[Suitcase Test]

So Linux crew. What are your thoughts on Gnome 3? Supposedly they are getting rid of the taskbar and going with this crazy group idea.

Last I heard, gnome-shell wasn't even officially accepted yet for GNOME 3. A lot of work on other GNOME 3 stuff is going on behind the scenes now, I'd say. They're doing a HUGE clean-up AFAIK.

But gnome-shell... I'm not sure man... I've tried it, but am not sold at all. Seems like a waste to throw all of this AWESOME GNOME stuff away (also, the new Ubuntu stuff that's built on it). Not to mention that doing such rash things is really not GNOME's style.

All in all, I hope gnome-shell doens't become the default soon... I don't like the way it works, it doesn't look good, doesn't work with Compiz...

I love that people are trying to innovate with such an extremely different system. It must've taken balls and a lot of work. But for me, I'll pass for now.

[Brettison]

Do we know if they are gonna hit their rumored release time frame of September or not? I hope most distros pass on it for this year. No offense to Gnome or anything, but I'd like a good solid 6 months at least post launch for bugs to be fixed before it's included into a major Distro. Then again maybe that's just cause I look at how KDE4 was a cluster fuck and a half at launch. :lol

[Andrex]

Gah, installed some updates, did the required restart, and now it won't start up. :(

[Flying_Phoenix]

What's the best Linux distro for servers?

[Cheeto]

What's the best Linux distro for servers?

What kind of server?

[close to the edge]

Looks interesting. Though would using regular Ubuntu kill my netbook battery?

No, there is probably no difference. The only difference between Netbook-Ubuntu and regular Ubuntu is the UI, as far as I know.

[Suitcase Test]

No, there is probably no difference. The only difference between Netbook-Ubuntu and regular Ubuntu is the UI, as far as I know.

Yep, the UI is very different (as in, optimized for smaller screens). The app selections are quite different too (or at least, will be in the next version, don't know what they are right now).

[Brettison]

Gah, installed some updates, did the required restart, and now it won't start up. :(

Are you just getting a command line? If so that means your boot loader probably got messed up.

[gregor7777]

What's the best Linux distro for servers?

For most servers I run CentOS. Very stable. Other distros would work just as well though. It's just my preference.

[close to the edge]

What's the best Linux distro for servers?

Depends on what you need. If you just need a server for your home network with stuff like a media server, file sharing etc. you should be fine with a regular version of any common Linux distribution, you just need to install those packages. The advantage over a dedicated Server distribution (e.g. Ubuntu Server edition) is that it's probably easier to use (I haven't yet used it but I think Ubuntu Server doesn't have a GUI per default)

[Cheeto]

Depends on what you need. If you just need a server for your home network with stuff like a media server, file sharing etc. you should be fine with a regular version of any common Linux distribution, you just need to install those packages. The advantage over a dedicated Server distribution (e.g. Ubuntu Server edition) is that it's probably easier to use (I haven't yet used it but I think Ubuntu Server doesn't have a GUI per default)

Yeah, Ubuntu Server doesn't launch a window manager by default. This is nice because you can use some of the real lightweight ones like Fluxbox or Blackbox without much trouble.

[Dimmuxx]

What's the best Linux distro for servers?

Debian for most kinds of servers.

[Flying_Phoenix]

I'm talking about servers more in the vein as a server for a surveillance system.

[Andrex]

Are you just getting a command line? If so that means your boot loader probably got messed up.

No, blank screen. Sometimes if I press the power button (not even hold it to do a hard reboot) the Ubuntu splash screen pops up for a second, then shuts down. Reminds me of my adventures with 64-bit Ubuntu to be honest.

Although, it might be because I turned on updates from Jaunty Jackalope for like four minutes while I got the Java 5 JDK for the Android source code. Urgh.

[Dineren]

No, blank screen. Sometimes if I press the power button (not even hold it to do a hard reboot) the Ubuntu splash screen pops up for a second, then shuts down. Reminds me of my adventures with 64-bit Ubuntu to be honest. Although, it might be because I turned on updates from Jaunty Jackalope for like four minutes while I got the Java 5 JDK for the Android source code. Urgh.

