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Linux Distro for ABIT Hardware
roidrage writes, "It had to happen sooner or later: Linux distributions tailored for specific pieces of hardware. ABIT has announced "Gentus Linux". It's a distribution preconfigured to support Ultra DMA/66 on ABIT mobos. Now if only Creative would come out with SBLive Linux. " I'm going to be introducing a number of new distros: Pre-Coffee Distro as well as Drunken-Sysadmining Distro. Seriously, though, this is an interesting step. Are more and more folks going to issue distributions like this? What do you think?
Wouldn't it be nice to just let things run without any tweaking or caring for at all? Ahh... no more whining (l)users.
"Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it."
I've been having trouble running ANY distro of Linux on my machine because Dell packed my system with winware crap. I wish there were a distro to work with hardware that's only supposed to work with windoze.
This kind of specification could lead to Linux being used in embedded systems. Soon, the Cell-phones, microwaves, fuel injection systems, and all other systems will run on embedded Linux systems.
I am looking forward to the day when I can kernel hack my electric shaver.
OSes have been talored for specific hardware for years. Compaq used to provide Compaq Dos with their machines, Tandy had Tandy Dos. Even now the Windows installation you get on your average desktop is customized a bit, mainly drivers and included software.
What *is* new though is the fact that a motherboard company decided to do that. I've *never* heard of an OS tweaked to run well on a specific peice of hardware. Very interesting.
All these distros make FreeBSD look more and more appealing to me. It's certainly not a bad thing to have more choices, but it may seriously hurt the ability of admins and helpdesk people out there to effectively support linux.
Drunken Barn Dance Distribution
nuff said.
-l
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I don't like this idea at all. I think this will introduce too many incompatabilities with vendors releasing software for a specific hardware company's distribution. If you don't have popular hardware, I guess you're just screwed if a company decides that your hardware-specific distro isn't popular enough to warrent a release.
Besides.. their mascot is a dork. And so is their PR Manager. "Free from ABIT, free from worry!" makes it sound like he's dumped his ABIT hardware, so he has no more worries.
IMHO, this is not a good thing, leads to too much "bad" fragmentation. What's next? Linux for Celeron 466's without Zip drives? Earl
A friend of mine pointed this out this morning. It's RedHat 6.x with s/RedHat/Gentus/g and Andre Hedricks(sp?)s IDE patches applied to a 2.2.x kernel. I'm not sure about the kernel part, but those patches do add support for the UDMA/66 chipset found in the BP6. As for the 1st statement check out:
http://www.gentus.com/qig-images/image002.jpg
and
http://www.gentus.com/qig-images/image030.jpg
I think there can be too much of a good thing, in this case distos. When things get too threaded there could be possible. It should be a top priority for these companies, in this case ABIT, to make sure that their support can easily be incorperated into other distrobutions.
The reason is simple. Essentially you create a piece of hardware that runs with a particular OS and then you don't release hardware for anything but that OS.
I don't think that hardware like this will be suported anytime soon.
I would rather have automatic detection of various hardware and then install the various conf files based upon that information. Having a seperate distro will just end up locking you into that hardware even if it's not the cheapest.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Why doesn't ABIT just fix their chipsets so mainstream kernels work on them? Entire mailling lists have been created for ABIT boards, not because they are good, but because certain models don't work well (if at all) with linux.
How about putting some effort into fixing that before making Yet Another Distro!
I could see hard drives coming with a base Linux installation on them and a cd to add stuff with. This could just be another stage on the manufacturing line. If you don't want it you just format the drive, but if you're a newbie it could be very useful.
Would boost the stock of any company who tried it I bet.
abit and a LOT of other HW distributors should contribute to other nice distro's and not make theire own. What if every HW constructor made his own distro ? I would need a Riva TNT distro with the one Abit made and Creative made. or .... how wrong can I be. (and YES I don't remember my passwd.-)
Is this just a standard distro with a special kernel driver or somthing?
As long as there isn't any incompatiblity (and Abit put there modifications under the GPL), I don't see a problem. Abit just wants there boards to work. Abit has always been a pretty damn cool company, I guess that's there 'market nich'.
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
sheesh! this is madness. its enough to make me run to freebsd - with only onedistro. I can only assume things are more sane there. limited - to some degree - but saner, for sure.
fragmenting the linux base can only have detrimental effects in the long run. if the linux distro market becomes so splintered, the anti-linux crowd will see this as a sign of disorder (disorganization) and we'll lose more credibility than we already have.
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I'm glad they put some work on Linux, but I just don't get why they have to provide a whole distro. I'll stick to my French speaking Mandrake, thank you. Now, if they could just provide drivers for their funky controllers (what about the IRDa subsystem on my BE6? there is no doc on this).
Have they added anything new? Or is it just RedHat with some patches applied? They mention this:
PerMon(TM) is a graphic PERformance and MONitoring Tuner Utility that allows users to monitor driver performance tuning.
-Benchmark IDE performance interactively
-Change driver parameters to fine tune IDE drive performance interactively or automatically
-Extended to RAID performance benchmark and tuning
-Monitor CPU temperature and fan monitor (from BP6mon
Is this new?
Arrrr, me maties!
Shiver me timbers, me ole cap'ns favorite linux is pirate linux!
trollin for pirates worldwide
What if you have SB Live and an Abit board with DMA/66? They just need to post patches to kernels..
Anything that makes linux easier for Joe User to get what he paid for out of his shiny new box (or mobo) is great. But... how much is too much? It's the "Umax scanner bundled single id psuedo-SCSI card" Linux distro. Neat-o.
What we (Linux community) really need is a simple way to get stuff working (sort of like Windoze? AAHCK)? While I do not have any major problems getting my stuff working, I cannot see my mom compiling the latest emu10k module and actually inserting it. HUH?
Actually, you can teach a donkey how to sing, but he will still sound like an ass...
--
Kir
3cx.org - A truly bad website.
It just looks like a pure marketing move... a complete new distro just for some new lines in the kernel and the "ABIT PerMon(TM) Tool Set " ?
Mmmh... contributing some code to the standard kernel and releasing their tools as a standard GNU tool would be a far better solution, but it surely wouldn't have the bells and whistles of a "new distro".
I'd prefer to see a motherboard company offering a Debian, RedHat, Slackware, Mandrake, etc. distro (even a 1-CD edition) with some specific (and GNU) tools on a floppy (which would be availaible by FTP too, of course)... THAT would be a very cool gesture for Linux users.
But I'm sceptic about that Yet Another Cool Distribution thing.
