Other Distros

[Colonel Panic]

Mike; I was using Xenial 7.5 XL for most of yesterday and if I had to I reckon I could easily stick to that one and use nothing else. It's got everything I really need.

[Billtoo]

I downloaded the Slackware 14.2 DVD and installed it to my 13 year old
HP desktop.
I added a few slackbuilds of favorite programs (mtpaint,geany,youtube-dl,
ltris).
It's working well.

[Colonel Panic]

Hi Bill,

I like Eric Hameleers's ' Alienware' Slackware spins. They're very similar to the official release but more up to date with the software. Here's a snapshot of my installation of Eric's Christmas release, with Mate installed as the desktop manager;

Mate works well with my installation of Slackware except that (as you might be able to see at the top left of the snapshot) there's no space between adjacent menu headings, a problem I'm hoping to find a solution to. I've generally struggled with slackbuilds in the past but may give them another go now.

[Billtoo]

Hi Bill,

I like Eric Hameleers's ' Alienware' Slackware spins. They're very similar to the official release but more up to date with the software. Here's a snapshot of my installation of Eric's Christmas release, with Mate installed as the desktop manager;

Mate works well with my installation of Slackware except that (as you might be able to see at the top left of the snapshot) there's no space between adjacent menu headings, a problem I'm hoping to find a solution to. I've generally struggled with slackbuilds in the past but may give them another go now.

Hi CP,

Thanks for the info, I'll give that a try.

I'm using the Slackware Current repository so it's up to date, it took a long time to update the first time with slackpkg (about 2 hours) but there were only a dozen or so updates this morning so that was only a couple of minutes.

They warn that with Slackware Current Repository you could break your install but okay so far.

[Colonel Panic]

You're welcome Bill. Here's the link in case you or anyone else is interested;

http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackw ... rrent-iso/

I think the approach you've taken is more economical than mine in terms of the number of Slackware isos you have to download and burn off, even if as you say there is a risk of the install breaking.

[Baldronicus]

Hi Nitehawk and all,

Please accept my apologies if I am butting in where I shouldn't.
I was wondering about your old HP Compaq desktop. Would it be an earlier Core2Duo? I am not trying to pry. It is just that I seem to recall that Intel were only going so far back with updating firmware (?) support for their processors after the Spectre/Meltdown stuff. Which, of course means that newer kernels may not be able to work on the older gear. I have an affected machine, which is why I mention it. It doesn't like Fatdog, Debian, Mageia or any other number of later distro releases I have tried on it, failing with a kernel panic. Earlier stuff, like Slacko 6.3.2 seemed fine, if I recall correctly. I can't remember if anyone found a workaround, or not.

[Edit 1- please ignore this. I am an idiot that knows that I shouldn't post off the top of my head, but can't seem to myself- I now think that the thread I was thinking of might have concerned graphics problems on newer machines and not this issue. Further, I don't think the Fatdog64-800 thread was the one I was thinking of. I hope I haven't sent anyone on a wild goose chase.]

I haven't pursued it as the machine I have is not a main one, and I just occasionally visit it to mess about.

[Edit 2- The affected machine my end is a HP Compaq dc5800 with an Intel Core2Duo E8400 processor. I don't know if that would be similar to your machine. It may not mean much, but I successfully tried booting MX18.3 live on a HP Compaq dc 7800p with an Intel Core2Duo E6750 a short time ago. It is a later machine and it's CPU is obviously in the supported range, not that it might help you much.]

Thanks, and, again, apologies [edit 3- for jumping in, getting the wrong end of the stick, and creating confusion. The description of the difficulties with newer releases just seemed so similar I couldn't help myself.]

[Colonel Panic]

Another good one, PCLinuxOS 2020.02, with the Trinity desktop environment (based on an older version of KDE) and featuring the Brave web browser (based on Chromium);

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)

Sorry that the image quality isn't great but I struggled to get the image size under 256 kb, and I sacrificed both size and (a little) image quality in Gimp to manage it.

[nitehawk]

Hi Nitehawk and all,

Please accept my apologies if I am butting in where I shouldn't.
I was wondering about your old HP Compaq desktop. Would it be an earlier Core2Duo? I am not trying to pry. It is just that I seem to recall that Intel were only going so far back with updating firmware (?) support for their processors after the Spectre/Meltdown stuff. Which, of course means that newer kernels may not be able to work on the older gear. I have an affected machine, which is why I mention it. It doesn't like Fatdog, Debian, Mageia or any other number of later distro releases I have tried on it, failing with a kernel panic. Earlier stuff, like Slacko 6.3.2 seemed fine, if I recall correctly. I can't remember if anyone found a workaround, or not.

