S.A.
VOTE COUNTING Algorithms, go to the MAMcalc site & look
around. This approach meets both Condorcet criteria &
Immunity from Majority Complaint , using first - past -
post voting in the USA = continuing disaster. Given the
definitions, Dodgson should work great [ most accurate by
definition ] but calculating it gets difficult and it does
not evaluate well [ crappy vs strategizing too ] . Look out,
even the wiki entries have some glaring errors on this
subject.
RANDOM BALLOT TIEBREAKER = great defense vs strategy.
REDISTRICTING , just use the algorithm from an issue of Dr.
Dobbs Software Magazine.
FIRST PAST POST stinks as a vote method when # of candidates
exceeds 2. [ The USA uses even worse methods to count votes
]
SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE mimics first past post elections
with progressively fewer candidates until a "majority"
emerges. Much less accurate vs
CONDORCET VOTE COUNTING METHODS because they mimic a series
of first past post elections with only 2 candidates per
election, the only scenario where First Past Post gives
accurate results.
TRUTHINESS, used to mean the better approximation of truth.
I rarely used it until The Colbert Report reversed it to
designate what someone feels the truth should =. The U.S.A.
fell so far from honesty in it's habits that we need this!
THE VERB MAY exists , don't use the verb can as a substitute
word beyond its generalized meaning of ability. Standardized
tests constructed by dolts who fail to make this distinction
spread the error ; disastrous according to the part of the
laws of physics called information theory : especially when
they fail to handle the suffix ", solely in that you're
physically able" correctly.
THERMODYNAMICS tells us that natural language overloading of
the verb can as more may stinks in a 'self evident' way !
'SELF EVIDENT', what B. Franklin did to 'Just and Proper' in
the draft declaration of independence from T. Jefferson
after the Founding Fathers realized they needed a bigger
bribe to 'hang together' with 'the common he' or 'we shall
surely hang separately'.
JUDGES , If their appointments don't ultimately hinge on
well informed elections ( using procedures like MAM ) : the
part of economics called game theory says we can trust them
to reliably enrich lawyers.
INTERPRETER , one who tells both parties suffering a language
barrier that the other party said what it benefits the
interpreter for the other party to have said. In computing ,
whats replacing compilers in hybrid form.
CULT = a small, unpopular religion.
RELIGION = a large , popular cult.
HISTORY , the shared delusions forced upon schoolchildren to
brainwash the lower classes that they share a common
interest in society. "Schooling indoctrinates those
subjected to it to obey those with more schooling"
Buckminster Fuller & others.
SLAVERY , something the church profited from but condemned
after Vikings started taking second sons of the nobility
from monasteries as slaves. Jesus and Paul both reinforce
the authority of slave owners. Prior to that check out the
Midianite Slave Girls at http://evilbible.com under rape.
BUCCANEERS, from the Arawak Indian word for their meat
drying racks; enters English meaning the folks who used
them to sell dried meat to passing ships. Then some turn to
piracy for better profits; causing the Spanish to run off
their cattle on Hispanola etc. Causing the rest to turn to
piracy [ sound social planning guys! ] or starve. [ part of
why their democratic traditions inspired those of the U.S.A.
]
MONOTHEISM , a religion of low explanatory power for people
so poor they only have one god.
POLYTHEISM , religions of potentially infinite explanatory
power AND COMPLEXITY !
SERIAL MONOGAMY , why the USA = not a monogamous society, see
Donald Trump & Marla Maples.
POLYGAMY , a marriage tradition that can really exist but
under the usual Polygyny the man must endure the special
punishment of marrying more than one woman.
GENDER RATIO , whats with all these extra men ? Has nobody
heard that extra male births = higher crime, even the
animators of GENESHAFT knew that .
TONY CURTIS = why we live so long.
PORNOGRAPHY , a term invented by poor quality Catholic
Priests of high birth because they didn't like peasants
correctly using the cheap new Gutenberg bibles to notice
when the priests lied. ( check GURPS Medieval for an easy
reference ) Should only exist for its inventors.
STATISTICS , an excuse liars use over 70% of the time.
CORRUPTION , the usual form of government. The genius of the
USA = restricting corruption to CAMPAIGN BRIBERY.
PROGRESSIVE TAXATION , an efficient form of financing useful
government services.
REGRESSIVE TAXES , something the rich will tolerate.
POLITICIAN , a lawyer hired by rich people to pretend to
represent poorer people.
LAWYER , rhymes with liar because thats what they do
professionally. One who enriches self while pretending to
represent a client.
COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS , a useful policy analysis tool that
snuck many right wing ideologies into policy under the guise
of objectivity.
COMMUNISM , a lie that someone poorer than you wants you to
believe.
CAPITALISM a lie someone richer then you wants you to
believe.
SOCIALISM = the wave of the future for over 90 years now, I
see nothing changing this!
CONTROVERSIAL = someone's willing to lie about it.
HARDWARE , what software's for.