Turning on the repository for Jaunty might have done it if for some reason you overwrote any system packages with older versions, but you would have to force it to install the packages, which I'm sure you didn't do. Did you make sure just to add the multiverse packages for Jaunty? It sounds almost like a hardware compatibility issue to me, but you could try booting from a livecd and reinstalling Grub, maybe the bootloader was corrupted somehow.

Here is a link to an easy walkthrough of the process if you want to give it a shot.

[Andrex]

Thanks, I'll try that.

Is there a way to just rewrite the OS files using the live CD, like recovering Windows?

[Dineren]

Thanks, I'll try that. Is there a way to just rewrite the OS files using the live CD, like recovering Windows?

I don't believe so. If the data (such as your home directory) you want to keep is on a separate partition from the root dir you could choose to manually partition during the install and choose a mount point without formatting it, but the rest of your system including anything installed via the software center or synaptic would be erased. You might be able to mount your filesystem from the live cd and repair your install manually with apt, but you'll need someone smarter than me to tell you the commands necessary to target it properly if it is possible.

I hope you can get it up and running without issues, I've tried a lot of Linux distributions since I first installed Slackware via a ridiculous amount of floppies in 1994 and this release has been by far my favorite for some reason I can't explain. Great polish and everything works perfectly (pretty much the opposite experience you've had :lol)

[Andrex]

Well, when I'm running it it's been super stable and faster than running the same stuff under Vista (well, not faster, but less slowdown.) It also was able to immediately use my USB Wi-Fi adapter, which I had to hunt a lot for under Windows 7 (although that was 64-bit, which was part of the problem.)

But that's after I can get it to boot up. :lol Maybe my hard drive is failing or something.

[Brettison]

Do you have a dual boot setup? I mean can you save all your files in Windows, and just format the Linux part? If so that wouldn't really be THAT bad.

[Andrex]

Do you have a dual boot setup? I mean can you save all your files in Windows, and just format the Linux part? If so that wouldn't really be THAT bad.

Hrm, maybe. Just reinstalled Windows 7, running Ubuntu 32-bit from the live CD, wondering if this is what you meant?

The first option, is that what you mean? Windows 7 system files are separate, Ubuntu is separate, /dev/sda2 is shared between them? Or should I go with the third option, and just beef up Ubuntu's space?

Halp GAF? Ubuntu loads fine from the live CD but never when actually booting so far...

[Dineren]

I think he meant that if you had both installed you could just copy your data to the ntfs partition and then just format the linux partition. If you just formated and installed Windows that doesn't really apply anymore. If for some reason Grub isn't compatible and that is causing issues with your system you could try adding Ubuntu to the windows boot loader instead.

I've never done it so I don't know what is involved, but some quick searching turned up this popular utility. If you want to try this with windows already installed you would want to make sure to install grub to the first partition of your Ubuntu parition rather than the MBR during the Ubuntu install. Then when you restart afterwards it will boot you straight to Windows and you can use the utility to add Ubuntu to the Windows bootloader. Since booting to windows seems to work fine for you this could be an easy solution to your problem.

If you install Ubuntu and it install Grub to the MBR anyway, you could try booting the recovery console on your windows install disk and typing fixmbr to restore the Windows bootloader and then carry on with the utility above. If for some reason any of the above causes your computer to blow up in your face I cannot be held responsible. :D

[Andrex]

Well, that seemed really complicated, so I did the third thing, just jacked up Ubuntu's space.

I was able to get it running, in fact it's what I'm using to post now, no live CD or anything, but I'm getting two "drm nouveau misaligned reg" errors pop up the last couple of times booting (and out of those, this is the only time I've successfully booted.) Seems very finicky. I'm installing some updates now but I'm gonna hold out on restarting as long as possible. :lol

It does seem to like the dual boot setup more. Maybe GRUB wasn't made for just having Linux? :lol Like it expects Windows almost.

