Hello folks again :-) Am Montag, 30. Juni 2003 09:49 schrieb James: > I need many of the new features in a 2.4 based kernel on my portable. > However, I like the Stable packages, as I have not had any issues, except > my own lack of knowledge of Debian on a laptop. > I have a Prostar P-IV running at 2GHz....
I run woody (stable) with kernel 2.4.5 and XFree 4.2.1. Higher versions may also work well. With linux on a new laptop, it's a good idea to learn how to compile a custom kernel that fits to your laptop. If once you maintained the first steps, it's a great fun :-) It's one of the most FAQ in linux, and there are many threads in list archives. You have to install a package like kernel-source-2.4.5. There's a lot of docu within. For compiling install 'kernel-package' and read the related doc (in /usr/share/doc). For possibly occuring difficulties with (e.g.) Sound, XFree, ACPI, and pcmcia cards please feel free to ask on this (or any other) list. Searching the list archives first is always a good idea. As you will have a bunch of questions you may look into some of the following sites (a small collection): http://www.linux-laptop.net/ http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO/laptops.html http://g.unsa.edu.ar/doc/sdb/en/html/keylist.NOTEBOOK.html http://tuxmobil.org/ http://hardwaredb.suse.de/extendedSearch.php?LANG=en_UK&PHPSESSID=6b9648a364901b494a2e15f16d00b960 > I read that may people are running 2.4.x kernels on their portables. Is > there a (semi) stable release of Debian 2.4, that I can run on a portable? Any release basically works on a range of kernel versions; however the most safe choice are the ones shipped within. For woody 3.1. it's around 2.4.18 or sth. > Could a portable boot 2 kernels (2.2.a and 2.4) from lilo without having > the installed packages wig out? (I'm not sure what you mean here) Booting a kernel doesn't affect the packages. When the kernel has booted, it passes control to the init-process which purpose is to start (and also shut down) most of the services that built up your runlevel configuration. Debian's default is to directly enter runlevel 2, defined in /etc/rc2.d. Runlevel 1 is 'single', designed for recovering issues. There's also an /etc/rcS.d for general booting tasks. It's easy to define sperate runlevels started from a specific kernel. 3-5 are unused, you can use these for custom. (Note that other distros differ in the scheme) For example, me got a standard desktop (2) and an network-study runlevel (3), each booting with it's own custom version of 2.4.5. It works through a paramter passed to the init process, given as kernel-parameter in lilo.config ('init=3'). See /usr/src/kernel-source-2.4.5/Documentation/kernel-parameters Also /usr/share/doc/debian-policy, chapter 10.3. > This way I can test everything on the same portable BEFORE making a > permanent commitment to 2.4. You can install many different kernels and define many different 'booting images' at once. No permanent commitment. For testing different kernels / images with lilo you should prepare a bootfloppy, and test it carefully. It is easier and safer to use grub instead - but then again, you would need to learn the how-to first .... (but think of the money we've spared (and will do in future) with linux, some of what we could give some hacker to configure the stuff - it's a fair deal and helps against unemployment (and M$ also) ;-) good luck -- mi <mrl> btw. Have a look at: Re: inittab zerschossen Datum: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 13:57:21 +0200 Von: Sebastian Henschel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Kopie: debian-laptop@lists.debian.org :-)
