[conspire] quiet , and mepis 6.5

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Edmund J. Biow (biow at sbcglobal.net):

> Seems like I just read about Rick diagnosing some memory errors from a 
> VA Linux system.

Just for context:  I got those sticks free of charge when I was very low
on funds, during the tech. economic crash, and should have known there
was a significant likelihood of one or more being defective.  The price
seemed right at the time.

So, the RAM vendor in question for _those_ sticks was "none of the above".

RAM vendors seem to differ in several significant areas:

o  Whether they buy primarily "seconds" of various sorts.
o  Whether they're willing to send back returns, or just put them right back
   into inventory.
o  Whether they know the technology well.

Of course, they won't _tell_ you where they are on those scales:  You
have to figure it out.  

> Now I can build a nice rig for about a quarter of that:
> 
> Retail X2 3800+ CPU & ECS GeForce6100SM-M motherboard (onboard GF6100): $90
> http://www.netaffilia.com/ad/electronics/frys/i/2007/04/06/23896.html

I've had nothing but problems from Nvidia southbridges, and would go out
of my way to avoid them, by the way.  They've sort of become the new
Broadcom.  Not that Broadcom has gotten better, but that Nvidia has
displaced them for sheer awfulness.

> Maxtor 160 GB Serial ATA/300 hard drive: $40

Short warranty.

> Samsung 18X DVD-RW: $30
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151133
> Nice Fortron power supply, about $30 at Newegg. 

You can do a lot better.  Don't forget:  A weak power supply tends to
take out other components, notably hard drives.

> Cheapo case, $27, shipped:
> http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=CV-501-BLK&AID=10440852&CJPID=227502

I personally tend to think this is an area where people skimp too much,
and thereby get noisier cases than necessary.  You wouldn't think the
baffling in a good Antec or Lian Li case would make that big a
difference, but it can.

> 19" Hanns-G 19" LCD monitor, $148 after shipping & MIR:
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?CMP=AFC-TechBargains&Item=N82E16824254009
> Total: $400

Don't forget:  The keyboard and monitor are the parts you interact with
most, and so, funds permitting, are what you should pick with most care.

> Not entirely true.  I played with it a bit and it has Beryl 0.2 nicely 
> integrated and the proprietary drivers for ATI and Nvidia.

Ah, I wouldn't have noticed that.  Some people do want those things.

> A newer kernel would have been nice if you are 
> in to virtualization or have newer hardware, but for most people I don't 
> think it is that big a deal. 

Newer hardware support (and, in particular, advanced autoprobing for
same) is the lion's share of the attraction of MEPIS, in my experience.
This is thus why I was so surprised to find that Warren was rather
notably behind the curve, in that area.  Again, the question is not "Is
there a big advantage of KDE 3.5.6 over 3.5.3?", but rather "What on
earth has Warren Woodford done since 6.0?"  On the evidence, not much, 
and that's going to hurt.

  
> Actually, Sarge looks like it will be maintained for a while as 
> "oldstable." 

The point is that experience suggest that the "while" will be quite
short.  (The symlink will persist long after support ceases, and means
basically nothing per se.)

 
> BTW, what do folks recommend for moving an install to a larger hard drive? 

Your choice of live CD, and rsync.  Don't forget to reinstall your
bootloader, at the end.  See:  "Copying Directory Trees" on
http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Admin/ .


> I tried 'dd if-/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb', but that isn't working for me
> very well.

Rule of thumb:  dd is almost never the right tool.

> I guess I can start over with an old copy of Ghost that I have lying 
> around....

Eww.  ;->