Or my life as a masochist…
I’m back into Linux mode, namely because I need a machine that can run some things that an old PII with 32 MB RAM can no longer handle. And yes, this may involve running some Windows Apps. In fact it most definitely will. So it was time to take an old 866 mhz PC with a 10 G hard drive and 320 Mb RAM and seeif I could get something installed. Can you guess what my first choice was? How about my second? Which one actually ran?
Dreamlinux 2.2 was my first choice since it seemed to offer most of what I might want and need right out of the box. However, perhaps because of the processor or the RAM it never got beyond the “Loading Thundar” screen. I tried a couple of times to get it to load and behave, but nothing doing. Dreamlinux 2.2 is brand spankin’ new and ran fine on my new laptop with the Intel Pentium D. But languished mightily in the PIII environment. Time to try something else…
Linspire 5.0 might be a possibility, However that too got hung up twice and failed to boot on this machine. It was looking like it was going to be a lousy day for Linux. I wanted and needed a full distro for some potentially heavy lifting, so Puppy wasn’t going to fit the bill (although Puppy was able to play nicely on the old PII and was able to bring that dinosaur back to life).
So I went back to what I know. And liked. that would be Simply Mepis 6.0. it is worth noting that for all the arrows and mud I have slung at Ubuntu, Mepis has so much in common with it as to simply be a more advance Kubuntu. i read on reviewer who basically said Mepis was a better Kubuntu than Kubuntu. So the live CD spooled up and I went ahead and committed the entire hard drive to Mepis. I said goodbye to XP, at least on this machine, and in 30 minutes I had a new OS.
Nest, taking advantage of the high speed connection here, I downloaded several apps using the Synaptic Package manager. Somewhere along the way, I heard about Automatix and thought I might like to give that a whirl. And with that quest, I was plunging deeper into the land of the uber geeks. For it was here that I began doing stuff with the (GASP!) Command Line.
Or at least that was my intent. This foray was not without its adventures and frustrations. The Automatix website was forever unavailable. And then, using whatever voodoo mojo commands that I happened to copy and paste, I managed to get the thing installed. At least to where it was in my K menu, which is better than I thought I would do. However, I still get the ubiquitous “some keys could not be installed, try again later.” I try again later and the same thing happens. So much for that thing.
I’m eventually packing this machine up and toting it home to further test it out and possibly see what it does with a modem and a game or two.
But I’m back in the game for the time being. We’ll see how long it lasts.
dick