[Cheeto]

I'm talking about servers more in the vein as a server for a surveillance system.

A server to control the surveillance system or server to archive the footage?

[Vipershark]

Ok, Gaf. I need some help.

I've got three laptops from 1996.
All three have floppy drives, but only two of them have CD drives. The third is a different model that doesn't use the same drive connectors as the first two, so I can't use their CD drives.
I need to get (a very lightweight) linux running on all three of them.

I've tried DSL (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/) and it works on the two with CD drives, but obviously without a boot CD I can't install it on the 3rd.

Buying a CD caddy and drive for the 3rd laptop is out of the question. I also don't have any laptop>IDE connectors so I can't pull the hard drive and connect to other computers.

Basically, I need to somehow boot linux off of (preferably one) floppy disk.
I tried following the instruction here (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/i...ans_Install%29)and using TOMSRTBT, but it only works on a 2mb floppy disk, which I don't have.

I then tried using BG-Rescue, but I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do with it. The page lists almost no information, not to mention that I have several 1.44mb disks, but all but one of them have bad sectors, meaning that I can't write image files to them.

So basically, I need a tiny, TINY linux distro that can boot from a single floppy and get internet support up and running so I can download and install another OS, most likely DSL.

Any recommendations?

Note: The 3rd computer doesn't have a CD drive, but it does have a single USB port. Is there a way to possibly get it to boot from USB? The BIOS is obviously too old to have native support, and I'm not sure if there are any bootdisks with USB boot support.

[Brettison]

I don't suppose you could get the 3rd comp connected to a network? You could just do a network install then.

I gotta ask though. WTF are you doing with 3 laptops almost 15 years old? :lol

[Vipershark]

I've had them for forever and I want to get them online :lol

What you said is exactly what I'm trying to do, though.
The computer has no OS on its hard drive. I need a tiny linux that will allow it to load pcmcia drivers and download a linux distro from the internet. Only problem is, I don't know of any linuxes that fit that description aside from the ones I posted, and I can't figure out how to use them. Not to mention that there's zero information for either of them on the internet.

[Dineren]

I've had them for forever and I want to get them online :lol What you said is exactly what I'm trying to do, though. The computer has no OS on its hard drive. I need a tiny linux that will allow it to load pcmcia drivers and download a linux distro from the internet. Only problem is, I don't know of any linuxes that fit that description aside from the ones I posted, and I can't figure out how to use them. Not to mention that there's zero information for either of them on the internet.

Debian etch appears to have still had the option to boot the install from floppy. You can grab the images here. Another option is to try to find a distro from that era and install it, I believe that was around the time of Red Hat 6 or 7. I noticed on the DSL ftp site there is a floppy boot img for a 1.44MB disk, have you tried booting from that and seeing if you can install from that? It looks like it also has a floppy image for pcmcia drivers.

Edit: I took a look at the Poorman's install link and it doesn't look that complicated. Maybe I'm missing something, but I think all you need to do is go to the BG Rescue link on that page, download the files rescue-0.9.1-1.img and rescue-0.9.1-2.img for 1.44MB floppy. Write the image to a floppy with
fdimage rescue-X.Y.Z-1.img a: and for the second
fdimage rescue-X.Y.Z-2.img a:

Then you boot from those two floppy disks and follow the installation instructions on the page you linked. The only purpose of BG Rescue is to get you into a linux environment with basic utilities. Once you've booted into linux you can set up your networking environment and download the frugal shell script to complete the process they describe.

[Brettison]

Your a poster after my own heart Vispershark. You have some totally cool idea you get in your mind even if it's something that's just gonna be a pain in the ass and not really useful in the end. You'll be damned if you give up that easy though, and don't see the meaningless side project through! :lol :D

[panda21]

Well, that seemed really complicated, so I did the third thing, just jacked up Ubuntu's space. I was able to get it running, in fact it's what I'm using to post now, no live CD or anything, but I'm getting two "drm nouveau misaligned reg" errors pop up the last couple of times booting (and out of those, this is the only time I've successfully booted.) Seems very finicky. I'm installing some updates now but I'm gonna hold out on restarting as long as possible. :lol

it sounds like its trying to load the NVIDIA drivers to display during boot.

possibly you managed to somehow make it so your video drivers don't match up with your kernel?

the moral of the story here is never ever mess with your main apt source, add stuff from a separate repository instead that only contains what you want (i'm pretty sure there is a dedicated android repo with just the android dev stuff, that you add to your sources.list?)

