PC-Janitor

Big woops, I was playing around with FreeDOS trying to transfer files off an old Compaq 386 when I tried to install FreeDOS on a bit of spare disk on my 60Gb drive using... wait for it... fdisk. Gentoo topic continued here - sorry for interrupting the thread

Good tip, I lug around a copy of Damn Small Linux which fits on a credit card shape cd-rom. Just used it today to ftp files off an 8086 (ripped the harddrive out and bunged it in an old Pentium :-) ) on to my machine for output to a CD-ROM. But my best 'try-it-for-size' distro has to be Morphix, especially for anyone testing the waters outside Windows.

Hi, I am using LTSP and having great fun. I had a few troubles, at first I was using Redhat 9 (Shrike) and installed the RPM then I found the K12LTSP schools project http://www.k12ltsp.org. The best bit about this project is that with the blessing of Redhat it has produced it's own branch of Redhat 9 (and Fedora - which I'm using now.) So I did an Redhat update that included the K12LTSP branch of Fedora, but I was none the wiser, I still couldn't get it to work (or maybe 'get my head around it'). Eventually burned the ISO's (to rw's of course,) and did a fresh install and if I remember correctly I didn't have to change anything, it all worked according to plan. You'll find all the information about the project here, http://www.k12ltsp.org/contents.html with links and instructions on downloading and instaling the ISO's which I found helpful in comparisson to the LTSP docs (although these need to be read too ) I've just realised I didn't make it clear why I'm saying all this :x The very best bit of this distro is that you are getting a regular Fedora distro with an option to install LTSP right there in the setup screen. see here for explanatory screen shot. This means no messing around with the config files (as mentioned in the LTSP docs,) until you've had a chance to see what it is they do and by then you'll probably only need to tweak them a little. The remote terminal booting has been a sticking point for me and until I get a chance to try a different network card I'm simply bootingDebian on my little old Pentium and typing the old... Code: jon# X -query 192.168.0.254 Note to new noobs, I've included the path to X in my ENV It's been very well put together and all I really had to do was add a repository source for apt-get to get additional RPM's from www.freshrpms.net for things like Webmin, Frozen Bubble Wine and Xine - which was in Redhat 9 but I couldn't find it under Fedora. Fingers crossed, nothing's broken yet! Sorry I can't help on RDP though, need to find out what it is first hang on, isn't RDP Remote Desktop Protocol that old Window kinda useful lump of cheese? If so, take a look at the screenshot below, from K12LTSP.org of course! rdesktop running Windows2000 Terminal Services Session

Quote: Window Managers ? GUI ? Ha. Window managers and high resolutions exist soley to allow you run several hundred xterms at once (with a pretty background of course). Perfectly fair point, however, if you were a bit of a noob and wanted to get a better understanding of the Linux way of thinking, which GUI would you use! Or is that not quite on the thread?

I understand, It's like Mac-on-Linux where you install the OS on the software which seems (to all intents and purposes,) to make Linux invisible to the host system! I may persist with Wine http://www.twoostwo.org/competitors/wine.php for a little bit longer as I only realy want to run a few applications Internet Explorer (wierd eh!) and I have some practice A+ and Net+ exams that are designed to run under Windows but I spend so little time in XP these days that I'd practice more often if I had them running in Linux. Thanks for the advice. Jon

Have you tried a large Magnet

I'm guessing from what you say there that its possible to use some of the code or functions in a regular installation of Win98 to enhance Win4Lin. Is this markedly different from the scenario presented by Wine where you can set variables to point to existing 'True' Windows DLL's rather than the ones that Wine itself ship with? I don't really want to pay out for something that I would (with a lot of reading) have managed myself eventually.

I sometime use KDE coz it may have a configuration function I can't find it in the Gnome menus, and I haven't yet edited my menus, which is probably why I don't use IceWM or blackbox as much on this machine as I do on my older Pentium Debian box. Gnome is faster for me because all the stuff I need is right where I want it and I don't have to go chasing through Apps menus (I could make an effort to edit them!) and it seems to be a little lighter on the 1.3 Duron than KDE.

Quote: Once you purchase it, (around $90.00), the Win4Lin install is actually so easy it's almost no fun! Sounds like a dumb question, but I need to ask, do you need Windows licences or am I right in thinking that Win4Lin like Wine on steroids?