[Edit 1- please ignore this. I am an idiot that knows that I shouldn't post off the top of my head, but can't seem to myself- I now think that the thread I was thinking of might have concerned graphics problems on newer machines and not this issue. Further, I don't think the Fatdog64-800 thread was the one I was thinking of. I hope I haven't sent anyone on a wild goose chase.]

I haven't pursued it as the machine I have is not a main one, and I just occasionally visit it to mess about.

[Edit 2- The affected machine my end is a HP Compaq dc5800 with an Intel Core2Duo E8400 processor. I don't know if that would be similar to your machine. It may not mean much, but I successfully tried booting MX18.3 live on a HP Compaq dc 7800p with an Intel Core2Duo E6750 a short time ago. It is a later machine and it's CPU is obviously in the supported range, not that it might help you much.]

Thanks, and, again, apologies [edit 3- for jumping in, getting the wrong end of the stick, and creating confusion. The description of the difficulties with newer releases just seemed so similar I couldn't help myself.]

So sorry! Just now saw your post (better late than never). Not sure exactly right now what my old rattle trap is ...but the sticker on the front says it is an Intel Core 2 duo. And it might be a dc5800 (getting old, forgetful)...I'd have to turn it upside down to see, and I'm using it right now

Anyhow,...It has 6gb ram, so just plain i386 distros like Antix work (but only recognize about half my ram. The latest UPupBB works, though (i386 with PAE). This old thing came used from Ebay with Windows Vista on it several years ago,....getting good use out of it with Puppy. Older version of Q4OS worked on it ...but the newest "Centurian" doesn't. I get Kernal Panics all over the place. My HP Pavilion dv2500 laptop uses both 64bit Puppy and Q4OS Centurian. (I'll let you know exactly what this old HP Compaq is in just a bit).

EDIT: Back from flipping my computer. Yep. This thing is one of those dreaded HP Compaq (small form factor) dc5800. Thank goodness for Bionic Puppy i386 PAE (nothing else really works). I have a couple of newer computers,...but somehow I prefer this one.
Older ones I have seem to like Puppy Phoenix (Puppy 431 remake).

[Baldronicus]

Hi Nitehawk,

Please accept my apologies for both delaying this reply, and for leading you to have to flip your computer (I suspect that you would have thought of it too, but about half an hour after first reading your post, I realised that Pup-SysInfo might have identified it). Part of the reason for the delayed response is that I mixed up models, and thought that Intel Management Engine, and other related stuff, might have applied to this model. But it may not, as far as I can tell.
It is good that Bionic Puppy works for you, along with the other successful i386 ones you have tried. I don't have the knowledge to offer any alternatives that also might work. I can also understand why you might prefer the dc5800: quiet, easy fit on the desktop etc..

The reason for my initial post was to provide, what I thought, might be an explanation for the difficulties you were having with newer distros.

I don't know much about Bionic Puppy i386.
By the way, I hadn't heard of Puppy Phoenix. It does sound intriguing (so many puppies ). Thanks.

Edits in several places. Finally realised that I was out of order and should have put things in a PM.

[belham2]

As this unfortunate Coronavirus thing sweeps around the world, having all this downtime led me to go distro-hunting and hopping over the past 8-10 days. To see what's been up over the past year in the Leeeeeenux world.

I'm not going to name names, but I tried a vast variety, on my many different machines (some bleeding edge new), others still cranking with 13-14 AMD processors & DDR1 ram.

Nearly all the time I was left wanting. Just distros that run slower and slower, and filled with more unnecessary bloat.

Then, I cam back to AntiX, installed on both old and new machines, and of course, it still flies. I mean, anticapitalista is incredible: I boot up Antix19-1 64-bit on my oldest machine, and it is sitting there sipping 168MB of the systems max 2GB ram. Open latest Firefox, a few tabs, and I am barely over 650MB. Just incredible.

MX-Linux was much the same way, except it sips more ram. But nothing huge. MX-Linux 19.1 runs easily on both old and new machines, where RAM goes from 2GB up tp 16GB+


I just have to wonder at myself why I even veer off and go on these Linux gorgy-orgies.

The best ladies (along with our Pup world) in the cathouse, for years now, are still the antix/mxlinux mademoiselles.

These dames can bang, excuse the pun, whether you're on an old and/or new platform.

[sc0ttman]

LinuxFromScratch, with Musl as Libc:

https://github.com/dslm4515/Musl-LFS

(Musl is a lightweight C library, ideal for building smaller libraries/distros etc)

This is based on the works of Linux From Scratch (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org), which use GLibc and SysVinit/systemD. Additional work was derived from Void Linux (https://voidlinux.org), Alpine Linux (https://alpinelinux.org), and Dragora Linux (https://dragora.org). Runit scripts were used from (https://github.com/inthecloud247/runit-for-lfs). For logging, I used porg from http://porg.sourceforge.net/.