SOFTWARE , what hardware's for.
TAUTOLOGY , a short logical loop that really explains nothing.
PARADOX , an inherent feature of open logic systems; the only
one's that can explain anything. Paradox makes logic
incomprehensible and unresolvable; I'm lying to you right
now.
CONVERSE = something that must look obviously true or you may
not include the statement in technical documentation. A
converse = always true when iff = correctly used over if ,
otherwise it must = false at least some of the time. "Never
include a statement in technical documentation if it's
converse = obviously false."
VICTORY -- the evil BUNTU fell to PCLinuxOS's ascension as
#1 on the http://www.distrowatch.com hit rankings ! I use
PCLinuxOS but prefer MEPIS when they have their act
together, faster for starters.
STAMP COLLECTING , how modern university Linguists publish
enough to keep tenure ; thus rendering them opposed to using
logic to communicate as this would render them jobless.
REALISM , a foil used to abandon any hint of game balance in
an RPG.
GAME BALANCE , a foil used to abandon any hint of realism in
an RPG.
YOU'RE NOT AN EXPERT , an excuse to make GNOME desktop user hostile.
WE TARGET NEW USERS , an excuse to make GNOME desktop user hostile.
YOU DON'T REALLY UNDERSTAND EVERY WORD OF OUR INCOMPREHENSIBLE
GUIDELINES , an excuse to make GNOME desktop user hostile.
KDE , a beautiful free desktop new users love to use on Linux
etc. with less code bloat then GNOME despite its reputation
for more.
FULLY FREE , an excuse to make GNOME desktop user hostile.
FDA , Bureaucrats who lie about food safety to get industry
jobs later.
DELUSIONAL, "no longer marginal. It has come in from the
fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office &
Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology &
theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington." - Bill
Moyers, 2004.
SCHOOLS should inflict E-Prime and the verb MAY on their
charges vs causing a reversal of the meaning of the words
truthiness and can in many sentences. Through a negligence
that supports the 'self esteem trumps all' movement.
RAID = an excuse so vendors ship crap vs hard drives.
SMART = an excuse for the drive to tell the OS its
replacement time because the vendor wants good drives
replaced after n hours to increase vendor profit.
SATA = an excuse to charge more for cheaper cables.
SCSI = an excuse to charge lots more for more expensive
cables.
GIGABIT ETHERNET , a faster way to ask a 99kbps 2 phone wire
connection for more bandwidth.
When code & comments disagree , both = wrong.
CIVIL SUIT , Early Feb. 2008, I wom one vs some US educated
Indian Lawyer regarding the genocide of insisting I meant may when
I said can. Large corporation = very happy they got off with what my lawyer
called "a generous settlement".
"ALL INFORMATION NEEDED TO JUDGE THE DECISION'S SOUNDNESS = there when its made." all competent deciders .
The advanced optimization rule for advanced experts only =
don't do it yet. - needs attribution
Looks like a lot of social needs reform.
Linux Distributions:
Read the latest top ten article at
http://www.distrowatch.com/
= best small blurb yet. Also check the linuxmafia.com pages
about philosophy & Linux distributions. Linux gets used in
everything from Supercomputer Networks to things smaller
than a cell phone.
Why this page exists?
Honestly, dial up sunk under 50% of households in 2005 but
Linux developers started acting that way half a decade early
[2007 update, dialup now at 47% of households! ] . Testing
software sucks & many distro reviews happen in a vm or give
it a drive & tray. Other users also support w98 legacy
software & will benefit from going mostly Linux like we did.
I review using a multi boot grub menu to support real users
under real conditions. Having really used partitions beyond
hda37 , I hate this back to hda15 = max idea. Flopping back
to sda vs hda occasionally seems dysfunctional too.
If you really wanna know more about me, I'm Jane_ikari on
http://rationalwiki.com .
2007.04.24 - Going through my disks:
[ no i wont review all 99+ distro on distrowatch.com]
Latest
2007.09.24 Main desktop still PCLinuxOS like last year, MEPIS betas based on Debian elsewhere;
rest = L aptop by default.
Fixed MEPIS beta3_32 on L it even did internal wireless. but I have to reboot as root for vid.
2007.09.24 Formally banning all future installs of buntu
family of distributions, we can't afford the post-install
partition wipe-outs probably caused by [ which buntu grabbed
from Debian Experimental after author gave up after 5 years
of not fixing the fact that this file benchmark speedup tends
to wipe out partitions post-install :]"some hd just don't
get along with Ubuntu".
2007.09.21 got MEPIS beta3 working very fine 2007.10.11.
, 4 looks awful and 5 looks promising. 2007.11.22 MEPIS beta6 looks okay.
2007.08.30 MEPIS 6.96 b1 firmly entrenched and almost updated to b3 sabayon=long gone. Entire buntu family banned from my drives now due to several suspicious partition wipes. Suspect=code they sucked from
debian experimental - its worse than Etch.
