From: adam@address.invalid
Moe Trin wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Jul 2012, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in
article
> , Adam wrote:
[my test system]
>> My plans at the moment are to install, if I haven't already, FreeBSD
[...]
>> Debian, Gentoo, Arch, Fedora, CentOS, and Slackware. I figure those
>> are about as different as popular distros get.
>
> Mighty big sandwich you've got there.
I know, but there's no time pressure at all, and also I can give up on
any of those if I want to (which I expect with at least one of them). I
looked through the list of distros and what they were based on, and
those ones seemed to be popular, influential, and all quite different
from each other. Can you, or anyone following this, suggest any other
distros I might find interesting?
I do expect to end up with at least one partition of either Mandriva or
Mageia before I'm done, out of familiarity and a need for one relatively
stable "production" install.
> Mentioned, Fedora is the
> beta for RHEL, and CentOS is a public domain version of RHEL.
So would installing both Fedora and CentOS be redundant?
>> That reset button I added has come in handy several times.
>
> Now THAT'S scary. What happened?
Nothing horrible, mostly things like booting from the HD when I'd meant
to boot from a disc or vice versa, or trying to boot a partition with no
boot loader on it, or booting the "wrong" distro. There are times when
both ctrl-alt-del and alt-sysrq-b do nothing.
>> considering how often I expect to use a dialup modem (only when I'm
>> desperate) I don't think it's worth spending money on it.
>
> With two working systems able to connect to Verizon, the only real
> time you'll need it is when the broadband is down.
And something is urgent.
> Rather doubt there is anything you'll be able
> to download and use to "repair" a broken broadband connection
I agree, but I might be able to find a solution on the web.
>> I pulled the ModemBlaster and a USB-RS232 adapter out of my parts
>> collection, and "stolid" could then dial up to NetZero and Juno.
>
> Great! Does eris still have a modem and a phone line? Would come in
> handy when looking at how the world sees stolid (and vice-versa).
I hadn't thought of that use, but it's a good one. "eris" still has the
PCI Winmodem it came with, but I purchased third-party Linux drivers for
it that will need to be installed for each distro.
I was killing time at Best Buy today, and noticed the only dialup modem
they had was a USB hardware one. I also noticed they had more Windows
laptops than desktops displayed, and they're also selling Macs now.
>> I can see where netzero-juno.txt could use minor revisions. For one
>> thing, their software only works with /dev/modem but Mandriva 2011.0
>> re-creates /dev at each boot, so to make it persistent I had to put a
>> symlink from modem to ttyUSB0 in /lib/udev/devices.
>
> Alternative: create the symlink in /etc/rc.local or equal (that's
> usually the last boot script to run).
Mdv2011.0's default /etc/rc.d/rc.local actually says "This script will
be executed *after* all the other init scripts." I'll have to remember
that as the correct place to add my customizations, including creating
directories under /media which gets re-created every boot. But isn't
creating the symlinks in /lib/udev/devices the "correct" way to do it?
>> Also, that Java that took ten minutes to bring up NetZero/Juno's
>> splash screen on eris now pops up almost instantly. I think the
>> massive number of fonts I'd installed on eris slowed a lot of
>> things down.
>
> Was that a memory exhaustion problem (moving the fonts and other
> un-needed stuff to swap)?
I checked 'iotop' during that, and the Java engine seemed to be doing
most of the disk I/O.
> The main desktop here has something like 250 fonts in /usr/share/fonts/
> alone, and 'locate font | wc' comes near 1500 files.
That's not many:
[adam@stolid ~]$ find ~/Downloads/fonts/ -name '*.ttf' | wc -l
27564
[adam@stolid ~]$
They're not installed on this system (and only a few will be), but that
was mainly from one weekend where I "discovered" alt.binaries.fonts.
[wireless]
>> since my transfer speed will usually be limited by my DSL connection
>> anyway.
>
> Even so, how many large transfers will you be doing?
Through DSL, probably a lot. Directly between my two computers,
extremely few, and I can use sneakernet for that if I want.
>> I know little about networking, but it sounds possible to me (in
>> theory, anyway) to have a router that would test various channels in
>> turn, and then use the one with the best connection, repeating the
>> whole thing every minute or so.
>
> It's certainly possible - but I'm not sure if it would be practical.
[...]
> Just looking at how busy the other channels are _might_
> give an adequate indication - hard to say. For that, you'd want a
> packet sniffer like "Kismet", "wifiscanner" or "wavemon".
That sounds easier, as long as there's some way for the computer to
change the router's transmit channel. Or even just check on what
channels are in use at the moment. I did notice that the wireless card
on eris picks up every channel, so it must know to transmit on the
frequency of the network it's connected to.
[Consumer Reports]
> Mentioning glass cleaners, there used to be a product that was a
> diluted hydrofluoric acid that ate through soap-scum like there was
> no tomorrow.
Isn't that what they use for /etching/ glass? That must mean it can
dissolve glass if it's less diluted. I remember one time my father
brought home a small bottle (pint?) of carbon tetrachloride from work --
I'm sure that isn't available to the public. IIRC he wanted to clean
part of a sail, which would have to be done outdoors anyway because of
the size of the sail.
[user reviews online]
> When looking at computer related stuff, using the keyword "Linux" is
> usually faster. Reviews that don't mention it are less valuable than
> those that do - either way.
Unless it's OS-independent hardware. I wanted what I gather is called
an "eSATA bracket cable" which extends the motherboard's SATA ports to
eSATA ports on the back panel. Nothing particular to Linux, but from
the reviews I came to realize that I'd need one with longer cables.
[kitty news]
> Good Sam wants to be brushed, but he also has a way to say "enough"
> without walking away. Kiri didn't, and would get up and move out of
> reach if you didn't stop when she was done.
[continued in next message]
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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