[PhillyLinux]

I loaded Redhat 9 on to an old emachine 422. Hardly any ram, 5 gig harddrive. 10 gig slave drive. Day two of the great experiment. Here goes:

1. When I installed to the 422 in order to create sufficient room I had to allow Redhat to remove existing partitions. I know that I gave it permission to delete data within the existing partitions (no sweat, no critical files on this dog). The question is this, If I load this onto my primary box, which has a 40 gig hard drive that is all \C:, I will not have to remove existing partitions, the room will be sufficient, and my data will not be deleted. Is this correct?

2. I have a linksys home network. The linux box connect without a problem. It runs to the dsl modem and can surf and download mail. How do I get it to see the XP network drive on my main computer?

3. Can I assume that Linux will run much quicker on my 2.4 gighertz celeron then on the 422? The 422 takes all day to redraw a screen.

4. Is there a Linux equivilent to Windows explorer for file management?

Thanks for your help. I'd love to get rid of Windows on all of my home computers as soon as I can.

Mark from Philadelphia, the City that Loves you back.....

[PhillyLinux]

Oh, by the way, I only have 128 meg of ram on my main computer.

Thanks again!

[Whiteskin]

Righty O'. Some of this will have to be added to the FAQ. First, i dont know weather or not RH9 will resize partitions, especially NTFS ones. So, you may have to repartion first.

No. It should not be that slow. I run a fairly fast set up on a 266. So, obviously there is a configuration problem right now on the 422. Are you using an acellerated xserver, or just a plain jane VGA setup. It would help if we could see your XF86Config[-4].

Weather it will be faster on a 2.4... Yes. However, once you have your 422 set up right, it will not be a Huge Massive jump in speed (Not of the diffrence you wpuld have between XP on a 455 and 2.4). Your speed jump will not be overtly noticable on most tasks. Window drawing, program loading, and compiling would speed up. Everything else is not going to be a massive jump (Unless... what are you using for a DE? Gnome or KDE. You may have a nice jump if you use either of those).

To help speed up your 422, you need to tweak your X setup, and probably change DE. XFce4 is a good choice. the *Box s would work well (Openbox, Blackbox, Fluxbox etc.)

Recompiling the kernel could also be a good choice. (Moving up. I'm not sure when RH updated its CDs last).

[PhillyLinux]

Originally Posted by Whiteskin

Righty O'. Some of this will have to be added to the FAQ. First, i dont know weather or not RH9 will resize partitions, especially NTFS ones. So, you may have to repartion first.

No. It should not be that slow. I run a fairly fast set up on a 266. So, obviously there is a configuration problem right now on the 422. Are you using an acellerated xserver, or just a plain jane VGA setup. It would help if we could see your XF86Config[-4].

How do I display this? How do I reset it?


Weather it will be faster on a 2.4... Yes. However, once you have your 422 set up right, it will not be a Huge Massive jump in speed (Not of the diffrence you wpuld have between XP on a 455 and 2.4). Your speed jump will not be overtly noticable on most tasks. Window drawing, program loading, and compiling would speed up. Everything else is not going to be a massive jump (Unless... what are you using for a DE? Gnome or KDE. You may have a nice jump if you use either of those).

I am using Gnome in Redhat.

To help speed up your 422, you need to tweak your X setup, and probably change DE. XFce4 is a good choice. the *Box s would work well (Openbox, Blackbox, Fluxbox etc.)

How do I do this?

Recompiling the kernel could also be a good choice. (Moving up. I'm not sure when RH updated its CDs last).

One again, not sure how to do this.

Thanks for bearing with me. Some days I really miss working in DOS....

[Whiteskin]

WHAT! DOS! Single user, single process... with a crappy command line to go with it! I can do more from the CLI on my linux box than i can with GUI on my win box. Lets see you say that about DOS. Anyhow....

To find out what DE{desktop environment} you are running, look around. If you see a k , then it is KDE. If its a foot, then its Gnome.