2007.06.21, got Presidency of EBLUG, too ill following neighbors
return to enjoy my pay from him, Latest Stable Sidux acts
haunted when using touch pad under iceweasel on Laptop.
Correctly gives 1280x800 only, thus missing all [ctrl][alt]
[+] resolutions ? I'd really like 640x400. I found 640x480
etc. buried under the control center in Linux
Mint Bianca ?2.2, I'm writing from it now, still a bug and
getting back to 1280x800 gets hard without scrolling.
ZEN linuxes , I tried them once & they flunked but might
have improved.
YOPER 3 didn't work on L.
YOPER totally unstable, was my top distro long ago.
XANDROS , fond memories but often the free stuff beats it.
xuBUNTU, my preferred buntu as apt-get install kubuntu-desktop usually
works & xfce has a text command tool i like on its panel. The buntu's
used to get hda2 after install of all others, making multi boot 0
steps away but no more.
VMware , I have a couple old disks of it but never got much
from it despite my need to support w98 in a vm.
WHAX , I keep it around as a tool but never got good install
from it.
WINDOWS 98se, for my legacies, Intellicad, Paint Shop Pro 5.0,
Word Perfect 8, some games. Discovered formatted empty on
2007.05.04 after putting 9 disks on my boxes. Oops! Gonna vm
around this with k, qemu.
VLOS has a pretty gentoo GNOME in one version but SABAYON
dwarfs it now.
VIDEO , looks promising but my version didn't find my mouse.
Vector SOHO 5.8 20070704, new prime distro on L, fast,
pretty, gives correct+640x480 resolutions after fiddling,
does not get throught to MetroFi-free on own, I use 5min. of puppy 212 to initially prime
internet access. Opera gets no packets from MetroFi-Free. 20070707
got seamonkey to kill the app after hang telling me the script for my
googlepage was slow 23+++ times, this process started about a day ago
and I've done many things during this time.Wiped out by , Ubuntu family
picky about hd syndrome = primary culprit.
VECTOR promising fast slack based distro that convinced me I want
KDE. Easy install does modem.
SOHO = KDE version of Vector, free version/s often buggy , old and
ignored my FAT32. Slower than Pardus 2007.1 which stole its thunder as
an easy kde slack install. SOHO 5.8 rc's 1,2,3 didn't boot on most of
my boxes. Enjoy the new June 2007 version on x as not handling vfat
right doesn't matter - lame excuses show up under /media and /mnt
about it.
FAT32 & AUTOMOUNTING , its easier to subtract junk from fstab etc.
than to add it, Vector & MCNLive & some others take note!
UNTANGLE:Aug.2007:great idea: Does no multi-booting! both discs failed on X.
UNDERGROUND 022= a nearly painless arch Linux that insisted on a primary partition & reiser4fs. RR4 killed everything past that hda3
inclusive causing a 9 distro rebuild over 3 partial days back when a
buntu would instantly make it all multi boot. Kicked RR4 off system
permanently. 029 Underground didn't work as well as 022.
ARCH = a binary distro like gentoo thus better because its binary.
Currently needs more tweaking than Gentoo.
ULTIMA = F last time I tried it on bx motherboard.
UBUNTU tends to hate some hd, causing wipeouts on my L. Avoid!!
TUQUITO 2.0r5 L very good, KDE .deb got resolutions right , 2nd panel
= there extra work localizing unless yo hablo Espagnol argentinio.
Seem to have fixed worst of permissions problems and I find brushing
up on my Argentinian Spanish pleasant enough, maybe the new top
distro on L ! 20070802 You probably want better English localization.
TRIXBOX 2.0, L saw installer. Phone, etc., not a conventional distro.
TOPOLOGILINUX , gotta try it both ways, normal & under windows,
sometime. Mint's installer found a way to boot this partition install
on x, should work elsewhere too, net problem/s(slack).
SUSE: Aug. 2007 update: Last version didn't boot L!
SUSE = a once good family, now bloated slow patent criminals.
SLAX , a run from cd distro based on slackware. I tend to use a floppy
imitating USB install of puppy instead. Often runs faster from cd
than Knoppix. Got 6.0rc3 on 07.05.16, I think.
STUX , mostly as SLAX.
SME, I should keep one of these around as a server tool but don't.
Simply MEPIS 6.5 lost to PCLinuxOS 2007 before June for not scanning
with kooka correctly o.o.b.
SKOLELINUX 20070805 about, L, mucho work getting [ctrl][alt][+]
SKOLELINUX _64, 2007.08.04 working good on x after new repositories,
-sound
SIDUX _64 2007-02 didn't upgrade successfully and install suffers
diagonal screen striping crash syndrome with [ctrl][alt][del] lockout
at random times!
