M 10 - the opposition

[RandomGoon]

I thought "wipe, reinstall" was for Windows fixes

J/K thanks for the input, I'll save your links in my bookmarks!

'Goon

[eco2geek]

I thought "wipe, reinstall" was for Windows fixes

Anyone who tells you to reformat and reinstall to fix a Windows problem, except in the most extreme cases, doesn't know what the hell they're talking about.

Anyway, even if they're both "Linux," Debian and Mandrake are apples and oranges. You can't "upgrade" Debian to Mandrake; you can't "upgrade" Mandrake to Debian. Same with the other Linux distros. They usually use their own modified packages and their own modified kernels.

(Note that Knoppix is Debian.)

So if you wanted to use a distro with a really user-friendly installer, like Mandrake, then you wanted to switch to Debian, you would have to start by wiping. (Although I've seen a Web page about a script that purports to change your current distribution, whatever it is, to Debian....)

[RandomGoon]

Grr, I was kidding, eco2geek...can't a guy have a little fun? I know that wipe, reinstall is a last resort. I, in most cases, can fix what's been borked without being that drastic.

As for the differing flavors of Linux, I'm getting used to what's what. I guess the best analogy is comparing apples to apples: some are red delicious, some are golden delicious, and yet others are granny smiths. In the end they're all apples. That about sum it up?

'Goon

[Stephen]

As for the differing flavors of Linux, I'm getting used to what's what. I guess the best analogy is comparing apples to apples: some are red delicious, some are golden delicious, and yet others are granny smiths. In the end they're all apples. That about sum it up?

'Goon

No you can usually do the same thing with different types of apples. It would be more like the models/make of a car the internals are similar but the parts and how you work with them are different sometimes.

[desire]

RandomGoon... As a suggestion for that tired old P133 BTW how much memory is in it? A good guess would tell me 32MB? Anyway maybe you'd want to consider Slackware or if you already have Windoze on it then get Zipslack which will run off a FAT file system and for a GUI run Fluxbox or Blackbox or IceWM. Just read a post at LinuxQuestions.org where someone saw a P100 system running Vector Linux with IceWM using the Opera web browser and apparently it ran pretty quick.
As for Mandrake I ran an install of 10 Beta2 version on a Celeron 2.4G system with 384MB and had it running for a few days and seemed to run fine just doing the basic stuff web browsing, wordprocessing ..that kind of stuff, ran Knoppix on it too and Gnoppix and finally Slackware and they all ran just fine except for Gnoppix which ran fine but seemed to be a bit of a memory glutton.
My main system is running Mandrake 9.1 (Duron 1200, 256MB RAM) and it's run flawlessly.
My uptime is 24 days 21:38 without a reboot.

[RandomGoon]

The P133 has 48MB RAM but I'm trying to scam some more off of my brother (he's got a dead P200 collecting dust). As for using other distros, I'm still working with DSL, Knoppix and M10; I've not installed M10 yet but I'll get around to it soon I think.

'Goon

[oldgeezer]

Cfdisk isn't that difficult to use - it's just better than fdisk; even I worked it out without using a book. The Mandrake install isn't easy to use when things don't go according to plan, either; and M10 is certainly in that category. Their auto partitioning isn't to everyone's liking - the allocation to the primary partition is too small on marginal sized discs. The easiest way to install Debian is via Knoppix - once one gains experience with it, then it may be possible to migrate to Woody-direct ( I am several years away from that!). This forum is full of excellent advice to cover most Debian-related problems and has a 'search' function. But the advice to try M9.0/9.1 on an old system seems a good idea. Flonix's latest version is extremely good, even has Firebird - they also have a new website on flonix.com. If you don't live in France, try putting a few comma pauses in the dial-up string after the third digit (may have a problem related to the unique French telephone system??).
OG.

[eco2geek]

Sorry, RandomGoon, didn't mean to overreact re wiping & reinstalling, that's just a pet peeve of mine - "Nothing happened when you double-clicked the AOL icon, so you reinstalled Windows?!"

If you can stand a few more opinions: ZipSlack is definitely not recommended. From personal experience, it was unstable as hell (nothing to do with Linux or Slackware, just that ZipSlack uses the UMSDOS file system). Some apps didn't work, and when it crashed, as it did often, it caused lots of lost cluster problems for MS Scandisk to fix. And fix. And fix...

Flonix, and Damn Small Linux, upon which Flonix is based, would be good choices because they use lightweight GUIs named IceWM and Fluxbox, which ought to run pretty well on your old P133.

If you've got spare hard drive space on a computer running Win2K or XP, with an NTFS partition, check out TopologiLinux, which will install itself into two large files (one for swap, the other for the file tree) on your hard drive (without repartitioning). You can install it on a FAT32 partition too, but the maximum file size on FAT32 is around 2 GB, which means you can't do a full install (which takes around 2.5 GB). It even comes with a Windows-based version of GRUB that works with Windows' NT loader.

[RandomGoon]

Sorry, RandomGoon, didn't mean to overreact re wiping & reinstalling, that's just a pet peeve of mine - "Nothing happened when you double-clicked the AOL icon, so you reinstalled Windows?!"

Heh, nice to know we've got something in common. I only ever suggested format/reload on Win. boxes if there was no other solution. 'Course, AOL imho is just shy of a virus - I LOATHE AOL. I suppose they serve their purpose for complete net newbies and those looking for new shiny coasters Hell, I even saw a way to make a tripple-bladed boomerang from an AOL CD...more useful than it's inteneded use if you ask me.

Flonix, and Damn Small Linux, upon which Flonix is based, would be good choices because they use lightweight GUIs named IceWM and Fluxbox, which ought to run pretty well on your old P133.

I've already had DSL working on the 133 box; I've liked what I've seen thusfar. I'll have to take a look at Flonix though. DSL worked just fine on it too. Although, I couldn't get my sound card to run, I guess it's just too old but I'll see what I can do about it. Maybe there's a driver I can load manually...that'll be interesting

Space on my XP box right now is an issue; I've got too many files I need to keep around. Although, I'm getting around to picking up a new HDD. I'll save that link you left for TopologiLinux.

Man, there's just a plethora of choices! I'm almost overwhelmed...almost

Thanks for the opining, everyone!

'Goon