Linux Adventures Reloaded!

[Hammer]

I've had XP Blue Screen.

Check your hardware drivers if you have a NT’s BSOD i.e. WinXP (pre-SP2)doesn't apply memory protection on drivers.
With SP2, memory protection will be applied on network related infrastructure.  

You'll notice that XP loads seemingly exponentially faster than Win2K. They're fundamentally the same OS, so how could this be?

Note that there are some difference between NT 5.1 and NT 5.0. With Windows XP (NT 5.1), it speeds up system boot by observing the code and data needed each time the system is booted and prefetching the necessary file contents early in the boot process. This particular prefetching scheme doesn’t not occur until the third boot of the system, or when sufficient information is available to make the prefetching most effective.

 Well, when you boot XP, it pulls up the login as quickly as possible and then loads all of the internal system crap and drivers after you've logged in (or, more accurately, after the login is displayed - all that stuff will load if you leave the machine at the login prompt).

It doesn’t load all of drivers during after Login prompt i.e. NTLDR looks for drivers that are marked as "boot". NTLDR is after the NT's kernel load(NTOSKRNL.exe). In another words, core services is loaded at boot time.  

Type in "/NOGUIBOOT" and "/sos" switch in boot.ini(as shown below). This causes NT Loader (NTLDR) to show the names of modules while NT devices load.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINXP
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINXP="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NOGUIBOOT /sos

[ottomobiehl]

but if you build your own then it's not bloatware.

Could you put up some links to where you could "roll your own" linux distro.  I am still a newbie on that and I have an old 120mhz pentium that I want to be able to play around with using linux.

Thanks in advance.
 :-)

[macto]

The easiest way is to choose a Linux distribution which doesn't suffer from bloat in the first place.  Debian and Slackware will install a rather minimal system to begin with.  In the case of Debian, you may then use the package manager to build it up from there.  Of course, you can do the same with Slackware but your choices are more limited.  There are many other choices, but they are a bit off the beaten track so support will vary.  (Crux comes to mind, because they also support the PowerPC.)

Unless you are going for a specialty Linux distribution, which will be more difficult to setup and manage in most cases, you may get better performance out of FreeBSD, NetBSD, or OpenBSD.  I have a slight preference for FreeBSD because it is very well documented: just look at the FreeBSD handbook or FAQs and many of your answers will be questioned.  But FreeBSD doesn't support the PowerPC or 68k, so NetBSD and OpenBSD will be better alternatives if you want to experiment on your Ami or Mac.  :-D  For NetBSD and OpenBSD, a good minimal install is base and etc.  If you want a GUI, add most xbase, xfonts, xserver, and xshare.  Most of the fancy stuff will be in the ports collection, but there are a few other packages in the standard install which you may be interested in (development tools, text mode games, etc.).

If you really want to role your own, try Linux-from-Scratch.  It is time consuming, but you will learn a lot about Linux!

[lame_duck]

While I respect your option Macto, I have to say that FreeBSD is good, but limited. Game companies are starting to adopt linux which gives it a +5 usefulness in my book.  :-D

I do not reconmend Linux-from-scratch. To much crap for the "home" user and some seasoned users. For that I recommend Gentoo. Lots easyer and the community is great! Can't beat Debian linux for a nice, non-bloat distro that you don't have to compile everything for.

BTW, back in the day I used FreeBSD for a long time on my old 486. There was this "What OS is right for you?" thing on cnet.com and it sayed FreeBSD. So I got the boot floppy, took 2 days for download and install. Was great tho. How's things there latly?

[WarPiper]

DUDe, my pc is a1.4Ghz Amd t-bird, and I am running win 2k pro and mandrake 9.2 and I have never had a speed problem with linux, nor have I had crash/reset problems with windows 2k pro either (not sayin anything in support for any previous version of windows because they suck!) a crash/reset or memory dump of windows 2000 may be a indication of hardware problems.

[lame_duck]

Sorry about not responding sooner, net went down. Here is my past from two days ago that didn't make it.

ottomobiehl: Try Debian if you want a simple distro. What I mean by simple is it uses RPM, install package, to setup programs and services. Want something more custom and speedy try Gentoo. Great community and nice doc to help you. I tryed useing the newbie handbook to install my system, gave up, and used the advanced user quick install. Go figure, seemed easyer to be than 110 pages telling me the same thing.

Debian: http://www.debian.org/
Gentoo: http://www.gentoo.org/

Before you take the plung, look up what window manager you would like to use and try the 2.6 kernels.

Email me at jamie20ATgameboxDOTcom if you need help.

[Floid]

lame_duck wrote:
Sorry about not responding sooner, net went down. Here is my past from two days ago that didn't make it.

ottomobiehl: Try Debian if you want a simple distro. What I mean by simple is it uses RPM, install package, to setup programs and services. Want something more custom and speedy try Gentoo. Great community and nice doc to help you. I tryed useing the newbie handbook to install my system, gave up, and used the advanced user quick install. Go figure, seemed easyer to be than 110 pages telling me the same thing.

Debian: http://www.debian.org/
Gentoo: http://www.gentoo.org/

Before you take the plung, look up what window manager you would like to use and try the 2.6 kernels.

Email me at jamie20ATgameboxDOTcom if you need help.

Um, I'm sure you could use RPM with Debian, but from what I know, you'd be clinically insane to make that your modus operandi...

[Floid]

lame_duck wrote:
While I respect your option Macto, I have to say that FreeBSD is good, but limited. Game companies are starting to adopt linux which gives it a +5 usefulness in my book.  :-D

The 'Linuxulator' takes care of this pretty seamlessly, of course.  Had only one or two incompatibilities, one being with the PartyPack distribution of Elate, but that was patched way back in 4.x.

BTW, back in the day I used FreeBSD for a long time on my old 486. There was this "What OS is right for you?" thing on cnet.com and it sayed FreeBSD. So I got the boot floppy, took 2 days for download and install. Was great tho. How's things there latly?

Right now, things are 'good' but messy.  5.x is a long time coming, and a long time stabilizing... but I've been running 5.2(.1?) with a 64 day uptime, and few annoyances.  The only 'problem' is that 4.x was essentially on the road to perfection as far as user experience went, so now that 5 is the focus, there's still that little bit of regression and confusion.

DragonFly still looks like The One, but they're going to go ahead and declare a 1.0 without quite all the sugar that'd make it an obvious win for everyone.  (1.0 does seem to be about "we believe this is safe for people to try to run," but I'm not sure if anyone's daring to touch the packaging problem.  Kernel keeps getting More Magic(TM).)

[lame_duck]

You would be crazy but, I've had some success using it in the past, and it's the only RPM based distro, that I know of, where you can build a custom system with out most the bloat.

[Van_M]

Ok guys, that's gonna sound really LAME (I'm a lamer I admit it!)... I downloaded an archive of some good 20 codecs for mplayer but I don't know how to install them! should I just copy them into a certain directory or what? Please give me a hand :-)!
Thank you


/me np Royal Hunt -Tearing down the world

[Van_M]

BTW has anyone managed to run DC++ or Kazaa lite successfully on his/her Linux-Wine-x86 box? if yes, what's the trick? Which WINE package to use?