Usb Key Linux Distro Options

[Dromede]

capn_fish, maybe www.puppylinux.com will suit your needs. it was my first linux experience and i think that it's a great and feature packed distro...

[Capn_Fish]

I tried Puppy, and it was pretty good, especially at hardware detection. A couple things annoyed me, though:

-The mount points in a USB install
-Can't remove packages without doing it manually or rolling your own distro, which failed for me.

So that drove me to look at other things...I'm not using my Linux-on-a-stick much ATM, though, so I may give other thins a shot.

[Capn_Fish]

Sadly, I only just got to try booting Debian off of a USB key on a different computer from the one I installed it on, only to discovver that networking doesn't work. I'm assuming that the card driver isn't being loaded. So my questions are:

-How do I tell what network card the computer has? (lspci? What package would that be in?)

-On the LCD, the edges of the screen both outside of and inside X are cut off. Why is that, and how do I fix it?

Thanks.

[adf]

Sadly, I only just got to try booting Debian off of a USB key on a different computer from the one I installed it on, only to discovver that networking doesn't work. I'm assuming that the card driver isn't being loaded. So my questions are:

-How do I tell what network card the computer has? (lspci? What package would that be in?)

-On the LCD, the edges of the screen both outside of and inside X are cut off. Why is that, and how do I fix it?

Thanks.

Surely there are debtools? dpkg-reconfigure Xorg, maybe will help with the screen?

[Capn_Fish]

It has nothing to do with Xorg AFAICT, as it happens even in the console before starting X. It happened on a different computer with a different monitor as well (both LCD. CRTs work fine).

[T3_slider]

It has nothing to do with Xorg AFAICT, as it happens even in the console before starting X. It happened on a different computer with a different monitor as well (both LCD. CRTs work fine).

Is a framebuffer being used for the console though? That could possibly mess things up -- there should be a way to boot it to the normal VGA console mode (maybe I don't know what I'm talking about here, but at least on Slackware you can boot to a normal VGA console or to a framebuffer console depending on LILO settings -- and I'm sure there must be a way to enable a console mode without LILO).

In any event, if the console is running a framebuffer and you can't get it to work in normal VGA mode, playing with xorg.conf MAY have an effect anyway in X sessions since its configuration would override that of the framebuffer.

If a penguin appears upon booting up, you're probably in a framebuffer console -- try playing with xorg.conf anyway (make a backup just in case). I'm not entirely sure if Debian includes xorgsetup/xorgconfig/xorgcfg or a similar tool, but manually editing the xorg.conf file should work anyway.

Good luck!

[Capn_Fish]

It has nothing to do with Xorg AFAICT, as it happens even in the console before starting X. It happened on a different computer with a different monitor as well (both LCD. CRTs work fine).

Is a framebuffer being used for the console though? That could possibly mess things up -- there should be a way to boot it to the normal VGA console mode (maybe I don't know what I'm talking about here, but at least on Slackware you can boot to a normal VGA console or to a framebuffer console depending on LILO settings -- and I'm sure there must be a way to enable a console mode without LILO).

In any event, if the console is running a framebuffer and you can't get it to work in normal VGA mode, playing with xorg.conf MAY have an effect anyway in X sessions since its configuration would override that of the framebuffer.

If a penguin appears upon booting up, you're probably in a framebuffer console -- try playing with xorg.conf anyway (make a backup just in case). I'm not entirely sure if Debian includes xorgsetup/xorgconfig/xorgcfg or a similar tool, but manually editing the xorg.conf file should work anyway.

Good luck!

No framebuffer, and the xorg.conf file looks fine to me, but I've only done minimal work with it, so I may be off. Nobody else has this issue?

[T3_slider]

I would try it out, but I don't have any LCD screens (I'm just using old-school CRT monitors for now). Slax seems to work fine on my CRT (haven't tried the Debian LiveCD though).

[Capn_Fish]

I would try it out, but I don't have any LCD screens (I'm just using old-school CRT monitors for now). Slax seems to work fine on my CRT (haven't tried the Debian LiveCD though).

That's the funny thing...It works fine on CRTs, so I don't know what gives. It's probably some little thing that I haven' changed.

[Capn_Fish]

On a slightly different topic (No need to start a new thread, even if this is the off-topic section), XUbuntu is freezing when trying to shut down or suspend on my laptop sometimes (not all the time). It gives a black screen and hangs (no disk activity or LCD backlight). So what distro do people recommend trying? I'd like something that does at least some hardware detection/setup (eg, so I don't need to edit EVERYTHING) and is lightweight/fast booting. Distros I've tried:

-Vector (I found it too complicated/cluttered)
-Debian (My fallback, some packages are too old for my taste, about my convenience limit for needing tweaking)
-Gentoo (Stuff got broken/didn't work, otherwise nice, lousy initial setup)
-Slackware (Never did get a working install)
-(Xu|Ku|U)buntu (Now freezing while shutting down ( ), non-Xubuntu *buntus are too heavy for my taste)

Any ideas? So far I've been prefering .deb systems, but I haven't tried an RPM system in a year or two.

Thanks.

[adf]

On a slightly different topic (No need to start a new thread, even if this is the off-topic section), XUbuntu is freezing when trying to shut down or suspend on my laptop sometimes (not all the time). It gives a black screen and hangs (no disk activity or LCD backlight). So what distro do people recommend trying? I'd like something that does at least some hardware detection/setup (eg, so I don't need to edit EVERYTHING) and is lightweight/fast booting. Distros I've tried:

-Vector (I found it too complicated/cluttered)
-Debian (My fallback, some packages are too old for my taste, about my convenience limit for needing tweaking)
-Gentoo (Stuff got broken/didn't work, otherwise nice, lousy initial setup)
-Slackware (Never did get a working install)
-(Xu|Ku|U)buntu (Now freezing while shutting down ( ), non-Xubuntu *buntus are too heavy for my taste)

Any ideas? So far I've been prefering .deb systems, but I haven't tried an RPM system in a year or two.

Thanks.

Those would have been my ideas. You could try fedora (haven't used it in a while, but had issues with it- won't use again if I can avoid it) or one of the rhel clones like enterprise or centos....

Or some other deb derivate?

[Capn_Fish]

Thanks. I didn't feel like going all the way to RPMs yet, so I tried Mepis, didn't like it, and went back to Debian. I decided to try Testing, and it's awesome. Up-to-date, stable (so far), and lightweight (fewer daemons than the *buntus).

[EnderNightLord-C...]

I'm looking to run Linux off of a USB drive (512MB). I would like to have:

-A 2.6.x kernel
-Hardware detection so I can use it on any machine
-The ability to uninstall whatever came with the distro
-GCC readily available
-Some space left over so I can actually use it as a USB drive

Any suggestions?

damn small linux not (DSL-n)? looks like it might suit

Can you uninstall whatever you want? It looks good otherwise.

It is so small I never bothered, But I think there is a roll-your-own method (not sure, though)

tinycore for sure