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Topic: Not For Profit Needs Help!, DSL on older machines

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davide

Group: Members
Posts: 265
Joined: Sep. 2003

Posted: Jan. 02 2004,13:02

just a word about IceWM. Great Window Manager, but I have it on my debian 486 and I found it is not as light as I expected it to be.
It is very familiar, thought (you're right John, familiar does not mean easy).
for debian: good suggest, but stripping down a distro can be more difficult or time-consuming than adding packages to dsl, i.e.
Starting from consolle and adding packages via apt-get needs the skill of knowing about linux file system..and so on..it take sto be familiar with it.
just my humble opinion.

--------------
Davide

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clivesay

Group: Guests
Posts: 935
Joined: Dec. 2003

Posted: Jan. 02 2004,16:40

All -
Loaded DSL to the hard drive of a Gateway 133mhz with 64mb of ram....Installed flawlessly! I don't have speakers on it so I don't know if the sound it working.

One question is how do you install packages from CD/floppy if the computer is not connected to the net? I was going to install AbiWord last night.

If anyone has a good resource for learning the very basics about using commands in Linux (DSL specifically) I am all ears. I don't want to bore you all with the same old questions everyone else asks!

As far as the distro and packages go, I would ideally like to have multiple verions of DSL with packages installed that I could readily install based on system requirements. Maybe something along the line of a Lite, Medium, Heavy (similar to Morphix). With the number of PC's I am dealing with, I don't want to recreate the wheel every time I do an install. Like I said, right now I have almost 30 machines!

Hope this makes sense. Thanks

Chris

CappyCaffeine
Unregistered

Posted: Jan. 03 2004,20:49

It is nice to see all the additional input posted under this topic. I think DSL is a Damn Fine Linux distribution (perhaps it should be "DFL"? but the package installation may bite your attempts. But, then again, it may not!

A similar distribution that is 100% Debian based is Bonzai Linux (http://www.gnulinux.de/) and a review of version 3.1 here: (http://www.cahtech.co.nr/reviews/bonzai31.php).

The upside is that it will be able to use all of the available debian packages to install additional programs. The downside is that the installation of Bonzai is taken from Debian: Text Installation and requires you to know what hardware is on each system. It is much more complicated than DSL which autoconfigures most things for you.

I think with most vintage machines, if you install programs that run under GTK and avoid those that require or need a functioning KDE desktop, you may be able to achieve your goals.

I would suggest that you figure out what additional packages you would like installed into DSL and find a friend who has a broadband internet connection and a CD-R writer. You could then create a "master" CD with the additional packages you want. Synaptic and Apt-Get can download the packages and their dependencies (other packages needed for your requested package to install) and keep them on the hard drive instead of just installing and deleting them. You could then burn the downloaded packages and install them en-masse from the CD.

Just a thought! Good Luck!

Cappy

BTW: Yup, you do need to do a dpkg -restore before getting synaptic!

clivesay

Group: Guests
Posts: 935
Joined: Dec. 2003

Posted: Jan. 03 2004,23:29

Thanks, Cappy.

I think I want to stick with DSL. I like the way it installs and I really appreciate the time that people have taken to respond in the forum!

I have a broadband connection so that is not a problem. My main machine runs with an Epox DDR mobo and Athlon 2600+ chip with high end video and sound. I took the leap last night and partitioned it for Linux distros.

I would like to do exactly what you suggested as far as having a "package" cd(s) that I could pull from based on system requirements.

The only catch I am having right now is that DSL doesn't seem to like my USB mouse. When I get to the desktop view, it doesn't do anything. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Chris

CappyCaffeine Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 64
Joined: Jan. 2004

Posted: Jan. 03 2004,23:34

re-run xsetup.sh in your root directory and make sure you enable USB mouse support. If this doesn't work try the following:

How do I configure USB mouse in XFree86-4.0?

Add these lines in /etc/X11/XF86Config-4

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Intelli Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "AlwaysCore"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
EndSection

Cheers, Cappy

22 replies since Dec. 31 2003,21:02

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