3 OSs, no installs.

[JCool451]

Some of you may remember my earlier post on the USB NIC. I tried to give Slackware, Debian, and Gentoo a go with it. 3 OSs, no installs. Laptop NIC (eth0) broke, so I'm using USB NIC (eth1), I already found out the modules I need.

Gentoo: Recognizes USB NIC right out of box, marks it down as eth1. Everything worked fine until the bootstrap process, there was a "file not found" error. (Oy, brings me back to windows days.) I think I could fix this by doing a different stage of live cd or by choosing a mirror.

Slackware/Debian: Detects broken NIC only. Loaded up the modules, so it should just be a matter of manually adding eth1 after installation, right?

RedHat/Knoppix Detected the USB NIC and configured it as eth1 for me. Redhat still has crappy video support. Knoppix gave surprisingly good opengl performance, considering that my card is a crappy SIS integrated GPU. :D The big companies could learn a lot about hardware detection from knoppix. :)

Well, if someone could verify my guesses, so I could give it a go....

*edit*
Bah, I'm too impatient to wait for responses. I'll just give my idea a go. As for gentoo, I don't really know how to fix that.

[JCool451]

OK, I got debian to install fine. I skipped the network configuration, loaded the modules for the USB NIC, then had the network configuration. Detected eth1, no problem. It doesn't display properly when I enter the shell. The lines go off the screen, I think that adjusting my XF86Config will do the trick or if I'm lucky, an environment variable. It's really hard to adjust it without seeing the bottom. Luckily, I installed vim. I tried using vi, I couldn't use it at all, lol. Geuss vim really is vi improved. :) When I tried to install x-windows and KDE, it said there were no screens available. I think I'll have to put the unstable version of debian on, it might be able to autodetect my hardware better.

Gentoo, I'm going to try to select a different mirror for the installation process. If that doesn't work, I'll try installing with a stage2 install. :-/ I actually found the install process easy, this time.

Slackware, haven't tested it. I'm sure things will go smoother with it, than debian.

Actually, Debian's install isn't that bad. I had a basic system in less than 10 minutes. :) Only cd based distrobutions beat it. I'll search for that one problem I had with gentoo, but if one of you gentoo users could help me out....

Thanks

*edit*
If Debian-unstable install doesn't go well, I'll leave 10GB free for the next stable version to come. (Which I hope will be in December) I sure am glad that I downloaded knoppix, it helps when installs go bad. :)

[sharth]

knoppix has a hd install part. You can use that if you want. Its basically debian.

[JCool451]

It's good Debian. :D I think I'll do that.

Gentoo is installing fine now, just used a different mirror for the stage1 install. I'm nearing the finish, I just hope it's worth it. It took all day to install. lol

Still haven't booted into slackware. I'll have to wait until I'm done with the gentoo install.

[JCool451]

LOL, can't find the HD install part.

Gentoo installed great, only took 8 hours. :D Now I just need to configure my devices and get all my apps up. Mouse, eth1, sound, firewire, gamepad, and some other stuff need fixing. I think I can handle everything, but the eth1 install, without doing too much research.

So far I'm liking what I'm seeing with gentoo. :) It's easy to install, since I know what I'm doing now. ;)

Still haven't booted into slackware, lol. I'll be doing that later tonight.

I couldn't get Debian-Stable running. I liked the install, though. I had a basic system in just over 9 minutes. Beats the pants off of gentoo's install. :D

I need to finish all this stuff before my highschool classes start or atleast until my college classes start. I won't have enough time to play around with linux for 8 hours straight on the weekdays. :(

[sharth]

its like knx-install or something. I've never used it before myself.

[JCool451]

Any hints on getting my network card to work?

I think I have everything loaded, I just need to edit a couple of text files. I'll post a little later about it.

Could it be "knoppix install" boot option?

[dkeav]

umm just a thought, by why not run regular deb, and fire up knoppix to get the proper configuration files, just copy them onto a floppy disk, mount your partition and move them into a tmp file, then fire deb back up and put things in their respective places, i do this for deb installs, since woody never seems to figure my video cards out

[JCool451]

That might work, but I don't think my card works well at all with Debian's current version of xfree. I'm in no rush, I can wait for the new stable debian to come out.

I'm having a hard time getting the nic configured for gentoo. I don't think I am editing the config files right. I'll search for some guides.

[JCool451]

Still can't figure out the nic thing. I've edited the config files so many times over. I'm wondering if it's even detecting the nic.

Got Slackware up for the most part. Just need to get my network configured, just hope it's more successful than the gentoo install.

I've got 5GB with Debian's name all over it. :) RedHat is going on it for the moment, until I get everything configured for slack and gentoo. Can't wait until the next stable release.