SIDUX from kaNOTix , initial dev release looked good on my 64x2 when
that box was hooked up, not using the dev now. Got w98 working under
vm player & still takes data from cd. Gotta fix those drivers to let
software installs work in there. 2007.06.28 SIDUX on L, supposedly not
a dev release but needed wrestling for dhcp internet access. Hope next
reboot has flash etc. working better. This is actually working well if
changing xorg[x11] to fix haunted synaptics behavior works out etc.
Maybe I will succeed at getting good experience from 1 distro on all 3
current boxes. KRandRtray stinks vs [ctrl][alt][+] working properly !
SCIENTIFIC 200706 switched to KDE for me but Didn't figure out my L
resolution, used 1024x768 instead, too much fiddling .
SAM 2007, light PClinuxOS, lacks KDE, working on x and b, no x11 on L.
SABAYON 3.4F, these just keep getting worse - didn't boot L!
SABAYON, more recently - packager stinks too bad!
SABAYON amazes me on my 64x2 box w 2g ram & 6100sm-m board. Too good
at getting wireless etc. on Laptop. Most recent sabayon was trouble.
64 bit version lacks software unless you compile.
I tend to use it over knoppix as a rescue cd. The mini does my wireless
easiest.
SABAYON 3.26 on L, dumped the /etc/X11/xorg.conf from knoppix511 here
and got 640x400 working auto via a 515resolution file in /etc/init.d/.
So I have movies and everthing working here as my prime distro after
changing a gentoo emerge setting that makes the conf file issues easier.
Occasional haunted trackpad syndrome but does what I ask ,
still 2007.07.25 will try 3.4 soon.
RAYS actually worked OK, knowing Chinese not required, a good rpm overall.
RO FREESBIE , couldn't get past passwd issues.
RUBIX didn't work out long ago.REACT OS , not a Linux but supposedly works great in vm.
QUANTIAN = now defunct. May replace with Scientific. on its dvd RW.
PUPPY 217 Still prefer 212, didn't even get 1280x800 from cd.
PUPPY 216 Colors too muted, prefer 212.
PUPPY 215, community bloated and ugly vs 212 on L, other boxes don't
boot from usb. Great for Solitare when taking Dad to Hospital.
PUPPY 212, my usb drive distro despite running as root.
PPC distributions for when you get better hardware.
PCLinuxOS , was my top distro at version .92. .93 was a dog 2007 = no [ctrl][alt]+ but finally got modem working. default boot on b.
PCBSD 1.3? Ports took too long to keep trying to MAKE 915resolution
deliver 1280x800, had extra vid modes, [ctrl][alt][+].
PAI PIX August 2007: kdesu didn't work for same password as su root!
PAI PIX was a good Portuguese DVD-RW but defunct till late Aug. 2007
PARDUS latest as of 2007.07.25 didn't wow me and become new prime
anywhere.
PARDUS 20070611 gets used for b/u sometimes , it also doesn't handle
the vfat fat32 partition "correctly" by default , my main user doesn't
like trivial changes to the Kdesktop either.
PARDUS 2007.1 tested scanner, both printers after root shell &
http://localhost:631/admin , Fast like slack & installs like MEPIS,
if it stayed working I'd use it as prime. Re-installed, will not
inflict on users yet. Can't add anything from repositories without
conflicts. User hates how it handles vfat.
OVERCLOCKIX got flash playing but no sound on my laptop.
NIMBLEX, stable 2007.10.01 worked but I didn't find any
installer. Fast boot, tiny kde, missing stuff. I like.
NIMBLEX , booted laptop not b or a , hated it. Neat idea.
MUTAGENIX can't handle 17" monitor properly from 64x2 box. MUSIX never worked well for me. 200706 Musix may work better for
people who remember how to change keyboards, I remembered shhift 0 = '=' and got it installed but ice window manager, I think its ice, is only good at wm-ing.
MUNJOY same.
MINT=banned w other buntu's! [ many suspicious partition wipes
that don't recur anymore ]
NINT XFCE commu. 20070707 Trying , didn't play dvd before initial
upgrade thats taking many hours [ i shoulda excluded mo stuff ] , ok
overall but ice = a better light because you can quickly move panels
from top/bottom to sides. May try to get xfce modified to my
preferences at some installfest , given availability of experts.
Suspect ext3 incompatibility syndrome remains in this buntu derivative
as it did fsck the recent vector SOHO install's partition. Grabs data
from other distro fine. Saw warning about kernel upgrade for some
intel chipset so im not abandoning my upgrade when that fails this
time. Setting mplayer to x11 got dvd playing !
MINT 2.2 KDE wow, it sets up good enough faster than MEPIS! Finds
other installs better than them sometimes, topologolinux, need to add
data partitions, typical media enabled buntu derivative. Boots slow
and gives good web. 20070602 prime on L despite a boot problem as
overwork on flaky MetroFi-Free wasted my Knoppix 5.x .s
2007.06.29 Mint Bianca KDE got problem fsck can't solve again, am
trying sidux now.
MINT2 booted my laptop.
MEPIS beta5 looks promising, 3 works great incl. 2007.10.11
built in wireless for the first time ever on L aptop.
