More Linux distros

My trying more Linux things.

What follows are the distros, the date of magazine that provided the CD, and some comments.


LIVE CDs:

• D*mn Small Linux (June 2004)-- couldn't figure out how to get word processing file onto floppy.
  
  
• Slax (June 2004) -- could save word processing file to floppy (*.rtf file), but couldn't read similar word proc. file I'd saved a few days ago, and it didn't detect my USB key.
  
  
• ATmission Live CD (apr 2004) -- (mentioned this in an earlier blog, but re-tried) couldn't save to floppy; also, I noticed that ''processor not supported''; since didn't save to floppy, didn't think to check for USB key.
  
  
• Knoppix 3.3 (June 2004 magazine), detected USB key, but would only read from; wouldn't let me save word processing document to it; read and write to floppy just fine.
  

ATTEMPTS TO INSTALL THE FULL LINUX DISTRO:

(Except for the first two listed items, the rest I did tonight [Monday], while typing up my lecture notes for tomorrow. The mega-tower computer was on the floor behind me, with the keyboard on top; I'd turn around every few minutes to check on the progress, make a choice, and click ''OK.'')

• Agnula DeMuDi 1.2 (2004? 2005?) -- (recap of earlier blog) an audio/recording-based distro; sounds promising! Tried installing, but no relevant kernel.
  
  
• Mandrake 10.1 (Dec 2004) and Mandriva 2005 (June 2005) -- (recap of earlier blog) couldn't find approp. kernel for my box. Interesting, though, to see the improvements in friendliness in just one year: the newer version had some suggested settings which the earlier version didn't offer.
  
  
• Slackware 10.0, Sept. 2004 -- High hopes, as this is supposed to be a rugged distro. Setup is a little less newbie-friendly than the others (esp. when assigning the hard drive partitions; very few helpful suggestions). But, it actually seemed to find the approp. kernel for my chipset (or at least, didn't show an error message to that regard, like the others, when reading the verbose output). Unfortunately, I misunderstood the instructions, and thus mistakenly set it to boot from CD, rather than from the hard drive (like for most normal folks). And when I tried re-installing (and assigning a new boot configuration), I couldn't get past the menu, nor would it let me go all the way thru the installation, the tedious way, starting all the way from the beginning. It simply wouldn't take my choices, and just kept reverting back to menu screen. Bummer.
  
  
• Gentoo 2004.2 (Oct. 2004) -- It installed, but then dumped me to command line. Uhrm -- so, what do I do now? Had to reboot, 'cause I didn't know where to go from there. (You'd think it would automatically open to a graphical interface...)
  
  
• Fedora Core 3 -- looked pretty good -- but it tried booting from the CD-ROM as well, rather than from a section of the HD. I must admit, I didn't read the partitioning screen carefully, I just clicked the "automatic/choose" and let them do it.
  

So, that's my continuing adventure. The fact that some of the more ''robust'' distros did indeed find my kernel suggests to me that most, or all, of the distros contained on my DVD-ROMs (from my favorite Linux magazine, Linux Format [from the UK]), ought to work just fine. It's just a matter of getting access to a CD-burner that can write *.iso images.

And I'm still looking forward to getting the Ubunutu CD-ROMs in the mail.


It could be that the newer distros (i.e. 2005 and after) would work on my machine, but (cleverly!) by that point I had taken to buying the DVD versions of the Linux magazines, so I need a way of pulling files off the DVDs, and burning them onto CD. And the PC that has the adequate CD-burning software is the dead one. So, I'm stuck in a bit of a Catch-22: Can't install a new OS on my mega-tower; can't use the Live CD to run the mega-tower to burn CDs because [doh!] the CD drive is already occupied -- with the live CD.

Eventually, though, I'll get the tower up and running on an OS with a good burning app -- and **then** I can burn the *.iso images...


--GG