Linux woes (was Re: Learning Squeak)

John Hinsley jhinsley at telinco.co.uk
Thu Jan 24 04:03:05 UTC 2002


Tim Rowledge wrote:
> 
> Simon Michael <simon at joyful.com> is widely believed to have written:
> 
> > > Either or both of you are most welcome to fix my problems with getting
> > > things running decently on _my_ linux box :-)
> >
> > Whatcha got running over there ?

> RedHat 7.1. It was no fun whatsoever to install or get working. It
> doesn't install linuxconf, but does refer you to it to set things up. It
> doesn't make sounds for squeak - and the sndconfig program I was pointed
> to to try to fix that isn't there. Getting the network stuff to an
> acceptable state was a nightmare. A horrible experience all in all. I
> still can't make any sense out of how to install appletalk support.
> 
> I'm sure there's lots of good stuff in there but the annoyances
> outweigh the pleasures by a significant factor.

It really shouldn't be like that. Which version did you get?

You might like to try SuSE (get the professional version, AFAIK, the
"ordinary" version doesn't include any of the "real" networking stuff).
It's about 1/2 the price of the RedHacked equivalent and (shock, horror)
500+ pages of printed documentation and 90 days of free support. (The
support guys are excellent: they sent me 5 emails on trying to get a --
finally declared dead -- hard drive running). Or you can download and
burn it (given a _really_ fast connection). 

The only caveats I have are that it can be a swine to try and add new
packages when your version becomes too old (kernel and glib versions) to
match the stuff the development folk are using. Also, it's not the best
distro to use if you just want to pop together something small like a
router.

How to get Appletalk support configured in (on RedHat, although IKFAF
that the author has switched to SuSE) is discussed by old school perl
hacker Charlie Stross:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/linux/shopper/154.office-1.html
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/linux/shopper/155.office-2.html

albeit pretty briefly. But there is a pointer in there to the HOWTO
(netatalk?).

That should get you going.

Another great resource is just to go online to Linux Gazette and email
them your problem!

HTH

Cheers

John

-- 
"Eeek!" exclaimed Tigger, suddenly remembering that Pooh had explained
why it
was a bad idea to log on as root and do:
cd /
rm -r



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