Is Linux Distro-hopping a Thing of the Past?

ComBob, just an aside, I read your entire My Debian Adventure novel with great interest.

@Bob_Rob: Thanks! The next episode has been cooking in my head for the past several weeks, and I now have 2 pages of tiny, scrawled notes to remind me of things that I want to write about my next Debian Adventure (Squeeze with Xfce).

Well, I have Xfce installed along with several others... Here, let me check... 10 other window managers, including the default Debian twm.

BTW, "Start a new session" on Alt-F8 is one of those features I use to blow away people if they say, "So, that's Linux?"

Then I start something that looks completely different, like OpenLook or Xfce, start an application or two, flip back to Alt-F7 where KDE3 patiently waits, maybe start a ping or "top" on random Alt-F1 through F6 sessions, go back to F8 and F7 to show that they're still working just fine, etc.

At some point I may set up my server with remote X login so I can put that on F8 for actually getting things done instead of just playing.

I'm rambling, sorry. Here, let's get back on track: KDE4 rots!

BobR,

You meant

Quoting: [...] KDE4 ro[ck]s[!]

Right?

YBT

And if you're on a trusted network, you can enable XDMCP on a remote, and be on two systems at once.

Watch their jaws drop when you tell them Unix had this twelve years before Windows had the same thing!

Quoting:Watch their jaws drop when you tell them Unix had this twelve years before Windows had the same thing!

Yet, I bet Microsoft have a patent for that in their patent library that they use to threaten people with.

jacog --

Not only do they have a patent, but it is a magical Dr. Who patent, awarded in the future of their past discovery after but before Unix.

Of course. Filed at the Tardis patent office.

I'll tell you this much...

If you think ordinary patents are screwed up, wait til you deal with an area where all the patent clerks are Cybermen and all the lawyers Daleks.

I can hear it now: "Infringing, infringing, INFRINGING!"

I thought it sounded more like "litegate, LITEGATE, LITEGATE!"

Ood have guessed that the daleks were in patent office.

azer

BOOOOOOOOOOood!

Quoting:The next episode has been cooking in my head for the past several weeks, and I now have 2 pages of tiny, scrawled notes to remind me of things that I want to write about my next Debian Adventure (Squeeze with Xfce).

I'd upgrade my laptop from Lenny to Squeeze right now if I was guaranteed to have working X, but with the ability to turn off kernel mode setting seemingly going away, I'm worried that X will no longer work with my early-2000s Intel video chip (i830m in my case).

So until the Arch Linux people figure this one out (like they did for me with Debian Lenny and Ubuntu Karmic), I really have to resist the urge to brick my Debian install with an Xorg that hates me and my hardware.

Quoting:I'd upgrade my laptop from Lenny to Squeeze right now if I was guaranteed to have working X, but with the ability to turn off kernel mode setting seemingly going away, I'm worried that X will no longer work with my early-2000s Intel video chip (i830m in my case).

So until the Arch Linux people figure this one out (like they did for me with Debian Lenny and Ubuntu Karmic), I really have to resist the urge to brick my Debian install with an Xorg that hates me and my hardware.

Yeah, I've followed your kernel-mode adventures, and even though none of my current hardware is affected by that problem, I feel your pain, and I'm hoping to someday read your confirmation of a permanent solution from the Debian devs.

Fedora has a great page on fixing X when it's broken. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Xorg/Debugging I plan to keep an eye on it as Fedora 13 winds its way toward release.

Thanks - I just bookmarked that Fedora page.

My first Debian X install, I finally found a reference for the screen I was using, "same frequencies as an IBM somegodawfulthingoranother".

And miracle of miracles, there WAS a modline defined by that same IBM screen model number.

I nearly cooked a friend's screen the first time I tried to install Linux on a laptop, through bunking back and forth trying desperately to get a working X.

It has been, and remains, my humble opinion that video configuration has come a LONG way in Linux in the last 15 years, much like from a Model T to a Mustang, but remains the one awful weak-point when compared side by side with the competition.

Right now, my server with an add-on nvidia card, I think because of the same Intel 810 video problem mentioned above, cannot get a correct 16x9 display on the "computer ready" and vga-input equipped TV, simply because the TVs frequency list and what X will put out just don't match up anywhere.

The 1GHz CPU is also, well, "not worth keeping", so when it finally does become dreadfully important I'll be throwing that server out anyway and getting hardware that might, might, display correctly to the TV. Those recycled $100 2.8GHz Dell Optiplex office machines sold on Craigslist are all 60 miles away. Maybe next time I'm going to Raleigh I can remember to look to see if there are any available.

Naa, then the wife would know.

> Those recycled $100 2.8GHz Dell Optiplex office machines sold on Craigslist are all 60 miles away.

Intechra delivers them: http://www.intechraoutlet.com/home/

Shipping is $27/machine from memory, so you're looking at roughly the same price. That's with 512MB of memory, a 40GB hard drive and a CD. We've bought 2 computers and 1 monitor from them over the past 3 years, and they've all been acceptable. There are probably dozens of competitors who offer equivalent deals, but they're the ones we've dealt with.

Thanks.

It's all a lack of standards I guess.

Connected hardware needs to be able to talk to the OS as to its capabilities and which standards it supports. For example, a USB drive with an EXT3 partition adheres to the USB standard, to some partition - standard and to the EXT3 standard, and the kernel is able to communicate with the device. Also, normally the video card is detected by the kernel, though it depends on the module being load if the kernel can talk to all 'features' of the card.

I'm pretty sure work is being done on standards for the kernel talking to a monitor, but it's not done yet. If it was, the kernel would ask for the modeline and the user needn't care. Nothing new I guess, just some continuation of the ongoing improvements. And currently it doesn't work all that well.