Re: Anyone tried basiclinux?

From: Walter Mautner (new.10.eatallspam_at_spamgourmet.com)
Date: 10/05/03 

Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2003 12:07:50 +0200

Day Brown wrote:

> Walter Mautner wrote:
>> Day Brown wrote:
>
>> Damn. Don't want to see the dos prompt anymore. A nice $bash gives a
>> lot more to me.
> Agreed, that $bash is much more powerful. but I dont use the dos prompt
> to manage my file structure, but a tool like 'directory wizard',
> (DW.COM) which is something like MC. I like the way that MC shows me
> both the current and destination directory, but DW.COM has
> functionality missing in MC. For one, you can use the mouse to scroll
> down to a file of interest. Or, you can type a letter, and it jumps
> immediately down to the files which begin with that letter. It also
> always tells me the available drive space of both source & destination.
> Unlike MC, DC.COM, DF.COM, & DW.COM all let me tag files with the gray+
> key for deletion, moving, copying, or whatever to do them all as a
> group.
>
Recent versions of mc allow to be operated with mouseclicks, mark files
with the right button and also press the function keys with the mouse,
if you really like. Also you have a list of the marked files with their
sizes, as well as different colors for executables.
....
> have been able to find. But comparing $bash with the dos prompt is not
> really useful because of all the dos tools for doing the stuff users
> need in the most efficient way.
>>
Hmm, but I didn't want to compare the utilities. Of course, in linux you
don't really need most of them because you can do most things from a
commandline with high efficiency.
>>
....
>> Which version - and which video cards?
> I've had MANDRAKE 7 and 9. But someone 'borrowed' my mdk 7, and the mkd
> 9 CD seems to have an error on it, and wont install. I've had several

Sad to hear. Well, mdk7 is a bit ancient, and the current 9.1 (.2 soon to
come) eliminates a lot of bugs or missing features in the .0 version.

> video cards on varios machines. IIRC, the DIAMOND S3 ragepro 64 didnt
> work right. Redhat & Corel ran it just fine. I've also had difficulty
> which I later learned was because I had a VIA C3 CPU, which again,
> Redhat had no trouble with.
>>
At the time mandrake7 was developed, there hasn't been a VIA C3 on the
market yet, I suppose. 9.x should be able to deal with that just fine
(and probably your redhat is a bit more recent also).

>>>that I use passwords on a single user desktop, and like the others
>>>that do this, complicate the shutdown process as well.
>>>
>>
>> You are not prepared to use linux yet. Sorry.
> IF someone gets to my keyboard and messes up my system, I dont have a
> software problem, I have a family problem. This is not a system in a
> business where I need that kind of password protection.
>
Well, it might be a all-too-curious family member, or a cat running
across your keyboard ... or your head taking a rest on it at midnight
pressing the wrong keys. All of these can easily trash your heavily
customized install, when you are logged on as root.

... always root ... again ...

>> So you are eager to have someone logging on to your machine making a
>> nice DDoS-box or a childporn-warez-ftp server without your knowledge?
>> Linux does _NOT_ know about blocking access to files or executable
>> files. YOU have to know this. By correctly using permissions and
>> passwords. And BY NO MEANS use the root account to logon for doing
>> regular work with (also regularly) exploitable programs. You will
>> regret that.
> Well, thanx for the tip, I'll quit looking for that functionality in
> Linux. Basic linux solves it for me by letting me store my important
> personal data on the dos drive. I dont need a dos box since I have a
> genuine dos prompt, and there are things I do with it that dont run in
> a dos box anyway. DRDOS allows me to lock a directory with a password
> if I am worried about it. I am not running a server, only a client. I
> didnt know that Linux automatically enabled access from the net thru a
> client.
>
You can access your dos drive from linux, isn't it? Now, guess, will a
intruder be able to access it, or will you be protected by magic
wizards? And, since root or uid 0 is a well known login, once you tell
on the newsgroups you are running root without a password ... well I
guess it's already too late.
....
>> As a beginner, you should rather stick to a distribution like redhat
>> or (better imho) mandrake with its msec (please set it to "high") and
>> the control center, and, most of all advantages, urpmi - which lets
>> you auto update the thing from commandline once you have added the
>> update sources.
> I remember liking Mandrake, but when I moved and changed to a new isp,
> it would no longer logon, even thought the ppp driver would dial out
> and go thru the handshake. Something to do with the isp using win xp on

You should have gone through the ppp setup tool again, or modify the
chatscripts by hand, telling mandrake the new logon name and password
... and probably authentication changed from pap to chap or something.

