OK Computer plays from my CDRW drive as I write this. I’m using Windowmaker, which I haven’t touched since Red Hat 5.2. I ::heart:: wmaker. I forgot just how amazingly wonderful it is. I’ve got my iBook on my desk to my right, and I check it every 30 minutes or so for new e-mail.
I’m sure I paint a lovely image of computer geekery . . . but I’m booted into Knoppix 3.3, because somehow I hosed my login thingy (gdm, I think?) over the weekend. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the kde 3.2 install I did, but I’m not exactly sure. All I know right now is that my /home partition is safe, as are all the Just A Geek and Dancing Barefoot files within said partition. I’m pretty confident that I can boot into runlevel 2 and fix it . . . but holy shit, man, I’ve been running Knoppix for . . .
knoppix@ttyp0[knoppix]$ uptime
23:05:52 up 11:05, 0 users, load average: 0.11, 0.30, 0.25
twenty-three hours eleven hours. (Yes, I realize what a total lameass I am. Here’s my cap, my pocket protector, and my sliderule. But you can have my polyhedral dice when you pry them from my cold, dead hands . . . provided I fail my saving throw, of course), and it’s awesome. Because I’m running Knoppix out of RAM, it’s moving at transwarp speed. If you’ve even shown the tiniest hint of geekery in your life, you owe it to yourself to give Knoppix (or any LiveCD, really) a go.
So the burning question is: do I get to a free spin on my propeller cap because I’m doing this from a live CD, using my CDRW drive to play an audio CD, and seriously looking at Gentoo, (The idea of a linux distro that’s optimized just for my machine is so alluring to me, and I’ve spent several hours looking at Gentoo’s site tonight) or do I lose 5d12+10 nerd points for not spending the last 23 11 hours tracking down the problem and fixing it?
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Wil,
I don’t have a clue of what you are talking about, but you always put a smile on my face.
Keep it up.
Amanda
Gentoo is cool, but be forewarned. You will have to dedicate at least one full day to get the base system compiled. Tack on at least another day to get X and KDE working. It is cool, but you will have to wait.
The learning curve is not that steep, but waiting for EVERYTHING to compile from source takes a looooong time.
?????????????????????????????????????????????!!!(cue “Lost In Translation” music)
Gentoo offers a lot of pre-compiled packages and a stage 3 install to get you up and running quickly. As far as it bieng unstable, I run various servers, desktop, and laptops with it and don’t have problems. Besides, as other posters have said, try various distros out… I have and kept coming back to Gentoo because it lets you have firm control over what you run. Nothing says you have to upgrade your apps every day, but it sure makes it easy to keep on top of security patches..
Dan
Nope, you are not a geek for using your Knoppix disk all day long to just fart around.
I use a Mini-knoppix 180 mini CD in my computers at work when I get the chance to boot it during class (I am a middle school teacher) so that I can get away from Windows from time to time. At least the eighth graders are interested!
Scott
Wil, I am new at this computer stuff and did not
understand a word you said but I love reading your comments. I am thrilled to be able to talk to a movie star.
Have you ever been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans?
You and Anne and the kids would LOVE it. This year it is Feb. 24; in 2005 it is Feb. 8. Mark your calendar.
Live long and prosper! ! !
Freeman.
gentoo doesn’t become truly cool until you have about 10 fast machines on a network running distcc like we do at work – distcc farms out the compile jobs across the network, reducing builds to actually waiting for network latency.
translation: if you thought watching code fly past was cool before, you ain’t seen nuthin
Google News Alert coughed up the following:
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17810
I think we should help Annalee get a grip.
Hmm. Funny you should go on about Gentoo. I’ve always been a Mandrake fan. I decided to give it (Gentoo) a try on Monday, but I decided to try for uber-geekiness, and do a stage one install. DAMN. On a P3 500, the bootstrap took something like 5 hours (or thereabouts, I wasn’t watching it all the time).
I’m going to start building ‘system’ soon.
Should hopefully have this sucker running sometime next week. *grin*
One day at a time…
I am new to UNIX/LINUX stuffies, but in my UNIX class we are running Knoppix 3.3. It is pretty nifty. My only complaint is that my damn HP goes all wonky when I try to get online with Knoppix. I have to open the shell & make it recommunicate with the network. Every freakin’ time! It’s uber dumb.
