Thread: NickA's first linux thingummy

My advice - take CMN down the shop and buy him a new computer or at least upgrade his old one as it seems to cause him no end of trouble

computer is sound.
specs are good.

does the install require a usb mouse?

Originally Posted by dirtydog

He said it was ps2, all the older keyboards are.

No. PS2 = PlayStation 2.

He said it was PS/2. That is the model series of IBM computers introduced around 20 years ago which had the new keyboard and mouse connectors.
Before that, the keboard connector was a 5-pin DIN and the mouse was connected to the serial port with a 9 or 25-pin D-sub.

There hasn't been any change to the PS/2 standard for the last 10 years so it is almost unbelievable how Suse could goof up this one.
I guess Frankie should contact his software vendor for a bug report.
They are prolly extremely responsive and will correct it immediately since they are losing a lot of revenue with that bug

Originally Posted by ChiangMai noon

computer is sound. specs are good. does the install require a usb mouse?

If the computer is OK, then you shouldn't have any problem with an install - unless FF is doing something strange. I have a PS/2 mouse and no problems. The only piece of hardware I've ever had a problem with is my webcam, other than that, nothing.

When I set up ubuntu it goes through the x configuration utility which should autodetect all your mouse, keyboard and monitor hardware - have you got to that bit yet?

it says auto detecting and then freezes.
it's buggered.

Originally Posted by ChiangMai noon

does the install require a usb mouse?

No. Your problems would be more understandable if keyboard and mouse were of USB type.

Originally Posted by ChiangMai noon

it's buggered.

Get used to it, don't wine. It's Linux..

Ubuntu is a shite to get my wireless working with.

Not sure why but it bloody hates it.

Never get it configured to use it. I can connect to the net via the LAN ports on the wireless router though.

Funnily enough somethings were much easier to set up on linux than windows - for example I've never even looked at any internet configuration and my broadband tends to stay up for weeks at a time and reconnects if it is dropped, where on windows I had to install special software and the thing would drop out every day.

NickA have you put salt on the eggs you are trying to get Frisk Frankie to suck?

Originally Posted by friscofrankie

Blah blah blah... etc, etc, etc...

A 5 year old motherboard is not intended to work with Vista.
But it will fail for other reasons than such an easy task as initializing a PS/2 port. That is very basic !
So is also detecting the various chipsets that has been used on motherboards over the years.

Strangely enough, when I google "Suse Keyboard Mouse Problem" I get pages and pages of hits..

And the solution seems to be rebuilding the kernel with another driver

It's the same as recompile the kernel.
But you never have to do that , do you?l

Now ,with the additional information you've given it looks very much as if Suse don't understand what chipset there is on the motherboard.
If that's the case, then I don't think you will have any success with a previous build..

Originally Posted by friscofrankie

you wouldn;t put Vista on a five YO MoBo you don;t put 2.6.x kernels on them either...

It's always the way in my experience that you want to upgrade your OS you are basically going to have to upgrade your whole PC. It usually starts bit by bit first a new stick of RAM then a new motherboard, CPU and ends with a new power supply because your new system uses that much more power.

Originally Posted by friscofrankie

But then if we wanted to run Vista we wouldn't have to recompile... Because we couldn't! And when it is running we won;t have to defrag the hard Drive, clean the registry or reboot six times a fuckin day...

FF I agree that Linux is the more elegant OS but Windows is not as bad as you make out. I used to run XP at work. The boxes were on 24 hours a day we were developing CAD CAM software on them doing a lot of messing around with openGL graphics and they were rock solid. I didn't defrag that often if at all and I never cleaned the registry. In fact we used to junk it up even more setting user prefs etc.

95% of people don't know what php perl mysql and apache are let alone why you would want to recompile them rather than installing the new version.

People use Windows because that’s what on the machine when they open the box and it's what they are used to. Commercial developers write for windows because they only have to test on windows XP and Vista and not x number of Linux distros with x number of kernel configurations and they know that the majority of their customers, as long as they are not computer geeks, want it to run on Windows. New hardware support is also better on Windows because the drivers for Windows always come out first for obvious reasons.

I would like to change to Linux and have thought about it many times but I always come back to the fact that I don't have the time to relearn everything basically from scratch. I reckon it would be about 100 hours of learning and fiddling just to get back to where I am with Windows and I just don't want to spend that kind of time.

My biggest grip against windows? it forces you to use windows. microsoft has made their marketing policy to close their system and applications.