MEPIS 2007.09.02 beta3 I used synaptic to upgrade so I have
got k3b and movies working again by switching to debian
testing repositories.
MEPIS, 2007.08.25 beta1, based on etch, Replaces the Sabayon and I
don't need to keep Konqueror in background to use firefox. [ctrl]
[alt][+] works, including 640x400 after 915resolution tweaking.
MEPIS "6.5.0.32" on L 20070731 can't get [ctrl][alt][+] working from
live cd; and I WON"T install it as all of my instances of partitions
getting wiped out involved a member of the buntu family! Maybe that's
why MEPIS will switch back to a Debian base. Ubuntu refused to work
for years on any box unless you changed the 99% common default PNP
os setting - so its the same old egotism as far as I can tell [ the
hd problems started over a year ago ] .
MEPIS 6.5 Unlike most distro. On L 6.5 got my 1280x800 screen right
but doesn't toggle other resolutions. On b kooka doesn't scan.
MCNLive adds a great text entry tool like xfce's to the KDE panel but
flunked on my bx motherboard.
MANDRIVA , its versions tend not to work on my boxes. A worse
MANDRAKE then PClinuxOS or MCNlive.
MANDRIVA FREE 2007 from LXF DVD 87, L saw installer.
LLGP, never tried this game cd seriously.
LG3D, okay on x, crappy on L, silly idea.
KRUMIN LIGHT 7.0 , Didn't USA for me on L..GRML = text only.
KNOPPIX 511 from magazine DVD, won't kdesu or otherwise let root do stuff under X unless login was console for root. Ditching it for Sabayon despite getting 640x400 working with 915resolution.
KDE 4 ; horrid U.I., don't try this - it's even worse than SUSE!
GPARTED = 0346 , I use it often to partition. May try the ext3cow file
system despite its bugs if its ever offered on Gparted.
GRANULAR 20070709 didn't boot L at all.
GOBO , looks good, I haven't figured out its packaging.
GOBLINX , untried
GENTOO 2007.0, just downloaded 05.17.
FREESBIE worked great way back then. Hard to install multi.
Other BSDs = same problem.
FREESPIRE , didn't work out on several tries.
FRUGAL , started installer on x and L, can eth0.
FEDORA 7 won't attempt a multiboot install as taking its warnings
literally it will always want you to redo your whole disk - handed to
me as a special recommendation by some nut - unless this is a
"distribution release" vs a "development release" .
FEDORA 4 worked well , I hated it.
FEDORA sometimes works well , I dislike it, may need permission
fiddling. My current , ~6, didn't L.
FEATHER , no ui on L.
ELIVE usually not worth its eye candy.
EASYS 3.0 didn't boot L.
DEBIAN installer usually not worth its bother vs MEPIS especially.
DSL 3.3 worth it this time? No net on a. Bad on L.
CENT OS 5.0's needs too much fiddling. doesn't let me have KDE when I add it. system>admin>login screen does nothing 20070605.
CAE LINUX , -L, -x ie; didn't work on either my laptop or my 64x2
BLAG 6001 & 5000, my favorite RHEL derivatives for USA. 20070605 Greetings from then Gnome of BLAG6001 at 1024 on my 1280 L aptop. This Gnome = good ! but wrong res=crappy esp w no extra resolutions, am now downloading 915, KDE etc. Certainly complements MINT 2.2 KDE. Need extra resolutions, expect my L aptop to have 1280x800, 640x 400 and maybe no more. As 640 is less than700, a 1440x screen would merit more than 1 extra resolution. Lack of [ctrl][alt][+] is a bug !!! Then Firefox started paging backwards for no apparent reason - Removed BLAG
from L before download of KDE etc. finished .
BERRY .79 from FEDORA , I love playing miss driller from live cd.
prior attempts installing berry got japanese, this got blinking red
light.
BINTOO 2007.1, shockingly good gentoo derivative with some SLAX, Great
if you know exactly which of 99 boot services you want, tends not to
boot otherwise.
AUSTRUMI uni140, didn't USA for me on L.ANTIX MEPIS 6.5 rc5_32 June 7 2007, live only kde not default.ANONYMOS , a live of OPEN for anonymous surfing.
ARTISTX 0.4 -L, 64x2 got to text but no Xorg.
ALIXE 09-ice, my bx worked. I liked it.
ACCELERATED boots fast but doesn't see hda1 for starters.
"Absolute 12.0 486": 2007.09.21: didn't boot L.
ABSOLUTE 1202 L install gave [ctrl][alt][+], -kde, 1280x800 native,
net - a showstopper whengoing root didn't fix.
ABSOLUTE 1103, L saw the installer, gave flux or ice wm on slack
without modem on b. An expert at getting net on slackware linux might
succeed. I liked it but not practical when you want quick installs..
64studio386 11-20/06, f on my socket A 1.6g v2dp box w 512m, 133pro
chipset. Didn't work on x.
