Can you boot anything cool on a computer without a HD?

Post by **|darc|** » Mon Jul 07, 2003 9:31 pm

Falcon4 wrote:You can do many, many, many, many things in DOS you can't do in Linux/Unix/Freesh*t OSes.

WTF?
Funny, good stuff. Why funny? Because there are DOS 'emulators' for Linux. So Linux can do everything DOS can... plus tons tons tons tons more. DOS is way outdated, its absurd to say DOS is better than Linux.

Wagh · Post by **Wagh** » Mon Jul 07, 2003 9:33 pm

|darc| wrote:Uhh.. Why not?

I guess the rpm wars are over o.o

Post by **|darc|** » Mon Jul 07, 2003 9:35 pm

Random_Troll wrote:
|darc| wrote:Uhh.. Why not?
I guess the rpm wars are over o.o

RPMs.. ugh.

If you can install the program right, I should say, it would run on every distro.

Wagh · Post by **Wagh** » Mon Jul 07, 2003 9:37 pm

Wagh · Post by **Wagh** » Mon Jul 07, 2003 9:38 pm

anyways get qnx man.. it's really small 200mb or so and does a shitload o.o you can grab it here http://lyceum.ksu.ru/pub/qnx/iso/

Falcon4 · Post by **Falcon4** » Mon Jul 07, 2003 10:28 pm

Hey, does "compile, install, delete, redownload, extract, bash head on keyboard to continue" ring a bell for Linux?

Post by **|darc|** » Mon Jul 07, 2003 10:41 pm

Falcon4 wrote:Hey, does "compile, install, delete, redownload, extract, bash head on keyboard to continue" ring a bell for Linux?

Maybe in 1991.

Falcon4 · Post by **Falcon4** » Mon Jul 07, 2003 11:08 pm

How about in 2002? That's the last time I tried using Linux (Red Hat, that is, that's all I see on shelves, so that's what I download). It was like this:

Configure your network as the only fixed-IP conputer on your DHCP-configured network.
Set up a domain, and suffer with constant errors.
Fight with networking your new Linux "box" with your 80gb Windows 2000 server with all your movies, MP3s, and software. Or just forget it, your files are on the other side of a 1,000 foot tall wall - called Linux.
Forget it. Dump an MP3 on a floppy and take it to your Linux box.
Figure out how to mount a damn floppy.
Open the supposive MP3 player that looks like Winamp.
Scratch your head and wonder why it isn't assiciated with MP3 files - and refuses to open them.
Go to the program's website, just to find out that Red Hat decided to OMIT the MP3 support for the MP3 player.
Download the support file... thank God it's an RPM - the only easy part of Linux... (the 1999 excursion I had with Linux hated RPMs but I lived)
Go back to your mp3 playing experience... just to find your keyboard shortcuts for the equalizer don't work (keys 1-0 move the appropriate EQ sliders up in Winamp, Q-P are down). So you have to tweak the EQ by hand.
Find out that your USB printer wants nothing to do with this strange OS.
Shut down your computer after a long night of Linux bashing.
Turn it on the next morning to find a Login: prompt, no GUI, and everything dead. What the f*ck is [bin 3423] #? Or something not close to that. it's been a while.
Go back to Windows, thank you, Linux multibooter.
After deciding Linux isn't worth it, delete the partition.
Go and boot, to find some mysterious message.
Dig up a copy of a boot script, memorize these commands, since you now have to type them in everyt time you turn on your computer... the Linux multibooter relied on having the Linux partition. setboot hd0.1 load hd0 or something like that.

I don't think Linux is worth the BS.

butters · Post by **butters** » Mon Jul 07, 2003 11:42 pm

Falcon4, I would have said the same things as you a couple of weeks ago. Since then I've forced myself (partially on accident) to survive without Windows. It was tough going for a while, but I have come to love Linux.
First things first, Redhat sucks, its designed for businesses. Go try a real distro. Second, dos is so damn archaic. I can't even go into dos anymore without trying to type "ls" lol. Third, RPMs are for the weak. You get much better performance, etc from compiling yourself

slpknt6009 · Post by **slpknt6009** » Tue Jul 08, 2003 12:40 am

hearld500 wrote:
Dude I get like 400 kilobytes per second on a fast server
What do you have? T1 line?

ive downloaded at a steady 1.3mb/s before on cable (and no, i didnt mean 1.3kb/s). ok, only for a couple of min, but enough to download the file i wanted. its not an often occurence but occasionaly i get it that high.

my steady download is usually 350 kb/s

Grooverider · Post by **Grooverider** » Tue Jul 08, 2003 1:58 am

You can run BEOS from a boot CD which is interesting...

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Tue Jul 08, 2003 4:31 am

Falcon4 - It sounds like you were expecting everything to work like Windows. That's a very common mistake that people make when they start using a Linux system. But Linux is not Windows - it's a totally different system.

Configure your network as the only fixed-IP conputer on your DHCP-configured network

Linux supports DHCP. And it supports it better than Windows does in most situations. I've had a freshly installed Linux system that was immediately able to talk to all the Windows machines on a network, and browse the 'net using Windows internet connection sharing. And Windows XP doesn't do that without running all kinds of stupid setup wizards.

