Old laptop, newish Linux not totally happy... 1190

In a message on Sat, 22 Apr 2006 20:22:39 -0600, wrote :

I've been using RH systems since RH 4.1 -- I was an system admin-guru for a research group at UMbutt and we used RedHat starting around RH 4.1 and were up to WBL 3.0 at the time I was laid off (lack of grant money). I did use Slackware way back when (kernel 0.99 and later 1.2.13), but moved on to RedHat and have gotten very comfortable with it.

It actually works quite well. Not only do I use it as a "glorified ipod", but I write code and documentation on it -- it is much more portable than my desktop box (an AMD K6-500 with 256Meg of ram and a paid of 36-gig SCSI disks in an extra large tower, presently running RH 7.3 (I know seriously out-dated)). Note: I *do not* use a overweight GUI (I use a very basic fvwm based desktop on all of my machines that have an X server installed). I also do not use a resource hog word processors either. I use MicroEmacs (a lightweight Emacs clone which is probably lighter in weight than vim) and LaTeX. The laptop takes a while to compile stuff, but there is not a mbuttive rush generally -- I don't use it to do full builds from scratch -- just incremental compiles of the one or two modules I am working on while on the road.

The laptop does everything I need it to do with WBL 3.0 (== RHEL 3.0), including the sound. I am one of those people who don't see any reason to get an 18-wheeler or formula-1 car when a VW beetle has enough capacity. The only *additional* thing I need to do is get things prepared and tested for upgrading my desktop to CentOS 4.3 (I need this for various other reasons). I figured on using my laptop as a convenient testbed for some of the software I'll need on my desktop, since it is also a FidoNet node and I am an NC -- I don't want to randomly be rebooting and otherwise messing with that machine, so I need to pre-test-pre-configure some packages, some of which are a bit tricky and fussy.

I know how to do all of this! How do you think I installed CentOS (and later re-installed WBL)? I copied the boot images (vmlinuz and initrd) to myboot directory and added a block to lilo.conf grub.conf. I no longer bother with and upgrade install from CD or any other removable media -- it is actually easier when upgrading a box to copy the CD-images to a hd parbreastion, and copy the boot image files (pxeboot) to the old system'sboot directory and update lilo or grub.

I don't have much reason to use a 'live' cd type system, when I might as well just install it. It is not like I have any need to keep some 'foreign' O-S on the hard disk, since non of my machines run anything but Linux -- I either buy a used box with a dead or trash hard drive or a 'blank box' with a new, but empty hard drive.

Robert Heller -- 978-544-68 plus 133 Deepwoods Software -- Linux Installation and Administration