Gentoo Reload
Just for grins, I decided to reload my old laptop with Gentoo.
For those following along at home, I had put (and praised) SuSE 9.1 on this laptop, but it didn't detect my PCMCIA NIC, and the video card itself had been fritzing, making X less than usable, and displaying the root console with huge borders (i.e. using only 1/4 of the screen). I'm now wanting to run the laptop essentially as a server, with VNC handing the display, and letting another box do the actual I/O.
So I downloaded the universal CD via BitTorrent (in part to be able to seed it when I was finished), and popped it in. It detected all my stuff, including the PCMCIA NIC, and had no graphics problems (although it didn't run X, either). All went swimmingly, until I rebooted, at which point it didn't find PCMCIA, and the root console was small again. At present, I'm not all that interested in an extended troubleshooting session, especially as the install CD worked flawlessly.
But it also makes me curious what they use for the installer, and whether or not I could just use that. I glanced at Knoppix, as I have this vague feeling they do something similar, but I'm thinking that I'll go play in the Gentoo forums for a while and see if I can get any pointers.
More as it unfolds.
For those following along at home, I had put (and praised) SuSE 9.1 on this laptop, but it didn't detect my PCMCIA NIC, and the video card itself had been fritzing, making X less than usable, and displaying the root console with huge borders (i.e. using only 1/4 of the screen). I'm now wanting to run the laptop essentially as a server, with VNC handing the display, and letting another box do the actual I/O.
So I downloaded the universal CD via BitTorrent (in part to be able to seed it when I was finished), and popped it in. It detected all my stuff, including the PCMCIA NIC, and had no graphics problems (although it didn't run X, either). All went swimmingly, until I rebooted, at which point it didn't find PCMCIA, and the root console was small again. At present, I'm not all that interested in an extended troubleshooting session, especially as the install CD worked flawlessly.
But it also makes me curious what they use for the installer, and whether or not I could just use that. I glanced at Knoppix, as I have this vague feeling they do something similar, but I'm thinking that I'll go play in the Gentoo forums for a while and see if I can get any pointers.
More as it unfolds.
posted by Dave at Tuesday, February 01, 2005
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home