Installation report, Averatec 3120V
I have just installed Sarge on my Averatec 3120V laptop, using the installer
dated 17 July. My experiences:
Standard install freezes with white screen.
Install with "linux vga=771" freezes at "loading module yenta_socket" and
2%.
Install with "linux26" freezes so solidly the battery must be removed to
reboot, with white screen (as with "linux" but then there's no permanent
freeze).
Install with "linux26 vga=771" succeeds.
A defective install CD failed at the "loading installation modules" stage.
A second newly-burned one got past that.
Since the install CD has no apparent partition resizer, I quit the install
and used the shareward BOOT-IT program to resize the NTFS partition. (I
realize some Debian developers have a moral problem with using non-free
software, but the installer doesn't include the free ntfstools, and neither
does my Knoppix cd (3.4), and BOOT-IT worked flawlessly. I'll be sending
them my $35.
I split my hard disk into four partitions: the resized Windows partition
(10 gig), a 10 gig Linux partition (to be formatted ext3) and an 8 gig FAT32
partition both OS's should be able to share, plus a 128 meg swap partition.
I'll also put a swapfile on the FAT32 partition.
Installation of GRUB failed, but luckily I prefer LILO and had planned to
switch anyway. LILO install worked (although I currently can't boot
Windows). I'll work on the Windows boot tomorrow.
XFree86 did not detect the SiS chipset, I had to select it manually.
I had to manually enter monitor info from
<http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/mcguire/notes/averatec.html> as well.
The "Workstation" selection (tasksel?) installs lots of stuff I don't want,
notably KDE and GNOME(both!?) Should Samba really be a default choice?
Default PCI bus info presented by the installer is 0:1:0, correct is 1:0:0.
Fixed using info from above web page.
I can't get KDE to go away. I set /etc/alternatives/x-window-manager to
icewm, and removed the only other known window manager, metacity (GNOME?)
but KDE still loads in preference to icewm.
Not being able to figure out how to turn off KDE at all, I ended up having
to completely remove all of KDE (266 MB just pointlessly installed) by
apt-get removing kdelibs-bin and all its dependencies. Now if I want any
KDE program back, even one, I'll presumably be reinstalling most of that
crap.
Then hordes of unwanted GNOME applets (e.g. gnome-panel) pop up. I don't
have a .xsession or .xinitrc, and the system .Xsession.options doesn't
mention them -- why are they loading? I also had to remove gnome-session
to get it to shut up. Luckily I wasn't forced to remove all the GNOME and
GTK libraries just to avoid having the whole environment load.
The only problem I have left is that the fonts are really, really ugly.
I'll try installing xfs next.
Note that Debian did not detect my WiFi card (SMC 2635W), although I
understand it's supported by kernel 2.6. I'll look for installation
instructions tomorrow or so. I completed the install using the built-in
ethernet port and an actual patch cable.
If any of the developers would like further information, please ask.
Despite all the complaining, I appreciate all the work you've done and I'm
trying to help.
Thanks.
--
Carl Fink carlf@dm.net
Manager, Dueling Modems Computer Forum
<http://dm.net>
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