[WickedAngel]

Your a poster after my own heart Vispershark. You have some totally cool idea you get in your mind even if it's something that's just gonna be a pain in the ass and not really useful in the end. You'll be damned if you give up that easy though, and don't see the meaningless side project through! :lol :D

Far too many of my little side-projects could be characterized this way.

[Andrex]

it sounds like its trying to load the NVIDIA drivers to display during boot. possibly you managed to somehow make it so your video drivers don't match up with your kernel? the moral of the story here is never ever mess with your main apt source, add stuff from a separate repository instead that only contains what you want (i'm pretty sure there is a dedicated android repo with just the android dev stuff, that you add to your sources.list?)

There might be but I couldn't get repo to work either. :lol FML.

[Dineren]

FYI, Sun still provides older releases on their website. You can download Java 5 here. The installation process is pretty straightforward and it should be better than trying to add old repositories to install it.

[Andrex]

FYI, Sun still provides older releases on their website. You can download Java 5 here. The installation process is pretty straightforward and it should be better than trying to add old repositories to install it.

I checked that out first but got lost on their site somehow. :lol nogoodwithcomputers.jpg

[panda21]

There might be but I couldn't get repo to work either. :lol FML.

oh wait i think maybe i wrong, just do this
http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing.html

i think i did have to install eclipse manually or something but its fairly painless

[Andrex]

oh wait i think maybe i wrong, just do this http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing.html i think i did have to install eclipse manually or something but its fairly painless

Ah, Java 5 JDK is needed for compiling the Android source code.

[Flying_Phoenix]

A server to control the surveillance system or server to archive the footage?

I'm pretty sure it's the former, but could you give me answers for both?

My friends asking me this so I'm not 100% sure what he wants.

[Cheeto]

I'm pretty sure it's the former, but could you give me answers for both? My friends asking me this so I'm not 100% sure what he wants.

In the case of the former, it depends on the software being used. If the software is open source then it's pretty much up to him what distro he'd like to use, if the software vendor supplies the source code then with enough diligence it can be compiled on any distro. Otherwise, it's almost safe to assume that any off-the-shelf software that isn't open-source is going to be redhat based.

If he's just looking for a server to archive the raw data than a good filesystem is more important than the distro. I'm personally a huge fanboy of ZFS, but I don't know about it's performance on Linux machines as I've only used it on Solaris. Maybe someone else can chime in on that

[Vipershark]

Debian etch appears to have still had the option to boot the install from floppy. You can grab the images here. Another option is to try to find a distro from that era and install it, I believe that was around the time of Red Hat 6 or 7. I noticed on the DSL ftp site there is a floppy boot img for a 1.44MB disk, have you tried booting from that and seeing if you can install from that? It looks like it also has a floppy image for pcmcia drivers. Edit: I took a look at the Poorman's install link and it doesn't look that complicated. Maybe I'm missing something, but I think all you need to do is go to the BG Rescue link on that page, download the files rescue-0.9.1-1.img and rescue-0.9.1-2.img for 1.44MB floppy. Write the image to a floppy with fdimage rescue-X.Y.Z-1.img a: and for the second fdimage rescue-X.Y.Z-2.img a: Then you boot from those two floppy disks and follow the installation instructions on the page you linked. The only purpose of BG Rescue is to get you into a linux environment with basic utilities. Once you've booted into linux you can set up your networking environment and download the frugal shell script to complete the process they describe.

I actually got bgrescue up and running.

The problem is, it wouldn't detect my pcmcia slot (which autodetects when I'm using DSL.) so I don't think it'll work with the two computers with CD drives. That's not really a problem since they have drives though. Luckily, it detects the 3rd laptop without the drive's pcmcia slots just fine.