:Revisions of this will replace the rest of my page:
so HARDWARE = L, compaq c301nr laptop w celerom 430 at 1.7g,. a = my
socket a box w v2dp motherboard. b = my bx chipset abit slot 1 be6r2
w a p3 at 600MHz (dial up where my others use free metro-fi ). these
usually have 512m of ram. All boxes with built in video use that as
summer mode, winter mode rarely used for reliability but = nvidia 5200
graphics cards w 128m ram . I own some tertiary backup bx boxes. Yes I
am triple redundant via my new box x plus my three bx boxes as backup
for the old phone line. 64bit = new direction & more distro to
test. Will do some vm stuff too, kqemu looks good.
PRINTER/s = Canon s400 for slow color or really cheap black,
Bought a gallon of quality pigment 3 inkjet printers ago. 2nd canon
s400 not rigged as RAIP yet. Canon ip2000 as friends printer =
continuous print system candidate over s400 as they = mega slow but
pretty since ip3000 broke due to lack of gimp-print driver. Canon's
physically here use bci cartridges which predate chipping movement
thus give lower ongoing cost. Cheapie HP still sealed in box. Both
lasers & s400's were free when friends upgraded, other surviving
printers were cheap after rebates. Use bc[something]6000 driver for
canon's for more speed but s400 still = slow, faster than its makers
w98 driver though. Now use only pixma ip1700, will use hp g95 multi.
I seem to like kde .deb distros that live boot and install.
Latest additions :20070417
Pardus 2007.1 , Great except no local printing until I used
http://localhost:631/admin from kdesu konqueror via konsole. Hope
everything survives reboot & someday this distro learns how to
finish shutting down. May replace simply MEPIS 6.5 but = loses
the ability to startx often.. did not try full install on L.
newest SABAYON worked well on my 64x2 cpu , booted laptop. Also good
on my bx -modem but not my a. Gotta get a vm working to handle my w98
legacies as primary user wont abandon those apps & I love those old
games. did not try full install on L BUT it saw my wireless gear, best
security uses no wireless. Doesn't even have openoffice.org in mini
64 version, use to host vm.
simplyMEPIS 6.5 works well enough on b , a , & x = my new amd 64x2
3800+ , 2g of ram w nvidia 6100sm-m board w graphics sound etc. 1
problem w board = even if you install graphics board into its 16x
slot you will only get 8x. I find built in graphics fine anyway.
Mepis 6.5 does not shut self down reliably on my desktops. did not try
full install on L yet. It's my top distro again. Primary senior citizen
user
is swearing at it now, 20070508.
KNOPPIX 5.1, probably 5.11 works great on my laptop, even kqemu. - but
that one finally died and re-installs of whatever disk I didn't give
away
don't work as well. But I can get 640x400 etc. working.
YOPER 2.95 didn't work on b, didn't try elsewhere.
2007.03.28 Rebuilt simply MEPIS DVD install on my v2dp socket a board
a few times before I wiped all partitions physically earlier than the
last one but added at a later time, this caused wipe outs in the past
too. Do most work on laptop w knoppix 5 dvd installed.
2007.02.04 NimbleX 2007 +L worked well , got vertical scroll from
orange line on right edge of my c301nr 's touch pad -bx didn't get
to kde with my 128 meg. nvidia video card.
2007.01.30 new Sabayon DVD = worse than last one , put MEPIS on sda3
over Sabayon but its behaving poorly overall a redo with an upgrade
before adding pysol etc. may help, hope I finally got my 915resolution
problem fixed....
2007.01.13 A buddy dumped KNOPPIX DVD over the MEPIS , wiping out my
porn collection , strangely I actually miss the terminally cute Fawn
and rabbit picture that would have slaughtered any diabetic viewing it
- its TOO sweet more than anything else. The KNOPPIX = working GREAT
!
2007.01.06 Dream didn't get past text on any of my boxes .
LG3d booted but SLOW , didn't find any, desperately needed, installer.
2006.12.28 Elive 0.6 revolution = too slow on cd & i can't find any
installer , booted on bx & L aptop . Pity too as it let me select
1280x800 up front . didn't find any modem tool so about 1 of 3
households = out of luck as that fraction only got below .5, 50%, in
2005 .
Puppy Linux 212 still impresses me , my redo with no installs where i
ignore missing dependencies works fine . Got flash9 working here too
but adding stuff just = not working out . tried 213 & 109 on usb,
hated them ! Downloaded 215 or new 1g lash drive, may try it someday.
Firefox runs pale force NBC fine after switching in flash9 . Amazingly
, I just watched 2 videos from yahoo under MEPIS . Maybe yahoo finally
fixed their vid or maybe my work finally paid off . [ Most of their
stuff still FAILS ! ]
2006.14.12 Underground029a replaces FC6 replaces Sabayon on my
Presario c301nr Laptop next to MEPIS . [ that didn't last long ]
Not seeing the ext3 MEPIS partition from the reiserfs either .
