Well,
It turned out that my verizon problems weren't really verizon
problems.. I figured it out a little while back... but then I had (and
still have) so many problems with other things. So for those of you
contomplating Verizon DSL, well, it's PPPOE, but honestly, it's probably
not as much as a headache as one might get an impression of. . and, at
least to me, the important part is that it's significantly inexpensive.
Anyways, for those of you who were curious... the install was started as a
debian NET install at pinkee's.. to do so we had to give the install
program the settings of her network, which is static IP, etc. . well, it
turns out the system had held onto those settings.. which explains my
network/routing problems -- but by the time I figured that out, I was pretty
fed up, had already bought a router, and had problems with other things
(namely, X) .. I tried 4 or 5 different ways to reconfigure X, and couldn't
do it to the satisfaction of the system, so with my already prexisting
frustration, I decided to move from the debian install, to some other distro,
working with whatever distros I could lay my hands on. .
Everything still isn't perfect-- I'm going to move to a different distro
after the one I am currently on, but with each one, it seems to keep
getting better. (Right now, it's EasyLinux 2.4 -- which at very least,
was interesting, and a fairly braindead setup. )
What's currently limiting me is lack of good, bootable CDs, and the
seeming fact that either the disks I have are buggy, or the drive, cable,
or mobo is buggy and keeps giving me floppy errors..
If someone could get me good, bootable CDs.. that would be great.. I would
be interested in attempting either Slackware (unfortunately, the version
of 8.1 I have isn't bootable, and is a secondary (re-packaged version)
that seems to not be quite-true to the original -- we're also up to 9.0 of
course, a debian based distro (I'm lazy, yah.) or.. if anybody else has
any other suggestions, for some other odd niche, new, or otherwise known
distros. Something tells me next I may be trying (when I find the CDs
laying around the house.. the evaluation version of Redhat 8.0 they gave
us on the roadtour.. I would have already tried RH8.0 but my cd-r of disk
3 was damaged, and the installer would crash if there was something wrong
with the media, or files missing, not a good sign.
So far I've shuffled between: debian net install, linuxcare bootable
business cards, LEAF distros (Bering, and contributed disk images of
Dachstein and Eigerstein), SuSE 7.0 - two different versions,
neither of which would work at all, TurboLinux (4.0 and 6.0 -- but I don't
think I ever loaded the 4.0 since I had the 6.0 -- I actually didn't give
TurboLinux too much chance, basically I only used it to load the Slackware
Installer, assuming that version 6.0 was too old), and the half-damaged
versions of Debian, RH, and Slackware I have laying around..
Scarily, so far I've had the best and easiest results with EasyLinux 2.4
and get this while I blaspheme: Caldera Linux Technology Preview.. yes,
there IS a good use for the stuff they give away at trade shows. :D Hmmm
that reminds me... I haven't seen my preview copies of Mandrake versions
around, I wonder where they're hiding.. probably with the copies of
freebsd 3.3, netbsd 3.5 and redhat version 2.. aiiigh, anybody need shiny
wall plaques? coasters maybe?
Well, at very least, it's a learning experience, and now I know all about
editing lilo.conf, amongst other things..
of course, I still need to figure out why my backspace won't work like I
wish it to.. and dig up my ultra cool fvwm2 config. :D
bleh..
you've made it this far?
You win a uhm, miscellaneous piece of old hardware I have laying around
the house, congrats!! :)