SuSe 9.3 / Re: [conspire] s MEPIS 3.3.1 t2 Gnu / Linux

[David Hartley]

On 5/8/2005 11:49:01 AM, bruce coston (jane_ikari at yahoo.com) wrote:
> simply Multimedia Enterprise and Personal Information
> System Gnu/ Linux 3.3.1 test 2 worked out after I
> stole the /etc/x11 files from an older Kanotix. It
> even got libdvdcss without complaint. Didn't test sound yet.

On the other end of the spectrum, I've finally found a suitably
bleeding-edge distro for the bleeding-edge box I've dragged to 2 mafiosi
meeting/installfests.

After installing (or attempting & failing) maybe a dozen distros, I'd been
about to settle with CentOS, even with the incredibly bad tinny & distorted
'stereo' sound which bleated plaintively from the speakers due to the
disastrous sound-driver AZX 'patch' on Intel's site, which purported to (but
clearly does NOT) support their "IntelR High Definition Audio"

Luckily, it was a pain in the butt getting RAID0 working, apparently due to
RHEL using some weird implementation of LibATA -as evidenced by the fact
that 
booting: kernel panic - attempted to kill Init  -upon attempting to boot
system with ICHR6 BIOS setting of "enhanced" (normal, I should say-  meaning
PATA and SATA support) -as opposed to "legacy" mode which kinda sorta mighta
worked somewhat.

So, now (after 3 complete re-installs of SuSe, preceded by around 4 of
CentOS, several of RHEL4, abortive attempts with Ubuntu, FC3, & others) I
have SuSe 9.3 (kernel 2.6.11.4) working so well on this machine that I'm
very tempted to start actually using linux :)

I'll build another thoughtlessly bleeding edge box (AMD64 instead of Intel
Hyperthreading SMP)  and hope that I don't have to fight too much to get all
the fun stuff like PCIEx nVidia/OpenGL (works amazingly well on Internet
'tank battle' game) and the now fully funtional ICHR6 southbridge's Realtek
ACL880 8-channel sound 'card'
http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/hdaudio.htm

FADERAID is working perfectly now, with hdparm -t /dev/md0  showing nearly
double the data transfer rate (about 112MB/sec) of the single SATA drive
/dev/sda (about 60MB/sec)  -the installation immediately prior to this one,
I had everything working pretty well, and then newbyishly accepted a default
suggestion for mounting /dev/md0 at /usr  -with I guess, predictably
unpredictable results. (don't try this at home ;)

Prob'ly it'll be a week or two to finish gathering parts; once it's built &
got 'SuSe Professional 9.3 AMD64' installed on it, I'll bring it around for
tire-kicking. With any luck I'll have the Promise Supertrak6000 installed &
functional.

Possibly, I'll have a dual-boot setup on my laptop by then -ideally I'll get
rid of Windoze as my desktop & just keep it on my laptop, which I use for
mobile Windoze customer support.

best,
www.davidhartley.com
San Francisco, CA