Problems and progress
It’s well known that Linux requires some knowledge of your computer and its hardware. One pitfall is dependencies, where a program requires certain other programs or libraries to function, and often a specific version of them. Fortunately Gentoo has a very nice system for handling software installs and upgrades called Portage. Let’s say you want to install the web browser Firefox; you simply write “emerge mozilla-firefox” in a terminal and Portage checks dependencies, downloads, compiles and installs the program for you. The dependency check is very nice, as the risk of breaking already installed programs are less.
I’m going to make three lists of problems: solved, “patched” and stuff that’s still a problem. The patched problems are things that are working, but is either cumbersome to use or gives less performance than a full solution.
Solved problems
- Hard drive - I had to download a program from the hard drive manufacturer to do a “low level format”, putting zeroes in the MBR, for the partitioning program to like it.
- Network card - I had to put my DNS server in /etc/conf.d/net, something that wasn’t covered in the online install manual for Gentoo. The required file resolv.conf gets overwritten each boot, so it would otherwise forget the nameserver.
- Sound card - Installed and configured ALSA for Linux, and after some troubleshooting found that I’d plugged the speakers into the wrong port.
- FTP - I run Pure-FTPd with virtual user authentication and Pureadmin as a graphical front-end. I had to read up on active and passive FTP transfers and configure the router to send the correct ports my way.
- File sharing - A MLDonkey client with Sancho providing the graphics works surprisingly well. I tried KMLDonkey, written specifically for KDE, but I didn’t get it to work and the latest news on the site are over a year old so I don’t think it’s being developed.
Patched problems
- Graphic card - I have a VIA K8M890 card that doesn’t seem to be that well supported with drivers. openChrome is an open source project for VIA cards, but I haven’t got the card working yet. There are also drivers included in X, and drivers provided by VIA themselves, but none of them detects the graphic card. What I’m using now is VESA drivers, but they’re non-3d and have a maximum refresh rate of 60 Hz.
- DVD burner - I have to start the burner program K3b as root for it to agree that the device is writable.
- VLC - I have a video player but with text-based controls and it doesn’t have enough codecs to show avi files.
Still problems
- Firewall - I want to use Firestarter, but it complains that it doesn’t find a system log file and won’t let me add any filtering rules. I think I have to set up iptables first.
- Flash graphics - I run a 64-bit kernel and compile my files for the 64-bit architecture. Unfortunately some closed drivers doesn’t work in 64 bits, for example Macromedia’s flash plugin. There’s a workaround where you install a 32-bit Firefox version, but I haven’t bothered yet.
- Keyboard - One key is missing! I don’t know if it’s because I’ve chosen a 104-key layout when I have 105 keys or what it is, but I can’t press the “|” key. I have to copy and paste it from the internet, which is a bit tedious, especially since the pipe sign is quite useful on Linux systems.