Linspire/Lindows not as smart as Knoppix

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

Lacking any detailed specs on storage requirements for Linspire, I
tried the install today on an AMD K2/500 I've been using to run
Knoppix.

Linspire gave me the options to install to a specific hard drive or to
a specific partition, and showed me what drives and partitions are
available. Since my only completely available EXT2 hard drive was
smaller than my largest available EXT2 partition, I chose the latter
method.

I was hoping that the installer would let me choose several of the
existing Linux partitions, but I only got to choose one. Then the
installation aborted with a "error 159" "unable to create swap
partition". This is strange because:

1. the installer had already recognized and listed two Linux swap
partitions on the system, and

2. the system has 384MB of RAM, and so should be able to install and
run without a swap file.

In contrast, Knoppix recognizes and initializes the existing swap
files at bootup automatically.

Achim
_____/)
axethetax

 

[Ben Cooper]

Lacking any detailed specs on storage requirements for Linspire, I
tried the install today on an AMD K2/500 I've been using to run
Knoppix.

Linspire gave me the options to install to a specific hard drive or to
a specific partition, and showed me what drives and partitions are
available. Since my only completely available EXT2 hard drive was
smaller than my largest available EXT2 partition, I chose the latter
method.

I was hoping that the installer would let me choose several of the
existing Linux partitions, but I only got to choose one. Then the
installation aborted with a "error 159" "unable to create swap
partition". This is strange because:

1. the installer had already recognized and listed two Linux swap
partitions on the system, and

2. the system has 384MB of RAM, and so should be able to install and
run without a swap file.

In contrast, Knoppix recognizes and initializes the existing swap
files at bootup automatically.

Interesting.

 

[El Gee]

(e-mail address removed) (Achim Nolcken Lohse) wrote in

Lacking any detailed specs on storage requirements for Linspire, I
tried the install today on an AMD K2/500 I've been using to run
Knoppix.

Linspire gave me the options to install to a specific hard drive or to
a specific partition, and showed me what drives and partitions are
available. Since my only completely available EXT2 hard drive was
smaller than my largest available EXT2 partition, I chose the latter
method.

I was hoping that the installer would let me choose several of the
existing Linux partitions, but I only got to choose one. Then the
installation aborted with a "error 159" "unable to create swap
partition". This is strange because:

1. the installer had already recognized and listed two Linux swap
partitions on the system, and

2. the system has 384MB of RAM, and so should be able to install and
run without a swap file.

In contrast, Knoppix recognizes and initializes the existing swap
files at bootup automatically.

Achim
_____/)
axethetax

I find that interesting as well. (I have had Knoppix fail to install a
few times and Linspire install perfectly on the same box. Kinda odd,
but hey, life is odd.

Thanx for posting you experience, Achim.

--
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
El Gee

Did you hear the one about the dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac?
He would stay up late every night and wonder if there was a dog.


Remove yourhat to reply ... but it may take a while.
Best to go to www.mistergeek.com and reply from there.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

....

I find that interesting as well. (I have had Knoppix fail to install a
few times and Linspire install perfectly on the same box. Kinda odd,
but hey, life is odd.

Thanx for posting you experience, Achim.

You're welcome. Will be trying a few more tricks with the same PC and
possibly some other in the near future.

After posting the above, I tried booting without CD-ROM boot enabled,
using a boot floppy made with the boot1440.img file. The Linspire crew
kind of dropped the ball by not providing a copy of Rawrite on the CD
(especially strange, since at 521MB, there's plenty of room in the
ISO), so I had to dig out a copy of Rawrite2.exe elsewhere. No biggie
for me, but a potential headache for some of the intended market, I'm
sure.

The boot floppy worked fine on my AMD. I then tried it on two Pentium1
machines I run. One has a flakey fdd controller (I'm assume, since
I've changed the drives and cables twice), but can usually read
floppies, if not write them. The Linspire boot floppy sent the drive
into convulsions. I've never heard a floppy make such horrible noises!


