Re: Flintstone Linux.

From: The Ghost In The Machine (ewill_at_sirius.athghost7038suus.net)
Date: 12/04/03 

Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2003 05:00:10 GMT

In comp.os.linux.advocacy, TehGhodTrole
<nospam@rainx.cjb.net>
 wrote
on Wed, 3 Dec 2003 03:48:36 -0800 (PST)
<MEIvpuaHNRivDD1FE612RGbAroTPQt7D@authorizeddealerdiscounts.com>:
> The Ghost In The Machine wrote:
>> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Kadaitcha Man
>> <nospam@rainx.cjb.net>
>> wrote
>> on Sun, 30 Nov 2003 15:10:11 -0800 (PST)
>> <QPl0sHfDvisw0B4324E7zjnQYSypWzyc@win.wwiinn.com>:
>>> Nate McSorley wrote:
>>>
>>>> It crawls along on an Abit Pentium 3 gigahurtz board with 2g of DDR
>>>> dual channel ram.
>>>> I am using SUSE 9.0 as if it matters at all because Redhat sucked
>>>> even more.
>>>
>>> I am using Mandrake 9.1 on a dual 2.8GHz Xeon system with 2GB of
>>> registered dual channel DDR and it runs, well, not quite like
>>> treacle on a cold day, but it is far from snappy. I put it down to
>>> linux perpetually computing uptime so the linuxfux have something to
>>> brag about.
>>>
>>
>> Why not put WinXP Professional or Server on that system
>> so that it'll zip along and do what you want, then?
>>
>> Is there a reason you need Linux on that box?
>
> I wanted to see if I could get it to work on my rig. I achieved my
> objective, but had to rip out two of my three video cards to do it.

Then you did not achieve your objective, as ripping out two videocards
is a change in the problem. :-) However, sounds like you got
reasonably close, and in any event I've never seen 3-video-card units,
although I have seen 2-video card units (I might even build one, using
a very old monochrome board, if I have one handy; I have a couple of
very old color (6845!) boards. Of course, such a machine wouldn't
be all that capable from a video standpoint...)

I think there's a bug in the Linux video handler (or
perhaps X?) anyway; it's fairly easy, at least for my 4
MB ATI onboard chip, to screw up things beyond redemption,
requiring a reboot. Set up two X servers on vt7 and vt8,
switch between them enough times, and the registers get
confused so that no text consoles work; then hit CR until
the machine crashes, as the text consoles are still accepting
keystrokes underneath; one simply cannot see them.

I'd frankly have to look into the matter. It gets worse:
my current machinery does not have AGP or AGP+ capability,
which means I can't buy an el-neato OpenGL-capable high-speed
gorgeous 3-D card I want. :-) (I'm not sure which one I
want, either. I'll work on that, once I get a new machine
that *does* have AGP+ capability.)

> My BIOS
> is excellent. It allows me to configure disks at will, so I just chose one
> of my backup disks, nominated it in the BIOS as disk 0 and installed linux
> on it. LILO was totally unaware of the other OSes on any of the other three
> disks. Plus, it's easier for me to reboot, tell the boot manager to set disk
> 3 as disk 0 with a few keystrokes, then run linux, than it is to swivel my
> office chair and wake up the screen of one of my two servers.
>
> I used to run server 2003 but took it off once I had Apache and 602Pro
> LanSuite running. Now I run only Pro because Apaches allow me to bypass the
> major limitations in the number of simultaneous web connections allowed
> under XP Pro, and 602Pro got around the problem of Pro not having a freaking
> POP3 service. Once I had them running, I just moved them to another machine.
>
> If you're not sure where that is all headed, I'm driving to the point that
> Microsoft are greedy cunts and should be broken up, just as bell was. It's
> funny watching a lot of the linuxfux spin themselves around on that one. I
> prefer XP as my OS of choice but certainly have no love at all for MS, their
> shithouse security, or their totally off-the-wall patch and hope approach to
> quality control.

I would assume for now that Microsoft will not be broken
up unless a Democrat is elected into the Presidency; the
current President is very business-friendly and Microsoft
is, at its heart, a business, attempting to make money --
lots of money. (There are issues as to whether its methods
are legal or not, of course, and Microsoft has already been
convicted, but the wheels of justice are extremely slow;
we're talking events back in the late 1990's.)

Linux could succeed where the DoJ has not, though, so
Microsoft had better be very careful. :-)

>
> As for the linux, it will stay for a while. I'll take a look at its innards
> one day, see if I can remember how to use vi from my Unix days, maybe even
> play around with rm -rf / while logged in as root.
>

Best have a Knoppix disk handy. :-) However, that should
delete almost everything, as the Linux method of deleting
files does not actually remove the inode until everyone's
closed it. Since 'rm' is executing, the files /bin/rm
and /lib/libc.so.* are open, among others.

Of course other commands (such as /bin/sh!) might have a problem... :-)

I'll admit, I'm tempted, if I can set up a satellite machine I'm going
to blow away anyway, to do the same, just to test the above hypothesis.
Ideally, I'd use a virtual machine (I don't know of a totally freeware
alternative to VMWare offhand, but bochs might do the trick)... 

-- 
#191, ewill3@earthlink.net
It's still legal to go .sigless.