Learning is a great experience!

ChrisK2972 · August 30th, 2003, 05:14 AM

I have been fooling around with different Distro''s of late to see which one I like the best. At the moment, JAMD seems to take the prize. A very nice setup that is trim and easy to work with. Not to mention a great community with decent documentation--a must for a newbie like myself!

I had always heard that if you want to learn about how your system works and such, to try Linux. Well, I must agree. I think I have learned more about software and how it works over the last several weeks that years of MS usage. Although at the moment, I am trying to compile a particular package and am learning the meaning of RPM hell, I am still enjoying my experience.

Kudoes to the person that wrote the "Why I think you should try Linux" post a while back! Because of it, I have begun a journey I doubt I will tire of anytime soon!

lynchmob · August 30th, 2003, 05:54 AM

You mean this?
It's good that you found one you like.Does it support NTFS out of the box?
lynch

nukes · August 30th, 2003, 11:04 AM

All I have to say is Good For You
Now with reference to RPM-Hell. There are ways around it, you could use urpmi to get your libs and programs. I've heard good things about it but I haven't personally used it because I quit RPM based distros a while ago.
You could switch to some other distro that fetches the software and dependancies over the web, such as Gentoo or Debian. The initial install of these is harder than the likes of mandrake, but if you print the docs so you have them to hand during the install, you'll get through it. Then you should never have to worry about RPMs again.

DanGrease · August 30th, 2003, 01:02 PM

Is it just me or do I see a copy of the Mac interface in this Linux distro called Jamd? I just went to the site, to the screenshot are and I got a surprise since it looks a lot like OS X IMO. Althouhg it looks great to be honest but I havent tried it yet, maybe I will someday, but im sure this distro is one of those that many dont know about. I just want to see how it performs so I can judge and give my opinion about it.

dan

ChrisK2972 · August 30th, 2003, 05:51 PM

yes lynchmob, that is the one. As for it supporting NTSF out of the box, I am assuming that you are asking if it will mount NTSF partitions out of the box. If so, the answer is no, at least I have not found it yet. It doesn't even mount my fat32 partitions. But, I have not really researched this completely, so don't take my word as difinite. The only distros that I tried that mounted them out of box was the debian based distros, Knoppix being the one that found them all and allowed me to mount them.

EDIT: although it will not do it out of the box, I just installed one package (35KB) download to resolve this issue. So, no, but yes, with minimal effort!

nukes, once I get tired of playing with this one, I will probablly go to debian via knoppix. 3.2 found and configured all my hardware better than any of them, so, more than likely, I will end up with that next.

Dan, as for OS X, I am not familar with Mac's interface so I can't comment. I do know that jamd is based on RedHat 9. I wanted to give redhat a try but did not want to download all of the ISO's. So, I thought it would be a good alternative and with a single ISO, it was convenient.

nukes · September 1st, 2003, 02:27 PM

Quote:

I will probablly go to debian via knoppix. 3.2 found and configured all my hardware better than any of them,

Woah there. I wouldn't go there if you're a new user, debian itself can be pretty hard to set up. Once you're familiar with compiling the kernel, setting up your X server and partitions manually, then you probably could do it, also, installing KNOPPIX onto a hard disk isn't nessecarily the best idea, unless you want to spend time cleaning out all the hardware detection stuff etc. Just see what drivers the hardware's using with lsmod and you can compile them into your kernel from that information on any distro you like.

crouse · September 1st, 2003, 02:53 PM

Why I think you should try Linux thread: http://www.techimo.com/forum/t58777.html

and to be fair

Why I think you SHOULDN'T try linux thread: http://www.techimo.com/forum/tid7412...pn1/index.html

Actually both threads are full of useful information....... regardless of which camp you come from

Glad to here your playing with Linux, keep plugging away........ it just gets more fun

ChrisK2972 · September 1st, 2003, 11:03 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by nukes
Just see what drivers the hardware's using with lsmod and you can compile them into your kernel from that information on any distro you like.

Thanks for the great idea! I had not thought of that. Actually, I am in the process of compiling my first kernel. So, I will let you know how it goes. Wish me luck!

One more thing, I have read about and tried the lsmod and for some reason I thought it was imsod or 1msod and could not get it to work. I finally realized that it is an L....duh! Makes quite a bit of diffence!

Crouse, thanks for the encouragement and also thanks for posting those links. I thought about doing that myself. I read the negative one also and remember that he was dissing the Linux clock. Personally, I have never seen a more configurable clock in my life! If you don't like how it looks, just change it! The beauty of linux, I am finding.....

ChrisK2972 · September 2nd, 2003, 03:03 AM

Ok, well I have done it. I have compiled my first kernel. It is amazing what you can do and learn by just following directions. I did it for the experience as well as to resolve a sound issue I was havng with the 2.4.20 kernel. So, I downloaded the 2.4.22 kernel with built in support for my onboard via8233 AC97 sound and it worked like a charm.

One more thing, I did it in Slackware 9. I gave it a try after I found that jamd did not have any devlopment tools included in the install. Maybe in the near future they will come out with a development cd which will resolve that problem. Try and do a ./configure in jamd out of the box and you are in for library/dependencies till the cows come home. However, for anyone not wanting to compile from source or know right off hand what they need to install to do this, it is still a great distro. Can't expect everything from a .06 release.