Well, thanks Jason, for burning a copy for me so quickly. I booted the ThinkPad with the Live CD (disc 1), and it booted up into KDE quite nicely. There were two problems I immediately noticed:
1) Although the PCMCIA subsystem was detected, and the ethernet/modem combo card therein was found, I had to type 'pump' manually to get it to configure (I have a DHCP server in my router). I would expect this to happen automatically. 2) The (known) tricky sound on the 600E did not work, but the single line modprobe-with-arguments that is the simple solution also worked. So, I have a dilemma- do I keep Debian woody on the laptop, with kernel 2.4.18, and an old KDE, which all mostly works even though I haven't tweaked it yet, or do I install MEPIS, which is a later kernel, later KDE and has a bunch of other apps neatly packages (oh, and it *looks* *nice*)? I am sure to get a range of comments to help me decide- fire away! (Sorry Jason, you can't give me MEPIS and then tell me to install Mandrake...) Thanks, Andy On Tue, 17 Feb 2004 10:09, you wrote: > I am not sure, have a look at mepis.org for more info. I have the latest > version (2-10-03). I think it is a 'combination' but of course you can > apt-get (or Synaptic) anything and it comes pre-configured to get > software from several repositores and you can specify whether to include > stable/unstable etc. They have included a GUI Control Centre for > handling most tasks, which is cool. > > Cheers > > Jason > > Andrew Errington wrote: > > On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 23:44, you wrote: > >>Hi All, > >> > >>Well after the hell that was the first Debian (standard, text based) > >>installation I tried, I just experienced pure joy with MEPIS Linux. It > >>is a Debian based Distro (I have been wanting to toy with Debian on a > >>spare partition for some time now) that is very easy to install. > > > > Hi, > > > > I just put Debian 3.0 (woody) on my laptop (IBM ThinkPad 600E). I > > don't think the installer is so bad, but you do have to concentrate. I > > will post to the list my final choice of partitions (since this is the > > decision I had the most difficulty with). > > > > Anyway, my question for you is- with MEPIS do you end up with a > > 'standard' installation (i.e. completely 'stable' packages) or do you > > get a happy combination of stable, testing and unstable? Since I only > > put Debian on at the weekend I am willing to discard it and try > > something new if it is better. My only worry is keeping it up to date, > > since this is easy with the staid and stolid Debian woody, but a little > > more involved with Knoppix and its ilk. > > > > Of course I will RTF-MEPIS-M, but that is no substitute for hearing > > someone's experience related. > > > > Andy > > > > PS The Debian installation went very smoothly. Everything but sound > > worked out of the box, and a quick Google showed an easy > > order-of-execution solution. My advice- write down all the hardware > > settings reported by Windows device manager before reformatting.
