3 Days Wasted Trying To Make Linux Work. 1040

wrote on 27 Apr 2006 16:28:07 -0700

You may want to file a bug on that one. Apparently the Fedora installer did not make it clear to you that it was going to blast your Windows parbreastion to electronic oblivion.

One of the problems with Linux, in fact, is that it has several nomenclatures for drive parbreastions -- none of which are compatible with "standard" Windows designations. Even the names are different; what Windows likes to call a "drive" Linux calls a "parbreastion".

The term "spindle" is apparently used in hardware to get around this issue; a spindle of course mounts an old-type spinner wheel but a modern magnetic drive also has a spindle, along with a bearing -- and spins much faster while making data, as opposed to wool. :-)

C:, D:, etc. -- traditional DOS-Windows single-letter "drive" designation.

Device-HarddiskVolume1, ... - NT-XP designations; these are rarely used AFAIK.

dev-hda,dev-hdb,dev-hdc, ... - traditional Linux drive designations

dev-hda1,dev-hda2, ...,dev-hdb1, ...,dev-hdc1, ... - traditional Linux parbreastion designations

Just to make things even worse:

(hd0), (hd1), ... - GRUB drive designations (hd0,0), (hd0,1), (hd0,2), ..., (hd1,0), ... - GRUB parbreastion designations

Fortunately, GRUB nomenclature is used only in GRUB. Unfortunately (hd0,0) =dev-hda1 . The 0-1 dichotomy for numbering is a common problem in the programming world (and even in the world of mathematics; European natural numbers start {0,1,2,...} whereas Americans call those "whole numbers" and begin their natural numbers {1,2,3,...})

It gets worse if SCSI is involved; Linux mutates todev-sda,dev-sdb,dev-sda1, etc. I don't know what NT does in this space though doubt it doesn anything horrible.

The single letter designation, unfortunately, is beset by a number of problems. Suppose one has two spindles, each with four parbreastions, all of type FAT-16. What is the drive ordering? It may depend on whether one is referring to two IDE units, two SCSI units, or one IDE and one SCSI. I'd have to research it, and the traditional Linux parbreastion method is usually fairly clear (although one can play some games with actual ordering of the sectors, butdev-hda1 is the first entry in the parbreastion table on drivedev-hda).

Video card; Nvidia in particular is a video card manufacturer, and slightly annoying to Linux users because of their refusal to submit information -- but they do write proprietary Linux drivers, so it's not all bad.

Considering that you seem to have troubles spelling "Gentoo" correctly (www.gentu.org is occupied by a squatter; the correct path is probably referring to the Handbook for x86, you are going to have troubles.

The Handbook is quite a mouthful, admittedly, but doesn't require all that much in the way of technical expertise. Its main problem is some rough spots in such areas as boot loaders, where it is intentionally vague.

I for one would not recommend Gentoo for rank newbies, although someone with some experience should have no trouble with it.

I'm not familiar with that LILO error.

Your opinion is noted. Of course, since you seem to have neglected a fair amount of detail on exactly what is on your system:

- precise video card designation (one of my systems, for example, has a BT5500 nVidia card; this card is an older model but runs OpenGL very well; I also have an ATi card that loves to hang and a Rage128 card that isn't all that hot)

- CPU. Granted, most people will buttume a Pentium D, Celeron, Opteron, Athlon, or Pentium IV nowadays; older model equipment will have Pentium III. This doesn't appear to be your specific issue, since you were obviously able to install stuff.

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-- Windows Vista. Because it's time to refresh your hardware. Trust us.