[Wolves] Couple of (redhat) problems

[Jono Bacon]

Hi Bob,

I thought I would chuck my two penneth in to see if it
any help.

As for distro's, you are certainly advised using a
newer distro, and upgrading that fairly regularly. The
reason for this is that Linux updates at a fair lick
of knots, and as such, older distro's really do lack
important newer updates.

Your choice of distro is another thing, and is largely
personal. If you are new to Linux, I would recommend
Mandrake as it really does make things easier,
although if you machine is not very powerfull it may
run a bit slower than optimal. This can be changed, as
with any Linux distro, using some of the steps thaqt
James and Adam have suggestion. Other worthy distro's
include SuSE and the venerable RedHat. When you have
been using Linux for a while, you will no doubt be
woo'ed over to Debian like virtually every other
person in the LUG, but Debian is quite hardcore for
new users and most of us started off with Mandrake,
SuSE or RedHat.

As for your performance issues, memory is an important
thing, but it sound unreasonably slow, and this may be
a hardware problem - particulalry if you get Kernel
Panic messages. The best thing to do to find out
hardware problems is to type:

  dmesg | less

This will give all of the kernel messages when the
kernel boots and does other things. Look out for
errors in there.

Linux can run happily on a 486 with a GUI, but you
would need a lightweight window manager such as the
ones James and Adam suggested. For advice on getting
Linux running on low spec hardware, the A2RT guys on
the list are the people to ask - that is what they do.
:)

Good luck, and hope to see you at a meet sometime.

  Jono

--- Christopher Walker
<bugger.me.its.cold@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> James Turner wrote:
> 
> >
> >
> >
> >>Because of this I decided to downgrade to (what
> #linuxhelp calls
> >>"stoneage linux") 7.3 but it won't install.
> >>
> >
> >Ah, Old Hat Linux 7.3, I remember it well...
> >
> I finally got 7.3 to work and now understand what is
> meant by "stonage" 
> even though its 18 months (or so) old. 7.3 is
> definitely more "quirky" 
> than 9, anyone any opinions of 8.x?
> 
> >>
> >>Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on
> 09:00
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Sounds like a bug in the way the installer
> bootstraps the kernel, presumably 
> >caused by some sort of incompatibility with your
> hardware. You could try 
> >making a boot floppy (instructions on CD) rather
> than booting from the 
> >installation CD itself, try a different version,
> different distro or 
> >something???
> >
> Got it working at last, apparently the message above
> is related to 
> advanced power management. if its turned off in the
> bios, the install 
> process works as normal. still, I think I may en up
> re-upgrading anyhow 
> and trying to speed the darn thing up a bit.
> 
> cheers for the help  in the meantime,
> 
> -bob
> 
> >
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Wolves mailing list
> >Wolves@mailman.lug.org.uk
> >http://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/wolves
> >
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Wolves mailing list
> Wolves@mailman.lug.org.uk
> http://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/wolves


=====
Jono Bacon - http://www.jonobacon.org/
Web Developer - Musician - Writer - Freelancer

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