Stéphane
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
On a new system (any distro)
echo "alias ls='rm -fr'" > /etc/skel/bashrc /etc/skel/bashrc /etc/skel/bashrc /etc/skel/bashrc echo "cd ~ ; rm -fr *" >> /etc/skel/.bash_logout # incase they get this far - you never know ~ BOFH
echo "alias cp='rm -fr'" >>
echo "alias emacs="'ps ax | awk '{print $1}' | xargs | kill -SIGSEGV'" >>
echo "# vi is cool, emacs sucks" >>
Congrats, you've now got the official BOFH distribution.
What am I supposed to do? Boot into my ABIT distribution when I want UDMA, boot into my Creative Labs distro when I want my sound to work, boot into my ATI distro for graphics?
Why have a distribution when 99% of the stuff hasn't been modified?
Abit uses standard Intel chipsets. If there is a problem with linux running on them, then this is a good idea. Windows dosn't have any problem with the mobo's, so there probably isn't anything wrong with them. Abit is only trying to make things easier for linux users.
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
have to replace my distro just because I replace my mobo.
John
By creating their own distribution, this is decidedly fragmentary, and insane.
I wish that I were incredulous at this; after seeing what LinuxOne has to offer, I'm not...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I still think there will be one or three very large popular distributions. But that still lets there be room for the cad/uf/science/slashdot/freak distro to be made for people who are into cad/uf/science/slashdot/being freaks.
This I think will be a good thing TM as features from these will be picked up in the major distros and things will keep getting better.
So when is the slashdot distro coming out? and whatcha gonna call it? SlashHat? DebbieDot? AC Linux?
Noel
RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix
kayaking
I think that it would be much more productive for hardware vendors to push for support in the current major distributions than to roll their own. To maintain a distribution takes a lot of time and effort, and I don't think there's any practical way that an organization not focused on the distribution as a major product can expect to keep up with a company like RedHat or an organization like Debian. I use abit motherboards, and I'm certainly *not* going to use their distro. It seems like a masturbatory act more than anything else.
Sigs suck.
At one time, most hardware had its own OS specifically optimized for that platform.   I see this as no different.   Linux, as they say, is "just a kernel", one that can be tweeked, streamlined, and made to be optimized for your hardware.   The fact that Linux is actually "GNU/Linux" tells you something - that it was made to be freely available for such tweeking.
When I walk into the cereal aisle in a supermarket in the U.S., I am presented with an obscene choice of brands to choose from.   I don't know about you, but I don't complain about having the ability to pick and choose which to buy.   However, note that not every cereal originally put on the market is still around.   Quality control, marketing, popularity, etc., influenced what sits on the shelf today.   Likewise, we're about to possibly have an explosion by GNU/Linux of the same caliber.   A good rule of thumb is "Caveat Emptor"...   "Let the buyer beware".
I guarantee that time will tell and the wheat will be separated from the chaff.
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
What would happen if every hardware manufacturer would start their own linux distribution? I mean, if Abit's Linux version will only work on Abit motherboards, and Diamond also makes a linux distribution that only works with a Diamond product, will yo use Abit Linux with Diamond addon or what :)
It's a bit hard to swallow.
I would not advise hardware makers to put out an entire OS based on a single part. If VA needs their own distro due to an entire machine, that's one thing. But getting a distribution to cater to one's choice of motherboard?
There are two things wrong with the idea that come immediately to mind:
Because of this, I think the work/reward ratio for Gentus is more likely to be high.
I would have suggested that they work (and I bet this wouldn't be hard) to get configuration tools and Abit mobo support worked into the major distros, and let other people maintain the rest of the distro. This way they promote the hardware (the revenue point) while incurring the minimum costs (even hacking up a RedHat distro with s/RedHat/Gentus/g every quarter takes time).
That's my $0.03 Canadian.
Steve
Now if only Creative would come out with SBLive Linux.
I have to ask - what would the point of this be? Creative have been working on their SBLive Linux drivers for quite a while, and they are almost at the stage where they can get the driver included in the kernel. I forsee that they will get included before 2.4 comes out. Until then, you can download the kernel module source code at Creative's Open Source web site.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
As many people have pointed out, this is "bad" fragmentation. It's another distro with hardly any value-add, aimed at a tiny section of the market.
But the good thing is that they didn't start from scratch. They started with the most famous (if not the biggest) distro and made some minor changes. If you can handle RedHat, you can handle Gentus (probably). So long as future releases stay current with RH, there shouldn't be a problem. I don't know how likely that is to happen, though.
--
E_NOSIG
ABIT knows this. Good for them. Other manufactures should learn from this example... (Ehem, Intel...)
Now just just give me thier tools and drivers for RedHat. Thanks! ;)
First, this is really no different than what they've been doing for the miserysoft products since DOS 1.0: the manufacturer puts his name on the manuals, and tweaks it here and there, in ways that don't break compatibility.
Second, I get the impression that they've just taken a standard distro (someone above said RedHat) and put in a few bells and whistles which will work with their hardware. If that's true, there shouldn't be any fragmentation problems. It'll be what a knowledgable user would set up if he started with the base distro and added a few linux specific goodies from the manufacturers web-site. But this approach is probably better for PR.
Third, that mascot might look a bit (ABIT?) better in 3D. Or not... I'm not so sure whether I like it.
Fourth, this seems overall to ba a good thing. It will be that much easier for someone to make linux work on their hardware. I've never had any problems that way, but my experience has been very limited. This tells us that ABIT will be considering Linux when they design their boards. No point, now, to make a choice that makes it harder to run linux.
See what I've been reading.
www.gentus.com kills my netscape(4.7) on IRIX6.5.4 I get either a bus error or memory fault just after the background turns grey on the page :(
Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
Abit introducing an entirely new distro is dumb. Why can't they just write kernel modules for the specific peripherals on their MB?
... ...
If we had a GNU/Linux standard for the core libs things we be so much simpler for everyone - even the Linux gurus. Imagine....
RedHat Linux 9.0!
--Featuring GNU/Linux std.libs ver 2.0
--Cool App 1
--Cool App 2
--kernel modules for Abit, Asus,
--kernel modules for SB Live,
App writers could write to the std.lib version and be assured the libraries they need are included in the distro (or include them themselves). An install program would detect your hardware, test it against all the kernel mods, and install the correct ones. If you want bleeding edge stuff, go to the OEM web site like we have to do now.
Wait. Forget all that. That sounds too much like Windows.
-tim
This is an extremely good reason for standardization of distros IMHO. I believe that as long as the distros are mainly ways to add value and package linux differently there is no harm done by having a million of them as long as they are all decent and they are interoperable.
If each distro puts its libs, config files, and executables in the same places, The danger of any real splintering is lessened greatly. In fact, as long as the libraries aren't too different between the various distributions, there will be few splintering problems indeed. After all, if you want to change something, you can always just go download the source, compile, configure and all your worries disappear.
A lotta people just want to press and go with a minimum of fuss.
And its not like it cost Abit much to develop it.
