Middleburgh Linux'd Out

I have now installed and run different flavours of LINUX, on

• an internal hard drive
• an external USB hard drive
• assorted USB flash drives
• and even an SD card

Lest Old Friends Be Forgot

A year ago I installed Damned Small Linux onto a USB flash drive. Unfortunately I didn't think it lived up to its’ reputation, no doubt due to the fact that I had difficulty connecting to the internet using WIFI, which is my preferred method at home, where I have access to 4 IBM ThinkPads of different vintages. The techies at work had prewarned me that my biggest challenge would be finding one Linux version with the necessary drivers for all of them.

Rising to this challenge I burned a Xubuntu 8.04 Live CD and installed it onto a PC internal disk. The installation went like a dream without any connectivity problems etc. This experience has somewhat spoiled me but did vindicate my choice of “distro” which had been based on four considerations:

• the size of (Ubuntu) user base, the argument being that it was likely to have been field tested on a wide range of hardware (including all of mine!!) and any bugs found and fixed.
• the quality of online documentation and user forum(s): ie there were resources available to consult as needed to resolve any issues.
• the frequency of upgrades: an indicator of support commitment to the “distro”.
• UI/size/performance: The 4 PC's I was proposing to use are all old and under resourced; No point in loading a mega sophisticated system which runs like the horse I backed for this years’ Melbourne Cup!

Not that I didn't have issues:

• I was particularly miffed that I could not get any of my webcams working. The problem was that none were supported by the standard Unix driver or other alternatives. (and the moral of the story was checkout which webcams work before buying any)
• I also got frustrated when I tried to remove items from the XFCE menu created through Wine until I tripped over a fix almost by accident on a user forum.
• And on one PC I had difficulty getting the sound card working: Fortunately I found an excellent site for ThinkPad/Linux support and another for "old" Thinkpad specifications.

Sticks & Moans

I was sufficiently impressed by Xubuntu to try loading it on a 2GB flash drive. Although more rewarding than DSL it only encouraged to look at some other ”distros” - about 20 in fact.

I came to the conclusion that Linux “distros” are rather like kit cars. In the same way that different kit cars are built over a standard production chassis and use standard running gear and engines, distros are build over an independently maintained Linux kernel and have standardized desktops such as Gnome, KDE,XFCE etc. The finished products ,like kit car models, however are all different reflecting the different visions and agendas of the various “distro” developers.

Xubuntu is a derivative of Ubuntu which is itself a derivative of Debian. A search using Distrowatch's "based on" search shows the Ubuntu is one of two major linux versions which have spawned most “distros”. The other is Slackware.which was developed by Patrick Volkerding in 1992 and is the oldest surviving Linux distribution. A year ago I tried out Slax which is a minimalist implementation of slackware. I actually prefered Nimblex, discovered through the Slax forum: In particular I liked it's configurator(shame about the version) and its’ comprehensive modules list.

Slax modules are application packages and to work all dependent components are required. Unapproved modules are frequently incomplete or contain incompatible components.(easy to test though!!) On the Slax site only approved modules were searchable and the administrator had taken it upon himself to be the official approver and bottleneck. Notwithstanding common sense has prevailed and there are several lists cited in the Slax forum which document modules including those unapproved.

Two richer slackware “distros” which are simple to install to a USB stick mention note:Vectorlinux which is more up to date, and Wolvix.I was very tempted to adopt VectorLinux as preferred USB solution but in the end (because it was the soft option) I gravitated back to Ubuntu “distros” and installed

• Xubuntu 8.10 using apendrivelinux installer .This supports persistence .(means you can save updates) I did however manage to corrupt the system by using the update manager to apply security updates. (I think this may have been due to the limited size of the USB drive)
• CrunchBang Linux which also based on ubuntu 8.10. It arguably is even "lighter" than Xubuntu using a Fluxbox UI. unfortunately currently there is no equivalent installer for making it persistent - although it has been suggested as a candidate to the pendrivelinux team.

I also installed Parted Magicwhich is a tool kit to manage disc partitions etc on my old 64MB USB drive: it proved its’ worth when I used it to fix up a USB hard drive install that had gone of the rails.

Back to Basics

Because of the challenges associated with persistence and alleged issues about running an operating system off of USB flash drive (ie speed and limited life - number read/ write actions?) I decided to install Linux on an external USB hard drive (well why not! –after all I had just installed to both a normal hard drive and a USB flash drive. I followed these pendrivelinux instructions with 2 small but significant variations:

• I didn't disconnect my existing hard drive (I was just very VERY careful to confirm which was target drive by running "fdisk -l" with drive both connected/mounted and disconnected/unmounted)
• I didn't use the guided option to partition/resize disk space. - I used the manual option: (and the reason was I kept getting boot errors when I did use the guided option. It took me a while to realise that I wasn't doing anything wrong and that the problem was the disc formatting correctly: Since I used a new 110GB disc the presumption was that it was a bad disk. In fact I read posts where others had had the same problem including one guy who said he had gone through and binned a box full of "bad" drives. The only problem was that when I formatted it using windows and ran diagnostic tools against it there were no problems. Moreover I could partition and format with "Parted Magic" after which Linux disk checking utilities showed it was ok too. However when I did the install using either of the guided disc format options the disk was corrupted. I found that if I used the manual option and only used 30MB (same as the internal hard drive install) I had no problems. I formatted the rest of the drive as a FAT32 partition. I emailed the guy with the “bad disks” asking if he would send them to me - he didn't reply !!)

I also discovered like others, that I had problems with GRUB which appeared to get very confused where it was loading from especially when the internal disk held a copy of Linux. I can't actually remember how I fixed this other than the resource used was here!

And They Said It couldn't Be Done!!

For completeness I installed and tested the “distro”s on a 2GB SD card. I used Syslinux to load boot member and make the card active. I copied the files from the USB drives and then tried to boot using a USB card reader. One PC declined to recognise the card as bootable. Some of the “distros” didn't boot properly due to file formats or because the Xserver didn't start. Several including Crunchbang did load although on 1 PC there was a problem with the WIFI connection dropping - This I believe was due to the device contention on WIFI card which according to the TAWBook was a strange dual combocard..

The Screen Saver

A question posed on one Linux site went as follows : You've loaded Linux, played with the screen saver .... now what? And the answer is go play with thecheat sheets and/or go get certifiedAnd If you read this far perhaps you should( be) ??

Labels: Middleburgh London UK "Hong Kong" Ireland

Posted at 12/31/2008 09:42:00 pm by David Middleburgh   Permalink

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