Wonderful small distro from arch from crux [ MEPIS = from kUbintu
from Debian too , notice a pattern ? ] but maybe it can steal Gentoo
Portage apps , I like kworld clock .I ditched XP from the Laptop for a
reason but . does not have kworld in repositories , i WILL dump it
for this reason .
DISGUSTING
Thats the state of reliability for most Linux distro today . Currently
if I don't say yes you should assume trouble if your hardware
resembles mine .
MEPIS scored great on my new laptop & many other distro do too -
thus my disgust as my
perfectly capable hardware gets near orphan treatment . don't expect
much in updates as Metro-fi & Google both = flakes .
2006,11,18 : Absolute & GnewSense both didn't give me vid in the bx
box . I refuse to do the junk I'd need to get FAT - 32 working on some
slack derivative & will try mint , an ubuntu derivative that
comes with flash > 7 to play the huge amount of content that
non-experimental Linux software won't .
I do an actual install vs using a vm because the vm = too likely to
work , please make sure your distro will get found easily by the
buntu derivative I put on hda2 after loading your distro onto hda34 or
higher & my chance of getting to your distro goes up . [in 2007 most
fail, I think the buntu ' s changed. ]
2006.11.03 : triumph of simply MEPIS 601 DVD over PCLinuxOS for not
printing. Switched boxes & the new primary os = MEPIS 601 despite a
pointer type mismatch 07 around irq 10 & 11 - only crashes on multi
tasking . I won't necessarily cover modem issues as free broadband
based Ethernet works so well . [ on rebuild that MEPIS's lack of gimp
print got different driver selected & killed my loved canon ip3000.
Chip less ink cartridges make great printers.
MY DISTRO WINNER distro family . kUbuntu was a tweaker distro totally
unsuited to less experienced users but along with simply MEPIS 6.0
that = THE distro family to use right now . What changed ? I tried
using 45 partitions & separating /home & /tmp on their own shared
partitions . 90% of desktop distro 's fail to get permissions right so
only root can run KDE 2006.08.09 . HD installs should never run as
root & separating /home & /tmp works better , much better when
doing my many distro evaluations . If you know you will never want
to do /home & /tmp separate from " / " the rest of this page retains
some value . I have not evaluated how well my winner family works
with modem & printer on current production box because they're on
traveling box now . ( but i should do more work making sure about
account configuration when /home gets separated . i will do it after
fixing the w98 partition i need to support intellicad , wp8 , and
photon paint plus the recent enough ie version to see certain
websites made by STUPID people . )
WARNING::: non-sculpted text ahead !
This page = done on an editor after grabbing the old text from
the web page . Then , after edits , [ctrl] ac & [ctrl] av dump the
new version into googlepages & if googlepages makes it ugly - it
stays ugly .
LINUXWORLD : its less than it was in almost every way & thats all I
need to say .
HEATWAVE HARDWARE special , because some boxes didn't survive .
Google " tom's hardware DIY gaming rig dual core 775 " to see a
buying opportunity like the old celeron 300a slot one CPU with 440 bx
board provided me , I'm typing on that board now . Normally I would
recommend socket 939 because AMD usually delivers more goodness per
dollar . After Tom started writing about it , the 805 CPU prices rose
to where a special at Fry's in Sunnyvale with it & a board went for
less than the current market price for a separate CPU . I'd recommend
the Asrock 775 Twins over the ECS RC410L/800M board but previously
ignored Intel's product improvements so I lack further advice . The
939 boards may still get the better CPU's as one would expect for
(939-775) more pins to the motherboard but the new AMD socket/s make
this less likely . If you lost both CPU & M/B , don't let the
presence of your old ram change your decision unless you have lots of
good stuff . I remain shocked at the price of socket A CPU's ,
someones gotta = hoarding or something .
NOW OBSOLETE , mostly just check compatibility on that hot deal
including ram matching. Avoid SIS, LEXMARK.
20070607, intels dual core 6400 seems a swet spot for performance
without overclocking but usually AMD gives better value and I expect
the extra data integer width to eventually pay off for amd64.
July update : [ Production box reduced to 8 Linux , to meet the limits
of the GAG boot loader , but I'm still using GRUB . ]
PCLinuxOS
PCLinuxOS.92 = best .rpm distro tested yet , I use synaptic for
updates & extras . First .rpm distro to beat out the .deb's in years
. Has flock for blogs etc. awesome execution , my current family dial
up OS winner , difficult multi boot because it uses lilo , I forget
the command to make it a partition boot but kUBUNTU 's installer grub
's it fine . Tends not to show additions to a directory until reboot
unless you dump some extra file from the desktop there too but no bugs
beyond that . 2006.09.21 need to try the big .93 of pclinuxOS .