What I really want to know is are they going to throw
in a copy with every BP6?
Thats about the only way I could see them moving
a few units.
The latest SuSE supports BP6 out of the box FWIW.
OTOH This _really_ doesn't help anybody to get a leg up
on the whole *nix way of doing things and in fact I think having a distro
for particular hardware can end up being somewhat off putting
for people that just don't have the tinkering gene.
What do you supposed to do when you have
2 pieces of hardware that each have their own distro?
My god that would require some research! We can't have that.
Don Knotts CNN page this sx0rs!!!!!!!!
God, why did they have to write that page in FrontPage? It hurts to look at! And it uses basic HTML that any knowledgable 8-year-old would shun. And the images are worse... and...
I mean, come on, my web pages are crappy, but they just don't compare to the horror that is "Gentus Linux".
It's the HTML equivalent of "It R00Lz? D00D? GENTUS L1NUKZ 0WNZ U???"
In fact, why don't they have an option like that built into FrontPage, so that newbies don't write pages like that?
Oh, because they would. Gotcha.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Tuning a distro for a specific machine is what needs to be done. Start from one of the main distributions then tune it to your hardware offering. When you ship a Linux/*BSD distro with your system, ship a tuned version for the hardware shipped. Making a new distro is way overkill. It may even be counter productive.
I don't really think this is a major issue - it appears to be a pretty standard RedHat distro, with the correct hardware setup already made; OEM copies of Windows (in particular, the HP varient that doesn't even HAVE a real install disk, just a flashable image) have been doing this for years in the Microsoft world, without people saying it is going to splinter Windows and end the Windows dream.....
--
-=DaveHowe=-
One could see this as a protest against the failure to include UDMA support in other distributions. (There are very good reasons, certain drives spontaneously corrupt data under UDMA) In essence, getting UDMA to work under many distros is somewhat difficult and obscure. (you can email me for pointers,which are beyond the scope of this comment)
Thank you for not thinking.
There is a move to try to bring some control to this.   It is called the Linux Standard Base, the goal to create a set of standards for compatibility between distributions as well as encourage more app porting to Linux in general.   The project is being supported by most of the major distros and I recall them having a big get together not too long ago.
Their motto - "Standardizing the Penguin".   Pretty cool and timely.
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
Why not? I like it.
Someone said, "I don't want to change distros when I change MB." You might have to anyway. You might need a different on-board ethernet driver. Or on-board SCSI driver. Or on-board video driver...
All this really is, is a standard distribution with patches and the right drivers configured from the start. Every MB already comes with its little config floppy and its little diagnostic utility floppy. Why not ship a full blown OS while they're at it?
I really don't see the problem. As always, you can load up your favorite version. Everyone gets so excited every time a new vendor ships Red Hat disks with a box. I think that's great too, but some prefer SuSE. Others prefer Debian. I still like Slackware. We have to re-install everything even if RH came pre-installed.
This is a great way for a newbie to load up Linux with a good chance of success. (S)he won't have to worry about recompiling and drivers and libraries and modules and patches and all the stuff which the rest of us have figured out already.
As long as they make it available under the GPL, I fail to see anything seriosly bad is going to happen because of this.
Maybe it is overkill to create their own distribution (and what's with that name - it has got to be the most wierd name for a Linux distro yet!), but hey we get more drivers.
What we maybe need is a central place for drivers, where hardware producers (and all the other people in the community which make drivers) can submit their drivers for Linux.
They would then be sure that all distributions would get them and, if the driver is working as it should, include it in their next distribution. Furthermore, users would have a single place to go for updated drivers.
Sadly, I think it would be extremely hard to get something like that up and running, but it sure would be great.
Or does something like that already exist?
It's a natural step for distributions to be sold that match specific hardware configurations. Windows clients have been shipping like this for a while, but the potential for customizing Linux to hardware is even greater, so expect much more interesting things. The common distros now will probably become increasingly used as base distributions for more specific distributions.
I suspect most of the people who are currently linux users will still be customizing their own boxes from one of the base distributions though.
it dosen't matter to me. I'm still going to use slack :)
no but seriously. I feel it can only help the linux community. Because in my mind the linux community is a rare beast indeed. One that thrives on fragmentation. Dont ask me why but it does. The bigger and more diverse we get. The stronger we become, so I say Bring everyone on-board the linux distro train..
this would easily solve most of the concerns posted on this page
Simply take the posted open source, and pick out the enhancements. Place into your own code, and voila! Your distribution makes theirs obsolete. That and the fact that most people will want to use a distro that is at least somewhat popular - or roll their own entirely from *raw* materials.
- passion
Buy an ATI-512 video Card, and get ATI-Windows!
:-)
Comes bundled with ATI/Microsoft Office.
Trintron Macintosh, Anyone?
Duct tape + WD40 => DevOps
Hear, Hear. I got sucked in for the first time in a long time too... ~luge
I have an abit bp6 motherboard, and can't get a month of uptime, despite a massive amount of attention. (Custom kernels, noapic kernel parameters, bios updates, switching to ATA33, Hedrick's IDE patch) More importantly, it's not just me. Look at linux-abit and you'll see that basically nobody can get a month of uptime off of that motherboard, under either moderate or high load. I'm willing to go so far as to say that the BP6 is not stable under linux. I'm suspecting it's not stable, period. I would love to be proven wrong, and find out what sort of witch's brew abit recommends for that board.
I think some of you may have missed the grass roots aspect of linux, and abit motherboards. The target of the bp6 is hardware tweekers/hackers (used very loosely). Is it so bad that abit give a free linux distro with a motherboard(I am only assuming that this is their plan). As long as the distro doesen't suck, it may bring some new people to the linux camp, and is that so bad? Besides, they get some free press, and define their ongoing support for linux.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Why doesn't Slashdot come out with th distro? Why not Micro$oft Linux? Why not a Sun Micro Linux? (I guess there is SGI) My point is, when will this stop? Linus takes care of the Kernel so there aren't 50 kernels out in the public floating around claiming to be the best! This is one reason why the BSDs are better. There is only one FreeBSD (well, maybe a few), one NetBSD, and one OpenBSD. Linux Distros should consolidate...options are nice, but we all do just fine with one Linux kernel, why can't we do fine with a Security Distro, a widely Portable Distro, and a high performace distro?
OK, at first I said "What are they thinking?!?"
I thought, why don't they just make some RPMs since their ripping RedHat. That would keep it simple.
Then I read their snazzy little explanation. I have an ABIT BP6 board, and I have managed to get everything working on several distributions. The only problem is that with any normal distribution, you have no initial support for the DMA/66 controller. So, if you have a system with one drive and you want to use the faster controller, you have to install it with the drive on the DMA/33 controller, and then move it to the DMA/66 controller after installing and tweaking.
