I would like to thank all the people who responded to my request for
assistance. I had been struggling to install linux on that old laptop for
nearly one year. I must have spent 40 hours trying to get RedHat (first
5.0, then 5.1, and finally 5.2) up and running. My fundamental problem was
that my laptop does not have a built-in cdrom, and the backpack parallel
port cdrom that I was trying to use is too old to be supported by Linux.
I finally solved my problem by going to the slakware distribution. It has
what I would call a more "old-fashioned" installation program than RedHat.
It recalls the days (not so long ago) when all software was installed from
floppies. Even when using the cdrom, the installation program looks for
subdirectories called /slakware/a1, ./a2, and so forth. Each of those
directories is 1.44 mb or less, which means that one may copy each
directory to a floppy and install from there.
What I did was, under dos, I copied the directories from the slakware cdrom
to corresponding subdirectories on my dos partition. (My backpack cdrom
works under dos.) After identifying my "target" partitions, setup mounted
the dos partition, and used the files that I had copied from the slakware
cd. The installation went really smoothly. Of course, I didn't install X,
so I avoided most of the headaches encountered by us newbie users.
I should point out that like RedHat very much. I am using it on two
machines in my LAN. I think they add a great deal of value to the OS with
rpm and the configuration tools. Their setup program is geared for the
machines of today, and with fewer and fewer people using "legacy" hardware,
they aren't missing many potential customers.
____________________________
Aaron E. Bradshaw 313 S. South Street, P.O.Box 1072, Gastonia, NC 28053
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 704.866.8289 http://www.gastonlaw.com
