A few questions on various topics
Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: A few questions on various topics
started by: aveline
Posted by aveline on Feb. 18 2005,04:05
Before I make an ass out of myself by asking what are probably silly questions I'll apologize in advance if this post makes no sense or that the answers I seek are easy to find even tho I've not had much success as yet doing so on my own. heh fair warning, I've got more painkillers in me soooo I'm stoned um ya...anyway don't hurt me too much? 
I'm on DSL 0.9.2 on a laptop and while playing around I noticed some weirdness tho it may be Hikarunix's implementation of DSL ... I'm not sure thats the case?
- EmelFM will *not* resize properly with a button click on its upper right corner box after configuring it in its "config" place. I tried to change fonts & it froze. I killed it & reloaded it up but min/maxmize doesn't work now. If I try to configure it again it freezes. why is this?
- on other distros I can do ctrl-alt-esc to get an Xkill icon. On dsl you use the menu. Is there a kb key combo I can use or make one up on my own & put it somewhere?
- I use an intellimouse trackball by M$ which for some reason has a scroll wheel that only works sporadically. Its a usb mouse btw... is this fixable?
Lastly, is 0.9.3 worth really getting? Is there a way to upgrade 9.2 to 9.3 w/out having to d/l & burn a new cd? That seems to be a waste of time and I've seen ppl mention doing frugal installs to avoid this very problem, but I don't understand the instructions I've seen so far on this board to do it. Point me in the right direction ?
TIA for your time & energys helping me out.
aveline
Posted by mikshaw on Feb. 18 2005,04:25
i can only help a little...minimize/maximize is controlled through fluxbox rather than the application, so if you're having trouble with it, there's something unusual happening...perhaps you are low on memory.
You can set up keyboard controls by editing /home/dsl/.fluxbox/keys
< http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/docbook/en/html/c289.html >
Posted by aveline on Feb. 18 2005,04:56
thx milkshaw very much. Wish I knew what the prob is w/maxi & minimizing.thx for the kb stuff
avey
Posted by Caspar_s on Feb. 18 2005,23:16
| Quote (aveline @ Feb. 17 2005,23:05) |
| Lastly, is 0.9.3 worth really getting? Is there a way to upgrade 9.2 to 9.3 w/out having to d/l & burn a new cd? That seems to be a waste of time and I've seen ppl mention doing frugal installs to avoid this very problem, but I don't understand the instructions I've seen so far on this board to do it. Point me in the right direction ? |
Hmmm, you can boot from a previous version CD and load up a newer version that is on your harddrive. Use iso buster or something like that to open the iso and copy the knoppix file to your harddrive in /knoppix (I don't know what other files are needed, so I just add the entire cd contents - it's only 50mb after all.)
Then at the boot: prompt put in "dsl fromhd=/dev/hda1"
I'll have to check to see if you can have directories under that (ie. /dev/hda1/dsl/0.9.3)
Frugal installs from my understanding, is similar, except has a bootloader instead of the cd/boot floppy.
Posted by aveline on Feb. 19 2005,04:10
| Quote (Caspar_s @ Feb. 18 2005,16:16) |
| Hmmm, you can boot from a previous version CD and load up a newer version that is on your harddrive. Use iso buster or something like that to open the iso and copy the knoppix file to your harddrive in /knoppix (I don't know what other files are needed, so I just add the entire cd contents - it's only 50mb after all.) Then at the boot: prompt put in "dsl fromhd=/dev/hda1" I'll have to check to see if you can have directories under that (ie. /dev/hda1/dsl/0.9.3) Frugal installs from my understanding, is similar, except has a bootloader instead of the cd/boot floppy. |
I'm not certain how to do this, copying over the entire cd um an using the iso...etc... would you kindly write out instructions or point me in the right direction to find them myself? The laptop in question has only linux installs on it.
Oh and a new question: is there a tool or command I can use to determine what version of the type of laptop &/or hardware it contains or must I just go to its BIOS & look?
TIA & TY for the responses thus far.
Avey
Posted by tronik on Feb. 19 2005,06:12
i'm not exactly sure what you're trying to do...as far as a command to find out about the hardware, when you're in DSL (or almost any unix or unix like operating system type 'dmesg' its the kernel buffer, and it'll show you all the stuff you missed when it was 'autoconfiguring devices' ;)
Posted by aveline on Feb. 19 2005,06:38
| Quote (tronik @ Feb. 18 2005,23:12) |
| i'm not exactly sure what you're trying to do... as far as a command to find out about the hardware, when you're in DSL (or almost any unix or unix like operating system type 'dmesg' its the kernel buffer, and it'll show you all the stuff you missed when it was 'autoconfiguring devices' ;) |
I was trying to figure out how to do what Caspar suggested above (earlier in this thread). I'm using ver 0.9.2 of DSL & wondered if theres a way to upgrade it to 0.9.3 w/out needing to write a new cd. (Thinks its time I just say to hell w/it & get a USB key?).
dmesg huh? will have to look & see if that shows the make & model of this laptop then. Ultimately my goal is to find out if I can flash the cdroms firmware on it, but to do that I need its make & model first really. All I found so far is its a Panasonic Toughbook CF-71. I looked up the CF-71 models and Panasonic lists them but they all have another set of letters or #'s after the 71 whereas so far, on the lappy itself I've found no other model info.
Anyway, ty for replying.
I'll try dmesg & let youknow.aveline
Posted by Caspar_s on Feb. 19 2005,19:55
| Quote (aveline @ Feb. 18 2005,23:10) | ||
I'm not certain how to do this, copying over the entire cd um an using the iso...etc... would you kindly write out instructions or point me in the right direction to find them myself? The laptop in question has only linux installs on it. |
Ahhh, linux... from searching on google I found this - it looks familiar, so it should work.
mount dsl.iso /cdrom -t iso9660 -o loop
(/cdrom or wherever you want to mount the new version temporarily)
Then you can go over to the /cdrom/knoppix directory and copy the knoppix file to /knoppix on your linux system.
Hmm, so if you are running linux already, why are you looking at DSL? (most others, like me, seem to be coming from windows... wanting to get into linux without massive changes to their windows systems)
Cya
Posted by aveline on Feb. 20 2005,03:26
I'm playing w/DSL because its small & fits on this laptop just fine. Being an older laptop, I can't run most newer distros easily. *shrugs* Plus DSL does what I want it to do w/out alot of overhead or useless programs taking up space. I still don't quite understand how to do a remaster or use the dsl extensions but when I do I'll probably create a custom dsl cd to use on that laptop *either thru a hdd install or some variant of that*. I also picked up a distro called Hikarunix, to learn the game of Go, which has based his distro on DSL. Its fun, small & useful. I may eventually run DSL on my desktop comp just because its so small & useful as well as because I'm sick of Mandrake, not sure I like Fedora yet & most other big name distros just do not suit my purposes.
Aveline