The aim of this project is to create a create a Linux system using Musl (www.musl-libc.org) instead of GNU's Glibc and Runit/S6 (http://smarden.org/runit/) instead SysVinit.

[sc0ttman]

Homepage: https://venomlinux.org/

This is a source based distro: most tools written in shell, very nice, clean code

Uses its own custom package manager, called scratchpkg: https://venomlinux.org/handbook/book/scratchpkg.html

Repo, with all the code, build tools and build scripts for packages is here: https://github.com/venomlinux/venom

...I personally think this one is very nicely put together.

Nice clean code base.. Probably quite hackable.

[Mike Walsh]

@ belham2:-

I have to agree with you as far as Anti-X goes.

I gave Ubuntu the 'bum's rush' after just a few months, during my first year with Linux. It was over-bearing; it was bloated; it wanted to organise everything FOR you - behind your back, natch! - and don't get me started on updates. There were so many of 'em, day after day, that I thought I'd gone and re-installed Windoze by mistake.

By & large I'm content with my Pups, but I do still get the odd, mad urge to distro-hop every so often. I don't know why I bother, 'cos I always return to the refreshing sanity of Puppy, time & again. However, when I tried Anti-X 16.1 'Berta Caceres', a couple of years back, it was the only other Linux distro that I hung onto for any length of time. Tidy, lightweight & easy-going, it was probably down to one thing above all others; it uses ROX-Filer!!

Odd though many people consider ROX to be, I've gotten SO used to it over the last 5 years or so, that it was like coming home. I knew exactly what I was doing with it, despite having to brush up on my 'sudo' skills (horrid thing!).....and setting it up was a doddle, compared to many.

I can't remember why I got rid of it now, because it didn't even have the hassle of constant, on-going updates, unlike most of 'em. I will re-visit Anti-X again, one of these days; the only fly in the ointment may be this UEFI hardware I'm now stuck with, though in every other respect, I'm sorry to say it does show the old Compaq tower up for the creaky veteran it was becoming. It had a good run, but it was getting so that much modern software was becoming too much for it; despite that that dual-core Athlon64 just kept soldiering on, it really wasn't much better than a pair of P4's strapped together.....its main competitor when it first appeared on the market.

We shall see. I tried Anti-X 16.1 again with Bill's ISObooter this morning, just for a re-run down Nostalgia Road; it fired-up fine using this HP Pavilion mid-tower's one-time boot menu under 'Legacy Boot', so I daresay there's hope for the current version yet.....

(I'm pleased to find that ISObooter works, and works well. Ever since keisha helped me, a few years ago, to flash the old Compaq's BIOS ROM chip to support the dual-core Athlon when I installed it, I was never again afterwards able to boot from FAT32.....which ISObooter insists on.)


Mike.

[Billtoo]

I installed Manjaro 19.2 xfce4 to my 9 year old Gateway desktop pc:

Computer
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
Memory 16381MB (796MB used)
Machine Type Desktop
Operating System Manjaro Linux
Date/Time Sun 29 Mar 2020 08:01:18 PM

Display
Resolution 3840x1080 pixels
OpenGL Renderer GeForce GTX 560 Ti/PCIe/SSE2
Session Display Server The X.Org Foundation 1.20.7

Version
Kernel Linux 5.4.28-1-MANJARO (x86_64)
Version #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Mar 25 12:45:29 UTC 2020
C Library GNU C Library / (GNU libc) 2.31
Distribution Manjaro Linux

It's using a 32" TV + a 27" ASUS HDMI monitor, sound is from the TV.

Works well.

[rcrsn51]

which ISObooter insists on

That requirement comes from Grub4Dos, not ISObooter.

ISObooter simply generates a menu.lst file that G4D will use to boot the device and the ISOs therein.

[Mike Walsh]

which ISObooter insists on

That requirement comes from Grub4Dos, not ISObooter.

ISObooter simply generates a menu.lst file that G4D will use to boot the device and the ISOs therein.

Clarification appreciated, Bill. I wasn't too sure about that, but I know I experimented with using ext2/3 instead, and of course, it didn't want to know.

It really is a very neat way of trying out 'Live' distros. Thank you..!


Mike.

