Notwork

[cosmolinguist]

setharoo has often told me that in computer science, everything is amazingly simple or grossly complicated.

Replacing my old hard disks with my slightly-less-old one was pretty simple for him. Installing an OS was--and is--grossly complicated.

comradexavier had made Slackware discs for me (and Jenn) a week ago, but they didn't work when Seth tried to boot off them. Early attempts to find alternative OSes were unsuccessful, so Seth brought his Slackware 9.0 with him when he came back to my apartment later in the evening and installed that. This was fine, until he realized that it was not finding my network card at all. Indeed, my network card, which was just fine before, seems not to be responding to anything at all. Seth and I both thought he hadn't done anything and this must just be massive and inconvenient coincidence, but he opened the case for at least the third time to check, and apparently its LEDs aren't even blinking. The good thing about that is that it's the school's network card, so I should be able to get a replacement from them tomorrow.

In the meantime, though, I still don't have a working OS, as once Seth noticed this glitch he saw no point in worrying about configuring any more, which is not his forte anyway, and instead he offered me his XP disc. I tried installing that instead but nothing seemed to happen; I didn't try very hard and will have another go at it when I go back to my room, after I finish this complaint.

Seth and I were thinking that Slackware is fine if you really know what you're doing, but we really don't. Not to that degree, anyway. And we don't think we have to. "It's like driving a car," he said. "Everybody shouldn't need to know the details of an internal combustion engine to do it." I agreed. And, in this metaphor, I like to think I'm fairly good at driving cars, but that doesn't mean I can (or want to) build one. And we decided Slackware is a distro for mechanics. I'm not a mechanic, just a driver. But not too stupid a driver; I can change my own oil and check the fluid levels.

And, since my copy of Slackware isn't working, I don't feel especially connected to it, now that I can't ask Matthew to be a mechanic when I need one (and I really need one now). So I'm sort of in the market for a new distro, and at the risk of starting a holy war, I'll ask if any of you have suggestions. What's good for the kind of person who can check the oil on her computer?

Comments

[davmoo.livejournal.com]

Unless you have the latest and greatest nose-bleed-causing technology, Mandrake Linux is pretty good at autodetecting your hardware and setting itself up properly.

I've used Slackware, and in fact that was the first distribution I used, way back when. And there is nothing wrong with that. But I switched because I got tired of having to mess with configuration issues for hardware that was as common as dirt. My attitude is I don't have to do that sort of thing for Windows, so dammit I shouldn't have to do it for Linux either. Just because I have the knowledge doesn't mean I want to do it all the time. ISO images of Mandrake 9.2 are at this link (ftp://mirrors.secsup.org/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandrakelinux/official/iso/9.2/i586/). If you'd rather have the latest and greatest, but with a few more steps, ISO images for Mandrake 10.0 Community are here. (ftp://mirrors.secsup.org/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandrakelinux/devel/iso/10.0/i586/) "Community" is the last release before "Official". 10.0 Official has been released, but ISO images have not been released to the general public at large yet. However, it is a trivial exercise to install 10.0 Community and then update it to 10.0 Official over the network. I already had 10.0 Community installed, and rather than go through the hassle of burning more CDs, etc, it was easier, in my opinion, to issue three commands in the software update interface and then do 10 minutes of downloading, and shazaam, you have 10.0 Official.

You might also try Knoppix. Its a distribution of Linux that lives entirely on a CD. You don't have to do an actual install (although you have that option). You merely download the image, burn it to CD, chuck the CD in to your drive, and reboot. You are now running Linux. A list of mirrors is here. (http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html)

[cosmolinguist]

I have far from the latest and greatest technology. :-) It's all cast-offs of my friends' computers. The hardware's fine for me (now that I have a hard drive that isn't dying) but it's all old. I actually smiled when I read about how easy Knoppix is. While I've heard that, I don't even have a CD burner. :-)

I have actually heard good things about Mandrake and your comments are enlightening. :-) Thanks.

[davmoo.livejournal.com]

If you can get a working network card, then you can install Mandrake using only a floppy drive and a network connection. If this is something you would want to do, reply back and I'll enter a new set of links for you to follow :-)

[ivana-duboise.livejournal.com]

First, chech out DistroWatch (http://www.distrowatch.com/) and research a couple Distros.

