the linux scholar

I got a gmail acount!

2004-10-19T01:40:00.000-07:00

That's right, I finally got one, thanks to Sean and to Sara. Good work all around guys. Also, to see the coolest conversation ever, (between me and sean) go to dissonanz.blogspot.com ForgettingToLive shows are/is coming up, so go to forgettingtolive.com for more info.

kernel compliation

2004-08-21T19:30:00.000-07:00

why? because i could. everything was working. well, cept for kaffeine, the front end for xine. i'd installed gxine and it sucks so i asked sean for some stuff. kaffeine wanted stuff i didn't think i had, so instead i recompiled the kernel. it was hella fast but then couldn't find the init . . . why? because i'd directed it to the wrong partition. heh. so i figured that out (or sead did) and rebooted. then i noticed that i didn't have anything i should, like usb or ntfs support. I'd used make oldconfig which is supposed to take your old settings and only ask you about new ones, but that didn't work. thats why it compiled so quick! so i copied the old config file into the new linux directory and started over. i had to recompile my nvidia driver and the ndiswrapper, and now everything works. It took a long time to compile, but i got to read some Harry Potter while that was happening. sean had me install everything i needed for kaffeine, but then it gave me some other type of error . . . i forget what, i'll look into that later. for now, it should be noted that I WANT A GMAIL ACCOUNT!

And finally, linux works with my stupid wireless card!!!

2004-08-10T00:42:00.000-07:00

but not without many struggles, most of which were completely unnecessary. First, I decided to upgrade to core 2, since i was getting this odd message with iwconfig that it had been compiled with version 15 while the driver (ndiswrapper, presumabl) had been compiled under version 16. Upgrade is the wrong word actually. I backed up everything i needed to my windows partition and i installed core 2 over the old installation. A fresh install.

Somehow, tho, doing this made grub unable to boot my windows partition. And Fedora Core by default does not read ntfs, so for about a day I thought i'd just lost that partition. Then I discovered, partly by checking in opendarwin, that the ntfs partition was still there. So I used menuconfig to try and compile the module to read ntfs. But then modprobe ntfs did not work. Later I realized that I needed to recompile the kernel for new modules to work, so i did that. Then I could read ntfs but still couldn't boot into windows.

then my friend sean finds on ndswrapper's website mention of recode. appearantly i had been supposed to take the binary windows driver and use recode to convert it to ascii. this had been nowhere in ndiswrapper's readme, but i hadn't thought to check their website for more info. anyway we did that, and finally after months of trying, my wireless card works in linux, which means I have internet! I did not need to install Core 2, however, but it's just as well that I did, except for the fact that now i can't boot into windows. The only thing i need windows for now is video games, and i am in the middle of a few of those, so i hope i figure out why i can't boot to it soon.

I want a gmail account!!!!

supplemental . . .

2004-07-27T19:30:00.000-07:00

I want a gmail account!

how it started . . .

2004-07-27T19:04:00.000-07:00

the prologue: One day, as a blissfully ignorant windows user, I purchased an airlink plus wireless g card so that I could access my dad's network. It worked fine.

But one day I decided to install Red Hat Fedora Core. I formatted my drive and am now running a duel boot system, the first being FC and the second being windows. I found that airlink plus does not support linux, and neither does broadcom, the chipset that airlink plus uses. I found a program called ndiswrapper, which is supposed to be like a wrapper for the driver, but so far it does not work. I had to upgrade my kernel to 2.6 to find this out for sure, which was an adventure in and of itself. I suppose the next thing to do is try the newest version of ndiswrapper, and I need to upgrade to core 2, but that will take quite a while as first i have to copy all the stuff i need to keep over to my windows partition, and to do that i need to do the thing that makes windows read ext 3. I have that, but i'm too lazy/stupid to figure out how to install it.

The othe project:
I have also been playing with apple's open darwin. I have it installed on a 4 gig harddrive. It works fine but I want a better window manager that the one that comes with it. I tried to install KDE, but that wanted QT, which couldn't get over the fact that I was running darwin on an x86. It works on most unix clones, but if you're running darwin it assumes you're using a mac, which means it looks for a header file called carbon.h, which does not exist. That put a screeching halt to that project. I'm looking for a window manager that doesn't need Qt, but that may be hard to find.

And:
I'm using grub as a bootloader. It boots the two bootable partitions on my hd0 fine, but i can't get it to boot to hd1, the one running darwin.

Well those are the past few months worth of adventures. When more happens I'll get back to this chronicling, or maybe i'll discuss some more interesting non-computer related stuff.

I want gmail!

2004-07-27T14:34:00.000-07:00

Well I've been wanting to create a blog for a while now, mostly to discuss my adventures in linux, opendarwin, and other exciting computer things, but i've been to lazy. However, I have recently found a compelling reason to start a blog: I want gmail! I have heard that this is one way to get it, so i will discuss my various adventures and hope.