Re: Debian vs. Fedora on Laptops
On Sunday 26 December 2004 16:49, Ryan D'Baisse wrote:
> 1. Woody versus Sarge. Any idea when Sarge will be released? Any
> major benefits over Woody?
Sarge, and I believe I speak for everyone. The new installer is just such an
improvement over the woody installer (which is hopeless in comparison
really..). And you will have much less trouble with modern hardware.
> 2. It sounds as if I am going to have to get comfy with compiling the
> kernel, regardless of which distro I'm on. Are there any texts out
Well. There are still a lot of pigheaded hardware manufacturers out there who
insist on not supporting linux, therefore you will often find that in order
to have the latest drivers, it requires you to recompile the kernel.
On the other hand the vanilla kernel will get you up and running without any
problems, but some things may not work.
> there similar to "Compiling the Kernel for Dummies?" My biggest fear
> is disabling something that some other piece will need - OR - enabling
> something that some other module will have a conflict with. It would
> be great to have something that detailed each, and every, possible
> option available. Any suggestions?
Well.. It's tough.. The best advice I can give is to read each and every help
item in the kernel configuration menu (during 'make menuconfig'). Most
mistakes will amount to not including a particular driver into the kernel
which is needed during boot, such as the IDE driver for instance. With grub,
the worst thing that can happen is that your new kernel won't boot, but then
you can just select the old kernel from the grub startup menu, and you will
be back to the way things were before.
One thing you can do is to install the precompiled 2.6.x kernel image, which
should boot fine, and then have a look at what drivers are loaded with the
lsmod command. That will give you a hint about what drivers are needed.
> 3. Several people have referred to kernel 2.6, which is great, but I
> am wondering about the release. I am currently on Fedora and using
> kernel 2.6.5-1.358 and it works well for me. My problems began when I
> allowed yum to install kernel 2.6.9-1.6_FC2. That's when all of my
> ACPI problems began. How can I tell what version of the kernel
> "woody" ships with?
I think the default kernel in woody is some old 2.2 kernel! (Yeah it's really
that old!) You really should consider installing sarge instead. It is not far
from being released as stable. Sarge will let you choose between a 2.4 and a
2.6 kernel, the particular version used will be obvious during the install
process.
Anders E. Andersen
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