Quote: I've seen what Linux is like beyond Red Hat and there's nothing Red Hat or Fedora can do to make me want to go back, I'd be taking too much of a step backwards. There's a lot of drool on the floor here, I'd love to do the Gentoo jive, in fact I have a DVD with 1.4 on it sitting in front of staring at me with it's scary (you'd-better-get-someone-to-hold-your-hand-before-you-try-and-install-me) eye. Still the only thing that's stopping me is a spare machine, I've pretty much commited this one to experimenting with LTSP www.ltsp.org and there's a really 'simple to keep up with' branch of Fedora called k12LTSP that was all neatly packaged for schools initialy. Still I am probably being a bit Neanderthal about settling for the simple option, I should probably grow up and get a Distro that wll teach me to be a Man ;(

I have an old Pentuim 75, 6Gb, 64Mb, (not really workstation material, but that's not what I'm commenting on,) that I wanted to play around with. Being a fairly impatient sort I simply bunged a Knoppix CD in and installed the system to disk. Yesterday I did an apt-get with Synaptic that checked over 1000 packages - that's verging on system bloat! Point being that just about everything I needed to work with is there on that machine even though there are some tasks that would be murder to try and perform. Oh and in my fairly limited experience it's proved real smooth and stable (as expected.)

Very funny, but could it not have waited until April the First - for a really good giggle... Fedora is fabulous - agreed, but it's edge is in the baseline it provides. It might be great when all machines 'can' be Fedorised, ie when all packages needed by all people are available and maintained, but can isn't the same as should and some of the interesting parts of where Fedora should/is going next will develop out of the uses it is put to now. So if we all zip off immediately after our fresh install of the Fed. and add Frozen Bubble, maybe it's time for Redhat to push for more approved games. I figure that the dynamics of a forum like this is more valuable than taking the company line and blindly following where they lead. Jon

If I remember correctly the simplest thing is to open a terminal and type "redhat-config-language" this should give you the option to select which language you want to use by default if you already selected additional languages in the installation procedure. If only the current laguage shows in the dialog, you'll need to get the additional RPM's for full support of each language you need, this site has some useful information http://www.ficorp.com/linux_i18n.html It doesn't however mention Lithuanian! I think KDE makes the configuring of language support more like the faciliies used in Window$. In my Fedora setup, I simply right clicked on a clear patch on the menubar and added a special button > Preferences (or you can open Control center from the Menu and in the region settings define your preferred and alternate language support. then set up your keyboard and choose keyboard layouts to use with the languages you have chosen - if that's what you use... Hope that helps, all the best

Hi, I've been doing similar things recently, rather than throw my old machine out, I've been determined to make use of the old one as much as possible... The best solution I've come across so far is the Linux Terminal Server Project http://www.ltsp.org, but to make it easy, you should look at the high-school teacher oriented K12LTSP http://www.k12ltsp.org project which offers a regular Fedora Distribution (3-4 disks that can be downloaded as ISO's) and in the setup pages there is an extra option for installing a network server offering services to satellite machines. This of course is suitable for the majority of home users too, I guess a home version would only need a name change! It took a little bit of setting up and some reading, but I was upgrading from Red-Hat 9 anyway. Both machines now behave pretty much the same, the slow one is still slower, but while there is sometimes a noticable lag (there are a few things to tweek still) I can continue with most of my usual jobs, while my son fires away with Frozen Bubble or Bob the Builder's website(flash) using the faster machine. This means I don't have to FTP files around, and if I really want to and only if I'm set up to use SSH, I can log in as root, which I suppose I might do if my three year old is being a bit crazy while I attempt to rebuild the kernel. The distro is solid enough and with apt-get and Synaptic is appropriate for beginners. I have just downloaded a recent build of Wine http://www.linuxcompatible.org/story24516.html and need to get hold of Webmin http://www.webmin.com which I tend to use for most things, even writing ISO's to disk - I shouldn't be so lazy! P.S. also tried clusterKnoppix http://bofh.be/clusterknoppix/ where you bung a CD in your server machine and then the client (if it has the right nuts and bolts) will boot over the network off of the server and become part of the processor - ie: build a cluster see http://www.mosix.org/ Mosix for more information - may be a bit advanced in this instance. Oh and back to your other question Allen, ...connected my preferred system to the cable modem through the USB on the motherboard, and plugged the older system, through etherlink, into the etherlink card in my new system. Will this not work...or do I need a router...? LTSP if you choose it will by default set up two networks eth0 and eth1, Eth0 would be your connection to the outside world, change this in the network configuration to something like /dev/usb/SO4(or a symlink to /dev/usb/modem) and the other (eth1) will be the internal, trusted ethernet connection to the client, normally the first one of these is called eth0. I have absolutely no experience with a cable modem, (although I'm happy to note that downloading 3-4 ISO's should be a breeze ) however in your Gnome menu there may well be an internet connection setup link or network configuration script which should enable you to configure both of these connections. You shouldn't need a router, but you will need to make sure that you are using a crossover cable instead, (bit fiddly to make your own, I found about three different options and had no good connections until I used a router.) and you can buy very cheap routers these days - check out http://www.ebuyer.com I hope that helps and my appologies if it covers stuff you already know. All the best, Jon.