IN THE BEGINNING, I wanted to check out the ease of use between one package and the next but some packages failed too early in the set-up process to make such an evaluation. Instead, tests are made to find out how far along the installation could go before a critical failure brought it to a halt. Available machines are a Soltek KT890Pro 939 AMD64 Athlon 3000 and a (forgot which manufacturer) KT600a AMD 2500.

The steps following boot up where there were problems are

  1. Partitioning

  2. Expanding packages or RPM's

  3. Rebooting

  4. Setting up ancillary devices

  5. X-window manager

  6. Getting the modem to dial out

  7. Printing anything

Warning, with the change to 2.6 Linux kernel, things that did work under the older versions are now kaput due to a lack of drivers that can be compiled, even to date, mid-2007.


Distribution

When Set-up Died

Comments

2.6.x distributions--Brave New World of Non-functional 64-bit Systems

Gone are those heady days of watching DVDs and dialing up the Internet on a Linux/GNU machine. Though, at least now the video card set-ups seem to work on the first try.

OpenSuSE 10.2 64-bit

Nothing bad happened.

No working modem.


There appears to be no working modem drivers for ones I own, an internal HCF and an external BestData USB HSF. Conexant has freeware 64-bit drivers that will start up a connection at 14.4kb, just not my modems.

Mandriva 2007 (2.6.17) 64-bit

Nothing bad happened.

No working modem.

 

rPath 1.0.3

X-window setup

This is for the 32-bit machine. Maybe I had a bad download, but nothing seemed to work.

Ubuntu 6.10 32-bit

No working modem.

Ubuntu 6.10 "Edgy Eft" came with a live DVD from OSDisc.com called Ubuntu Gamers. Interesting marketing concept. However, no working modem, even for this 32-bit system.

Mandrake 10.1 32-bit

No working modem.

No working modem, which is a shock, because I could get modems to work for 9.1. The difference being the new distributions using Linux 2.6 kernels. BestData's external USB modem came with its own drivers you could compile on a disk, but BestData stop support for these drivers and now refers everyone to Conexant. I don't know what the big change is between 2.4 and 2.6, but working modems is not apart of the new kernel.

2.4.x distributions--when drivers worked

FreeBSD 4.1

X-window setup

Would not start X from startx or xdm. However, you could start the xf86config and leave in the middle of the set-up to use other apps requiring X.

Mandrake 9.1

Never

They saved space on the CD's by leaving off documentation, but everything worked...the video cards, the odd modems, the printer, everything.

Redhat 7.0

Modem

Never got a good looking display, blurry.

Slackware 7.1

Never booted

It failed so early. Not even starting with its own image file on a floppy could get this thing to work.

SuSE 8.0

Modem

They do a good job of packaging software with their distributions.

Older 2.2.x distributions--when failures were more spectacular

Caldera 2.3

Printer test

Quick. Was on the web in 25 minutes.

Debian GNU 2.1

Copying files

Could not find cd-rom again.

FreeBSD 3.2

First reboot

Wiped out the master boot record.

LinuxPro 5.4

Selecting master boot record

Never rebooted, but at least it was not a FreeBSD in its destructive powers.

Mandrake 6.0

Partitioning

Does not like to share space with Windows 98.

SuSE 6.3

Sax XF86Config

Documentation is in sort-of English, a language by Germanprogrammers invented.

TurboLinux 3.6

Printer test

One of the few that I could get the sound card to work.