[conspire] Distros available for installation at CABAL

[Rick Moen]

Quoting David Hartley (david at holistiq.com):

> I have put CentOS 4  'clone' of RHEL 4 onto the balky 'bleeding edge' box I
> brought to last CABAL meeting (when it had RHEL 4 on it.)

CentOS is very, very good, and I recommend it highly.  See:
"RHEL Forks" on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/RedHat/  (Disclaimer:  A few of
the primary guys behind it are friends and/or former co-workers of
mine.)

> Now it would be very nice to get a SATA RAID 0 set working (not to boot
> from, though  that'd be fun too ;)

You have your choice of either the manufacturer-proprietary "fakeraid"
or Linux's own "md"-driver software RAID to do that with.  Details at:
"Serial ATA" on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Hardware/

(You probably already knew that.  I'm mentioning it for others'
benefit.)

> If anyone wants Ubuntu Hoary DVD in i386 or amd64 flavors, I can bring them
> too.

Coolness.  BTW, Canonical, Ltd. sent me a set of about 50 envelopes of
Ubuntu Hoary i386 CDs, to pass out at LUGs.  Each envelope has both the
liveCD and installable versions.

> Also have a 7 disk set of newly downloaded Debian 30r2 CD's which I
> couldn't get the danged Marvell NIC working with.

1.  You might not have been aware of the "bf2.4" boot-flavour at the
second installation screen, which gives you a 2.4.x installation kernel
instead of the default 2.2.18 one.

2.  In any event, installers for Debian 3.0 "woody" are pretty ancient,
as a rule.  (There are other installers other than the official
installer.)  For a desktop system such as yours, I'd personally be
inclined to use an installer for the prerelease 3.1 "sarge" branch.
Installers are listed here:

"Installers" on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Debian/

> Sadly, I could not get the Marvell NIC working with SMP kernel....

I hate to have to say it, but Marvell NIC chips are notorious for being,
well, pretty sucky overall.  In my opinion, the main reason certain
motherboard manufacturers like them for onboard use is that they're
cheap.  It might be that you'd have minimal pain from just chucking a
PCI NIC in there, with a better chipset.  Like maybe an Intel Pro/1000
or such.