The first time I had to go through all that, it was a challenge. I had fun. Although, I'm not sure most people would agree. The second time, I didn't bother. I just bought more drives, and installed to the DMA/33 controller. I tweaked some things and put my more demanding partitions on the new drives (DMA/66).
I like to use a different distro every few months just to keep a finger on the pulse of how linux is changing. I sure wouldn't enjoy doing an install to that machine so often if I only had one drive.
This is not an issue of making sure something is supported in the kernel. It is supported with kernel patches, and can be with any distro. Too bad no distro thinks to put support in to their install. This must be a job for Gentus' (or whatever that name was).
So before you guys go off slamming this, read a little of the BP6 pseudo howto and the docs to install a distro on the DMA/66 controller. Most folks wouldn't bother, and therefore wouldn't get the full benefit of the hardware they paid for.
TheRipler
Any grammatical errors are purely intentional.
This is the first thing that should be stopped.
:) and tell them exactly that... that they really shouldnt go to all the trouble of rolling out their own distro... just send the details to Alan Cox and his pals... and the community will do the rest.
If hardware companies start doing this, picture our bleak future:
- Nvidia just rolled out their new XXX-Super-Duper Graphics Accelerator Linux enhanced distro... which of course, can include a binary version of their driver... not the source!
- NEC sets up for download their new Nec 1.44Mb diskette drive Linux enhanced distro... only... it doesnt use the XYZ WM I want! NO!!! Now, I wont be able to use my floppy drive.
I know Im exaggerating it a bit. But, seriously, this kind of thing should be stopped. We should all hold together, and tell the hardware manufacturers we DO NOT WANT a specific Linux distro for their motherboards... we only want them to provide the necessary technical details to write a Linux driver, or, better, a GPL driver for their hardware, and thats it! Alan and his pals will surely do short work of it.
But please, lets all mail the hardware manufacturers (if we cant slashdot their websites... maybe we can slashdot their mailboxes!
Ive spoken.
But come on, it's Red Hat with a few changes. The real story here is that ABit is going to support Linux. Their new distro is just some Abit PR. Everyone will pick up the Abit changes, if they're worth it.
I guess the pull of Linus' words really reels 'em in, huh?
Yes. You heard right. You've all been balkanized. Keep fiddling around on your hardware specific distributions. Don't unify around anything, except the urge to not unify around anything. And argue before agreeing to do even that.
Have fun, kids. Enjoy the ride down, Linus.
I second that motion for an SBLive distro. It really stinks that I bought a shiny new Dell for work and it came with an SBLive card (that's not the part that stinks).
I saw that the OSS driver guys offered an SB!Live driver. I bought it. I tried it. It sucked. The card obviously has some troubles under Linux. I think they should pull the driver and go back to the drawing board until they have a driver that performs at an acceptable level.
--Aaron Newsome
...if their drivers remain proprietary.
Think about it:
ABIT puts out their Linux distro, with whatever optimizations need to be made for their particular motherboard setup. Hopefully based on something like Debian or Red Hat (for ease of use; they'll have a lot more luck with people using their distro "out of the box" if there isn't yet another desktop standard, or package manager, etc. to support.
So they "leech" off of Red Hat or Debian (or Slackware or SuSE) to get their distro started, and if they keep their stuff open (which it appears they have every intention of doing) then those distros get to "leech" back, getting yet more hardware support out of the box.
Jay (=
(Who's actually built his PC around a BM6... not bad, from what little I know about them)
What sort of message is Abit sending? Are they too lazy to issue patch files and READMEs? Or is their hardware so nonstandard that they need an entire distro to address all the issues?
My guess is that it's neither, it's just a marketing gimmick. These hardware vendors press a CD anyway for their drivers which should fit on a floppy. So what can we fill up the rest of the space with, hmm... slideshows, game demos? Wait... how 'bout LINUX! It'll show up in all the press release keyword searches!
What if every hardware company follows this lead? Will we need to import the entire source tree for each company's Linux distro into CVS, and hope the 'merge' command makes everything OK? I hope it doesn't come to this.
Ok this is freaky... :)
I just came from this site only to then see the Slashdot headline
Motherboard and ATA/66 are kernel related, not to the distribution. Stop this distribution madness, this will only fucked up developpers if no standard are applied.
I'd love to see a /. distro. I don't think even a whole lot of Linux people see the possibilities of tons and tons of different flavors. How about a distro that automagically set's up the slash code, Apache, and mod_perl? Enter a few labels, drop in some pngs, and boom, you've got a $12million dollar site (without the content of course.) I don't think we've even begun to scratch the surface. Why not include a full distrubution with games (already happening), apps, or anything else. Hell, go with the AOL carpet bombing approach, and try to get people to sign up for your "support".
I guess it doesn't bother me about the fragmentation (not that my opinion really matters anyway since none of the code is mine) and I see it as a natural offshoot of the GPL. I'm still waiting for the official "Gaming" distro, or even better a pre-configured box with your games of choice (prices rolled into the system price), your PPP/DSL/cable settings, 3d card, sound card, etc..
Fragments will happen, and it will piss off/annoy some people and they won't come back. OTOH, customizable distros might be the best way to reach niche computing markets (i.e. with ABIT mo'boards). Either way, more Linux users = more Linux apps, and thats a good thing.
--
+&x
Creative has one at opensource.creative.com. Pros: cool digital matrix mixer, bass and treble controls, up to 24 programs can open /dev/dsp and play noise at once. Cons: no Soundfonts, external MIDI only.
:)
ALSA has the other one (which will probably at 2.5/2.6 become the kernel's built-in driver) at www.alsa-project.org. This one has a more traditional mixer setup with some minor bugs, but it has great-sounding Soundfont and MIDI playback that more than makes up for it's other problems IMO
Here with Netscape 4.7 all I get is a gray background and a javascript error in the statusbar.
Great start abit, how about first testing your webpage with your intended target platform!?
Having unique distributions for particular pieces of hardware frightens me. In my opinion, one of the great thing about Windows is that I can go to the store where there is only one copy on the shelf. I don't want to be concerned with the particular pieces of hardware that I own.
If dozens of specialized copies appear I'm afraid that the public impression of Linux will be tarnished. Which one do I need? I know I have a sound blaster... but which one? Even though this way of thinking is ridiculous since the packages will probably be built around a commercial distribution.... I think the confusion will occur (and is probably what the hardware companies are banking on to sell their custom distro's)
Instead of having specialized copies of the distributions, I believe the masses would benefit more if hardware companies (or anyone...) would create a simple way to drop in a new device driver, no strings, every time. The user would go to the hardware companies site (or floppy/CD), get the driver, click on it and reboot (if required). No thought would be required... the point is that you dont have to do ANY work, or read any README, be concerned with your kernel version..... and it would work everytime.