[Billtoo]

I installed Manjaro 19.2 xfce4 to my HP mini desktop pc:

Computer
Processor Intel(R) Celeron(R) 2957U @ 1.40GHz
Memory 1885MB (465MB used)
Machine Type Desktop
Operating System Manjaro Linux
Date/Time Mon 30 Mar 2020 04:30:10 PM

Display
Resolution 3843x1080 pixels
OpenGL Renderer Mesa DRI Intel(R) Haswell Mobile
Session Display Server The X.Org Foundation 1.20.7

Version
Kernel Linux 5.4.28-1-MANJARO (x86_64)
Version #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Mar 25 12:45:29 UTC 2020
C Library GNU C Library / (GNU libc) 2.31
Distribution Manjaro Linux

Using 2 27" monitors (HP + ASUS) + a pair of entry level BOSE
external speakers plugged into the headphone jack.

It makes good use of the swap file but runs well on this fanless so
silent pc.

EDIT:

I updated this install last night,
Version
Kernel Linux 5.6.12-1-MANJARO (x86_64)
Version #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun May 10 14:36:43 UTC 2020
C Library GNU C Library / (GNU libc) 2.31
Distribution Manjaro Linux

Still works well.

[vtpup]

I've installed Linux Mint to a free ext4 partition just to temporarily test out a later version of Openshot (2.x).

I opted not to do the Mint auto-install re. grub, as I didn't want it installing Grub2 or (whatever else it does), having had past bad experiencesother distros messing up my frugal puppies on our usual legacy Grub.

But I need to add a menu.lst stanza manually to start Mint. Can anyone help with that?

Thanks

info:
Mint is on sda8 (hd0,7).

In its top level folder it has two applicable links:
initrd.img and vmlinuz. Both point to files in sda8/boot/ (screenshot of contents attached).

[mikeslr]

Hi vtpup,

I have Linux Mint 19.2 Tina on sda4, booting into it using grub4dos. I'm not familiar with Grub-legacy beyond that the arguments it uses are almost identical to those of grub4dos. The only difference, AFAIK, is that the 'kernel' line under grub4dos starts with the word 'kernel' while that under other versions of grub start with the word 'linux'. Actually, although you used the phrase 'usual legacy Grub', your later reference to menu.lst suggest that you are using grub4dos

My listing for tina under grub4dos reads:

title Linux Mint 19.2 Tina (sda4)
uuid cf92c7e0-2f62-4a22-9490-8d6e07cb0100
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda4 ro
initrd /initrd.img

Although there are other ways to specify which partition to boot from, you can open a terminal and type "blkid" --without the quotes-- to obtain a list of every partition's uuid.

I would think the stanza you would need would be something like this:

title Linux Mint (sda8)
uuid sda8's UUID # from blkid's printout
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda8 ro
initrd /initrd.img

NOTE HOWEVER, THE FOLLOWING:

At the top level of my sda4 are two symbolic links. One has the name vmlinuz and links to the specified vmlinuz in /boot. In your case, it would be vmlinuz-4.19.0-8-etc.. The other has the name initrd.img and links to the specified initrd.img in /boot. In your case that would be initrd.img-4.19.0-8-etc. So, what I think grub4dos is doing is reading menu.lst to look for vmlinuz and initrd.img files at the top level and as those files are symbolic links follows them to the actual files in /boot. Ask if you need assistance creating symbolic links. I'm not sure if grub4dos is 'smart-enough' to use the actual files directly and without having removed their version designations.

[vtpup]

Thanks so much Mikeslr!

Here's what I had already tried in menu.lst, including the good working entries for Tahrpup and Bionicpup, and the non-working stanza for Mint (looks very much like your suggestion except for the disks UUID line vs. the (hdo,7) older style. Note that the tahr and bionic work well:

Code: Select all

title Tahrpup
  kernel (hd0,4)/Tahrpup/vmlinuz PDEV1=sda5 psubdir=Tahrpup acpi_backlight=vendor acpi_osi=Linux ro 
  initrd (hd0,4)/Tahrpup/initrd.gz
  boot 

title Linux Mint
  kernel (hd0,7)/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda8 
  initrd (hd0,7)/initrd.img
  boot 

title BionicPup64
  kernel (hd0,4)/Bionicpup64/vmlinuz PDEV1=sda5 psubdir=Bionicpup64 acpi_backlight=vendor acpi_osi=Linux ro 
  initrd (hd0,4)/Bionicpup64/initrd.gz
  boot 

I do know how to make links and the Mint standard ones are already present as you mentioned.

I get a Grub "Error15 File Not Found" error when I try to boot Mint. Maybe my grub doesn't like those links?

ps I was able to boot the HD install as a test by first booting a live install on thumb drive, and choosing to boot in the opening menu from HD. So I know the install is good. The only issue is just getting my present Grub to work with it.