Baslinux mailing list

[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2004, Ron Clarke wrote:

> Hi Sindi,
> > I heard 6.20 was better than 6.22 but I forget why.  Why?
>  
>     I have no idea if it is or if it isn't.  I only have MSDOS 5.0 and 6.20 
> to look at.

I asked, and the difference between 6.20 and 6.22 is the use of drivespc 
instead of dblspc (double space) because it turns out MS infrigned on 
someone else's software rights.  Should make no difference to linux.  If 
you are just using DOS to boot linux, 5.0 should work as well (and the 
himem.sys from 5.0 does not mess up Xvesa like that from 6.2).

> > What is the rule about something booting from the first 8 MB?
> 
>    3 DOS (2 GB) partitions on one of the HD, and 2 DOS (2 GB) partitions on 
> the other HD in the other machine.
>  
>     Don't know anything about first 8 MB.
> 

>From reading the primer about partitioning, DOS uses CHS system for 
addressing hard drive locations instead of LBA and CHS has a limit of 8G 
that it can address, therefore you need to put DOS in the first 8G and 
boot linux from DOS in the first 8G, but linux partitions can use the 
rest.  So if the drive is over 8G DOS should not be the last partition.

I typed M for G (8M for 8G).


> > >    The DOS partitions needed Nortons Disk Doctor to setup properly.  
> > > After that, I simply installed the Linux distros I wanted into the
> > > partitions I had set aside for them.
> > 
> > What did you use Disk Doctor for that fdisk could not do?
 
>    I had to format the new DOS partitions, and even then they failed
> Norton's Disk Doctor check, so I let NDD fix them.

THere was something wrong with the drives?


> >  Which linux 
> > distros do you use and how much space do they occupy? 
> 
>    Machine 1:  BL2.1 has 32 GB to play in.

Wow, what do you do with it all?  Store music?

>    Machine 2:  BL2.1 has 5 GB, and Peanut Linux (RedHat based) has 10 GB.
> 
> > Do you use more 
> > than one and if so why?
>  
>     Peanut was recommended by a techie friend I trust.

> It is the very latest (as of 6 months ago) based on a RedHat distro. I
> am not real happy with it because although it is able to run a lot of
> multimedia stuff that BL2 doesn't, there is something not quite right
> about the X-windows setup and I have yet to find the problem(s).

Is it that BL2 kernel does not support the hardware, or BL2 libraries 
don't support the hardware, or the programs you want are not available 
compiled for SW71?  Can you use Xvesa with peanut linux?
 
>    It will probably turn out to be that I am not using enough gun, so to
> speak - I have 64 MB RAM on an AMD K6 450 MHz machine.

That is similar to our fastest computer.  What sort of multimedia stuff 
have you been able to use it for?  Can you play DVD movies?  We have a DVD 
drive and could not find any use for it.  Windows wanted some sort of 
driver to use along with the RealOne player and did not like any that we 
offered it.  



> Regards,
>          Ron 
>  
>