The other PI PC is quite short on RAM, at 51MB (anyone have a memory
expansion board for a Compaq Deskpro XL486?) - though still good
enough to run Win98SE, but the floppy controller is fine. Linspire's
floppy booted up ok, displayed the splash screen, and allowed me to
choose between the "install" and "diagnostics" functions. Then the
CD-ROM started up, and just kept going - all night! I believe it
finally failed with an:

error 0X10

message

I then went back to the AMD, and tried booting with floppy again, but
with the Linspire CD in an external SCSI CD-ROM drive. This gave the
same "0X10" error message, so I'm guessing it means the installer and
diagnostics can't read the CD-ROM.

I'll have to try Knoppix on these two next, as soon as I download and
burn the latest release with the floppy boot howto.

BTW - do you know which distro and Kernel Linspire 4.5 is using? Is it
Debian? I'm wondering if I might be able to install it on my laptop
via the external SCSI CD-ROM if I could find a Debian pcmcia.img file
for the same Kernel? Ditto for Knoppix 3.4.


--

Achim
_____/)
axethetax
___

 

[El Gee]

(e-mail address removed) (Achim Nolcken Lohse) wrote in

...
You're welcome. Will be trying a few more tricks with the same PC and
possibly some other in the near future.

After posting the above, I tried booting without CD-ROM boot enabled,
using a boot floppy made with the boot1440.img file. The Linspire crew
kind of dropped the ball by not providing a copy of Rawrite on the CD
(especially strange, since at 521MB, there's plenty of room in the
ISO), so I had to dig out a copy of Rawrite2.exe elsewhere. No biggie
for me, but a potential headache for some of the intended market, I'm
sure.

The boot floppy worked fine on my AMD. I then tried it on two Pentium1
machines I run. One has a flakey fdd controller (I'm assume, since
I've changed the drives and cables twice), but can usually read
floppies, if not write them. The Linspire boot floppy sent the drive
into convulsions. I've never heard a floppy make such horrible noises!


The other PI PC is quite short on RAM, at 51MB (anyone have a memory
expansion board for a Compaq Deskpro XL486?) - though still good
enough to run Win98SE, but the floppy controller is fine. Linspire's
floppy booted up ok, displayed the splash screen, and allowed me to
choose between the "install" and "diagnostics" functions. Then the
CD-ROM started up, and just kept going - all night! I believe it
finally failed with an:

error 0X10

message

I then went back to the AMD, and tried booting with floppy again, but
with the Linspire CD in an external SCSI CD-ROM drive. This gave the
same "0X10" error message, so I'm guessing it means the installer and
diagnostics can't read the CD-ROM.

I'll have to try Knoppix on these two next, as soon as I download and
burn the latest release with the floppy boot howto.

BTW - do you know which distro and Kernel Linspire 4.5 is using? Is it
Debian? I'm wondering if I might be able to install it on my laptop
via the external SCSI CD-ROM if I could find a Debian pcmcia.img file
for the same Kernel? Ditto for Knoppix 3.4.

From everything I can tell, it is a Debian distro, but I do not know
which version (I am pretty sure it is a 2.X or 3)...Best of luck on the
testing. I just removed Linspire (for testing purposes) to make a win9X
box for my wife to play games on. She recently found some old DOS games
that make hre very happy, even though she is not a gamer. Sounds like
you have some very fun equipment to play on, so I will wish you all the
best in your endeavours.

--
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
El Gee

Did you hear the one about the dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac?
He would stay up late every night and wonder if there was a dog.


Remove yourhat to reply ... but it may take a while.
Best to go to www.mistergeek.com and reply from there.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

(e-mail address removed) (Achim Nolcken Lohse) wrote in


From everything I can tell, it is a Debian distro, but I do not know
which version (I am pretty sure it is a 2.X or 3)...Best of luck on the
testing.

....

Thanks, have spent several more hours on Knoppix and a couple of hours
more trying to install Linspire.

Judging by the installer's verbose display on startup, the kernel is
2.4.24, same as Knoppix 3.3.