Originally Posted by Jardine

The boxes were on 24 hours a day we were developing CAD CAM software on them doing a lot of messing around with openGL graphics and they were rock solid. I didn't defrag that often if at all and I never cleaned the registry. In fact we used to junk it up even more setting user prefs etc.

Special purpose machines configured and optimized to run special software will be solid. They better be or the dude setting 'em up would be lookin for work. General purpose machines with video email word processing, a game or two mostly internet browsing will fragment a hard drive in a heart beat. You store them CAD drawings on a server did you? browse the web much?
Multiple use machines that are constantly writing little tidbits of information will frag an HD in a month or so of daily use. Windoze has a habit of writing every damn thing that is not absolutely active out to swap. Another nice feature of the OS is fragmenting to swap file unless configured not to do so.
The feature of setting up the personal data directories on the system partition is a real good idea too! Go visit any home user and some nice tech set them up with a biggO data partition, still they download files or save in word, excel, etc. into that handy "My Documents" directory. you know we can set them up to save into other directories but end users do not. When ever they install some new whix-bang app the default directory has to be changed, same for Linux folks, but thing usually default to ~user_id a machine setup right this is never on the partition as the system. The temp and swap areas are on separate partitions as well. Temp is optional but if not configured it will go to the /var directory which will be separate from the system.
If you just set up a machine to run one or two apps and disallow the addition/removal of new software the registry shouldn't need cleaning. it's them goddam pesky users that fuck things up, man. They want to try new apps, remove old ones the shit left behind is amazing.

Originally Posted by Jardine

Commercial developers write for windows because they only have to test on windows XP and Vista and not x number of Linux distros with x number of kernel configurations

hardly the case. but I can see where people might think that. many of the applications developed can be compiled on Sun, AIX, SGI, as well as Linux. Hell there are many out there that can be compiled on Windoze! kernel configurations rarely come into play you may require certain libraries (you MS geeks call 'em Dynamic Link Libraries. Any windows geek (I have built & maintained very large windows networks BTW) can tell you horror stories in resolving dll conflicts I'm sure you had a few.
Have you ever seen the size of Micorsoft OS "undocumented" function calls? You now what they mean by undocumented right? "subject to change without notice." You develop in Micorsoft's Application development frameworks you're pretty damn safe, What is the whole package goig for these days anyway? You use MS's dev products you are not only safe but you don;t really have be all that sharp a coder. Hell you can damn near code a whole application with out touchng the goddam keyboard! Drag ad drop coding, man. the wave of the future

Originally Posted by Jardine

would like to change to Linux and have thought about it many times but I always come back to the fact that I don't have the time to relearn everything basically from scratch. I reckon it would be about 100 hours of learning and fiddling just to get back to where I am with Windows and I just don't want to spend that kind of time.

Give it a whirl. You just might find you don't need that much time nor is there that much to learn. Apple and MS both stole the interface for the original X most interface behaviors are the same. if you ever set up DOS 5 or 6 you can get a machine up and running. Remember system & win.ini? autoexec.bat? config.sys? You know what I'm saying - text-base configuration and startup files. easy to trouble-shoot, easy to change. Much of the X-Window applications use xml files for config. but he config utils are GUI driven. work in the GUI it you've got a problem there is always that text file to go to as a last resort, Windows? MS products? WEll there always that reinstall ain't there?

The OS is simply not as stable or robust in daily operation as *nix based systems, we won;t even get into servers, 99.99% of the folks here could give a shit. Yes windows can be setup to run fairly stable. But it ain;t click and go like Billy boy would have you believe it take as much work to get a Windoze system to that level of reliability as it does to with linux.


Microsoft has a strangle hold on the corporate desktop and the personal computing community at large. I can remember when there were things like DR-DOS (peer to peer networking out of the box) word Perfect, Lotus 1-2-3, Dbase, First MS had shit products (OK still do actually) they went after the competition bundling office for next to nothing. then stole or bought everything out of existence. Now there are no more choices, they're gone! If you want to run windows you're stuck, then there's all tehm piss-poor back-end applications, but they integrate so well.
It wouldn't be so bad if MS would come up with one fuckin best of breed type application. That is not in the cards though. MS's strategy has been and always will be to make quality secondary, avoid standards compliance thus forcing your customers to stay loyal, remove all competition, integrate applications into the system and by all means do not document your OS any more than necessary, keep other developers guessing and unable to efficiently produce competing applications.
Microsoft is the modern day Black Hand. Bill Gates a modern day Robber Baron.they have used every dirty trick in the book to steal the desktop and if Linux was ten time more difficult to set up I'd still fuckin use it. but Linux makes a very good alternative for a general use machine. it offers an abundance of applications in several areas.

