Sep 14, 2005 08:32 pm Why not use a floppy boot and do a network install?
W.
being an evil linux haxor today
Posted on Sep 14, 2005 08:07 pm
zekthedeadcow
Eat Spam before it eats YOU!!!
Member Since: May 11, 2002
I needed a cheap laptop to do wordprocessing, etc so I sunk $30 into a IBM Thinkpad 760XL I'm installing old Slackware 8.1 on it...alread got 7.1 on... but the CDROM is flakey... or maybe I'm just not used to 4x anymore. I'm doing Slack 8.1 because it needs to fit easially on a 3gig drive..and be a 2.4 kernel for my ethernet cardbus drivers..and be light enough for the thinkpad. one problem is because mainly the BIOS...err what IBM used instead of BIOS doesn't support bootable CD's otherwise I'd probably use knoppix...
The pain in the *** right now is the flakey CDROM... I have to manually copy everything off a slack iso CD I made to a harddrive because the CDROM will have read failures...so I'm doing a directory by directoy copy of the install files and if any show up as failed I go back and do that file again...tedious... but I did see directions for an all floppy install using a small distribution and a filesplitter...that would be a true test of sanity... but it'll be nice to be able to regularly use linux again as my only other linux bo is my weserver running slack 7.1... I used 10.1 a few months ago on a computer I was seting up for someone else and loved it. I wish XP and OSX offered those stupid icon symbols (stars, checks, etc.) as they would have kept us a lot more organized on the movie with which files have been processed and to what stage of productions, ect.
Im using it to work on scripts and a book... so I suppose I should learn TeX while I have it... I know OpenOffice started to choke on some huge tables I had for a sourcebook... I dunno how MSoffice would have faired.
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Sep 14, 2005 08:32 pm Why not use a floppy boot and do a network install?
W.
Sep 14, 2005 08:50 pm because the ethernet card is not supported by the kernel yet... so I have to compile the driver and install it... and to compile it it needs the .h files from a 2.4 kernal or better.
Sep 15, 2005 06:31 pm a bit too messy... it died and took everything with it ininstall. so I googled a bit more and found that compusa sells 2.5" to 3.5" drive adapters so you can mount the laptop drive in the desktop... which is what I did ... worked great...except X in Slack 8.1 nolonger likes my moniter...I'm sure it's a sync problem and I can't find specs for the monitor and all the other XF86Config files online don't do the trick... and just 5 min ago Slackware released 10.2 and apparently it will infact fit ok so I'llgive that go and install it on a drive for my desktop too.
heck if I can just put the 2.5" drive in my drive bay then I don't need network access on it... most work files "should" fit on a floppy anyay.
Sep 15, 2005 08:17 pm man. just buy a crappy new laptop for a few hundred bucks, save the grief.
Sep 17, 2005 12:56 am well got 10.2 installed and the only remaining issue now is that the screen doesn't fill the dislay... no biggie...thougha bit annoying...
I have to admit it's been a while sence I've activly used slack... but I am pretty supprised at the performance of KDE on a nearly 10 year old latop...it's is very responsive.
basically the issue is... would I rather have a wordrocessor that costs $50 instead of one that costs $500. :)
Sep 17, 2005 01:12 am Ah I overlooked the 'only need it for word processing' part. Good luck with that man, i really hope it works out. I just got a VAIO that's 5 years old and i thought THAT was slow :) ..it can't handle audition so i'm kinda mad. In a better world I'd have a new alienware laptop and a firepod.
Sep 17, 2005 09:19 am "word processor" as in the entire machine :)
But I already killed OO on a sourcebook for the book I'm writing at 30 pages.. it couldn't keep up with some large tables so I'm gonna have to do it in TeX...and OO just can't do layout for books. Plus being a sourcebook it does have some math formula which is what TeX is known for.
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