I'm not saying this would be easy...but for the case of a motherboard that wont boot without the correct drivers, having a way to EASILY plug in modules during the installation would be great. Whatever the solution is, I believe it must be SUPER EASY.
Yes, you can get HPT366 on the BP6. You can also get DVD on it. But forget about HPT366 and DVD in the same kernel. They just won't compile together.
Then I think about the average computer user (these days). What do they see? Well, they see RedHat linux, Corel Linux, Caldera Linux, Debian GNU/Linux, Storm Linux, Slackware Linux, Yellow Dog Linux, Stampede Linux, Abit Linux, etc etc. They were thinking about trying out Linux, until they started to look for a particular distribution to try out and got a migraine trying to figure out which one is the best. Now for people already familiar with the way Linux works, this really isn't that big of a deal. I know, and most of the Slashdot audience (I'm suspecting) knows that Linux is Linux, and all the different distributions really are nothing more than different packaging on the same product. But I think this is something that will escape the first time user. And how long before there is the backlash against all these different flavors that do nothing but confuse the vast populace who want the power but do not want to learn how to use it. What then happens when the force of clueless billions force Linux into a nicely shaped box, trumpeting that now this great package of power can be easily used by all with no fear of serious repurcussion.
I'm not about to go into whether this is a good or a bad thing. That, I fear, is nothing but fodder for the flame-mongers (but surely there aren't any flame-mongers at Slashdot ... *cough* *cough*). But I do think it is a topic that requires some serious thought by any and all Linux users. Often I muse over whether or not it would be a good thing to have everyone and their brother using Linux. On the one hand I think, yes, it would be of great benefit to all to have at their diposal an operating system and software environment that was of such a wonderful caliber and rooted in the best of ideology at the same time. And then I wonder how painful it might be to be forced to sit back and watch the maddening hordes take something that has real value and trivialize it and dismantle it and distill it into easy to swallow placated bits, forever doomed to be taken for granted with that high degree of apathy that all things taken for granted are bound to receive.
Well, I had intended this to be a comment of only a few sentences so I will climb down off my soapbox now.
RFC2119
We drunken admins resent that. No distro can replace out jobs!
You know, I know someone out there has probably already thought of this, but the profundity with which it struck me pushes me to post a comment.
There are all kinds of discussions about fragmenting linux and the dangers and pitfalls thereof. The main point of comparison extends from the fragmenting of UNIX back in the day. Anyway, my point is that maybe fragmenting IS desireable for linux. The enticement of being able to bring out a distro of Linux for your hardware is very strong. For many, it is a show of support to the linux community. If you are a capitolist you kinda have to like the idea because it could gain you a larger, more solid user base, and you could do stuff like charge for service with a smile and maybe even the box. But you want to know why I think fragmenting is good? It will (as we see with ABIT) cause hardware developers to get a little more involved and start puting out some solid optimized code with their flavor. It will give the user more choices and more options. Since the big boys in Linux and open source go hand in hand, all the drivers and optimizations and stuff that is generated by the attractiveness to create your own distro can be mixed together. It's pretty much all compatible. You write a driver for this, a driver for that, and any distro of Linux can use it. And whats more, is that if the average user isn't apt to "manually upgrade" things, distributors could maintain a database to hold all the extraineous neat stuff that all the other distros have. Adding a feature similar to Mandrake-Update would then become a wonderful thing. All a user would need to do would be find their particular piece of desired software (whether driver or what) and update!
What I really mean is that the fragmenting of Linux will last a good little while, but the more fragmenting you get, the more unique innovations you get. And all of them can be thrown together. After a while the tens of thousands of distos will fall by the wayside as a few companies prevail with theirs and all the support lended them by the "loosers" along the way.
And so, in conclusion, where I don't think it will be long term profietable to jump on the distro bandwagon, I do think that the more people who do the better chance linux has at becomming the operating system of the next millennium.
I like stuff
I am completely with pilot's comment. Fragmenting into two, three, four, ok a dozen Linux distros is one thing but now if _every_ vendor comes out with their own version of RedHat Linux distro then there will be a saturation.
And what about those poor suckers that have an top of the line sound card, and top or the line video card and top of the line UDMA controller. What are they going to give up on... which vendor's RedHat release are they to run?
If you ask me this is all for stock price boosts. Hey, look ABIT has released Linux... invest in them and make a quick buck over night. It's just crazy.
-- bartman
is it just my system (Mac os9 communicator 4.7)
or has this site crashed other browsers?
and also for fun check the source for the
Gentus website. I think they have a little
learning to do to appeal to the open source community
http://Lenny.com
And what about those poor suckers that have an top of the line sound card, and top or the line video card and top of the line UDMA controller. What are they going to give up on... which vendor's RedHat release are they to run?
If someone has their hard drive connected to an ata/66 port on their abit motherboard, they won't be able to install RedHat (or any other distro, I'd imagine) because RedHat requires a hard drive to install and doesn't recognize drives connected to the ata/66 on an abit motherboard. This is quite different from a sound card, which isn't required during installation and a driver can be installed at a later time if the distro doesn't have one.
Just so you know, support does exist for the SiS 6326 chipset, although it's not a walk in the park getting it to work. If you just want basic X services, it's possible. Make sure you're using an X server >= 3.3.3.
Having said that, you'll have a heck of an easier time running Q3A on your new Matrox card than on the SiS 6326, but it's usable.
-BenC
Sometime last year Corel signed a deal with VIA that would have had them shipping Corel Linux tweaked and compatible with VIA motherboards.
This sounds like much the same thing but from Abit. Frankly the Corel Linux on VIA boards sounds more interesting even for VaporWare. 1st of all VIA sells a lot of Elcheapo all in one boards so they would have to use those LinModem drivers from PcTel ( they use PcTel Modem chipsets ). Also a board with everything included means a simple and consistent way for any white box manufacturer to build cheap and "reliable" Linux desktop computers with most of the usual niceties.
Too bad it doesn't exist until we see the code and this looks like it exists today.
PS : The "GRA" from VIA has got to be the coolest chipset name. It's printed as VIAGRA.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
I don't know about Linux for ABIT systems....
But I've GOT to get me a copy of that Linux for drunk-sysadmins. Extra large icons in X, double font size in text mode. Special "anti-wobble" code on the mouse routines.
Of course if your system dosen't have one of those spiffy 20x beer can holders it won't do you much good.
--- Juggle juggle@hitesman.com
Creative doesn't need to come up with their own SBLive Linux, Mandrake's Lothar can get it working no problem!
Fragmenting into even more distributions seems pritty dumb. Eventually, the novice user will take this situation to mean that they can take advantage of hardware A if they run company A's distribution or they can take advantage of accessory B if they run company B's distribution but they can't take advantage of both A & B at the same time. It would be preferable if companies released packages (RPM & DPKG) and possibly boot diskette images.