I liked SuSE 'cause it did a lot of everything that I wanted to do for me. At times that did get annoying though 'cause it would do something that I didn't quite want to do at that moment (i.e. mounting drives). It was quite nice and easy to install once I got all of the information that I needed. Installation is down by download. You have to set-up a driver so that you can connect to 'The Internet' and a mirror. If I can figure it out I'm sure that you can ... plus you have a CS major at your disposal. One more thing about SuSE a lot of the software that it will install is outdated and there are newer versions that you will probably want to upgrade to.

My other suggestion is Fedora. I haven't gotten to check it out yet and it looks promising.

And for shits and giggles, Gentoo. It compiles EVERYTHING. (It may take a while.)

[comradexavier.livejournal.com]

I was going to disagree with your analogy, but then I thought of more levels of complexity that I wasn't taking into account. You're not spot-on, but I don't feel like typing out a huge comment, so you get a freebie on this one.

You probably can't boot Jenn's slackware 9.1 CDs because I had nothing to burn them on but CD-RW discs, and your CD-ROM drive predates that media.

Unfortunately for you, there are two kinds of distributions: the ones which try to make everything brain-dead simple, and those which expect you to know what you're doing. You know enough that I think you'd get frustrated with the former, and you've just said that you don't want to master the latter. I actually think you might like using Debian, but even I don't like their installer (supposedly they're writing a new one, to be done...well...sometime), so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to you at this point. I also can't quite bring myself to recommend Fedora, simply because RPM package management has never been my friend.

You know, you can still ask me to fix your computer; if it weren't so far away, I would happily help.

[cosmolinguist]

Thanks for giving me a break. :-)

I thought of the CD-RW thing, but didn't know if that made any sense or not, since I really don't know that much about such things. She'll probably be happy to know that they'll still work for her, if she ever gets around to really wanting Linux on her desktop.

Yeah, I know I can still ask you. :-) But when I have even wanted to complain about my tribulations recently, you seem to have reacted with "I can't do anything about it now," and I don't want you thinking that I just want things out of you, because that's not true.

If I get Windows to work, I might end up having that as an interim solution until the end of school, when you won't be so far away from me and can do stuff to my computer to your heart's content. :-) Well, especially since it's your computer, anyway.

[comradexavier.livejournal.com]

There are differences in the laser required to read CD-RW discs; basically everything made since CD-RWs became common can read them (whether they can write them or not), but most readers from before then will fail.

My response is dictated by the situation when things physically break. I suppose I could say, "I'm sorry," instead, but you'd still have a piece of non-functioning hardware that I can't replace out-of-pocket (or closet of junk, in this case), and that I can't talk you through fixing. If you just had simple software problems, I would be more helpful.

What a shame; you were doing so well! I really don't think switching to Windows will help you find your 'missing' network card. If you really want help auto-configuring things, get a Linux like Fedora (SUSE or Mandrake are similar, but have a smaller user-base, so the number and quality of available packages suffers), but from what Seth told me, I suspect the card came unseated from its slot, or that it has--like what seems to be a growing number of things--just failed.

[cosmolinguist]

I didn't mean to imply that you were uncaring of my problems; indeed, I know you would help if you could (you have, many times :-)) and I also know there's nothing you can do when it's a hardware thing.

I was doing so well, wasn't I! Aren't you proud? I don't think switching to Windows will help me, either (and Seth told me so, as well). That wouldn't be why I was trying to install Windows, I was doing it because I wanted to get some more work done on my gigantic paper that's due...well, last Thursday, and due to many misfortunes in my life recently is nowhere near done yet. So I was just hoping for it for that, as well as something I can use until I get some kind of Linux to work again. Anyway, I have to have some kind of OS on there before the computing services people will believe me that my network card doesn't work.

[setharoo.livejournal.com]

Just in case you were curious, I had opened the up again and the card was firmly secured in its slot. The bloody thing probably died.

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

My offer to stick those Red Hat CDs in the post still stands. I want you online, damnit!

[cosmolinguist]

Oh, quit your whining. :-) I'm working on it.

[(Anonymous)]

You're wasting the precious gift of life itself. Bite the bullet and buy a Mac.

[parakleta.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm going to step in and lend my support to AC here... but I know it's not a viable option for everyone, not everyone has kidneys to spare (although you should be able to track someone down who does, and borrow theirs). If your computer is living off scavenged parts, there's not much chance of getting a mac in there.

I've always liked FreeBSD, it's excellent for server stuff, but I'm not sure how it fares for a user desktop system. I certainly doubt that it has all the latest creature comforts, but it may be worth looking into. The config and package installation stuff I've always found just fine, and they don't take the kitchen sink approach, which for me makes it easier to understand, when I only have to wade through the things I'm actually trying to figure out, rather than everything else as well.