New to Salix - trip report

[comet]

Hello

I'm new to Salix but old to Slackware.

I like the system as it has many pieces missing from the usual Slackware release.

But here are some suggestions to make it easier for new users of Salix:

• I tried signing up for this forum yesterday but got locked out.
  Please give newbies more time/more chances to sign up before locking them out and
  please change the wording choices from "a tree" to "tree"
• The bittorents do not appear to be working (not seeded?) for
  the Xfce Installation Disc Images (x86_64, 64-bit)
  I tried using aria2 with tcp ports 6881-6889.
  Please seed the bittorrents for the Xfce 64-bit version 14.0 disk images.
• On the first boot, the system started up in runlevel 4 and the screen went completely blank and the system was unresponsive. I had to ctrl-alt-delete to get out of the system.
  I was able to change the /etc/inittab runlevel to 3 by booting another version of Linux...
  Please set the runlevel to 3 like Slackware so that users can test X using startx
• wicd did not recognize my hard wired ethernet connection because wicd searches for eth1 and not eth0.
  Please change the default ethernet to eth0 for wicd

[mimosa]

Regarding Wicd, it usually does defaut to eth0; but sometimes gets it into its head to behave oddly in that and other ways. However, by and large, it works very well and is easy to configure.

The behaviour you describe on first boot should not occur. What did you do to fix it, once you had booted into runlevel three? Does X now work normally? Arte you using 14.0?

Regarding torrents, I agree, and the forum, it's a difficult balance to strike between making it easy for genuine users and hard for bots and spammers ...

[comet]

The behaviour you describe on first boot should not occur.
What did you do to fix it, once you had booted into runlevel three?
Does X now work normally?
Are you using 14.0?

Yes I'm using the Xfce 64-bit version 14.0 and X works normally now.

To fix it I booted to another Linux partition and upgraded the Salix kernel from huge-3.2.29 to huge-3.2.37

I have an Acer AM3470G-UW10P with AMD quad core cpu and I think the new kernel was needed to support the graphics chips.
From the dmesg:
CPU0: AMD A6-3620 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics stepping 00

I built the kernel on a Slackware64 14.0-stable dual-core system in January using the newest 3.2 kernel at the time.
( There are newer 3.2 kernels than 3.2.37 now...)

• Download and unzip kernel from ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/linux-3.2.37.tar.xz
• make mrproper
• Copy the Slackware /boot/config-huge-3.2.29 to .config
• make oldconfig
• make -j2
  (or make -j4 if you have a quad core...)
• make modules_install
• make install

[thenktor]

* I've changed the registration to allow one more try. But as spam is the most annoying thing when running a forum I actually don't want to increase it further. You say the question should be changed. So what is correct english:
"What is in our logo? A house, a tree, a pizza or a beer?" or "What is in our logo? A house, tree, pizza or beer?"
* The torrents should be seeded. But maybe connection to California is bad. Most seeders probably are in europe.
* I don't think runlevel 3 as default is a good idea. X autorecognition works quite good, as long as the hardware is supported.

[mimosa]

@Thenktor This is a blind test because I don't know what the current version says. But as a native speaker, I prefer your first sentence. The article needs to be repeated for each noun because they are all countable - especialy if it is included with any one of them. Ok in fact you could leave it out for pizza and beer (though it might suggest something about the way these were represented in the logo, if they were, such as just a slice of pizza, not a whole one). But since all humans know the most ecologically correct answer, this iconographical question doesn't arise.

[thenktor]

I prefer your first sentence. The article needs to be repeated for each noun because they are all countable

That's what we have. I guess the initial suggestion means that "a tree" should be considered as correct answer, not only "tree".

[mimosa]

Maybe any string containing "tree" (but not "house", "pizza" or "beer").

[comet]

Salix looks great, was easy to install and has many pieces missing from a normal Slackware install.

The startup problems with X were easy for me to fix but would be very hard for a newbie to Slackware.

I had a similar problem trying PC-BSD (http://www.pcbsd.org/) where I did the installation and it started up in X but my screen went blank and I was unable to continue.

I did not have another FreeBSD partition sitting around, so I gave up.

Maybe there is a way to test X and see that it actually works before putting the user into permanent xdm?

[mimosa]

That's an interesting idea. The forum gets a lot of posts from new users with similar problems (and in many cases, shiny new hardware ). As I understand it, that's Slackware - stability (for most users) over bleeding edge. To be frank, I think anyone who can cope with a kernel upgrade can cope with X trouble (ctrl-alt-F2). It would be good to fail more gracefully, though I'm not sure how. Salix is aimed at experienced users ("lazy Slackers"), but attracts and welcomes others.

[aurlaent]

Also, it's fairly easy to press the TAB key at the lilo screen and add a 3