DSL Wirless / Resolution / Other Query

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: DSL Wirless / Resolution / Other Query
started by: ThePotato

Posted by ThePotato on May 05 2006,21:30

Hi all,
First-time caller here with a few questions. I like the idea and principle of DSL, so I downloaded both the GEMU Windows version and the Live-CD and tried them both. The GEMU version runs pretty slow in my XP system, and of course it doesn't have access to the hardware. The one good thing is that because it's an emulation, it can access the net with no problems. Now, here come the questions. I'm tempted to buy a USB Pendrive as the fact that it CAN run as a GEMU version aswell as native will come in very handy for my work. I'd like to know:

A) If it's possible to buy a bigger pendrive than the standard 256MB and if not, if it's possible to install to a larger drive, what the maximum drive size is and if it's possible to 'copy' the contents of the 256MB drive onto a bigger drive.

B) If the pendrive is a full read-write system with files being stored on the drive, as per a 'normal' system.

C) If it's possible to change the resolution of X to 1280*1024 @ 85Hz with 24/32-bit colours and keep that as default.

Finally... D) I have an MSI PC54G2 wireless card < (Link) > in my home PC (which a Windows box and has to stay that way for the rest of the family). Is it possible to get this running on DSL, with WPA encryption? I'd rather not have to change anything on the router side or change the encryption if I can help it. Can this be setup so that it logs onto my network as standard whenever it is booted?

I appreciate that there are a lot of questions here, and I'm a newbie to linux, but DSL seems a great place to start and would give the portability feature I am looking for. If anyone can help I'd be most grateful.
Regards,
ThePotato

Posted by pr0f3550r on May 06 2006,10:42

A) Yes, i use a 1GB pendrive.
If you use both pendrives on XP, just drag and drop the contents from pen a to pen b, otherwise you have to use dd.

B) What?

D)If you use DSL from Qemu you can't use the wireless adapter directly from DSL because that belongs to the Host machine, which is recognised as a diffrent machine (qemu is a hardare emulator, not a software emulator like cygwin).

You'll have to establish an internet connection from Windows and then start Qemu.

Posted by ThePotato on May 16 2006,22:51

Sorry, what I mean for D is that the card I have (as I say) is the MSI PCI54G2. How can I get that card to work in DSL when booting natively from the pendrive, as opposed to booting through Qemu and using the Windows connection?

For B, I mean that if I boot natively from the pendrive, I presume that it's a full read-write system, and I can store my data on the pendrive just as if I was running from a HD? When booting in Qemu, is this the same? Can I still store the data on the pendrive, even when booting from it in Windows or another OS?

Posted by pr0f3550r on May 17 2006,15:12

D) I have no direct experience, other will help.

E) On a frugal install you'd backup and restore from /dev/scd0 or /dev/cdrom, in qemu install you'd backup and restore from /dev/hdb.

I'd say that if you want to use DSL both natively and from windows, fo for the qemu install, that is a no-install actually.

I personally use neither as I have a diffrent configuration (Qemu + vnc + iso).

Posted by ZoOp on May 17 2006,15:38

Hi,

B) I guess, it is possible since DSL-2.3 (perhaps earlier?), but I am just guessing; it was not possible with older version of dsl in a direct way (save file directly on your usb pendrive), but it was possible in an indirect way using samba; browse the forum which gives very good advices about this;

C) I guess, it is possible, but it depends on your hardware; just look at xserver in mydsl menu and related option; and browse the forum for more (also look at the 'noacpi' cheat code in the wiki);

D) the wiki of DSL gives you a list of working WLAN cards; if you don't find yours, as I didn't, just ebay you a cheap wlan card, or install DSL-N which has kernel 2.6.x, i.e. a better hardware recognition;

a tip: if you want to install DSL, a frugall install gives you the very best of your system without breaking anything if something goes wrong; otherwise, DSL is meant to be portative and mobile, so you get the more of it on a usb pen drive, on a cf card, or as live-cd;

and a remark: in order to make DSL running faster, look at the cheat codes in the wiki (I run DSL without 'nodma' and it is very fast); as embeded in Windows, DSL is slower as in another non-embeded mode; I don't use DSL-embeded (because it's too slow for me), and I prefer to boot right off an usb pendrive, or to install it frugal with Grub.

Enjoy your DSL experience!
yours
z