What to do with this notebook?

Inventor

I've got an old hand-me-down notebook, it's a Dell Inspiron 2500 whatever that is. It has a Celeron processor and runs Win2000. I can't get miniAudicle to run or files transferred to it, I think it's hosed. I want to start from scratch with Linux, but what's the easiest configuration for ChucK on Linux? Ubuntu? Where do I get it and how do I install it from non-bootable memory stick? Thanks.

radarsat1 · Joined: Mar 14, 2008 Posts: 35 Location: Montreal

it depends how comfortable you are on the linux command line.
since chuck is nice and text-based you could actually get away with making music right in text mode using vim or emacs.

otherwise if you want to use miniAudicle but still save on ram you could install a simple window manager like fluxbox, xfce, or windowmaker.

personally i prefer debian-based distros, and ubuntu is a good choice. When installing, I suggest choosing the "server" method, which will install only the minimal system you need to get to the command line.

Then log in and use "apt-get install" to install whatever programs you want, like chuck. You can always go to the full Ubuntu experience by installing the "ubuntu-desktop" package.

radarsat1 · Joined: Mar 14, 2008 Posts: 35 Location: Montreal

Where do I get it and how do I install it from non-bootable memory stick?

Ubuntu.com of course.
As for the second question, that's probably quite difficult so I wouldn't try. You're better off using the CD-ROM if you can. For difficult installs, there are... ways... but that's more than I would describe in this forum. For instance, there's almost certainly a method to use floppies to bootstrap a net-based install. Anyways you have to be able to boot off SOMETHING, if not the memory stick. CD is your best choice, believe me.

Inventor · Posted: Sat Apr 05, 2008 7:29 pm Post subject:

OK, well then I will order a free CD from Ubuntu.com, it will get here in 6-10 weeks. My CD player never worked on my Mac and the one on Mom's Mac is kaput too. I tell you, i've never seen such an unnreliable medium as CDROM. Maybe mine only needs cleaning, but that's one more thing I gotta do and it might not work. So I'll order one and we'll see how that goes. Thanks for the advice, radarsat1!

Blue Hell · Posted: Sat Apr 05, 2008 7:39 pm Post subject:

Inventor · Posted: Sat Apr 05, 2008 7:57 pm Post subject:

Ya know Blue Hell, I have always wondered if it was the smoking. My PS2 disk stopped working and my brother cleaned it and it started working, so I'm thinking it's smoke as the likely candidate. Hmmm which means that I don't need an Ubuntu CD, I need a CD drive cleaning kit!

What rocks to me though is memory sticks. Such huge capacities, so cheap, fast enough for a storage device, hard to destroy, and little things too. I have three of them to backup my chuck, web, and other data.

Blue Hell · Posted: Sat Apr 05, 2008 8:20 pm Post subject:

Yup, sticks are way better Cool

I hate to blame smoking for something ... so please lets have some more ops Laughing

radarsat1 · Joined: Mar 14, 2008 Posts: 35 Location: Montreal

Inventor · Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 12:01 am Post subject:

Thanks for your comments, radarsat1. I have a CD drive cleaner now, I'll give it a try and see if I can write an Ubuntu disk.

Kassen · Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 5:49 am Post subject:

Yeah, CD is your best bet.

CD drive cleaning if the "cleaner" fails; tell yourself it doesn't work right now and new CD drive's aren't expensive (nothing will go wrong, it's just for psychology), take a screwdriver and open it up, you're looking for the lens, it'll look like a small glassy, round thingy, like a button on a doll's dress. Dip a Q-tip (I think that's the word, one of those small wooden sticks with a cotton ball on the end) in medical alcohol, get the type meant for sterilising, not for your skin (the strongest you can get, basically). Make sure it's soaked but not dripping. Gently clean the lens with it. Screw it back together. Works nearly always and is cheaper then lens-cleaner disks.

If that doesn't work you could look for the small trim-pots to calibrate the laser but those can also burn the laser out and unless you put power on a open laser device that's a time-consuming operation and that's not without danger (eyes....), not recommended unless you are sure.

Also; the trick with the Ubuntu install is that it will look for newer/better drivers online so make sure it's internet connected while you install. Unless something goes wrong the install should be trivially easy.

Next up will be compiling the Mini, I can't remember if you did that before? It's not so bad anyway. Somebody like you will need to compile his own and not get the package as the package is old-ish (thingy dot 8 or so)and only ChucK itself.

Kassen · Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 5:51 am Post subject:

Oh, wait, I just realised the drive might be inside of the laptop. That may make cleaning easy (if the lens is in a tray that slides out) or hard (if it's a non-removable one with just one of those slits). I don't recommend screwing open laptops that still work.

Inventor · Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 2:37 pm Post subject:

Well, I tried to clean the Apple eMac's CD drive to no avail, and I cant' get into it the way it is built so I can't clean it with a Q-tip soaked in alcohol. I spent a few hours unsuccessfully trying to install an old Red Hat Linux CD that I happen to have from 10 years ago. I don't have a network cable or a router, so that's out for Ubuntu. So I guess I'll have to wait until payday and order an Ubuntu CD and just hope it has drivers for a ten-year-old laptop.

