Yeah, I did.
I went and put in an order with Mr. Volkerding, et al, from the Slackware Shop, and had a Slackware DVD (and a copy of the Slackware Linux Essentials book) waiting on me when I got back home.
I'd prepped prior to trying out the install process. And, thankfully, the install was painless. Just to test, I installed the 32-bit version of 14.1 on my Thinkpad T400 (Core2Duo at 2.53 Ghz, 3 GB RAM, and a 160 GB HD). Hardware detection was flawless, and everything was set up perfectly. (Even the touchpad, which had me a bit worried.) I installed Network Manager, and it picked up my wireless without a hitch.
Of course, being a drone who watches YouTube far too much, I immediately set about installing Flashplayer. (I know...) I ended up going to the SlackBuild route, which was an adventure, but one I wanted to take. I wanted to get familiar with the system, so... Luckily for me, smarter souls have left instructions. Took some minor modifications, but I got it installed. And I could watch movies.
But I couldn't hear them.
No sound, whatsoever.
OK, let's think this through logically. The first thing to do is panic, and desperately try to think what the hell I've done wrong? What didn't install right? What's wrong with the plugin? Etc., etc.
Luckily, through the haze of general ignorance came a sudden spark of realization: Remember all that time playing with Puppy Linux? Remember having to occasionally monkey with the sound manager?
Took me for freaking ever to remember the name "alsamixer". Jump into the terminal emulator, fire it up. A few seconds, and problem solved.
I now have a nice, functional install of Slackware 14.1. I chose to use XFce, as KDE and I don't always see eye-to-eye. Everything works, and Good Grief, how much software they jam into this thing! I am a bit curious about CalligraOffice, which I've not used much. (The BrainDump program from the Calligra folks looks particularly intriguing.)
And, as a side note, installing Slackware knocked the sense into me to figure out what I did wrong with that copy of Salix 14.1 that I thought I'd botched. I now have a nice install of Salix on one of the ancient Toshiba's.
So, there's been a bit of an overkill of Linux installations this weekend. But I'm having fun.
Until the next round...
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Cracking the Cabinet Door
So....
It has been a while. But it's been a busy while. I've been through one job which, while not being the greatest, at least paid the bills. And when that one wound to an end, thankfully a friend called and... I'm still employed. Though it was another move, and a whole lot of stuff dumped in my lap very quickly. With more to follow.
But I'm back. Sort of.
This is just a touching base sort of thing. I've been been so busy as of late, I had to pare back the computer stuff for the while. But I've kept my hand in.
Most of the time at work, I'm stuck using Windows 8.1. I have to admit, it works. It's fast booting (a large improvement over it's predecessor), and is about as stable as Windows 7 ever was. But...well... blah... I had to finally put my beloved little Thinkpad X220T on the shelf because it was...well, little. My eyes are not in the best of shape these days, and that 12" screen wasn't doing me much good. So, for office work, I've switched over to a Thinkpad Edge with a 15.6" screen. No touch capability, but I never used that anyway.
I still keep one foot in the realm of Mac, and on in the realm of Linux. And here, I've both stayed the same and moved about. Still using OS X 10.8. Mountain Lion isn't Snow Leopard (God, do I miss AppleWorks!), I've managed to configure the MacBook Pro up write as a "creative writing machine". I discovered Scrivener, and have started relying heavily on WriteRoom and Nisus. One of these days, I'll get round to making some comments on each.
Linux remains a hobby. I seem to have adopted CrunchBang as my fallback for everything. I have it on my Thinkpad X301 "Kodachi", which is my backup computer. However, I've been juggling my main "Linux box", from a T410s, currently running Manjaro XFCe, and a Thinkpad X1, running Mint 17 Cinnamon. I had Salix running on the T410s for a while, and loved it, but on a complete whim put Manjaro back on the system. However, I loved Salix so much, I'm going to have to find something to put it back on. (One of these days, I'm going to do a straight Slackware install on one of my systems, but I just haven't worked up to it yet. I'm still too much the "lazy slacker...")
Which brings me to Puppy. Puppy Linux is the evening's project. I'm actually typing this right now in Dpup Exprimo, booted off a USB thumb drive on the T410s. It's outdated, but I like it. I have a bad tendency to boot into this, even over Puppy Slacko, or Quirky (which definitely lives up to its name).