Set up a domain, and suffer with constant errors.

Errors? The only way that would happen is if you had mis-configured the networking system, or if you have a hardware fault. The only errors I've ever had with Linux networking is when I screwed something up. And it usually gave a helpful error message, which was actually useful in determining what was wrong, and how to fix it.

Fight with networking your new Linux "box" with your 80gb Windows 2000 server with all your movies, MP3s, and software. Or just forget it, your files are on the other side of a 1,000 foot tall wall - called Linux.

In this case, the wall is called "Windows". It uses a non-standard, proprietary protocol called SMB to communicate between Windows boxes, and do all the file sharing. Linux has no native support for it, just as Windows has no native support for NFS or most other Unix networking standards. If you use Samba, you can connect to a Windows server from a Linux box (or act as a Windows server).

Go back to your mp3 playing experience... just to find your keyboard shortcuts for the equalizer don't work (keys 1-0 move the appropriate EQ sliders up in Winamp, Q-P are down). So you have to tweak the EQ by hand.

XMMS doesn't necessarily use the same shortcuts as Winamp. That's because - despite the fact that it looks a bit like Winamp - it's not Winamp. It's XMMS.

Turn it on the next morning to find a Login: prompt, no GUI, and everything dead. What the f*ck is [bin 3423] #? Or something not close to that. it's been a while.

Depending on the way the Linux system is set up, it might not start up into X-Windows by default. That's no more strange than Windows 3.x, which required you to start "win" to start it up. You just type "startx" to start the GUI. But most modern distros will boot into GUI mode.

After deciding Linux isn't worth it, delete the partition.

Go and boot, to find some mysterious message.

And if you delete a Linux partition (and the entire Linux system, including the boot information) without restoring the Windows bootloader, you're asking for trouble. You get the same problems with Windows. Hardly suprising, is it?

If you can work out how to build a DOS system capable of browsing the 'net, playing MP3s, and doing all that stuff, then getting Linux to work shouldn't be that hard. Especially if you can manage to set up networking in DOS, which is generally a real pain in the backside, setting this stuff up on a Linux system is child's play by comparison.

toastman · Post by **toastman** » Tue Jul 08, 2003 8:31 am

I'm no Linux guru. I've used several distros. I work well enough with it to be able to get along with it and have it do what I want. If it weren't for the games, I'd probably be able to give up Windows completely. However, let me say this about Linux.
It totally rocks.
RedHat 7.2 (Valhalla, it might be 7.3 but I believe it's 7.2), a distro that gets picked on notoriously for being insolent, was able to auto-detect my printer (an HP 612C), my USB wireless mouse (Logitech), and my Audigy. With a little work (read download a program and read a short HOW-TO), I was able to get my Alcatel USB Speedtouch to work. Something that was damn difficult to do with Windows especially without the proper drivers (and even then there was a whole bunch of crap I had to do). The Audigy drivers and the USB mouse required a kernel compile, but that's gravy anyway since I like to recompile my kernel to trim the excess fat off of it anyway and make it personalized for the system it is running on.
The printer worked without me so much as touching anything except the power switch. I just set up the printer daemon with the correct information and I was printing like a champ. (An interesting side note: printing on my old PC in Windows always made it chug, however in Linux I hardly experienced any performance hit.) Xine was able to play some videos at full speed that no Windows program could handle (again on my old PC, which was showing it's age quite well).
All in all, having installed both Windows and Linux on blank PCs, Linux takes less time and comes out better than Windows. And I'm talking clean install, not some crappy restore disc.

Wagh · Post by **Wagh** » Tue Jul 08, 2003 11:38 am

dunno about quicker.. takes about 30min total to install windows 2000 and install video card drivers + sound. Where as my latest adventure into linux.. ( Debian yay that was fun ) took about 40-50min. Granted it would have gone quicker if I knew a lot more... but instead of configuring things I like to just click Next

shitload easier and quicker

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Tue Jul 08, 2003 11:49 am

Well, WinXP takes something like an hour and a half to install on my systems. Linux tends to take about 40 mins, depending on the distribution, and comes with a lot more software.

Wagh · Post by **Wagh** » Tue Jul 08, 2003 11:51 am

yeah.. that's xp though. *cough* bloatware *cough* I hate it when people say oh windows is evil when all they've tried to do is run xp

2k is my baby it's perfect in every way /me hugs 2k and pets it.

MetalGearRay · Post by **MetalGearRay** » Tue Jul 08, 2003 3:21 pm

I need help. My comp with no HD won't boot up. I can't get into the BIOS. It checks the RAM, and says press DEL for setup, so I tap DEL repeatedly, but nothing happens. Then it says WAIT.

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Tue Jul 08, 2003 10:35 pm

XP is really too huge for it's own good. Unfortunately, I don't have Win2K. Not that it really matters too much anymore.

MetalGearRay - Sounds like a hardware fault, possibly. Give it a kick, see what happens *

* This is a joke. Don't really kick it.