michael hast wrote:
<snip>
> Oh, and there's nothing you said that I should take offense to, but
> for instance: Last weekend, I set up my brother's machine with a
> dual-boot system, Debian and XP. That was the first time that I have
> ever successfully done one. I tried to do the same thing on my extra
> machine, and it didn't work! On his, the Debian installer couldn't see
> the XP partition for some realosn, so I didn't install Grub to the MBR,
> but used NTLDR instead. When I was doing the same thing on my machine,
> it did see XP, but I couldn't get Debian to boot properly like that. I
> set that project aside, and I will undoubtedly get back to it, but I
> found it very strange that such a remarkably similar operation could
> have such vastly different results on the two machines.
Welcome to the vaguaries of hardware. Unfortunately, we're not
Microsoft, and so we can't afford to pay people to work on hardware drivers.
That said, though, a partition on a hard drive is a pretty simple thing.
Linux should be able to see it. Odd that it wouldn't find it. Grub is
supposed to be the best at seeing and reading those partitions, and I'd
never use anything Microsoft for a dual boot. Odd.
> As far as the video is concerned, I'm with you. I've ALWAYS had to
> go back in and mess with stuff to get the video working as properly as I
> have. For some reason, though, I still don't think it's working
> properly. It doesn't seem to have as much response as I think it
> should, but I'm not using ATI drivers. I'm using whatever Debian
> installed in the xserver.
Someone else can correct me, but as I understand it, if you're using an
ATI card, you have to use ATI's (proprietary) drivers to get good use
out of it. Same is true for NVidia, except that NVidia's (proprietary)
drivers are better. Not using the proper drivers for your card may work,
but naturally you won't get full response out of the card.
> I would like to get that ironed out more, but
> like the other system's dual boot, I'm having plenty of fun with other
> stuff currently. I think it's funny that so many people I know ask me
> what I do with my computer. Do I play games? Keep records on a
> sophisticated database? No. More often than anything else, I just play
> with it. I learn how to configure different stuff. Half the stuff I
> have learned how to do isn't even valuable for me to know for my
> purposes. I told friends and family that I successfully booted XP in an
> emulator under Debian. They asked me what I did with it. Nothing. But
> it was cool. In fact, it's installed there still, but I haven't booted
> it up again since I set up Qemu a couple of months ago.
This is what happens when you can do something better than other people,
even if you're not that good at it. Because I've been using Linux for
almost ten years, people think I know all there is to know about it. The
problem is that I don't hack computers for a living. Yes, I can program,
yes I can build a computer, and yes I can install Linux. But I don't do
this for a living. Ian Blenke's an example of a guy who's been doing
computers as a job for a long time. He knows waaay more about this than
I do. But it could be anything. If you can garden marginally better than
other people, they will come to you to as an "authority".
> So, the thought suddenly occurs to me: I configure for the joy of
> configuring. I use open-source apps just to see how cool they are. I
> have more live cd's than most people do in a lifetime. Am I turning
> into a Linux user? ;-P
>
No, a geek. ;-}
Paul
-- Paul M. Foster ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
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