Hi, everyone, and I'm online for the first time with a version of the new Slackware Linux 10.0 release called ZipSlack. Bill, you asked about gpm and screen, and I'll comment on those in a bit, remarking for now that one of these programs seemed to be less my strong suit than vi -- to which I'm new, being accustomed to GNU Emacs 19.31 or Pico, but am using for my SysAdmin stuff. More specifically that's Elvis, a kind of "vi meets the 21st century and HTML." The other, or the drivers or whatever for it, seem to produce some curious complaints in /var/log/messages -- but no significant problem.
Anyway, it's been a week with lots of fun and a bit of weirdness, and a lot of excitement as I booted SW 10 with its standard 2.4.26 kernel and got into a bit of basic system administration with vi, a new application for me: editing /etc/fstab to place the root at hda5 rather than the default fd2 (typical for a ZIP drive, I guess, to which this core selection of the SW distro is nicely proportioned). Then came the pppsetup script, and editing the relevant configuration file to load the ppp modules automatically by uncommenting some relevant lines. However, although the friendly pppsetup script (nicely tailored for someone accustomed to either a text-based or GUI environment) had written the relevant ppp files, I encountered a problem: the modem didn't seem to be dialing out. Then I took a look the listing of the file pppscript helpfully made available with some other ppp-related files in a document produced by the setup routine -- and saw a likely problem. Somehow the AT command for the modem to dial my ISP got placed in double quoted -- so that it was _expected_ rather than _sent_ to the modem. Starting vi, I could fix this easily -- and was soon pinging Google. Anyway, Bill, I'm fascinated with the possibilities of Screen, and thought of you when I noted that it was included in the list of packages for ZipSlack. I want to try the split-screen stuff, and already admire the visual bell option (nice and quiet) and the screensaver option, which I need to learn how to get right. Often I've used multiple buffers and two or three windows in Emacs, so this could be a neat variation. I have some ideas to try. Watching the startup process, I noticed mention of gpm -- and the problem that the program expected a system with some kind of mouse. This produced some items in /var/log/messages, but no evident problems. However, this looks like a very useful option for people who use these pointing devices, with Screen supporting pasting between consoles with the keyboard -- thanks for educating me on this, Bill! As the documentation explains, one of the ideas of ZipSlack is that if you like it, you can freely expand with other Slackware packages, and migrate it to a native Linux filesystem. Both the easy installation and the traditional **IX culture and humor really have me impressed. Most appreciatively, Margo Schulter [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ vox-tech mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