I know it’s been said before, but to add to it, oh man, gentoo is AWESOME, I love emerge!
gVeloper
“or do I lose 5d12+10 nerd points for not spending the last 11 hours tracking down the problem and fixing it?”
The mere fact that you worry about it keeps you all nice and nerdy.
Glen
Wil,
Maybe you should start your own country or language. I did not know you and your computer were that tight. Be careful or you may make the rose and the kids jealous.
FG
Wil, you wrote that you thought that KDE messed up your ability to log in; that should not be the case. It may have messed-up graphical login, but you can always login from a tty (or, if you use devfs, a vc) and run startx. Anyway, root should be able to restart gdm or whatever that service is called. I don’t use it: I’m an LFS geek who prefers the command line whenever practicable, so if you’d like LFS help, please feel free to contact me… (I’m assuming that you can read the personal info that I enter even if no one else can.)
Not to be overly-picky, but there is one slight problem with your transwarp analogy: while your OS might be very fast, there is still the minor problem that the speed of calculations is limited by the speed at which electrons can oscillate, which is less than c, so full impulse power would be more appropriate.
wow. i have no idea what that entire post was about. except the ok computer bit. that i did get.
and i thought i was a geek. i got all excited when i heard star wars was being released on dvd. then i heard it was the spec ed only, so that made me sad.
wil, my wife thanks you …
Dude, Wil, IMHO, avoid Gentoo. It takes a hella long time to install. Why not just install Knoppix from the CD?
http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/HdInstallHowTo
You’ll pretty much have Debian unstable, and the joys of apt-get, including:
su -c “apt-get update && apt-get upgrade”
Oh and one more thing: Backup, backup, backup before you do anything else!
Wil,
knoppix is the greatest .. I give it away to everyone who has a hint of Linux interest.
Might I suggest a try of SuSE Pro 9? it’s wonderful .. and the people are nice.
I won’t try Gentoo JUST becuase the guys I met from Gentoo last year at Linux World were the rudest people there I had met. If you weren’t one of their little group of fanboys then they really didnt want to talk to you.
Mandrake 10 final will be out in less than 10 days. With KDE 3.2 final and 2.6.2 Linux Kernel.
Take a look!
Ay, Senor Wil!! Siempre cuando hablas de las computadores me dejas confuso. When you habla about computers you confuse me! Why do you talk about computers with such a passion that should only be reserved for the lovely muchachas?! You should be spending more time with your senorita than fooling around all day on the computer. Gentoo,Knoppix-ay caramaba! When will the madness end? Vaya con Dios,Senor Wil! Buena Suerte in your search for whatever it is your trying to explain in today’s post.
WIL! Go with Gentoo!! If you need any help you can hit me up for it. I am a huge Gentoo user. Gentoo smacks up other distros.
Dave, I met those same people at Linux World, and I found them to be friendly and approachable.. Maybe you caught them at a bad time. All I know is that their little booth was *Mobbed*. And really, at a trade show, everybody’s tempers can get frayed. It is a really rough place to gauge people.
Dan
Wil,
Long time reader, first time poster. I have been using Gentoo for almost two years now. I will never go to any other distro. As far as some of the other people said about spending more time updating than using…Rubbish…If you want to be on the bleeding, bleeding then yes there are a lot of updates. I have a server I update every six months, aside from misc. security updates. And I have never had a problem with it. I saw go for it dude…As others have offered help I offer it to. The Gentoo community is unlike any other. People are nice, helpful and knowledgable. Good luck..
Jake
*looks at Wil with wide eyes*
I have no idea what you just said.
Like …. all of it.
And I thought I was quite a computer nerd.
Oh hey, I’ll just quickly blame it on the language barrier to make me feel smart again *holds up the “I’m German” sign*.
XXX
You don’t lose 5d12+10 geek points for not fixing the problem, just for using an iBook. 😛
/Never did like Apple 😛
Debian is da bomb! I have been using it for ages, apt-get is a godsend. Love it! They are working on a new installer if you can’t stomach the current one.
Though any system with real package management and dependency handling is a treat. 🙂
-steve
I really don’t understand why everyone raves about apt-get when Mandrake’s urpmi is just as good. All Mandrake’s GUI does is run urpmi in the background. I haven’t had an rpm problem for a very long time, and even used urpmi to update from 9.1 to 9.2 without any problems.