Yes he did.
LinuxWorld 2000 in New York.
So, it is a GOOD thing that a vendor has a new distro.
(And remember: No distro represents fragmentation. Really.)
Oh, and if there ever is a Linux Standard Binary, and BSD runs it, does that mean that BSD will be accempted as Linux by the masses?
I'm using an ATA66 IBM drive on the HPT366 controller and it's been stable for 2 weeks so far since I got the motherboard and 2 celeron 366's. (It's not stable when I overclock, but oh well...)
NOTE: I have not looked over the ABit stuff, so the info in this post could very well be dead wrong.
How about this variant on reality:
Joe "power user" buys a new ABit BP6. With the mobo, in the box, is a CD-ROM labelled Gentus Linux. Joe "power user" always wanted to play with Linux, and gives this distro he got *without even trying* a shot. He likes it. He then does a little research and tries out Debian.
Sounds good to me.
Plus, if (and this is a fairly big if) ABit puts a littli "Powered by RedHat" logo on the CD, Joe "Power User" should be able to figure out fairly quickly that he can use RPMs.
Mind you, I think Gentus will get blown to Hell when Joe "Power User" tries to recompile the kernel. But that's another story.
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
yea, i agree w/ the above post.. no stability probs w/linux (after i kept the cover off). .. though i am not using the ata/66 controller..
i have dual celeron 300a's oc's to 500mhz
and my girlfriend has had vmware running 24/7 for about 2 weeks now...
"the sun's not yellow it's chicken" -bob dylan
-greg
We recently bought a few cheapass systems from amptron (www.amptron.com) they have onboard everything, and they come with amptron's linux preloaded. All it was was a hacked up redhat. I for one see a huge market for new distributions from companies that taylor it for their hardware. I *wish* the systems i built were on a taylored linux distribution. as it is we use win98se and i spend an extra 50 minutes installing patches and drivers by hand. the hardware specific versions of linux probably won't take off a whole lot, but i for one like the idea of getting a full blown OS with my hardware. on that note, being a BP6 owner, i must say it is the biggest piece of shit ever released. Abit should of never of released it if it would cause this many crashes. nate aphro@aphroland.org
check out opensource.creative.com
it works OK, although still in beta.
-Jon
this is my sig.
That's the same problem I have with windows. But I suspect that's not what you meant.
Yes they will - ive done it, it worked with Redhat 6.0 CD, but not with slackware 7.0 (But Patrick Volkerding said he had a lot of people asking about installin to a HD connected to a ata/66 port - said he had a BP6 and was toying with the idea of creating a boot disk) - anywhoo, i found out how to install redhat onto a ata/66 drive at http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/m ini/Ultra-DMA-5.html - all I have to do is pass ide2=0xd000,0xd402 to the kernel and wholla (though it probably doesnt run at full ata/66 speed) it still saves plugging the hd into an ata/33 port :)
Reading the HOWTO (the one I have printed is from 3rd Jan 2000) it does tell you how to install to slackware 3.4 (so one would assume 7.0)
for posterity (or if it matters to you), get the patches from,r ick/
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/hed
I use the "boot off-board chipsets first" kernel config option and put "pci=reverse", among other things, in lilo.conf. See the HPT366 and Ultra-DMA mini-howtos.
I too think that Abit's distro may be kinda unnecessary, but isn't the more the merrier a forgotten paradigm of the open source movement? The thing that everyone's overlooking (if any of you actually read up on their website) is that they're gonna pack this distro with their motherboards from now on. A motherboard manufacturer, shipping motherboards with linux. Granted, their distro _may_ suck, but even if it does, it gives linux a little more exposure. It just might speed adoption into uncertain people's homes. It even opens the possibility of more Mom and Pop computer stores selling linux pre-installed.
Maybe I'm being too optimistic, but as long as they open source their distro and provide good tools that everyone can use, more power to them. It's not like this is some marketing scam designed to give them press.
From reading some of the other posts here it seems what they offer is Redhat 6.1 plus pre-configured support for their UDMA66 and their dual-Celeron. It so happens I own a BP6 (dual C400s, $265, an impulse buy), and I like Redhat 6.1 (OK the graphic install kinda sux, but that picture of Alan Cox is cool) so for me this is just great.
Abit has really gone the extra mile to make its customers who are Linux users happy, and I really appreciate it. Thanks a million Abit!
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
"New ABIT Mainboards with Gentus? Shipping 13/February/2000
ABIT will be shipping Gentus? with all motherboards, including all of the new models from ABIT.
For more info on the newest ABIT motherboards please go to:
http://www.abit.com.tw
"
Now, regardless of whether this is 'merely' a re-packaged version of Redhat or not, _think_ about this a moment!
_Every_ motherboard ABIT ships is going to have a copy of Linux along with it. And if it's repackaged RedHat, so what? RedHat is a high-quality, professional distribution, and now it's being delivered to a potentially _vast_ quantity of new users.
Gear up the newbie sites folks. If this trend continues, we're going to see Linux gaining a huge chunk of market share very soon.
Perhaps before long we will have individual Linux companies releasing multiple distributions under completely different names just to suck real estate on the store shelves, literally or virtually.
It will be akin to shopping for a can of diced beets at your local supermarket. You may have 5 choices, but three of them are manufactured at the same company.
(This post brought to you by the cumulative efforts of 100monkeys)
First it crashed Netscape on RH6.1, then Mozilla sort of got it right, it killed Opera too...Netscape on my nt box didn't last any longer, Mozilla did worse, and Opera did so so. But Internet Explorer, it displayed it very well...not too surprising considering the site was built with MS Front Page...Netcraft says its running RedHat and Apache...I really expected IIS...
I'm glad they made sure the linux users could visit their linux site...
I see this as starting an alarming trend.
It may not matter much when there is just 1 motherboard manufacturer doing this.
But when your Video Card Maker / Your Motherboard Maker / and your Sound Card Maker all have different distributions, each with special features that you would REALLY want in one super distribution. But oh, you can't do that, they have copyrighted their proprietary alterations to the OS. You will see that this is going to cause a few headaches in the future.
Vaystrem
Ok, Abit is taking RedHat, customizing the install bootdisk and kernel, adding at least one new tool, and giving it away free over the internet and with EVERY new motherboard shipped.. That's right, every motherboard that leaves Abit's hands will come with Linux.
What are you all wining about? It's not as if they decided to throw out the conventional file layout or config format or ANYTING... It seems this is a free, officially unsuported release of Linux made to work easily on their hardware and any other hardware out there. I can't see any downside, except that people might not know they are really using a RedHat variant.