Then from there, it just gave me a blank terminal screen and wanted me to type commands. Being new to this, I obviously have no idea what to do when presented with a blank linux terminal. How am I supposed to download the setup files for the OS from this point?

[Dineren]

I actually got bgrescue up and running. The problem is, it wouldn't detect my pcmcia slot (which autodetects when I'm using DSL.) so I don't think it'll work with the two computers with CD drives. That's not really a problem since they have drives though. Luckily, it detects the 3rd laptop without the drive's pcmcia slots just fine. Then from there, it just gave me a blank terminal screen and wanted me to type commands. Being new to this, I obviously have no idea what to do when presented with a blank linux terminal. How am I supposed to download the setup files for the OS from this point?

Once you're at the command prompt you just need to follow the instructions here. I'll type up a condensed version that will hopefully be a little clearer.

First thing you need to do is make sure your network is up. Try ping google.com, if you get a response you should be good to go. If not you'll need to configure your network settings similar to this:

ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.14 netmask 255.255.255.0
route add default gw 192.168.0.1

You'll have to replace those numbers with ones suitable for your own network of course, a common variation would be be ip 192.168.1.14 and 192.168.1.1 for the gateway if the settings above don't work. Then you'll need to add a nameserver with the command:
echo "nameserver xx.xx.xx.xx" >> /etc/resolv.conf

If you don't know your nameserver you can use Google's 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

From there you're ready to download the actual install script with the command:

wget http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/...frugal_lite.sh

It should end up in your current directory. You'll next have to create your partitions for DSL. It looks like the way this particular install works is it copies the live cd for DSL onto one partition and then you boot the livecd you installed with a floppy and install it from one partition to the other. Make sure one partition is at least 64MB and the other partition would be as large as you're going to want your system. Here is a link to the fdisk guide on that page, it's fairly simple, but make sure you follow the instructions carefully. If you have any specific questions about that please ask. Once your partitions are good to go you'll need to edit the script file you downloaded, I don't know what editor you'll have, but try:
nano frugal_lite.sh

Change the fourth line to:
URL="distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/damnsmall/current"
and the fifth to:
PROTOCOL="http"

Hit ctrl-x and then y to save the file. (If you don't have nano you should have vim or vi installed)

Put a floppy you don't mind erasing in the drive (it will be your boot disk so make sure it works)

Then finally type:
ash frugal_lite.sh
and follow the prompts. Once it is completed reboot and when you get the boot: prompt type:
boot: dsl vga=normal

Once that is up you can run the normal DSL install with:
dsl-hdinstall

That is a slightly condensed version, you might want to read through the first link as it adds some important notes and what you might need to do if for some reason the install isn't working. Particularly I would read the notes toward the bottom of the page. If there is anything in particular you don't understand please let me know and I'll try to walk you through it. The command line isn't too hard to navigate once you get used to it it bit.

[Flying_Phoenix]

In the case of the former, it depends on the software being used. If the software is open source then it's pretty much up to him what distro he'd like to use, if the software vendor supplies the source code then with enough diligence it can be compiled on any distro. Otherwise, it's almost safe to assume that any off-the-shelf software that isn't open-source is going to be redhat based. If he's just looking for a server to archive the raw data than a good filesystem is more important than the distro. I'm personally a huge fanboy of ZFS, but I don't know about it's performance on Linux machines as I've only used it on Solaris. Maybe someone else can chime in on that

Thanks.

[Andrex]

I download a program from here, extracted it... now how do I use it? Driving me absolutely insane.

[Cheeto]

I download a program from here, extracted it... now how do I use it? Driving me absolutely insane.

Did you compile it?

[remz]

Or grab an .rpm and run that.

or if you're on a debian based distro (ie. ubuntu, etc) use alien to convert it to a .deb and run that.

[itxaka]

I download a program from here, extracted it... now how do I use it? Driving me absolutely insane.

open a terminal and navigate to the extracted folder (cd whatever)

type:

./configure

Wait.

make

Wait

sudo make install


And done!


