Fedora follies

[David A. Bandel]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 10:55 PM, Collins Richey <crichey at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 9:37 PM, David A. Bandel <david.bandel at gmail.com> wrote:
>

[snip]

>>
>
> OK, sounds like you have conflicting requirements
>
> 1. You want to install on vintage machines with limited ram, etc.
> Debian is the most flexible for this purpose. There are, of course,
> specialty distros like DSAL and Puppy that are outside the mainstream.

I only have a limited number of systems to play with.  Just so happens
the one I wanted to use only has 256Mb RAM.  Until about 3 months ago,
it happily ran an Asterisk system (and as the usage grew and hence the
codec translation required more CPU, I had to upgrade -- but the
system is quite usable, at least for all but an RPM-based system).

> 2. You want to point out differences using RPM based systems. The
> "mainstream" systems are designed to use the latest and greatest
> hardware and lots of ram. Fedora, RHEL, CentOS follow the same

This is a shame.  In third world countries like Panama, You're lucky
to find a system w/ more then 256Mb RAM.  They only started putting
512Mb in systems here less than a year ago.  This is why I can still
find DOS and Windows 3.1 based systems here.  Heck, when's the last
time you saw a manual typewriter?  I can show you hundreds still in
use here.  I thought they were museum pieces 20 years and more ago.

> pattern. SuSE (Novell) follow another pattern. Mandrake and PCLinuxOS
> have yet another pattern. Try any or all of these on a PC that meets
> the minimum requirements (not one of your vintage systems) and catalog
> the differences. One difference you'll find immediately, is that
> almost all modern systems use grub, except for some raid systems where
> grub has its limitations. You may be able to coerce these systems to
> use lilo, but that's way outside the mainstream.

I don't worry about GRUB.  I have access to systems with GRUB.
Unfortunately, GRUB is very limited.  And if you want to talk to some
truly hard core GNU Nazis, try the GRUB team.

Guess I'll have to install an RPM distro on a virtual machine.

Now, anyone got pointers on how to do a network install of Fedora over
the Internet (i.e., a network install without having to download the
entire Fedora DVD?).  Kinda defeats the purpose of a network install.

Ciao,

David A. Bandel
-- 
Focus on the dream, not the competition.
            - Nemesis Air Racing Team motto