Wow, random google on gentoo leads to your page, Wil. Surprisingly… appropriate. Very nice, congrats on the site and surviving the beating it sounds like you took over a few lines given to you in your TNG role. (?)
As for opening the door to platform wars (living dangerously, eh?), I agree that if you can stick with gentoo for a few weeks (actual build not livecd) you’ll probably love its flexibility and top-notch community. Any problem you encounter is usually already dealt with reasonably and competently in the forums. They’re great at teaching you how to fish (i.e. you could probably come up to speed on fixing gdm — or emerging wdm for ‘thematic consistency’ — within an hour easy). Guaranteed to reduce lost nerd points in two weeks or your money back! (hmm… is that a perm +4 WIS bonus to AC? Or a ‘Tomb of Exceptional Linux Sysadmin’ level 9? Ooo, or maybe… uh, sorry. nm.)
Besides, I’ve noticed a strange correlation between people that love the simplicity and speed of WindowMaker also loving gentoo. Myself included of course, but I’ll try the knoppix livecd as suggested.
After all, if we weren’t interested in at least a little geeky exploration underneath the windows and desktop, we’d all run OS X and live a stable, stress-free, drag-and-drop existence, right?
Cough — hack Argh! BTW, no worries on lost nerd points ever (you owe me a non-coffee spewed keyboard, tho). Just noticed http://www.williamfuckingshatner.com indeed… For some reason THAT is damned funny!
Wil,
Give Gentoo a try!
It can be a little tricky (and time consuming) to install but once you are up and running it is the easiest linux distro to maintain and update, not to mention the speed boost you get from building software with all the optimizations for your systems specific architecture.
Plus you feel a great sense of accomplishment after you install Gentoo for the first time (bonus geek points)!
I was a freebsd geek before i discovered Gentoo – i’ve stuck with Gentoo for nigh on two years.
No OSS/free software package system is updated faster!
Also, the Gentoo community forums are second to none for linux/OSS/free software related assistance.
Let me know how it goes!
– Mark.
I use Gentoo, it’s great. Just be careful uninstalling packages, as the dependency checking for unemerging things is shaky (although it does good dependency checking when you emerge).
Hey . . . check out the uptime now:
knoppix@ttyp0[tmp]$ uptime
19:38:00 up 6 days, 5:20, 0 users, load average: 1.01, 0.74, 0.36
Regarding the problem with your login: did you have your OS execute a Yeager Loop? Just wondering.
Read the Da Vinci Code, incredible!
Gentoo rocks. No, wait… GENTOO ROCKS! 😉
Although, it’s still less cool than Slackware, but that’s how it goes. Wheras Gentoo can be fast, once optimized and configured right, Slack just is fast. It works. It’s good stuff, man.
And as for fixing the problem….well, lose those nerd points, yo. Keep that up and you’ll be non-geeky in no time, for shame.
—FF7—
Sup
Was searching for something and
followed a Google link to here out of curiousity.
Gentoo rox.. this is an older blog post, not sure if you managed to get it installed.
It’s well worth the effort. You learn more of tux with gentoo than any other distro.
I am running it on a couple boxen. Portage is the best thing since sliced-bread.
I am not a fan of KDE or Gnome, so I am running fluxbox
wm. Lean and mean.
There are multiple resources for gentoo, including the irc channel I hang in ( we’ve managed to convert quite a few to gentoo) irc.freenode.net #linuxforums.
Anyway, back to my Googling.
L8r
If you haven’t already tried Gentoo by now – kill two birds with one stone… get the latest (and first reliable) release of CoLinux from http://www.colinux.org/ which is a Gentoo system that runs as a Windows process – *no* emulation or virtualization overhead. Takes 10 seconds to boot to a command line, uses only 10Mb of ram to get there, and the Windows task manager shows 99% idle. It’s basically the same technology as uml (user mode linux – http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/ ) but hosted under Windows. This is a better option than a Live CD because you can run the two OSes at the same time, pretty much as equals. It beats vmware or virtual PC because it isn’t hogging the CPU when the linux system is idle. (Microsoft hacked that problem in Virtual PC by adding proprietary extensions – but only to windows systems – run a lunux under VPC and it takes a considerable number of cycles away from the host…)
It’ll test your geek skills getting it online though, it isn’t packaged yet for a trivial installation. I wouldn’t start on it until a Friday evening if I were you 🙂