normany
Group: Members
Posts: 3
Joined: July 2007 |
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Posted: Aug. 07 2007,00:32 |
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Just an update on what I have done so far, and what I perhaps should have done...
The right cheatcode...
Based on "thehatsrule"'s advice, I shortened the cheatcode to boot off the CD to "dsl dma xsetup" and that worked fine. No need for the other stuff that I found here in the forums at:
http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....8;st=20
In doing the HHD install, I followed the instructions at:
http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Installing_to_the_Hard_Disk
I did the disk partitions using the fdisk and went ahead with the install. I inadvertently hit "g" instead of "l" when I was prompted for the bootloader install, so I ended up with a Grub install which would have been OK except I wanted Lilo.
Here was the first place I encountered something unexpected. I attempted a reinstall several times specifying Lilo as the loader, but when I would reboot, Grub insisted on attempting to do the boot and returned an error code - I believe it was 15. I am not sure what I did differently from the first install, but on that one, Lilo booted the system with no problems. It was almost as if Grub never completely went away once it was installed. I even went back and reformatted the entire disk using Win 98 SE install, and Grub still insisted on showing up.
OK, I didn't want to keep beating my head against a brick wall, so I went with the flow. I installed and specified Grub as Ye Olde Bootloader, and everything worked fine. I'd still like to know why Lilo didn't work though.
On rebooting I immediately did the xserver config, and that resulted in the display working as it should. No more freezes.
I also edited the Grub menu.lst file to add dma and commented out every other option but the 1024x768 config. If I decide I need any other option, I can edit that at a later time.
I edited the .xinitrc file to get rid of the Dillo startup as per the FAQ.
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/FAQ
Now I was up to a working system and just itching to mess something up... and I did.
I wanted to get a word processor with a little more horsepower than Ted or Beaver, so I decided to install Abiword through MyDSL. (Actually, I wanted something that I could use to read e-texts using the whole screen and allow these 54 year old eyes to adjust the font size.) Abiword was installed easily enough, but for some reason could not open a simple text file on the pen drive.
I then used MyDSL to install OpenOffice. I knew if that could not read a text file then I was definitely doing something wrong. OO Writer read it with no problems.
OK, that works... now it was time to get rid of Abiword. It was only then that I learned that getting rid of a MyDSL program with a Debian-type install can apparently be tedious and you may delete something important.
http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Removing_A_MyDSL_Extension
OK, I needed more practice, so I did another install, repeating the tweaks mentioned above. I then used MyDSL to add OpenOffice, the KJV Bible, and the Gimp.
I also learned a valuable lesson. If you want to see whether you want something installed using MyDSL, try it on the CD first, and if you like it, go ahead and install it for real. That's what I did when I used MyDSL to check out the nature backgrounds for Fluxbox and JWM. The windows managers look really slick now with the new backgrounds.
I later began reviewing the MyDSL packages online...
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/damnsmall/mydsl/
... and discovered that by using the GTk utilities, I could have gotten a more current version of Gimp, but my need for it on that machine is not as great, so I won't bother trying to upgrade or get rid of the old one unless I need to start from scratch again.
All in all, I like using MyDSL over apt since what's there has been tested and found to work on DSL. Still, it would be nice to have an easy way to uninstall the MyDSL stuff with the Debian-type install, short of just starting over, as you apparently can do with the frugal install.
I am hedging my bets until I get everything right by storing all my personal files on the pen drive. If I decide I need to do things better, I will not lose anything I have created.
Next up, I intend to do a test run with the ham radio PSK package, and if that works OK with the CD, I'll go ahead and do the a MyDSL install of that one.
I also want to find out exactly where that FluxBox slit is supposed to be, and what the DocApps thing is supposed to be:
(See http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Fluxbox)
This is in connection with the need to see how much audio volume I can get. I maxed out the mixer volume and the XMMS volume to get about what I had under Win 98, but I want to make certain I have configured everything properly since volume may be an issue with PSK.
I hope my experiences here will help someone else.
So far, I have concluded that this DSL install really has given new life to an old machine. It has much to commend it over Win 98 SE, which was on it before, but like every other Linux I have played with, it is not really user-friendly to get going. Unlike Windows, if you hit the wrong key and need to back up in the install process, that's too bad. You'll just have to start over. Still, it has been great fun so far!
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