Trying to get a stable desktop going. For months now I have been doing the Knoppix hard drive install using my custom remastered version. The good side of this has been that after every install I'm right back in the environment that I created with that remaster--all the apps I prefer to use already installed. But after a month or so something always goes haywire. I guess Knoppix isn't really designed to be installed to the hard drive. The problem manifests itself as an inability to get into X Window. When this happens I login as root (X usually still works for root) and backup the important stuff on the drive, then reinstall Knoppix. If I can't get into X I just burn backup cds from the command line.

It's been a painful cycle of re-installs. The good side has been that it's easy to get that comfortable environment back, the bad side is I need to backup and reinstalled frequently. I've had it. I just want something that works. I have been going through my hardware and cobbling together a stable machine. One thing I found out while doing this is that there are some power connectors that have poor connections, and that pluging them inbetween the power supply and the cd burner was a bad idea. It only took me about 100 coasters to figure this out. I think what I need to do there is solder the connectors into the wiring harness. I'm tired of screwing around with my computer. I just want the thing to work.

There it is, sitting on just to the right of me. My super desktop machine--400 Mhz, wow.

Right now it's running the latest Mandrake. I like Mandrake a lot but am not quite sure I'm ready to go back to "rpm dependency hell". Maybe if I just stick to the stuff that's on the cds but I know that's not going to last very long. I always want to try some weird exotic software (and what geek doesn't?)

Also, the hard drive is about to give it up for good. It runs pretty hot and I'm reminded that it's some drive that I got off a friend because he didn't have time to return it to the manufacturer for repair. I need to shitcan it.

I'll sort this out in the next couple of days and then hopefully quit screwing around with it. I want to have something that just works. It doesn't need to be compiled precisely for this configuration so I get the ultimate speed. It just needs to work.

I'm still working off the trades--easy install with Mandrake and subsequent dependency hell, or harder, longer install with Debian and apt-get install heaven. I'll probably try both for a while and than decide. A little frustrating cause I want it to work (and just work) now.

One of the biggest problems I notice having when I'm doing this install thing is the hassle I have cleaning up and backing up stuff from the hard drive that will be getting the new system. It seems it's always easier to download stuff I just can't live without than it is to back it up to some cds or whatnot. This has to be a pretty universal problem. I think it's going to get worse too. I was reading an article about the problem of hard drive capacity outpacing Moore's law. Disk drives are growing in capacity faster than the IO capability. This is only going to get worse. The article I read made the point that within the next 5 to 10 years hard drive capacity will for all intents and purposes be much larger than we will need. That we will have to consider them [hard drives] to essentially be tape devices--serial, rather than random access.