| d2r diego's weblog |
back to windows (for now)I've been a happy camper since I switched back to Linux (Red Hat 9) on my Thinkpad T21 laptop about three months ago. Everything worked fine. And aside from some annoyances, such as the tendency of Gnome to crash a few times a day, it was great. But yesterday I needed to test some of the sound features in clevercactus and Linux bailed. For some time I thought this was a Linux problem, after all, the Gnome sound recorder crashed when I recorded more than once and didn't record anything at all. Then (this morning) I realized that the problem was in the internal microphone (not supported) and using an external mike worked ok. The sound recorder still crashed, but at least it worked. Once. Problem is, I need Java to work with it, not just a native Linux app. And Java sound support has been spotty outside of Windows and the Mac (Sun is devoting basically no resources to it). Even though output worked ok, microphone input did not. LineUnavailableException. At the moment I really don't have time to spend two days fixing whatever the problem is. I think that with enough tweaking it should end up working (that's the Linux way after all) but that's not an option right now. Back to Windows it is, at least for the moment. I dusted off the original Windows 2000 Pro installation disk that came with the notebook (after I found it :)) and I am now in the middle of the install. Disgusting experience. FDISK. FORMAT. Abort, Retry, Fail? messages. I'm now doing the recovery of the install (the IBM recovery disk creates its own partition setup, one more reason to wince) and the file copy is in progress. *Sigh*. I hope to be able to go back to Linux soon in the machine. Running cygwin is a poor excuse for it. Update: Linux doesn't want to let go. After reformatting, Fdisk, and such, the Linux boot loader is still there, except that now it just hangs. Damn. Trying again... Update 2: running "fdisk /mbr" took care of the problem. Categories: soft.devPosted by diego on November 18 2003 at 12:29 PM Comments (please see the comments & trackback policy).
I run a dual boot XP and RH 9 on my toshiba (writing on it right now from Redhat). I have small problems on both platforms, and I swich between them. Gunnar: the problem is a... err, "dual" problem. First, disk space, which is *very* limited on my laptop. Second, time. I had to get this up and running fast and my Win2000 recovery disk did not allow me to choose partitioning. Therefore, switching over to a dual boot would have required fiddling around with partitioning *after* the install, then installing two things instead of one... etc. Probably at some point I'll get to that though :) There was an anonymous comment from "gnomeuser" which I deleted (sorry, but no anonymous comments allowed, no matter what they say, I can't make exceptions--please see my comments policy). I'll reply to it anyway since it was a good question. Essentially (whoever it was) was asking why gnome crashed. The answer is I don't know. After heavy usage it was common for gnome to crash a couple of times a day. Using the file explorer (or whatever it's called) to access the windows network failed so often that regularly I had to kill -SIGHUP the gnome process to wake it up. Using multimedia tools also crashed. I used the "out of the box" Red Hat 9 installation, openoffice, Firebird, a bunch of applets for wireless control, network, time, etc, etc, multimedia, and various Java applications. Hopefully the next time around with Linux I'll be able to track it down if it happens again. Posted by: Diego at November 19, 2003 1:03 AMYou need a copy of vmware... ok this may not solve this particular problem (not sure how the sound will work through in context) and it may not be workable given the lack of disk space, but as a generalised solution to needing to be able to get at multiple o/s without mucking around its really rather good. (As is VirtualPC which - to my delight - I find I have a valid license for being an MSDN subscriber, but not if your box is running linux to start with.) Given CC's cross platform ambitions I'd suggest its pretty much a practical necessity. Posted by: murph at November 19, 2003 12:32 PMLinux on a T21 is exactly what I'm using. Luckily, I don't need Java for anything. Posted by: Jeremy Zawodny at November 19, 2003 2:54 PMCopyright © Diego Doval 2002-2007.
|