But tonight's fun was FatDog64 which, if you're not familiar, is a 64-bit Puppy. I've had a love/hate relationship with FatDog since way back when. I think I originally ran FatDog64 600, and rather liked it. But, when a new version came out, I updated, and the problems began. The main problem being, the newer versions would never find my Save file (containing all my system settings, etc.) on boot up from a USB stick. I never bothered to research this, just got mad, nuked the installation, and moved on to other things.
Well, the other day, on a whim, I downloaded the 700 Beta 1 edition to give it a try. And ran right into the same problem. I set up my Save file, reboot, and nothing. Only, this time, I decided to be a bit of an adult (what a bummer) and do a little research. Turns out it's a fairly simple fix. Seems FatDog "boots too fast" for older USB drives. Solution: Pass a boot parameter to slow the boot down by a few seconds. I added the line "waitdev=5" to the boot menu.lst, and things worked fine.
It's the strangest things that get you back in the game...
I'll definitely try to get back on. Maybe do some reviews. Some writeups.
We shall see...
It has been a while. But it's been a busy while. I've been through one job which, while not being the greatest, at least paid the bills. And when that one wound to an end, thankfully a friend called and... I'm still employed. Though it was another move, and a whole lot of stuff dumped in my lap very quickly. With more to follow.
But I'm back. Sort of.
This is just a touching base sort of thing. I've been been so busy as of late, I had to pare back the computer stuff for the while. But I've kept my hand in.
Most of the time at work, I'm stuck using Windows 8.1. I have to admit, it works. It's fast booting (a large improvement over it's predecessor), and is about as stable as Windows 7 ever was. But...well... blah... I had to finally put my beloved little Thinkpad X220T on the shelf because it was...well, little. My eyes are not in the best of shape these days, and that 12" screen wasn't doing me much good. So, for office work, I've switched over to a Thinkpad Edge with a 15.6" screen. No touch capability, but I never used that anyway.
I still keep one foot in the realm of Mac, and on in the realm of Linux. And here, I've both stayed the same and moved about. Still using OS X 10.8. Mountain Lion isn't Snow Leopard (God, do I miss AppleWorks!), I've managed to configure the MacBook Pro up write as a "creative writing machine". I discovered Scrivener, and have started relying heavily on WriteRoom and Nisus. One of these days, I'll get round to making some comments on each.
Linux remains a hobby. I seem to have adopted CrunchBang as my fallback for everything. I have it on my Thinkpad X301 "Kodachi", which is my backup computer. However, I've been juggling my main "Linux box", from a T410s, currently running Manjaro XFCe, and a Thinkpad X1, running Mint 17 Cinnamon. I had Salix running on the T410s for a while, and loved it, but on a complete whim put Manjaro back on the system. However, I loved Salix so much, I'm going to have to find something to put it back on. (One of these days, I'm going to do a straight Slackware install on one of my systems, but I just haven't worked up to it yet. I'm still too much the "lazy slacker...")
Which brings me to Puppy. Puppy Linux is the evening's project. I'm actually typing this right now in Dpup Exprimo, booted off a USB thumb drive on the T410s. It's outdated, but I like it. I have a bad tendency to boot into this, even over Puppy Slacko, or Quirky (which definitely lives up to its name).
But tonight's fun was FatDog64 which, if you're not familiar, is a 64-bit Puppy. I've had a love/hate relationship with FatDog since way back when. I think I originally ran FatDog64 600, and rather liked it. But, when a new version came out, I updated, and the problems began. The main problem being, the newer versions would never find my Save file (containing all my system settings, etc.) on boot up from a USB stick. I never bothered to research this, just got mad, nuked the installation, and moved on to other things.
Well, the other day, on a whim, I downloaded the 700 Beta 1 edition to give it a try. And ran right into the same problem. I set up my Save file, reboot, and nothing. Only, this time, I decided to be a bit of an adult (what a bummer) and do a little research. Turns out it's a fairly simple fix. Seems FatDog "boots too fast" for older USB drives. Solution: Pass a boot parameter to slow the boot down by a few seconds. I added the line "waitdev=5" to the boot menu.lst, and things worked fine.
It's the strangest things that get you back in the game...
I'll definitely try to get back on. Maybe do some reviews. Some writeups.
We shall see...
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