Hi !
I'm about to reinstall linux on my at-home notebook and I found vector linux via a websearch on fast linux. I am especially interested in very fast KDE. I read some reviews, which mostly spoke highly of the distro. I've read all over the VL site and did some searching in this forum and there is not much information. I'm also considering ArchLinux + KdeMod, PCLinuxOS, openSUSE, and Sabayon.
I got the frugalware-20070928-x86_64-net.iso -- md5 is good, burned a CD, rebooted said laptop and.... nothing. The cd-rom cycled a number of times then the bios went to the HD and started up kubuntu. Said notebook is a sony vaio sz220. Dual core pentium 1.8G. This is a fairly new system with plenty of ram so the hardware should be a limiting factor. (see lspci output at end of post) But it is not "too new", like the latest Dell's and whatnot, with unsupported hardware. The only trick with this one is the 1280x800 resolution, but it works with ubuntu's i810 xorg install.
Next, I boot to command line and mount the CD. With some of the on-line help here, I went ahead with fumbling around to do:
Direct ISO on a Linux Host
If you have another Linux running on the computer, this method will be easy. You need to download the following files into a directory (e.g: /home/download):
* The chosen VectorLinux ISO image file.
* vlinstall-iso
Find it as “install/vinstall/vinstall-iso” within the FTP site
Now go to the text console (press Cntrl-Alt-F1) and login as root. Proceed as follows:
* Switch to run level 2 (or 3 in Slackware/Redhat, etc)
init 2 <enter>
* Go to the directory where you downloaded the files, i.e.: /home/download
cd /home/download<enter>
* Now, install using the ISO file
./vinstall-iso vl-5.0.iso <enter>
The fumbling around consisted of: create iso image from cd into and copy the vinstall-so script to ~root/vinstall.
Then it thought I wasn't root, so I changed the test in the script to:
if [ `whoami` = root ]; then
return 0
fi
Next it didn't like run level 1 (I found the above instructions after the fact) so I init 2. Now the script executes but leaves me at a strange place...
echo "WARNING: these partitions are mounted:"
mount | grep -e '^/dev'
cat <<EOF
They will be excluded from installation process.
If you intend to use any of them for /, /home, etc.,
please cancel then umount them using this command:
umount <the_partition>
Press <enter> to continue or <Ctrl>-<Break> to cancel.Well, yeah, / and /home are mounted, duh, we're at run level 2...
Without knowing what could happen next, I quit. I intend to reuse /home as-is, so I don't know if I should unmount it or leave it be. root on /? who cares, it's gone.
I'm not a newb, but while some of my cli foo is quite amazing, there are some aspects which I am not very good at. Maybe there is something easy I am not doing? I can install and reinstall *buntu family of OS in about 20 minutes and retaining the /home means you may not otherwise notice once logged in. I mostly use computers for e-mail and office work, but I do a bit of web/ db/ php/ perl/ programming and am curious about the potential for more speed with vector x86_64 versus kubuntu x86_64. Once I get to a stable place with my computer(s), I tend to never change things. I don't do eye candy (beryl, compiz, etc)
I'd appreciate some suggestions about things to do to get vector running; I'd love to have a bootable CD but am a little confused by all the ISOs. I still would love to try out vector linux ... and depending on how it goes, I may migrate all our computers to it...
Thanks!
Chris
.
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00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller IDE (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8036 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 15)
05:04.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 Cardbus Controller
05:04.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCIxx12 OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
05:04.2 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments 5-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS PRO/xD)