First, you are looking for a file in /etc/X11. (Open a terminal, then enter

cd /etc/X11

Caps are important in Linux. Linux is case sensitive.

Type

ls

. YOu should see a list of files. Makes sure there is one that starts with XF86Config. (It will be either that, or XF86Config-4. )

Open it with your Text editor. (Kate in KDE, gedit in gnome).

Copy that stuff into this thread.

Then, type "uname -a" into the terminal, and copy that into this thread.

Check out <http://www.freeos.com/articles/4414/> for some first steps into Linux command line.

[PhillyLinux]

# XFree86 4 configuration created by pyxf86config

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "DevInputMice" "AlwaysCore"
EndSection

Section "Files"
# RgbPath is the location of the RGB database. Note, this is the name of the
# file minus the extension (like ".txt" or ".db"). There is normally
# no need to change the default.

# Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (they are concatenated together)
# By default, Red Hat 6.0 and later now use a font server independent of
# the X server to render fonts.

RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
FontPath "unix/:7100"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "fbdevhw"
Load "glx"
Load "record"
Load "freetype"
Load "type1"
Load "dri"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
# Specify which keyboard LEDs can be user-controlled (eg, with xset(1))
# Option "Xleds" "1 2 3"

# To disable the XKEYBOARD extension, uncomment XkbDisable.
# Option "XkbDisable"

# To customise the XKB settings to suit your keyboard, modify the
# lines below (which are the defaults). For example, for a non-U.S.
# keyboard, you will probably want to use:
# Option "XkbModel" "pc102"
# If you have a US Microsoft Natural keyboard, you can use:
# Option "XkbModel" "microsoft"
#
# Then to change the language, change the Layout setting.
# For example, a german layout can be obtained with:
# Option "XkbLayout" "de"
# or:
# Option "XkbLayout" "de"
# Option "XkbVariant" "nodeadkeys"
#
# If you'd like to switch the positions of your capslock and
# control keys, use:
# Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:swapcaps"
# Or if you just want both to be control, use:
# Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:nocaps"
#
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "keyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xfree86"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
# If the normal CorePointer mouse is not a USB mouse then
# this input device can be used in AlwaysCore mode to let you
# also use USB mice at the same time.
Identifier "DevInputMice"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Unprobed Monitor"
HorizSync 31.5 - 37.9
VertRefresh 50.0 - 70.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "ati"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "ATI Mach64"
VideoRam 4096
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Group 0
Mode 0666
EndSection

[PhillyLinux]

From final terminal command:

Linux localhost.localdomain 2.4.20-31.9 #1 Tue Apr 13 18:04:23 EDT 2004 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

[Whiteskin]

Well, MUST you run in 24bin mode? If we turn it down to 16 bit, it whould speed up a little.

[PhillyLinux]

Originally Posted by Whiteskin

Well, MUST you run in 24bin mode? If we turn it down to 16 bit, it whould speed up a little.

How do I do that? Is that the only congif problem you noticed? Thanks again!

[Whiteskin]

The only thing that lept out at me really. So far.

change
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
***THIS***Depth 24
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

to Depth 16

[PhillyLinux]

How do I do this? Do I open up the file in Gedit, modify it and save it?

[Whiteskin]

Yes. You have to do so as root however. So, go to a terminal, go SU, enter the root password. Your prompt should change from $ to #. Then go "gedit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4"

You can also use tab completion to your advantage here.

[PhillyLinux]

Originally Posted by Whiteskin

Yes. You have to do so as root however. So, go to a terminal, go SU, enter the root password. Your prompt should change from $ to #. Then go "gedit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4"

You can also use tab completion to your advantage here.

I did, and booted. Now Linux won't load. HELP! (PS I am replying from my xp box>

[Whiteskin]

Crap. You were running gdm right?

If you are using Lilo, as i suspect you are, i belive you can boot from the prompt using "linux single"]

That will bring you to text mode. Then we will disable GDM.

[PhillyLinux]

I got back in. Should I retry the origional rewrite to set it to 16? Should both 24's be changed?

Thanks again!