Using Linux

So, after some troubles with my computer (namely, my Ubuntu Feisty partition filling up so much that I couldn’t log in), I needed to wipe everything and start fresh.

Fresh like Mint.

I decided to check out Linux Mint after a recommendation. What sold me on it was a screenshot showing that it only had one taskbar/menubar. There was no top and bottom bar business like Ubuntu has that wastes valuable screen real estate.

The process wasn’t painless, though. Apparently a new version of some part of the OS decides not to distinguish between IDE and SATA drives anymore when naming devices. My primary IDE drive became /dev/sdd and so it was listed after my e-SATA and SATA drives when it came time to install GRUB.

Since I have a Windows partition on the same IDE drive as the Linux partition, this caused all kinds of problems and I couldn’t boot into any OS.

After trying a few things I stumbled across a forum posting that made something a bit more clear. I needed to change the numbering for GRUB back to (hd0,2) instead of (hd3,2) in the menu.lst file without changing the device reference from /dev/sdd3 to /dev/hdd3. I was able to boot into the LiveCD and edit that file that was on the drive.

I restarted from there and it actually worked. It only took a few extra hours and some frustration over one little part. The rest of the installation was very easy and straightforward.

Rolling out a new OS version every six months is no small task, so I applaud those who work on Ubuntu. I just don’t like how it catches me off guard and causes me to realize how little free time I have.

I want to start fresh. A clean install on a formatted partition. It is the recommended procedure on many forums, and I want to rid myself of Automatix. The problem is, I need to figure out all that I will have to reinstall when I actually do it. A short list so far:

• Opera
• Unison
• whatever I did for scheduling backups

Not the best thing when I start to not remember every little tweak I have made.

Maybe that is a good reason to update it here for myself.

First I must go back and look into separating my /home directory again to its own partition.

Every once in a while I dig up old drives that seem to still work (although all drives will fail eventually, right?). Today I’ve got a Fujitsu MPA3035AT 3.5GB IDE drive that I’m going to partition and use for swap for all my (planned) Linux partitions. I found a Fujitsu obsolete product information page for the series it is from even.

I remember reading somewhere that the ideal space for a swap partition is no greater than 1.5x the system memory. Right now that means I’ll dedicate 1.5GB to the swap partition.

I’ve been debating with myself about what to use the remaining ~2GB for. I thought about using it as a small, unreliable backup space for my USB flash drive (which is actually 4GB); or using it as backup for other crucial hard disk data. Today I realized that it might be the perfect space for an installation of Puppy Linux. I’ve been using a derivative of Puppy known as Muppy from a CD off and on for quite a while. It has saved me many headaches in the past.

Now it’s just a matter of turning off the PC and getting on my hands and knees to do the actual hardware installation.