Open source software is going to lag behind in certain areas when competing for profit development. Do you remember the shareware situation of 15 years ago? Remember when MCAfee was free? Norton? AS more people begin to put Linux on their desktops, and in their homes the profitability of linux application will grow. And just possibly, just a small touch of a chance; Microsoft might even start to build applications that are truly worth the money they are now charging.

Today I can write code in any language two or three times faster than I could ever do in Windoze; the interface is just that much more usable. I only use windoze when I have to massage my standards compliant code to run in Internet Explorer, Oh, fuck me, don't get me started on IE.

It maybe years before we see Linux on the corporate desktop. Thing is it takes knowledgable people to setup and maintain robust corporate desktop systems. Microsoft has convinced management this is not the case with MS products, they have instilled the "Fear of Things Not Microsoft (Linux)" in these fools and they will hold on for dear fuckin life.

try a separate linux install in a dual boot config. You might be surprised just how much you like it after a few weeks.

Originally Posted by friscofrankie

Special purpose machines configured and optimized to run special software will be solid. They better be or the dude setting 'em up would be lookin for work. General purpose machines with video email word processing, a game or two mostly internet browsing will fragment a hard drive in a heart beat. You store them CAD drawings on a server did you? browse the web much?
Multiple use machines that are constantly writing little tidbits of information will frag an HD in a month or so of daily use.

We were a system guys worst nightmare. Full internet access, full admin rights most devies have to be. So naturally we surfed the internet all day, played games at lunch time, downloaded and installed things to get new ideas , personal email, the occasional word processed file and presentation. The works all on the same machine and no problems. Just checked this PC had it 6 months never defragged until today and it was fine didn't really need to be done.

Originally Posted by friscofrankie

The feature of setting up the personal data directories on the system partition is a real good idea too!

The system, data split in Windows is totally shite, there is no defending that aspect.

Originally Posted by friscofrankie

You develop in Micorsoft's Application development frameworks you're pretty damn safe, What is the whole package goig for these days anyway? You use MS's dev products you are not only safe but you don;t really have be all that sharp a coder. Hell you can damn near code a whole application with out touchng the goddam keyboard! Drag ad drop coding, man. the wave of the future

Roughly $2000.00 for the all singing all dancing Enterprise Developer Studio but they do a Visual Developer Studio Express for Free. I use the free one it does everything I want for single user apps and quite alot of simple networking stuff, its fine.

As for the undocumented stuff you don't go there thats just a world of pain its bad enough when Windows automatic updates fucks you over with out notice let alone using undocumented APIs. The first rule of programming is never fight the OS thats true for all systems.

Drag and drop that was a Borland thing and yes you can build applications without writing a line of code but in reality if you want to get something worth having you are going to have to write it yourself.

I do have my old laptop which is sitting around on my desk waiting for the files I want to keep to be taken off of it. I might just stick openSUSE on it one of these days. I have already downloaded it......

Originally Posted by Jardine

Visual Developer Studio Express for Free.

and what come with that? seriously curious.

Originally Posted by Jardine

I do have my old laptop which is sitting around on my desk waiting for the files I want to keep to be taken off of it. I might just stick openSUSE on it one of these days. I have already downloaded it......

try slackware on your older machine you may have to know more about your machine, figure out refresh rate, resolutions, etc before installing. but You will have a nice, lean system. I only code in php, javascript and other web-specific languages now.

I only use a text editor with syntax highlighting to work in. There are some newer frameworks type thingies out there though. wouldn't know much about it, though. amazing how much is out there for linux good stuff, free. Download the source, compile or tweak and compile. some good widget libs available...

gcc is the defacto c, c++, Ada & java compiler for linux; complete with cross-compiler capabilities, there's an open source JDE from Sun.

I have always disliked using a gui for system config, trouble shooting or development so kate is my friend. No, I don't use vi or Emacs any more.

Originally Posted by friscofrankie

Originally Posted by Jardine

Visual Developer Studio Express for Free.

and what come with that? seriously curious.

Visual Web Developer Express
Visual Basic Express
Visual C# Express
Visual C++ Express
Visual J# Express

note they always call it Visual or VC++ etc. to avoid being sued for not complying with standards .

This page shows the restrictions Product Feature Comparisons
beware this link is a nasty MS active server page but it does run in Firefox.

You can download the whole lot or individual products. There are restrictions about commercial use of products developed on these products.