Unfortunately, I couldnt' get anywhere with Linspire.

After my first effort at giving it a Linux ext2 partition to install
in (error 159 unable to create swap partition), I tried again by
giving it a whole drive. This resulted in an error 154 - unable to
create a partition.

I then tried to delete or consolidate three partitions on my largest
drive for the next effort. I tried this with QParted under Knoppix
3.4, and found that Qparted could neither delete nor resize Linux ext2
or reiserfs partitions, although it seemed to be able to delete Linux
swap partitions.

I then tried Linux Fdisk, and couldn't get it to delete any of the
above either. Interestingly, the swap partition that was "deleted" and
disappeared from the list under Qparted, still showed under Linux
Fdisk.

I finally used Dos Fdisk to delete and recreate the entire extended
partition containing all of the above logical partitions, and again
gave it to Linspire for installation. This got me another error-159 -
unable to create swap partition. So - no joy. Can't say I'm impressed
by either distro so far.

--

Achim
_____/)
axethetax
___

 

[Al Smith]

Unfortunately, I couldnt' get anywhere with Linspire.



I decided to give up on the idea of installing Linspire also, even
though my downloaded CD copy is fine.

By reading the Linspire boards, I learned that its bootloader,
Jiffyboot, wipes out any other bootloader that may be in place at
the time of installation. More than this, each time Linspire is
booted, any setting you may have changed in the bootloader gets
reverted back to the default settings. So, if you have Mandrake
already installed, as I do, and you succeeded in getting Linspire
loaded, and you also succeeded in changing its bootloader to
recognize Mandrake, the next time you booted Linspire, the
reconfiguration of the boot loader would be wiped out.

Another thing. The install of software in Linspire is really easy
-- one click. What they don't tell you is that you pay a monthy
fee for downloading software, and more importantly -- if you stop
paying that monthly fee, all software that you've downloaded and
installed from the Linspire site is deactivated!

I've decided to stick to Mandrake, which is working pretty well
for me right now. If I ever have a clean box, I may try installing
Linspire just to see what it looks like, but the disadvantages of
the OS seem to outweigh its advantages, as far as I can judge.

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

I decided to give up on the idea of installing Linspire also, even
though my downloaded CD copy is fine.

By reading the Linspire boards, I learned that its bootloader,
Jiffyboot, wipes out any other bootloader that may be in place at
the time of installation. More than this, each time Linspire is
booted, any setting you may have changed in the bootloader gets
reverted back to the default settings.

.....

And I gather there's no option to boot from a floppy?

Another thing. The install of software in Linspire is really easy
-- one click.

Not for everyone. I've edited the partitions on two drives several
times now, trying to get that click to work. Never got past one of two
error messages:


error 157 - could not format partition

error 159 - could not create swap file

I started with two Linux swap files and an ext2 partition and a
reiserfs partition, and used without complaint by Knoppix3.3 and 3.4.
When that didn't impress Linspire, I created a single ext2 partition
on one 500MB drive, and a 1GB extended partition on another. Linspire
failed to install on either of those (it only lets me choose one drive
or one partition to use), so then I created a 1GB logical partition
and formatted it with DOS and tried again. This got me some drive
activity, a message saying it was formatting, and finally, the error
159, and a suggestion to call on tech support.

I would say this is a brain-dead installer, and there's probably
nothing tech support can do for me. Usually, if you can get as far as
accessing the CD,a linux installer will give you a clue as to how much
space you need for what, and let you select your packages.

 

[Al Smith]

By reading the Linspire boards, I learned that its bootloader,

....

And I gather there's no option to boot from a floppy?

That's the problem I had with the Linspire installer. There are no
options at all, other than whether you want it to take over a
drive or go into a partition. It doesn't give you any wiggle room.
Either it works, or you're screwed.

 

[Richard Steven Hack]

if you stop
paying that monthly fee, all software that you've downloaded and
installed from the Linspire site is deactivated!

I wasn't aware of THAT limitation! That sucks big time.

Definitely will not bother with Linspire at all with that crap.