Date: 2008-11-02 11:52:02 Created: null
Lately things haven't worked the way I want in Red Hat the times I've booted it. The main problem being a certain unwillingness of X (that's the graphics server, that gives you anything that isn't a command line) to start at all. Since I got Red Hat 8 for Bonnie and still had the ISO files sitting around on Pigbox it wasn't too hard a decision to upgrade a bit ...
Palmnotes made during install ...
Which is easier, installing LiteStep or a modern Linux? Very hard to say ... The only thing that really makes Linux more difficult than Windows to a beginner is that Windows is there first, and most people prefer to keep it around. That might even be a sort of benefit to Linux, distro installers have learnt to deal with the problem in as user-friendly ways as possible. Knowing how to present complicated stuff to people without scaring them off can't be anything but good.
I picked a /boot partition smaller than recommended, we'll see what happens ... Last time I looked in 7.1 it wasn't even near full. No complaints so far anyway ...
If you're the slightest bit geeky you'll like Anaconda more than any old Windows installer. All the options you want, and plenty of automation and instructions if you're feeling uncertain.
Everything's coming along perfectly, my one question is how and if I'll be able to get both monitors going. I don't think it's impossible by any means, and I won't be surprised if it's really easy either. I just don't expect it, to avoid needless frustration :-) ...
Right, we're installed, rebooted and fetching updates. About to log in as soon as that's done ...
Hmmm, may not be that soon, plenty of updates to get ... Maybe I should take a walk to Willys while that's being worked on ...
End of Palmnotes ...
Everything finished without problems, except I get no sound (just like Bonnie!) and haven't figured out how to get multimonitor support working. I still don't think it's impossible, because Red Hat detects both video cards without any problems, but I haven't figured out yet. Clues are welcome!
March 9th 2003, 12:17
Wow, it only took a few hours to get the knowledge and courage to the multi monitors working at least as good as in Windows! Support for it was built right in, like so many other things, but apparently nobody has fixed a graphical frontend for the process. The Xinerama howto I've linked held all the information I needed, all you need to bring is a little courage to edit your config files. I managed to get it working without ruining anything, and that's a new record for me in Linux :-) ...
When the big screen first came on (it's the secondary one, so it's the one that started off) it was at the right resolution, but at a horrible 60 Hz. I thought I'd be stuck with that at least for a while since I couldn't find any information about setting the refresh rate in the howto. However, I noticed the setting "viewport" in the example configurations. Including it for the relevant resolution(s) did the trick, and the screen came on with a lovely 85 Hz!
Okay, when I think about it I can't be 100% sure it's the viewport that did it. I did update the monitor information with some more correct values for horizontal and vertical scan. The previous ones weren't wrong though, just a little lower max values.
So, after just 24 hours all that remains of issues is the lack of sound, and that's not annoying me half as much as squinting at a 14 inch monitor when a 17 inch one is sitting right next to it ...