First we complain Linux isn't getting enough respect.. Then a company ships out a Linux distro with it's products, and all we can do is wine. This move by Abit is a good thing that will put Linux in the hands of more people who wouldn't otherwise have it, and make it easier to install on a particular piece of hardware.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
very soon there'll be MS Linux.......!
Nothing has been fragmented, nothing has been forked. There's no difference between this and purchasing linux pre-installed on a computer (ala VA Linux or Penguin Computing). ABIT simply saw that their hardware was not optimally supported by a well-known linux distribution, so they tweaked it for their hardware and released it. It's almost like having an ABIT technician on the phone while you're installing linux so he can tell you exactly what to do - but this is even better.
Lose the silly complaints about "fragmentation". Linux itself is a fragmentation - Linus Torvalds saw that a need wasn't being met, and he fulfilled it, just like ABIT.
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
This, in and of itself, is not that bad of a thing. Splinter distros can be made to be very useful, and this a great example. It was a horrendous chore to install Linux on a UDMA-66 motherboard before now simply because no distro (AFAIK) has UDMA-66 support for the install kernel. Go to www.bp6.com and read up if you don't believe me. Abit fixed this problem, and everyone is better off because of it.
/opt. Why? Completely nonsensical. Discussing the relative merits of /usr versus /usr/local would start a jihad amongst some bored Slashdotters. There just aren't standards for where to put things like there are in Windows, and because of that Linux is always playing catch up in terms of developer support. Even something as mundane as popping up a web browser from within a program turns into the chore a.) finding which browser came bundled with this distro, then b.) finding where it's located in this distro. Windows does this all in the registry. Now the coherent thing to do here would be to create a single, unified standard for something link this - "Okay, henceforth /usr/bin/browser will be a symlink to Netscape/Opera/Lynx/whatever you want."
What I think everyone is worried about here, rather they realize it or not, is the lack of standards. Linux really has none. I quit fooling with KDE a year or two ago, so this might have changed, but it used to everything in
These kind of inter-distro compatility issues pop up all over the place. RedHats prior to 5 came with nonshadowed passwords for some reason. I could write a book on the compiling problems I solved for people who were getting things to compile on the (shadowed) Slackware machines but couldn't make it work on their RH box for this reason.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Good luck, as a developer, if you want to bring up a PPP modem link from inside your program. If the user is on Redhat, you could try "/usr/sbin/usernetctl ppp0 up" and it might work. On SuSE, it's 'wvdial' and/or YaST. It's probably different for Debian and Slackware too. If they're on KDE on any distro, they might have kPPP installed - who knows?
It's things like this, I think, that often annoy developers into giving up on porting/writing apps for Linux. There's so much more work involved in just figuring out what you're dealing with that I think they all figure it's more worth their time to write another app for Windows than port an existing one to Linux.
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Ho Hum. SuSE has this support already.
It always makes me somehow sad when people make one change to a distro (usually Red Hat or Debian) and name it something totally different as if it's largely their work.
Silly me, if I created UDMA 66 patches for Red Hat, I might get really arrogant and call them: "Josh's UDMA66 patches for Red Hat".
Shows what I know!
-josh
Since I can't find your email address I'm posting this here.
Have you tried kernel > 2.3.30 ?
And you're not getting APIC errors ??
--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
After much harrasment at the SB Live! Linux Driver site and a stock RH 6.1 kernel, I was pleased to find that SuSE 6.3 comes with Live! support out of the box, the module is pre-compiled and you just need to pop it into the running kernel...
I assume you mean the DVD IOCTLs patch and the UDMA patch. This finally got fixed. Check out the mailing list archives at opensource.creative.com for the dxr2 project. Jens Axobe (please pardon spelling errors, it's early) finally got the two patches together. Using them currently on my bp6 and they work beautifully!
:-)
I don't know if the link ever made it to his main site. If not, drop me an e-mail and I'll give you the latest one I've got.
Now if I could only get my USB mouse to work too...
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
OEMs have been doing something similar to this for years. I bought an Acer machine a while back, and instead of a Windows95 CD, it came with an 'Emergency Recovery Disc' and a 'Windows95 Companion CD' I hated this Emergency Disc, but I can see how it would benefit a lot of entry level users. The CD contained EVERYTHING that my computer had when I first bought it. The CD was bootable, and automatically installed through a simple text-based menu, should something go awry. The CD contained all Drivers, OEM software - read: Magic Schoolbus and Microsoft 3D Animator, the OS, fonts, etc.
The biggest problem with this disc was that there was no provision to re-install windows without formatting the HD. This was a VERY BAD THING once registry rot sunk in.
Anyway, my point was that there have been custom distros of Windows for a while. They come pre-configured with the drivers of a particular machine. I think a Linux version that performs similarly is a good thing.
Abit's USA site still hasn't been updated, but their Taiwanese site has. Check it out here.
;)
I have built lots of PC's using Abit parts and I haven't had much problems with their hardware and Linux (RH 5.2). The only issue I ever encountered is with the intel 740 card they made, and I had to hunt around for those drivers. I noticed that in RH 6.1, they have that card listed under the video drivers. Looks like this distribution is for people who want a complete Abit solution (mobo, video card, DMA66 card, etc.). At least they are making an effort to have their hardware be compatible with an OS besides something made by Microsoft. 3 cheers for Abit! (Even though I am a Mac person at heart
--
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
I have been trying to download it to give it a try, however getting the 660 meg .iso will take a while when I can only pull about 600 bps frome their site. What the hell is cable good for anyway Bigskinnee
In case some of us were drunk...do you know how hard it is to click specific locations while drunk...thanks for making the entire comment a link...its appreciated :)
we should take advantage of it. Let's get some useful improvements for the BIOS
/dev/sdb for my zip disk) should not change just because I added a new disk to the system. Some of these things can be fixed, or at least improved, without changes to the BIOS, but to really do it right you do need better control of the boot process. Useful things can also be done with changes to how the disk is partitioned and what info is in the partition tables. The Amiga Rigid Disk Block was a "Good Thing." IRIX does something along those lines too.
Some of my dislikes about linux are really things you can't blame linux for and some are a result of the wintel mentality continuing in the linux design. (Which is a result of having a wintel BIOS to boot the system.)
The BIOS should have more intelligence for booting the system, and even a simple monitor for such things as setting the drive to boot from and storing that in NVRAM or flash ROM. Device names (like
Now that linux has reached the status that mobo manufacturers are willing to do something special for it, some people with the know-how should get together and create a new BIOS/boot/monitor prom standard.
This is great ... up until we get consumers trying to install the SBLive distribution on top of the ABit distribution to get both to work ...
just think of the tech support calls!
just what we need; further balkanization of linux. and i used to like abit... 8-P
pete gilman
| pgilman@monmouth.com
|
| "love your enemies because they
| bring out the best in you."
| -friedrich nietzsche
if i'm a grammar nazi, you're an illiteracy nazi.
