Linux distro poll

[Southtown]

Jay: Kubuntu - it works

 

I've been trying to install Gentoo for over a week now (wasting two, 4-day weekends) and still cannot boot gui. Though, the stage 1/3 install looks to be bulletproof... if I can ever learn to use it.

 

I'm either divinely patient or neanderthal-ignorant. :xparty:

[alexander]

no, no, no south, it depends on what he needs to use it for, it just works is a windows person thing.

 

As to your gentoo problems, as i have said, if you need help ask, you know that i can ssh into your box when you are running gentoo live, so hence i can install your os remotely, or if you have a running system, i can fix it, dont blame the distro, i told you its all hands on, you really have to read the handbook, and its probably the little thing that you havent investigated that you have so much trouble with. with that, if you install screen, you can see exactly what i type hence you can learn from me fixing your box... if you give up, you will never see the speed you gain with from source distros, and you will never actually get to be quite that into the system with other distros... the fact still remains, and before anyone makes any recomendations, wait for the use data...

[Southtown]

Well, I'm assuming that if he has to ask about distros, then he need not wrestle with gentoo (unless he's got nothing better to do). When trying to decide what to drive, gentoo is like building a car yourself. It's great for learning. And if you've got more than one box, you can afford the time to let gentoo remain half-built, while you read more about it.

 

I'm grateful for gentoo teaching me tons about linux, and it seems rock solid, but after a week or so, I'd like to have my box back. I got gentoo running to the command line well enough, but now it's time to start tackling x11. What seems to be standing in my way is finding the usb mouse driver and the console frame buffer. When I can attempt a recompile I'll overwrite Kubuntu, since I can replace that in under an hour.

[alexander]

What seems to be standing in my way is finding the usb mouse driver and the console frame buffer.

aah :)

lol all that is in your kernel...

USB mouse driver - if you go in device drivers, usb, you need usb driver turned on, if you have usb2 use ehci driver, else use uhci theoretically you should keep it a module. from there you have to build in usb HID support for human interface devices and then emerge hotplug and rc-update add hotplug default... build, copy kernel to boot, should have no problems.

 

Console frame buffer is even simpler, device drivers, graphics, framebuffer built in, go down to vesa, enable that, and then go into vesa and choose vesafb-tng as the driver. then you build your kernel, copy it to boot, and in grub boot line where you specify your kernel, put "kernel whatever_kernel video=vesafb", reboot, and fb problem should not come up

Oh and dont enable any other kind of frame buffer anywhere, and dont use any kind of nvidia fb or anything of that nature, vesa works.

 

then its a matter of building xorg-x11. actual tricly part is configuring it, but no worry, there are a gazillion tutorials, and you can run xorgcfg which brings you to a graphical interface to configure your x, use num pad to move the mouse, space to hold down left button and change mostly your mouse settings, the rest it does pretty well, if you have an nvidia or ati graphics card, leme know, i'll tell you how to set that up with 3d accell and make x use the display drivers and whatnot. for mouse settings, in your kernel enable /dev/psaux support, should be in the input settings somewhere, then you can point your mouse to /dev/psaux and use either an explorerps/2 or imps/2, or if you have a simple mouse with no scroll wheel even ps/2 protocol. once you are done, use ctrl alt backspace to exit x, then all other tweaking you can do in /etc/X11/xorg.conf (i'll attatch an example when i get home)

 

.xinitrc is the file where you want to put things that will start when you start x followed by an ampersand, last line should be your wm or working environment (black/flux box, fvwm, enlightenment, looking glass, or whatever for window managers or kde or gnome for working environments), so something like

gkrellm & 
./crazy_bg_switch_script.py &
some_other_prog &
window_manager

gkrellm 2 with invisible theme is awesome ;)

 

if you have any questions, or something doesnt quite work, first of all, you can try to catch me on aim, drop me an email ([email protected]) or start a thread, although first two should get you answers faster. also there is gentoo wiki, that has a load of tutorials on things like x and stuff, and any aspect of the system, and its all speciffic to gentoo... (if i'm not mistaken its gentoo-wiki.org or com, not sure)

 

and lastly, as i have said, if michael wants to actually learn linux hardcore, there is very little that works better then a gentoo install... but if he's migrating, there are better distros then gentoo to make it seem seemless, and as harmless as possible... (the new ubuntu install is supposingly supposed to even resize your ntfs partition and stuff... all that crazy stuff...)

