[svlug] the continuing saga of the supercheap eMachines box;-)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Alex Martelli (aleaxit at gmail.com):

> Well, my experience _installing_ distros is limited and dated -- back  
> when I first got involved with Linux there was no such thing as a  
> "distribution", and in the last few years I've switched to Mac for my  
> personal use (basically for the same reasons my now-colleague, then- 
> Redhat-employee Chip Turner mentions at his blog <http://other- 
> eighty.blogspot.com/2005_12_01_other-eighty_archive.html> )

Ah.  I too like Macs:  They make great Linux boxes.  ;->  As does Mark Pilgrim:
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/02/when-the-bough-breaks 
(even though he says "Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning 'can't 
install Debian', http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/26/essentials-2006 
-- recommended.)"

> -- even though my income for the last several years has come mostly from  
> developing in and for Linux, I'm invariably using and programming for  
> machines which others have installed and tuned.  But while the Debian  
> installation experience on this box hasn't been flawless, it's still  
> been vastly more satisfatory than the alternatives I've tried,  
> particularly Ubuntu (a bit surprising and disappointing, given than I  
> consider Mark Shuttleworth as a friend:-).  And I doubt gentoo is the  
> distro you steer newbies too, hm?-)  [[Haven't tried gentoo --  
> perhaps I should add a "yet", or perhaps I shouldn't:-)]]

No, I don't -- but I wasn't going to say that, because I didn't want to
seem as if I were veering into distro-advocacy warfare.  (It's one thing
to say I'm a long-time Debian guy and steer unwary newcomers away from 
_Debian_; it's quite another to be one of those and bad-mouth Gentoo.  ;->  )

(Anyhow, welcome, fellow geezer.  When I started doing Linux installs,
SLS did exist, but I hadn't heard of it yet.) 

> Interesting!  Considering that everything IS installed now, what boot  
> parameter should I pass the kernel to see if this "alternative"  
> works?

Actually, what you'd want to do _post-installation_ is apt-get a 2.6
kernel package, and try booting from it with and without your USB
chipset enabled.  Let's talk for a moment about Debian's treatment of
kernels:  If you do "dpkg -l | grep kernel-image", I suspect you'll see
something like this (querying one of my systems):

ii  kernel-image-2.4.27-2-686      2.4.27-12                  Linux kernel image for version 2.4.27 on PPro

Note that the name of the above package is "kernel-image-2.4.27-2-686",
and the package version number is "2.4.27-12".  Regular maintenance
would fetch new versions of "kernel-image-2.4.27-2-686", perhaps with
security patches, but would not fetch, say, a 2.4.28 or later kernel
because the kernel-image-* package providing such a kernel is not
installed.

What I'm saying, in part, is that your Debian system can have multiple
kernel-image-* packages installed, and you can pick whichever one you
want to boot, and which one you want as a default, in your bootloader.

There are, in addition to kernel-image-* packages that track specific 
kernel releases, metapackages that _do_ take you to newer point-releases 
of kernels.  E.g., I could install in my system "kernel-image-2.4-686",
a metapackage that always at any given time resolves to the latest
"kernel-iamge-2.4.x-686" package available (highest valid value of "x").

Sucn metapackages exist for 2.6.x as well, and I note that there's a
kernel-image-2.6-k7 metapackage.  You might want to browse the package
catalogues (/var/lib/apt/*Packages) using your favourite apt front-end, 
e.g., aptitude -- or using less and grep, as I do.


> Thanks, but there are no occurrences of "zeroconf" on that page.   
> Perhaps you mean:
> http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Network_Other/zeroconf.html ?

Yeah, sorry -- and that's catalogued on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Network_Other/