$200 computer: Status report

[Joel Hammer]

Well, just to let folks know how things are working on this walmart lindows
special.

So, far, OK, but not great. Here is what doesn't work:

1. Compiling  a new kernel.
     I used to do this sort of thing with abandon, but they
     have made it too complicated for me.  The kernel.o usually
     gives errors, although I did get around it. It uses devfs,
     which has no documentation I have found. This seems to
     require initrd, which also is not documented.  Add to his
     the program fooze which changes your lilo.conf randomly,
     and I am out of this. Thanks to devfs I can't boot up
     with a rescue  CD and chroot. So, I will not be burning
     any kernels on this again.

2. Without the latest kernel, 2.4.20, my zire won't work.
     I spent 30 hours on getting that not to work. This was
     reported by the jpilot people as supported, but only
     if you have the newest kernel, version of jpilot, and
     pilot-link, as it turns out. I also can't compile the
     newest version of pilot-link (see #4). This is not the
     fault of the lindows people.

3. Video.
     Attempts to use xine or run Doom hang the system and,
     in the case of xine, made it unbootable. Since I can't
     save this thang with a rescue disk (devfs again) I am
     afraid to try anything which hoses the system.

4. Compiling C++ programs.
     I don't know why, but I cannot compile C++ even though
     C programs compile nicely. I have gcc-2.94, and it is
     supposed to be able to compile C++ programs. I don't
     know a thing about C++ so this problem is serious and
     long term. I had this problem on my old box, too.

On the other hand, everything else works.

The distro is up to date, with kernel 2.4.19 and kde3. All the software
I download from the warehouse or with synaptic if the warehouse doesn't
have it works, with the exception of certain video stuff (see #3 above)
(Unlike libranet, this distro wasn't obsolete the day I bought it.) This
is much nicer, IMHO, than the Redhat up2date system, at least when
I used that a year or two ago. The debian nature of this distro must
have something to do with this. My digital camera works nicely. Grip,
staroffice, koffice, jalbum, gimp, xv, imagemagick, acrobat, etc,
all work fine, and installed without headache. Netscape 7.0 is working
well, although it has limited video. Like most linux browsers, it seems
weak on java heavy pages occasionally. I  did install realplayer, and
that integrated itself fine with netscape, without any intervention
by me. I think I don't mind the $100 fee I paid to be a full member of
the warehouse. Beside easy software installation, it makes it easy to
find out what is available, which is half the game for us amateurs.
The warehouse also keeps track of what you have installed, and this
makes reinstalling fairly easy after you hose your system.

My wife even uses this thing and doesn't find it too difficult. With
everything running as root (you can change this) configuration and use
are much easier.

I also have one machine dual booting with XP, and this works fine, too.

So, overall, I think this has been a decent investment for a
workstation. It is not good if you want to get under the hood, since
the ease of use features in this distro make that difficult. You would
have to spend a lot of time ripping stuff out, I think, before it would
be fun to play with.

Just make sure you think about security or keep this behind a firewall,
or both.

Joel