Or you could go the easy route if you have unbuntu and install it from the repositories (only vesion 15-2)
Or, if you need the latest version you can get it from javintus ppa: http://ppa.launchpad.net/janvitus/pp...idppa1_all.deb
:D


Also I gotta say, Archlinux is the fucking bomb. Everything I got running on ubuntu I got it running here without a lot of the shit that comes as dependencies.

I got apache running as well, gnome, sshd and the load nevesr crosses 0.08. Fuckawesome.

[NH Apache]

Help.


I am now making Ubuntu my primary OS on my Dell 1501.

Dell Specs: http://www.notebookreview.com/defaul...+Inspiron+1501

Randomly, and increasing in frequency, I am getting a crazy screen after boot. I know that it must be directly related to the video driver, but I'm not sure how to tackle it. Directly after the splash screen, or sometimes, after I log in, the video goes wonky. All other functions continue. I can hit the power button once and press enter to shut down, but I can't do shit otherwise. Then I try rebooting.

Here is the screen:

[IMG]http://i45.************/dnzifo.jpg[/IMG]

I want Ubuntu to work so bad. Help.

[Cheeto]

Help. I am now making Ubuntu my primary OS on my Dell 1501. Dell Specs: http://www.notebookreview.com/defaul...+Inspiron+1501 Randomly, and increasing in frequency, I am getting a crazy screen after boot. I know that it must be directly related to the video driver, but I'm not sure how to tackle it. Directly after the splash screen, or sometimes, after I log in, the video goes wonky. All other functions continue. I can hit the power button once and press enter to shut down, but I can't do shit otherwise. Then I try rebooting. Here is the screen: I want Ubuntu to work so bad. Help.

If the splash screen draws correctly... then your problem is most likely the video driver that gets applied afterwards. You may need to switch to the proprietary video driver from the free one, or vice versa.

[NH Apache]

If the splash screen draws correctly... then your problem is most likely the video driver that gets applied afterwards. You may need to switch to the proprietary video driver from the free one, or vice versa.

During one of the times that it booted properly, I went to see if I had any restricted drivers running and the only drivers listed were for my broadcom wireless. Do you have any info on how I can acquire that driver?

Edit: I checked under System->Administration->Hardware drivers

Edit2: Fuck it, I'm doing a clean install then reporting back.

[itxaka]

During one of the times that it booted properly, I went to see if I had any restricted drivers running and the only drivers listed were for my broadcom wireless. Do you have any info on how I can acquire that driver? Edit: I checked under System->Administration->Hardware drivers Edit2: Fuck it, I'm doing a clean install then reporting back.

You can always boot on rescue mode, drop to a shell with root privileges (it's streamlined) and remove the ati driver. xorg should "break" and offer you to create a new config file with the default framebuffer/vesa driver that works across all video cards.

Check yes, log in, install propietary drivers again, reboot.

[NH Apache]

You can always boot on rescue mode, drop to a shell with root privileges (it's streamlined) and remove the ati driver. xorg should "break" and offer you to create a new config file with the default framebuffer/vesa driver that works across all video cards. Check yes, log in, install propietary drivers again, reboot.

Thanks. I'll hold onto this post if it happens again. I reinstalled after backing up my documents and wiped the drive. After install, I have rebooted 4 or 5 times and haven't had the issue yet.

I'm going back through and setting it up again (half the fun, right?), including setting up Ushare once more. It is such an effective media sharer.

[Andrex]

open a terminal and navigate to the extracted folder (cd whatever) type: ./configure Wait. make Wait sudo make install And done!

Thanks, this worked. However I had to do it twice because the first time "your intltools is too old" or something, so I sudo apt-get install intltools. Learning Linux everyday. =P

Can I delete the extracted folder, or do I have to keep it around? I wish the Ubuntu Software Center had the most up to date versions, then I could just use that instead of doing all this downloady, extracty nonsense for Eclipse and Transmageddon.