This is getting to be quite a hassle, thanks to Apple's CD drive breaking, and on top of that I had to face a planned obsolescence issue on Apple's part. I bought this eMac three years ago and now it won't run TurboTax because TurboTax now requires version 10.4.0 while I have a fully upgraded 10.3.9! Three years old and already I can't do my taxes on this thing. I'll keep my Mac, but my upgrade path now includes a new Ubuntu system rather than a Mac. If they're going to continue this planned obsolescence BS then I'm not playing in their sandbox anymore.

Kassen · Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 8:36 pm Post subject:

Erm, what do you mean you don't have a network-cable? How can you not have a network-cable? I mean... you posted this.... I suppose you might have wireless but the wireless receiver needs a cable one might borrow, right?

I think a new CD on a ten year old laptop has a better chance of success then a ten year old CD on a new laptop.. but I might be missing stuff. If the target computer is a old Mac it likely has a G-series CPU and I don't think Redhat would have support for that?

Inventor · Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 1:14 am Post subject:

Aha! I see that I have confused even the logical-minded Kassen with my ranting and raving! My setup is an eMac with a network cable to a cable-modem. I would need to install Ubuntu, then configure it for the cable-modem, then let it look for drivers I guess. The laptop is a Dell Inspiron with a 10 Gig hard drive and a Celeron processor.

So to have both the Mac (which I believe has custom cable-company software on it) and the notebook on the web at once, I'll need a router and I think two network cables - one to the cable-modem, one to the notebook, and one to the Mac. But your point is well taken, that I don't need to have the Mac and the notebook on the network at the same time so I could just connect the cable-modem to the notebook and see what happens.

Trouble is, I recall with vivid and painful clarity all the problems that computers had with networking in earlier days. The blue-screen of death was common and "the network is down" was a frequent phrase in workplaces. I also remember the rough-and-tumble task of configuring Slackware and Red-Hat Linux back then. I've just been reminded of it after playing with the old Red-Hat CD which did work to a limited degree on the notebook. You had to know your video card chip, the video card memory size, the video scan rates, the dot clock, and modem/network chips too, even the mouse had to be configured - ugh.

As you mentioned though, Kassen, today's Ubuntu installation is so simple a child can do it so I'll have to shed all these hard-learned lessons and get in with the times. It will go well once I get the CD, I'm sure.

Kassen · Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 7:02 am Post subject:

Well, it's not perfect but a new Ubuntu CD should auto-detect nearly everything. I think it should for example work with more hardware "out of the box" then Windows does. It's really quite impressive, a few months ago I had a issue trying to help a friend install a tablet mouse on Windows and because it wouldn't work I booted to Ubuntu (from CD) to see if the tablet itself worked. Of course it got auto-detected; no questions, no hickups. Redhat 10 years ago was exciting, fresh but for fanatics only. This is completely different beast from Ubuntu now. I seriously recommend Ubuntu to novice users who run into trouble with XP or Vista (and those two can cause a lot of trouble at times, I can tell you :¬) )

You should also realise that with Ubuntu it's not a matter of installing, then going online, it will actually go online *during* the installation process. Now I'm in the fortunate position that at my place we have a DHCP server so going online is a breeze, I'm not sure to what degree this "cable company software" will affect things.

Things could be simplified if you would have a nearby friend with a LAN network (and maybe even a external CD drive...) that would be willing to help, letting you plug in your computer on his network. That's probably what I'd start thinking about at this point.

jksuperstar · Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 7:59 am Post subject:

I know I posted this in your other 64bit question thread, but ubuntu studio is ubuntu, but with a realtime-tuned kernel and all the audio/video gadgets.

Kassen · Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 8:06 am Post subject:

You can also install plain Ubuntu and apt-get the realtime kernel.

ChucK will not work on 64 bit Linux right now though, just thought I'd warn. Some people were working ont his but I have no idea on their status.

elektro80 · Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 8:17 am Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 8:25 am Post subject:

cable company software?
Shocked

Can you check this? I don´t see any reason for why you should have to use some sort of fancy third party stuff. Do you have a plain ethernet with DHCP on the LAN side and will the router allow more than one machine to be connected at the same time? It would be either the above or a PPOE scenario with only one machine allowed online at the time.

Does the mac have a wireless card installed? You can share the network connection using the mac as a wireless base station. This way you can have both machines online at the same time ( I guess that PC has a wireless card as well )

elektro80 · Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 8:28 am Post subject:

Kassen · Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 8:43 am Post subject:

radarsat1 · Joined: Mar 14, 2008 Posts: 35 Location: Montreal

if you need to do PPPoE (i.e., DSL) when installing ubuntu, just boot off the live CD, open a terminal, and type "sudo pppoeconf"

http://blog.mypapit.net/2007/06/how-to-connect-to-adsl-broadband-internet-from-ubuntu.html

Inventor · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 6:42 pm Post subject:

Kassen · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 11:50 pm Post subject:

widdly · Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 2:08 am Post subject:

Xubuntu might be worth checking for slow machines