On Thu, 2 Dec 2004 20:23:36 -0500 Scott wrote: > Compiling a kernel isn't difficult, but when you are first learning, > it can be intimidating. Of course, it takes experience to REALLY > mess it up, when you're beginning to do it, you're careful--after > you've gotten used to it, you blithely tab through the menu choices > and do things like accidentally remove support for your hard > drives--this can lead to an interesting reboot. > > (For FreeBSD'ers, along the same lines, the other day, meaning to > remove/usr/obj before doing a buildworld, I cheerfully used tab > completion to get to /usr/obj and did my chflags and rm -rf *. Only > afterwards did I realize I had not gone all the way to /usr/obj and > had managed to entirely remove /usr. Oops. )
A couple of weeks ago I managed to do something even more "interesting". I had added a compiler optimisation option to the /etc/make.conf on my gentoo workstation and was recompiling some of the more relevant packages to make the optimisation take effect. Now, my disks are usually full to the brim (a bad thing, I know), so the installation failed with "no space on device". The trick I use with such problems is to remove the package that failed and retry - portage just overwrites most of the old files because they have the same names, files with changed names (and with same function) are present twice on the disk during the short period between the installation and emerge clean, so removing those usually does the trick. Without thinking, I did it on the package in question. The problem was: it was the glibc! People with more brains than me won't need to have it explained to them why removing the glibc on a sources-based distro is a no-no. I managed to fix it in the end (recipe: add a GRP mirror, emerge sync and emerge -k glibc), but it has been an experience I'm not very keen on repeating. > SimplyMepis installs more quickly than SuSE, supports NTFS out of the > box, and in my opinion is better as a newcomer friendly > distribution--however, I'm not very familiar with SuSE--I think that > Horror, one of the moderators is, and can perhaps help you. Not really, since I haven't actively used a SuSE since 7.1, but I have seen it in action a couple of times. SuSE is my distribution of choice to recommend to a newbie. It has tools to help use it without needing experience, and it also tolerates "user interference" like, say, hand-editing config files, better than other newbie-oriented distros IMHO. SimplyMepis might be better though - I don't know anything about it. In any case I'm quite confident to say that installing SuSE won't be a mistake. Cheers -- Horror Vacui Registered Linux user #257714 Go get yourself... counted: http://counter.li.org/ - and keep following the GNU. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/0XFolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this list, please email [EMAIL PROTECTED] & you will be removed. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LINUX_Newbies/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