> their server; the install cd which they furnish, is of course, only for
> windoz. I know a mac user who move here who also gave up, and bought a
> new DELL w/ win xp... which is a clue to what is going on. Mickysloth
> is selling servers which only work with windows, which is good for
> their client deals with Dell, Gateway, et al.
>
There is no windows-only authentication to connect to a isp ... except
maybe AOL :).

>>>So often I have seen an entire install trashed because of some problem
>>>which could have been dealt with later. I was just appalled when the
>>>first distro I looked at, Redhat 5, crashed trying to make the backup
>>>boot disk, and wiped out the entire install.
>
>> Probably you messed up your config files running as root when you
>> shouldn't do that.
>> man su
>> man sudo
> There's lot of things I should not do that I dont know about. And,
> there has been some progress in the install scripts, as well as
> practice at installing improving my success rate.
>>
Great. And the most effective learning is by mistakes :).
>>
>> There are a lot of mini-linux distributions. But I suggest you try out
>> a knoppix cd first: it will boot from almost any 586+ pc, without even
>> touching the harddrive. Later when you got familiar with it, you can
>> install it on the hd and update with debian apt-get.
> Just got back from a Basiclinux webpage, which memtioned 'memtest86'
> which appears to be a boot image just to test the ram. Its docs say
> that dos is quite forgiving of bad ram, but Linux is not, which may be
> why
> some of my installs didnt work. IIRC: http://www.memtest86.com if
> anyone has an install that dont work, they might try to test the ram.
>>
Memtest86 is a well-known tool for a long time. Even a better test is
compiling a kernel & modules. It will stress the cpu for quite a long
time, with non-regular patterns in memory. Now since my good old athlon
freaked out a few times (got random segfaults compiling kernel) I have
"underclocked" it a little bit and it runs stable now.
>
.....
> Well, yeah, I downloaded the Kernel 2.4 to try, but then find that it
> needs gcc 2.95 or better, but I aint found a way to get that installed
> yet. The rational thing to do, of course, would be that if something
> has a dependancy, to have a link to it. Granted that Linux apps are

Updating the gcc and the c libraries would in fact require a complete
distribution update. There are also other major changes from 2.2 to 2.4
which will render most of your utilities useless, so you have to update
or recompile them also.

> much more powerful, but this is a continual problem in my experience,
> that when I download an app or whatever, I so routinely find out I have
> the wrong distro, the wrong archive tool, the wrong gcc, or it cant
> find some 'dependancy' or other. This is not intrinsic to the design of
> Linux, any more than it would be of dos.
>
Compare the "dependency hell" in linux with the "dll hell" in windoze.
Where the former one is documented and - with some effort - resolvable,
the escape from the latter depends upon luck or most often a fresh
(re)install.

> But whereas there are so few versions of dos still current, the myriad
> of Linux distros is complicating life for both users and programmers.

Well, the distros may differ regarding paths, places and even semantics
of configuration files, selection of tools, management and updaters.
Still they all need a kernel and a glibc ...

> Since dos apps were so small, they routinely included in the archive
> any drivers that might be needed. Characteristically, when I discuss
> these problems, the responses are defensive or aggressive, as if the
> responder had written Linux and needed to defend it. I dont love dos,
> nor Linux, they are just tools, just as windows is a tool I stay away
> from.
>>
Hmm, dos applications mostly rely on the BIOS routines whenever possible,
so they find consistent but restricted environment for basic tasks.
However, when it comes to things like usb, big drives or setting up a
network under dos, you are either lost or dependent on proprietary
solutions. Plain old DOS is outdated and obsoleted by the hardware.

.....
> I dont need open office. I aint running a business. I dont mind using
> Linux to get online with, and using dos for my own research & writing.

You never have to open word or excel docs from windows users, and/or be
able to exchange your own docs with them?

> I dont worry about loosing any of my work to sabotage software when it
> is on a drive of an OS that is not online.
>
Again: as long as you can access the drive from linux, a intruder can do
the same. In particular, when he is running as root. Period.
 
> I had rather hoped that BL would let me install the new 2.4 kernel on
> another drive, and that I could use the new kernel to mount the CDrom,
> which will not boot, and then let me install the Mandrake apps that I
> want on the Linux drive.

Try find the floppy boot images on that cdrom, use rawrite to create a
boot floppy with the 2.4 kernel (chose after reading the readme) and
then try to install after booting from the floppy.
Good Luck! 

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