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Re: [LUG] Debian on an Acer Aspire One ...

 

Gordon Henderson wrote:
> 
> I actually suspect part of what made it harder for me was never having 
> used a "modern" window manager. (I use fvwm - been using it for the past 
> 16 years) Working out how to lock applications to the task bar (wossat 
> then?) was tricky - initially

What desktop did you install then?

> and installing the right wi-fi stuff. I 
> ended up compiling a custom kernel for it too and removing 100's of 
> packages that really aren't needed, and while it boots in under a minute, 
> it's way longer than the original 15 seconds that Linpus Lite booted in..

There was a nice article....

http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/620

But I wouldn't go there myself - except perhaps the advice for GRUB
timeout and starting X earlier on laptops.

> Still, that's progress for you!

In Lenny's defence I suspect it is capable of booting the disk pretty
much whatever hardware you now choose to plug it into with the same
processor archtecture. Which is great for us server types, whose
hardware dies and we can transplant stuff easily. Pretty pointless for
most other folk.

I did once propose slaying anyone who suggests making the machines wait
"<an integer> number of seconds" for any action except responding to a
user key strokes. Which would solve about half the delays with most
computers in my experience.

This would include culling the authors of a lot of RFC's - but it would
save the rest of the world a lot of time, when all those seconds are
totalled up.

e.g. DHCP "The client SHOULD wait a random time between one and ten
seconds to desynchronize the use of DHCP at startup." - centiseconds
would probably have been ample here for 1997. Even then most big
networks were switched, so DHCP storms weren't a huge issue, and besides
the protocol would retry between 3 and 5 seconds per host if it did
cause an issue (Simon cries into alcohol free beer).




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