[Southtown]

aah :)

lol all that is in your kernel...

*sigh* Here we go again... j/k I'm not as disgruntled as I might sound. Just needed a break.

 

USB mouse driver - if you go in device drivers, usb, you need usb driver turned on, if you have usb2 use ehci driver, else use uhci theoretically you should keep it a module. from there you have to build in usb HID support for human interface devices and then emerge hotplug and rc-update add hotplug default... build, copy kernel to boot, should have no problems.

Thanx a million for this one.

 

Console frame buffer is even simpler, device drivers, graphics, framebuffer built in, go down to vesa, enable that, and then go into vesa and choose vesafb-tng as the driver. then you build your kernel, copy it to boot, and in grub boot line where you specify your kernel, put "kernel whatever_kernel video=vesafb", reboot, and fb problem should not come up

Oh and dont enable any other kind of frame buffer anywhere, and dont use any kind of nvidia fb or anything of that nature, vesa works.

The fb thing got me a 1024x768 boot console (with no image) which was cool, but xdm complained that it couldn't run in fb mode. Mind you x11 was merely emerged and not configured (was flying blind at that point. Later I found the wiki and tried the config, at which point the fb error turned into the mouse issue.

 

then its a matter of building xorg-x11. actual tricly part is configuring it, but no worry, there are a gazillion tutorials, and you can run xorgcfg which brings you to a graphical interface to configure your x, use num pad to move the mouse, space to hold down left button and change mostly your mouse settings, the rest it does pretty well, if you have an nvidia or ati graphics card, leme know, i'll tell you how to set that up with 3d accell and make x use the display drivers and whatnot. for mouse settings, in your kernel enable /dev/psaux support, should be in the input settings somewhere, then you can point your mouse to /dev/psaux and use either an explorerps/2 or imps/2, or if you have a simple mouse with no scroll wheel even ps/2 protocol. once you are done, use ctrl alt backspace to exit x, then all other tweaking you can do in /etc/X11/xorg.conf (i'll attatch an example when i get home)

 

.xinitrc is the file where you want to put things that will start when you start x followed by an ampersand, last line should be your wm or working environment (black/flux box, fvwm, enlightenment, looking glass, or whatever for window managers or kde or gnome for working environments), so something like

gkrellm & 
./crazy_bg_switch_script.py &
some_other_prog &
window_manager

gkrellm 2 with invisible theme is awesome :evil:

 

if you have any questions, or something doesnt quite work, first of all, you can try to catch me on aim, drop me an email ([email protected]) or start a thread, although first two should get you answers faster. also there is gentoo wiki, that has a load of tutorials on things like x and stuff, and any aspect of the system, and its all speciffic to gentoo... (if i'm not mistaken its gentoo-wiki.org or com, not sure)

More good stuff thanx. This page is gettin' printed. LOL

 

and lastly, as i have said, if michael wants to actually learn linux hardcore, there is very little that works better then a gentoo install...

Touche

 

but if he's migrating, there are better distros then gentoo to make it seem seemless, and as harmless as possible... (the new ubuntu install is supposingly supposed to even resize your ntfs partition and stuff... all that crazy stuff...)

I didn't notice that, but it did offer to delete it. :evil:

[alexander]

well, gdm works well too, i'd say it looks better then xdm, if you want all that graphical logon pretty sinyness. (http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_GDM_setup also setups for xdm and kdm are there, but you are not restricted to using gnome as your window manager/work env...

 

That fb problem is from the fact that you didnt get vesa working all that propperly, and you can specify the screen size at console in your grub line, i think its something along the lines of

kernel whatever video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr,1024x768-16@65

there are other cool things you can do, like framebuffer splash and bootsplash which are cool, like in my console, i have a nice penguin sitting in the background instead of the plain black bg (and I am not talking aterm, actual black console...

