DIY Linux

[Happily1986]

hey anyone tried to use a build of Linux on their older computer? Care to share experience? I am currently running Lucid Puppy 5.01 on my 11 year old computer. Specs are as follows

 

Pentium III "Katmai" 550MHz FSB 100MHz 512KB L2 Cache

256MB RAM PC133

Maxtor 20GB 3.5" 5400RPM HDD

ATI Radeon 9250 GFX 256MB VRAM

 

Am still a newbie poking around but so far i like what i experienced thus far. Am able to bootup in less than 30 seconds and functionality wise i am able to surf the internet (which was close to impossible in XP) I am still figuring out on the installing of apps part.

 

So far, i am dependent on Puppy's Package Manager because i am still a dumbo in terms of compiling tarball packages into binaries for the computer to execute

 

Terms like dependencies are beginning to get to me.

 

Would like to discuss more with fellow explorative Linux user

[Parkingidiot]

done many times using various flavors of ubuntu linux.

[Happily1986]

done many times using various flavors of ubuntu linux.

 

hello, are you an expert on Linux then?

[Kangadrool]

I am a newbie to Linux. Tried many times to download and install Damn Small Linux, but no luck. Can someone advise step-by-step how to do it.

[Happily1986]

Instructions

 

Hey i didn't do DSL but i did Puppy Linux. I think this one is good for old computers very zippy. If you want to try it out i can offer you my guidance haha.

[Happily1986]

I am now experiencing a problem with Bash. Specifically, Bash tells me that it can't find a compiler in the root directory where i instructed Bash to compile stuff. The problem is i thought i already downloaded and installed a compiler i.e. GCC which i have taken from the puppy repositories via Puppy Package Manager.

 

I understand that there are some dependencies which i have to install along the way. And in this regard, i have religiously done so. However there are some dependencies which i can't find i.e. perlapi 5.10.1, libmime_base64-perl and base_files.

 

Anyone knows anything?

 

LOL i must be crazy posting such a question in a car forum.

[Ehchang8]

ya, u should post in the puppy community.

[Ehchang8]

I am a newbie to Linux. Tried many times to download and install Damn Small Linux, but no luck. Can someone advise step-by-step how to do it.

 

where did it go wrong ?

 

usually u download the iso image, and burn it as iso image to cd. boots from it and follows the instructions...

[1fast1]

I am now experiencing a problem with Bash. Specifically, Bash tells me that it can't find a compiler in the root directory where i instructed Bash to compile stuff. The problem is i thought i already downloaded and installed a compiler i.e. GCC which i have taken from the puppy repositories via Puppy Package Manager.

 

I understand that there are some dependencies which i have to install along the way. And in this regard, i have religiously done so. However there are some dependencies which i can't find i.e. perlapi 5.10.1, libmime_base64-perl and base_files.

 

Anyone knows anything?

 

LOL i must be crazy posting such a question in a car forum.

 

I honestly don't know if the following advice will suit you at your current level, but it's always good to learn some command line stuff. I find it a lot easier to work with linux, and even some aspects of Mac OS X this way. So here's the dirty stuff.

 

Try doing "which gcc". If you get a path to gcc then it's strange. If you get an error message, then gcc may be installed in a place that the system does not know it has to look in. To alter this, you have to first find out where gcc actually got installed. There are a number of ways to do this, including looking at the documentation that came with your package and using a GUI based search. The Command Line Interface (CLI) way to do this is to use the find command. Become root (do "su") then execute "find / -name gcc" which will find all instances of the file "gcc" in your entire system. Be patient as it can take a long time. If the file is found, note down its path. If not, maybe you didn't install it after all (the find command executed with the proper syntax as root is foolproof).

 

Once you get the path to gcc, you have a couple of options. The hard way is to try and reset the path - that involves playing with environment variables in a hidden ".profile" file. The far easier way is to create a symbolic link (symlink, something like a Windows shortcut, but better) to the file in one of your path directories. Almost always, your path includes "/usr/bin". Become root, change to this directory and execute: "ln -s ***/gcc gcc", where you should replace "***" with the actual path of the gcc executable you determined with the find command.

 

BTW, check and make sure the gcc file you found is actually executable first. You can do so with the command "ls -al" in the directory where the gcc file resides. If you see something with a lot of "x"s in the attributes column, that means it's executable. A little difficult to explain here, but you can try and read more about file attributes in linux online. If you need to change it to executable, just do a "chmod 555 gcc" (as root) and it'll work fine.