simply MEPIS
The latest STABLE version of simply MEPIS , 3.4.3 on 3-21/06 lost to
PCLinuxOS.92 as my current winner as the family Linux dial up distro
again . Hoping MEPIS recovers its old form with v 6.0 as it used to
always win out . Selecting the keramic white color scheme gives me
yellow selections , unless some STUPID applications creates needless
cognitive dissonance by using grossly inferior choices . [ Given that
yellow highlighters outsell all others in bookstores etc. , all other
choices for highlighting hurt your users . ] Move Panel, menu bar, to
upper left as the Macintosh did it correctly until they blew it with
OS X . KDE on KDE behavior beats the alternatives . [ MEPIS 343 or 6.x
may work well if you don't synaptic the extras I did ] Fixed printing
by using ip4000 driver on my canon ip3000 pixus/pixma making MEPIS 343
viable except 4 the ever reappearing bookmarks toolbar - in Firefox
THUS still not viable . ] ; 2006.09.21 need to try 601 .
kaNOTix
STABLE kaNOTix & not knoppix because it gives good install vs ruining
from optical disk . Awesome at getting weirdo laptops to work , switch
language pull tab vs default German at their website via
http://distrowatch.com/ . Easter Edition didn't run KDE properly from
cd AFTER number of partitions on drive exceeded 30 . This FULLY FREE
distro has ugly browser fonts like all other fully free distributions
. Added accelerated to hd's for fun as another near knoppix & love its
fast optical boot but not the default Japanese .
Vector SOHO
Is getting a little old at 5.1
STABLE version of Vector SOHO , slack based so works on some 486 boxes
. Fast , gslapt works just like synaptic after kdesu from shell , has
barely enough applications to do the job well , newbies handle clutter
of double listed applications better than weirdo menu depth despite
suggestions from the gnome human interface guidelines . I look to the
slack based distro's for the future & put some on the next box
already .
K & X ubuntu
, but I don't run it , solely used to tie it all up initially as one
grub menu . Caused my WHAX to stop booting . These guys indulge the
weirdest ideas . Their graphical installer from live cd can't display
the continue button when it detects more than 22 partitions 2006.08 .
VLOS
VLOS 121 as an easy Gentoo , best of the gnome desktops , don't hurt
yourself that way with either gnome or gentoo . Its a masochistic
hobby for me trying these as sometimes 1.1 , 121 & 131 won't install
on one or more of my boxes . New Gentoo Live CD's may make this easier
.
UNDERGROUND
An easy way to get an arch distro on a primary partition , Arch = a
binary & thus better distro than typical Gentoo . RR4 wiped out
everything on my drive after Underground's reiser4fs once , costing
me a nine distro rebuild , you've been warned about these pioneer
distro & should expect to get arrows in yer back if you commit to them
.
Fedora4
Went on easy but I hate it & most .rpm distro's , preferring Debian
due to the social policies , check linuxmafia.com . 2006.09.21 need to
try remix DVD of 5.
Woot , my first run on sentence for this site = over & now
shattered into many fragments .
[ expect occasional revisions ] [ I need to get dial up working on w98
but forgot how except by browser activation. ] Actual mileage may
vary.
HALL OF SHAME :
These discs in my collection didn't modem as of 2006.06.26+ :
elive, LLGP, lg3d, Ultima , AnonymOS , PC-BSD, Video ,Pai Pix DVD as
of June 21, 2006 , Berry [old] , PCLinuxOS.93 mini-me . My latest
Yoper , blacksand , didn't do a / only install on my bx box.
August 2006 additions all go to the 1.6g v2dp box :
soon to get replaced.
Video Linux [ looks useful with wine & all , if I install more
applications like openoffice.org ] , accelerated [ was happy on hda10
but disliked my FAT32 file system . ] , w98se [ finally boots as of
31st ] , Simply MEPIS 6.0 looks good with careful install but I don't
expect it to break the PCLinuxOS stranglehold the way PCLinuxOS
displaced MEPIS , freespire [ difficult to do stuff around CNR & it
may not = free . ] , STUX looks good after modifications until it
stopped booting , SLAX looks good but defaults to root like STUX . I'm
behind testing as I've yet to fix the fstabs to give all distro's the
same /home & /tmp , nor did I get a final grub working yet as I have
44 partitions on this next box's 180g hd , 700+m DDR . I'd like to
try different file systems on different partitions of the same install
but some distributions freak when they see extra file systems , like
the latest KUBUNTU installer freezes . After installing older Kubuntu
on hda2 - lotsa distro have trouble after hda16 . Now I need to fix a
file system problem with hda3 & hda14 as /home & /tmp using ext2
and ext3 as some distro get confused dealing with a second type of
file system . I recommend using the Gparted disk for all partitioning
as working around the quirks of over 33 distro will get overwhelming .
VOTE ALGORITHMS STUFF
=mostly deleted, avoid ALL first past post variants, take any wiki about
it with some "grains of salt". Make sure your method meets both Condercet
Criteria and 'Immunity from Majority Complaint'. May put more vote stuff
on jane_ikari page at rationalwiki.com