Diving in!

[langobard]

Hullo, all.

I spent the last six months or so fighting and fighting and fighting to keep my W8 install stable.  I have formerly used Ubuntu/Mint for my desktop (in my "I'm giving up gaming so I can FOCUS!" stages... which only ever last 3-6 weeks at best), but always went back.  Now I'm actually at a point in my life where the vast majority of my gaming happens on the tabletop and the rest of my time is dedicated to work and education (going back to school after a two-year hiatus where I got myself together from the messy idiot I was - now I'm a somewhat clean idiot).  The only games I really play anymore are strategy (Civ!) and currently D3 with my partner.

Anyway, I finally gave up when my W8 installation updates committed seppuku for the fifth time in three months and I started having to play peekaboo with my data HDD.  I did some research, wanted to find a linux distro that would be lightweight, low footprint, and serve as a jump-point for me to learn a lot more about just about everything.  I debated for a while between VL and Arch, but decided to go this route - the community and culture being pretty big pros for me.

So here I am, about as wet behind the ears as I can be, trying to learn what I can learn and contribute (eventually) where I can.

When I get home, I am going to accidentally crash my box 5-6 times trying to add 32-bit libraries and applications since I installed VL64 7.0.  Kinda looking forward to it. (If there's a better tutorial/walkthrough than http://alien.slackbook.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=slackware:multilib please let me know.  I couldn't find anything VL-specific with my weak google-fu.

-V/R

Langobard

[overthere]

Welcome to the forum 

[langobard]

Thanks!

I am looking forward to this - chewing my way through any/all documentation I can view from work.

[overthere]

Here's to good digestion
cheers

[wigums]

well i can mention quite a few decent "books" to read and learn.

rute is a great all inclusive and sometimes over-my-head guide to linux

http://linux.2038bug.com/rute-home.html

and of course the slackware documentation (vector is a slackware based distro after all)

http://slackbook.org/

 and the slackwiki (my personal fav)

http://www.slackwiki.com/Main_Page

and of course vectors forums and irc channel which is at irc.freenode.net  #vectorlinux


happy learning!!! and never be afraid to ask a question. many of these guys/gals are extremely knowledgable and quite friendly

[langobard]

Thanks for the wealth of info, Wigums! I'm a pretty voracious reader with a break between reading materials, so I intend to be going through as much as I can over the next couple of weeks.  I'm never afraid to ask the stupid questions - and I probably will ask a lot of questions as I go along - because I'd rather learn the answer than waffle about it in private.

Tackling my ATI drivers, then x86 libs/WINE on my VL64 install.

[hata_ph]

Welcome

BTW, VL does not provide multilib capabilities directly but alienbob's multilib packages do work with VL 7.0 64bit. You can install the multilib version of gcc and glibc at http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/VL64-7.0/multilib/ via gslapt/slapt-get (which is of course copied from alienbob) .

[langobard]

Thanks, hata_ph!

I've managed to install the libs et al, and I added compat32pkg as well - now I am trying to figure out step 2 (ATI drivers -> WINE/PlayOnLinux).

I have been active for t<1 day, and I'm already convinced by the community I have made the right choice for a main-computer distro.

[wigums]

what makes vector so nice is the community   

[langobard]

I am probably buying an Acer C720 (chromebook) and throwing VL7.0 on it for school.  I am just going to have to convince my partner to let this happen, that's all - should be easy, right?

[wigums]

i guess it depends on your partner....vl and linux in general is fairly easy to learn, especially just for web browsing and simple online games and such

[sledgehammer]

I am probably buying an Acer C720 (chromebook) and throwing VL7.0 on it for school.  I am just going to have to convince my partner to let this happen, that's all - should be easy, right?

langobard, if you do this, and it works, would you tell us what you did and how you did it?  I have an acre chrombook and want to keep the google os and add VL to it.

[langobard]

Wigums: It's more a matter of convincing her to let me have yet another toy that I will tinker on and play with until the sun comes up six nights a week.   It only costing $200 USD brand new is definitely a selling point though... And (hopefully) I only have to fight the install battle once.  I have been getting smarter with each attempt to use VL on my desktop, after all.

Sledgehammer: Absolutely! Three times over, yes, yes, and yes.  I will probably be nixing the Chrome OS for myself (probably...), but I imagine it shouldn't be terribly hard to dual boot them.  I really need a simple reliable portable machine for doing all my schoolwork - grabbing a cheap chromebook and putting VL on it seems an ideal solution.

Also note that all things are possible given enough frustrated energy and dedication.

[langobard]

Sidenote: I finally managed to get VL64 7.0 and 7.1 installed on separate partitions on my box - and apparently 7.1 lost GLIBC_2.14 somehow and is now unuseable.

Luckily, I was able to log in once (with my partner watching) and cheer about how I had made a great step forward, etc etc.  She didn't see it all go to the handbasket post-reboot.  I have no idea (yet) what caused this.  Digging as I go.

[overthere]

The Arch wiki warns that entering developer mode will wipe all your data but I do not know if this includes the os or just saved data. If it is just saved data then entering dev mode so you can get to the legacy bios to get a boot menu will allow you to boot the usb port thus boot a usb linux, saving the installed system?

I read  somewhere that there is no linux support for the mouse so you would have to use a usb mouse.

VL live does not offer persistance so saved data would not be possible via usb runs but a better test prior to install.

edit: found couple of relative links

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Acer_C720_Chromebook

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=acer_c720_linux&num=1