Visual Web Developer Express is my web page editor of choice, of course it has no php support and sadly no xslt but I still use it for those because it feels natural to me.

Originally Posted by friscofrankie

try slackware on your older machine you may have to know more about your machine

This is my machines spec
Acer TravelMate 800


Intel Pentium M processor (1024KB L2 Cache), supports Enhanced Intel SpeedStep
Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 network connection
Intel 855PM chipset with 400MHz processor system bus
Standard 512MB DDR-266 SDRAM, upgradeable to max. 2048MB
Hitachi IC25N040ATMR04-0 - 40GB Ultra ATA/100 HDD with Disc Anti-Shock Protection system
Acer MediaBay for modules: hot swappable standard 24/10/8/24x DVD/CD-RW combo drive
15.0" SXGA+ TFT colour LCD, 1400x1050, 16.7M colours
ATI Radeon 9000, dedicated 64MB DDR video memory
SoundBlaster-Pro and MS DirectSound compatible
TravelMate SmartCard solution including PlatinumSecret suite
10/100Mbps Fast Ethernet; Wake-on-LAN ready
56K ITU V.92 data/fax software modem; Wake-on-Ring ready
Integrated Bluetooth (mine doesn't have this as it was a very early model)

In this case should I go for a 2.6 kernal as don't they work better with speedstop, Intel Wireless chipsets etc.?

Originally Posted by Jardine

Visual Web Developer Express

Does this have any kind of JScript debugger? Tryin to write ECMA compliant scripts is a bitch in IE. Their "Web Developer Toolbar" is a fuckin joke. I'll be goddamed if I will use the MS Office "script editor" unless I absolutely have to.

Originally Posted by Jardine

In this case should I go for a 2.6 kernal as don't they work better with speedstop, Intel Wireless chipsets etc.?

the later versions of 2.4 support just about anything the 2.6 kernel does. The drivers and libs are all there. You can probably use a 2.6 based distro
My only problem with 2.6 was the Bus master support built into the kernel. I tried several different configs to no avail. Finally found the patch to rectify the problem still have he 2.6 kernel as a boot option I might try building the patched kernel again and give it a whirl. But. My systems has been problem free and reliable for two years plus. It runs every day for 16+ hrs. I shut it down most every night. why fuck with it?

Cmn's machine just choked on the hardware probing/detection features of Suse. I think a more hands on install featuring a 2.6 kernel would work but why fuck with it. The older distros will match his machine better and if he has any reason for the latest and greatest it's easy enough to try a new kernel, window manager, utility package, X server or window managers. We'll have to upgrade OO, FF add a torrent app, maybe update some media players just so he can watch his porn (can't interfere with that!) I can download RPMs Hell he can use RPM manger to install new stuff himself! after considering it further I will install an older version of fedora on his system instead of slack. It has more bundled software enough to do every thing he wants. It has a semi GUI install, I tried it on my system. Didn't like it for the same reason he will like it.

Everything on your machine will work just dandy with the 2.4 kernel. Slack gives you a more granular approach to install It expects you to know what the hell you're doing. You might like the approach, might not.

I would not recommend this to just any one but you seem to have fair understanding of systems you might be interested in Linux From Scratch.
Welcome to Linux From Scratch!
They have a downloadable book, a guide through getting all the apps, utilities, window managers and the kernel and assembling your own distribution. get the thing set up and you will know everything you need to know about linux. total reading time, downloading and assembly might just hit that 100 hour mark though

Go for the install you think will work, Suse 10.2 should work on your system. I think the 2.6 kernel has been accepted too readily into the mainstream but the hardware probing, hands-free install is a big seller and is getting Linux on more home desktops. But then, I'm just a conservative systems engineer at my core.

Before you run the install though, you might want to check this out.
Welcome to the Linux-ready Firmware Developer Kit website | Home
They have a downloadable, bootable image that will test your machine as completely as possible before you even attempt an install. Tell you more about your machine than you want to know.

Originally Posted by friscofrankie

Does this have any kind of JScript debugger?

Here's how you set it up
BernieCode » How to debug JavaScript with Visual Web Developer Express

It does the job and at the right price!

I'll keep you posted on the Linux front. First I have to tidy up the laptop and then I can have a play.

^
I have a suse boot disc if you want it.
No fukking use to me.

Thanks CMN but downloaded it about a week ago just in case. Might not use openSUSE I'll have a hunt a round and check everything out.

This is Jardine speaking from openSUSE 10.2
Thanks FF for help.

Douglas