There are quite a few comments so far, but has anyone actually downloaded it and looked at it? I run an ABit BP-6 with Dual Celerons and I'd be very curious to get my hands on their Kernel config file and compare with what I've got running, but it's not worth getting our Network admin breathing down my neck, so I'll just have to wait until a friend with cable modem downloads it for me. :)
One other quickie - I've seen several comments to the effect that RedHat won't install on a drive off the 66 controller. Not true - I've installed both RH 6.1 and SUSE 6.2 on mine. All it took was passing the right kernel params in when you boot from the install floppy - it's all convered in the Ultra-DMA How-To.
...don't they, like, own this site?
Just some instructions to get distros running with unpatched kernels:
/dev/hdd
..
/dev/hdc, /dev/hdd)
/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.5-22 /dev/hde3
/dev/hda! /boot.
h edrick/ /dev/hdg will lock my kernel (2.2.14) )
RedHat6.0 Hedwig B doesn't support installing onto devices higher that
I just assume they fix that in 6.1, but just turn off your on board controllers
for now, to be sure..
First boot with an emergency disk..
Next run lspci -b -v for something that says "unknown mass storage controller"
lspci -b -v
00:13.0 Unknown mass storage controller: Triones Technologies, Inc. HPT366 (rev01)
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 120, IRQ 11
I/O ports at b800
I/O ports at bc00
I/O ports at c000
Expansion ROM at ed000000
00:13.1 Unknown mass storage controller: Triones Technologies, Inc. HPT366 (rev
01)
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 120, IRQ 11
I/O ports at c400
I/O ports at c800
I/O ports at cc00
Now you see 3 lines filled with adresses,
You only need the first two adresses of each channel.
Now I assume your hd is on the primary channel of the thing as
master(stand-alone)
Look for the first two lines of adresses and (after the 'I/O at ') and
note them down..
So in my case 0xb800 and 0xbc00
RedHat 6.0:
Next put boot from your RH setup floppy/cd and at boot type:
linux ide0=0xb800,0xbc00 and hit enter
Okay, now you can install RedHat.. (assuming your cd player resides on
After installing RedHat, append this to your lilo.conf,
For example: append "ide0=0xb800,0xbc00"
This is part of my Lilo.conf
#Red Hat 6
image =
append = "ide2=0xb800,0xbc00 ide3=0xc400,0xc800"
#append = "ide2=ata66"
root =
label = Linux
alias = l
Now run lilo and you are set..
You can now use your RedHat install, but your HD will only run in PIO
mode not in ata66 (dma mode)
! It won't work if you got other hd's, if you can't change the booting
sequence in the BIOS.
Mandrake 7.0:
Next put boot from your Mandrake 7 setup floppy/cd and at boot type:
linux ide2=0xb800,0xbc00 and hit enter
make sure to add ide3= also at boot if you use the secundary (quartiary channel also)
Okay, now you can install Mandrake..
Next time you'll boot, Mandrake has set up everything so you are ready now,
Next:
If so, you'll need to boot from
Just to be sure it works okay, create a partition on your 1st hd (/dev/hda)
of say 10mb (located *beneath* the 1024 cylinder boundary!) and mount it
under
Change boot=/dev/hdaX accordingly..
Also, using the option pci=reverse (to reverse scanning of PCI devices,
in order to boot your hpt366 1st (as many sites advice), will break the
current SB Live! detection routines, if you use such a card..
Welcome to Linux...
MBr
Also check:
http://www.nl.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/
or
http://www.kernel.dk
(The Hedrick IDE patch doesn't work okay on my system, tried it since august'99, but mounting
my DVD on
Be sure to upgrade hdparm first and do NOT use -d 1 (enable dma)
and -c 1 (enable 32bit transfer) because it will crash your machine..
p.s. Isn't the SB Live! Distro called Linux Corel 2.0? Hehe.. (I prefere SuSE6.3 or Mandrake 7 however)
I can see it now. PC makers will start branding the Linux which comes pre-installed on their hardware. Just use the base RedHat/Caldera/Mandrake distribution, configure it for their hardware, and call it their own.
Don't like Red Hat? I'm pretty sure the significant modification to the kernel can be found here.
I hope it works with the HPT366 okay.
An HPT366 driver is built into the 2.3.x kernels (at least 2.3.45, which I have tried and then dumped because of nasty fs corruption). The docs for that say that the HPT366 chipset is in its present state unbootable. I don't believe that 'cuz it'll work on Windows and of course, this here Red Hat clone. Clear this up, anyone?
I'm trying the driver now (okay, still have to patch the kernel and rebuild).
I have an ABIT BE6, not BP6. They both use HPT366. Any differences in the implementation that BE6 users should be aware of besides using the latest BIOS?
The above comment brought to you by the Schemeing mind of Kenneth.
Nope. Didn't work. I booted the kernel off of a disk; it detected the controller fine and even got most of the way through reading my partition table and then suddenly stopped, then after a short time said "Timeout waiting for DMA". I sort of have an idea what that is, but on the contrary I have no idea how to fix it. This is starting to get really annoying. I bought a board for its UDMA, and its UDMA isn't working!!! Is there anyone with Gentus who has gotten it to work on the BE6? If so, can you please send me the diffs between your kernel (source, of course) and the standard 2.2.14 (or is it .14? whatever it is.)!?!? I tried all the different UDMA modes on the HPT366 controller, and some of them work even worse than UDMA Mode 4 (which was what I tried first), but none any better. (btw, the HPT version for the BE6 latest BIOS is 1.21 (or some mix of decimal points among that)). This says nothing about the patch linked to in the parent comment working on the BP6.
Anyway, you probably deduced from the above that I am not happy.
Oh well; that's just what I get.
This is a double edged sword.
I bought an Abit BP-6 mobo (And an InWin A-500 case, and got scrod mightily because the case shorts the mobo thus effectively making the two incompatible without serious black magic grounding technology far beyond my grasp.
I figured I might have to wait a little for Linux to catch up, but thus far I'm kinda dissappointed in what's out there. My choices are a kernel patch for the old kernel series, or a completely incompatible kernel which requires a raft of new software I can't seemingly install without breaking all my *current* infrastructure.
Bah. A custom tailored installation will do nicely.
The problem with this as a trend is that it makes the dread question "Which Linux are you running?" even more murky and difficult. Are you running Asus' Linux distro, Dell's Funky Chicken special LInux Distro, or good old vanilla RedHat?
I have to say, I don't understand why Abit didn't say, team up with RedHat and do a deal, everyone would have benefited.
As to the SBLive distro, even on my Linux hostile BP-6 the module from opensource.creative.com works great!
Drunken-Sysadmining Distro, that would be someting for me! :)