New subject: [Alug] Introduction

26 Dec 2000


      I apologies for flooding your e-mail but I would like to introduce myself as
a new member.  My real name is Tony Cook, I adopted the internet handle of
idiamin because the late entirely unlamented  gentleman was the only person
I ever heard of who was without doubt more self centered,   egotistical and
a bigger idiot to boot, than I.
My computer set up is a Gigabyte AT board carrying an AMD K6/2 500 CPU with
a SoundBlaster 128 and a Voodoo 3 graphics card and I have 128M/B of ram
plugged in at the moment while my H/D is a 20GB unit which seemed enormous
when I bought it but which is now beginning to be a little confining.
I currently dual boot  Win98 and Linux.  Win98, with which I am reasonably
familiar because it gives me access to a cheap parallel port scanner, if
anyone knows or hears of a scsi emulation which will allow Sane to co-exist
with it please let me know together with games, mostly old, which are either
not available or comparatively cost a lotty under Linux.
For the future however I plan to migrate my more serious interests, D.T.P.
and graphics manipulation to Linux with the impact of adapting to new
software being lessened by loading Win4Lin from Trelos.  As far as Linux is
concerned I am a complete newbie and to be frank I find getting used to it
to be a bit challenging.  My home computing background originated with CPM
and the Spectrum, progressed to the Amiga and dos in emulation and then to
Win95 native on a PC.  At the moment I am still fumbling my way around the
Linux CLI structure and trying to forget I ever knew dos.
I have tried several Linux distro`s, Mandrake 7.1, Red Hat 7.0 and Suse 7.0
before finally determining on Suse 7 Pro as my system of choice largely due
to the excellent documentation available and the, (Comparatively easy and
reliable installation).  I nearly threw a rock through my monitor when
grappling with Red Hat, and Mandrake though initially very good revealed
bugs in operation with which at my current level of experience I could not
resolve.
The only specific problem I currently have centres around Win4Lin for which
there is currently no specific Kernal is yet available for Suse 7.0 although
6.4 is supported.  I gather from Trelos that support for 7.0 is in the
pipeline however.  Incidentally support is currently available for both the
other distro`s I have.  According to the manual, which I have read, there is
very little change between 6.4 and 7.0 apart that is from the compiled
modules which are of course not interchangeable.  If anyone were in a
position to supply me with an evaluation copy of the basic Suse 6.4 system I
should be very greatful as I believe I could then overlay the 2.2.16 modules
with the 2.2.14 set and thus get Win4Lin running correctly and
interconnecting with my system components, noteably my printer and
soundcard.
Best regards, compliments of the season and apologies for rattling on,