[conspire] Re: conspire Digest, Vol 12, Issue 3

[Rick Moen]

Quoting bruce coston (jane_ikari at yahoo.com):

> I plan to attend the next CABAL and would like to get a 686 reiser
> english desktop distribution working on my rig including dialup, my
> debian/knoppix/gnu/linux partition will dial up but my users will need
> bigger fonts all round and as an amigoid i want more
> responsiveness....

Addressing the "responsiveness" matter will probably hinge on figuring
out what resource is bottlenecked on your system, and why.

I'm not really enough of a desktop guy to help much with "bigger fonts",
but maybe others will have suggestions.

> gobo linux looks iffy since getting help from linux gurus works less
> well w/o traditional file structure

Right.

To explain, GoboLinux (http://www.gobolinux.org/) is from a guy who
considered the standard Unix file tree (/etc, /usr, /bin, etc.) and so
decided to build his with a radically restructured hierarchy, where all
files belonging to each program go into a ghetto of its own under
/Programs , e.g., "/Programs/WordPerfect/8.1/bin/xwp" and so on.
_However_, it also has a veritable forest of symbolic links so that
things are also findable in their traditional locations, e.g.,

/usr/bin/xwp  ->  /Programs/WordPerfect/8.1/bin/xwp

Other parts of the system also get similar treatment.  E.g., what would
ordinarily be users' home directories is handled by an anything-goes
tree called /Depot , and all shared files (fonts, plugins, etc.) go
under /Files.

There is probably a very heavy performance hit from all of those
symlinks, not to mention the mess it makes.  

GoboLinux serves, if nothing else, as proof that nothing stops you from
building and maintaining a Linux distribution to embody your own
weird-ass theories and practices, no matter how bizarre.  I wouldn't
want to use it, but, hey, difference of view are what makes horse races.

> fixiing dial up on the yoper partition looked good but lack of mtools
> and dial up leaves it stranded plus i gotta change its resolution.

mtools should be easy to retrofit onto any distribution.  It's tiny
enough, and enough of a standalone package (no dependencies to speak of)
that you could just grab the source tarball and compile that sucker into
/usr/local .  http://mtools.linux.lu/download.html

As you know, I'm a bit out of the loop on dial-up tools.  The KDE "kppp"
tool (graphical) is nice unto being completely foolproof, and so might
be a fine solution for you.  On Debian, the ncurses-based ppp-config
script serves well.  And a lot of people seem to like WvDial
(http://open.nit.ca/wiki/?page=WvDial).

> Gentoo suffers from too long compile times, i need to abandon it for now.

I am shocked, _shocked_.  ;->

> I'd love to have an al-amlug live cd of arch linux image available so
> i can go that route and have made a partition for it or some other
> deserving distro.

OK, pulling down the ISO, now.  Web page is at
http://amlug.net/new-projects/live-cd/al-amlug-live-cd.html .  Seems
nice.

-- 
Cheers,               No trees were destroyed in the sending of this message. 
Rick Moen             We do concede, though, that a large number of electrons 
rick at linuxmafia.com   were terribly inconvenienced.