[Southtown]

Testing... says last post is alexanders?

 

...poof it worked, now can I see your post. =P

[alexander]

oh, sry...

[Southtown]

kernel whatever video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr,1024x768-16@65

there are other cool things you can do, like framebuffer splash and bootsplash which are cool, like in my console, i have a nice penguin sitting in the background instead of the plain black bg (and I am not talking aterm, actual black console...

I tried that via the gentoo handbook. Also tried the gensplash tut in the stage 1/3 install, and then another tut from gentoo forums. All I got was high-res.

 

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml

http://jackass.homelinux.org/jackass/docs/stage13-2005.1.pdf

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-49036-highlight-bootsplash.html

 

That's all nifty and everything, but when I first attempted x11, I got an error saying it couldn't run in framebuffer mode. That was preconfigured x11, though. I still have to attempt it again on a fresh fb-less gentoo install.

 

Once I get a window manager (willing to work with anything at this point) I can then maybe mess with framebuffer and splash. Cuz they are cool. :)

[alexander]

its not x's fault with framebuffer, i have vesa running, and it works beautifully, i mean i'm in Firefox now, but there are other options in your kernel that make it scream at you for fb, what you could also do is you could email me your .config file (hope you have .config support enabled) to me, can look at your kernel that way and change it and stuff and send it back to ya... if you want... we could also do an ssh session... its very secure...

[Southtown]

Hmm. I'm pretty sure I saw config support enabled, in the menuconfig right? I'll see if I can find it and send it. The other half dozen installs (;)) I copied the kernel and config over to boot manually, but this time I did make && make modules_install install per stage 1/3 pdf, and just pointed grub at vmlinuz. So I assume config is somewhere... :)

 

We might end up doin' the ssh thing, if ya don't mind. Something else to learn on this end. Thanks for the offer by the way.

[Southtown]

Per the extremely difficult to find Gentoo KDE guide, I did an emerge kde just to be sure I didn't miss any important packages. After waiting all day and then eventually going to bed, I wake up and continue:

 

echo "exec startkde" > ~/.xinitrc

startx

 

Well it turns out that startkde is not a valid bash command. :hihi: Any clues as to why?

[alexander]

ok, your .config is in /usr/src/linux directory

 

in order to run kde, emerge kdebase-meta... its got all kinds of utils, startkde should be there when you are done, and then you can edit your .xinitrc file and put just "startkde" remember no exec... that way you can see all the processes instead of them being hidden under x...

[Southtown]

nevermind it worked. all I had to do was try again. I even got it xdm loading kdm login on boot. I guess it just needed a reboot or env-update or something? :hihi:

 

now to configure sound and vid =P

[Southtown]

Man, that was cool. In order to get more packages, I tried to emerge kde-meta, but first I had to remove a bunch of conflicts:

 

emerge --unmerge kde-base/kdebase-3.4* kde-base/kdeaddons-3.4* kde-base/kdegraphics-3.4* kde-base/kdepim-3.4* kde-base/kdemultimedia-3.4* kde-base/kdetoys-3.4* kde-base/kdeadmin-3.4* kde-base/kdewebdev-3.4* kde-base/kdegames-3.4* kde-base/kdenetwork-3.4* kde-base/kdeutils-3.4* kde-base/kdeedu-3.4*

 

Then I just surfed with firefox, and watched as all that disappeared from my menu, icons and all, and then re-appeared one by one. Linux is so cool. HAHA

[Jay-qu]

Jay, that all depends on what you want to do, if you want to learn how to use linux for real, there is not much that can beat Gentoo for the purpose, if you want to just use Linux and not really get into its inner workings and stay in the GUI, there is a distro called Ubintu, free, available for x86, AMD64 and PPC both 32 and 64 bit...

 

cool thanks, I think I will start with Gentoo - I will be sure to ask any other questions that I come across;)

[alexander]

good, good jay, nice to hear from ya :hihi:

 

south, i assume that KDE is working for you?