On Mon, Sep 24, 2001 at 11:36:03AM +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Well, over the weekend I found some time to try out the new Linux CD -
> yes, it did arrive, thanks Claus - so here are a few observations:
>
> Getting it installed and running was very straightforward and the
> following are not problems that required workarounds.
>
> 1. I copied the loader and kernel zip files onto MSDOS formatted
> diskettes on a PC. When I unzipped them on SMSQ I got the following
> messages:
>
> Inflating: boot warning: skipping unknown (non-Qdos) extra field.
>
> I got this message also for loader_txt, howto-install_txt, README,
> ramimg_gz and vmlinux. Only lxx was unaffected.
>
> 2. I partitioned the disk using atari-fdisk as follows:
>
> hda1 - QDOS 4Gb
> hda2 - Linux 4Gb
> hda3 - Linux swap 512Mb (yes, I discovered there is still a 128Mb
> limit
> afterwards, as /proc/meminfo clearly showed).
even in 2.2.17? It is certainly gone in 2.4
> I tried formatting the QDOS partition with qxltool, but it wanted me to
> run fix_geometry. Of course the leaflet I got with the disk has long
> since been filed away and I couldn't be bothered to pull the disk out
> to read the label on it, so I've not bothered with that yet.
recent versions of qxltool will tell you which value to enter, otherwise
you can use those displayed when booting Linux (dmesg will replay them).
> However,
> just to see what would happen, and in spite of warnings against, I
> tried formatting the QDOS partition from SMSQ. It worked and didn't
> seem to damage the Linux installation, but DIR will not report any size
> information - you just get 0/0. Anyway it was good enough to allow me
> to boot Linux from hard disk instead of floppy.
it would be nice to find a pattern as to when SMSQ Format works..
> 3. Booting Linux takes ages (from hard disk) - the part before the
> screen clears and the Linux penguin appears. After that initialization
> seems to be as quick as any x86 system of similar performance. The
> default console font seems easy enough to read on a 14 inch monitor
> (the final larger font - not the initial tiny one).
even the initial one works fine on 17"
> 5. Reading large files from diskettes is a lot quicker in Linux than in
> SMSQ.
you mean floppy-disks? I am surprised, the PC ish hardware is not
easy to serve in Linux. In fact you will probably experience
severe slowdowns of floppy performance under X or when lots of HD
activity is going on - the system has to serve 30K interrupts/second
not tolerating any delay.
SMSQ has it a bit easier as it simply polls the floppy.
> 6. Normally, after installing a new version of Linux, I will build a
> custom kernel - perhaps not really relevant on Q40 as there are no
> extra bits of hardware to support. But anyway, I noticed the Linux
> source is 2.2.6.
obsolete, even dangerous kernel by todays standards.
Making a customised kernel would certainly help the boot time,
at least half of the kernel can be moved into modules.
The monolithic kernel is only usefull for installation and such.
> So will I continue using Q40 Linux for projects? Too early to say yet,
> I will certainly experiment with it a bit more and I'd like to get the
> 2.2.17 kernel source. There are some clear advantages over SMSQ -
> better filesystem, faster file access without the slave blocks, mature
> CDROM support; but some disadvantages - it isn't a QL :O) no SBASIC
> (except with emulator), not as simple to use graphics, slower to boot.
if you like a handy interpreter with graphics try python with TK.
It has most benefits of Lisp-like languages while still fairly easy
to learn for someone used to SBasic.
> The speed of disk access is a limitation on the ISA bus compared to my
> 800MHz Pentium with 100MHz IDE, which would be a more practical
> proposition to base a 40Gb Linux system on.
even the RAM isn't that much faster - I get about 13 MB/s reported by
hdparm.
Bye
Richard
