noob first impressions (somewhat detailed)

[tobiaus]

first things first: wow! tc is more like what i would do if i was ambitious enough to remaster dsl. i'm very excited.

2.6 kernel... interesting, but as a fan of dsl-n (the idea anyway) it was probably a good choice. first thing with that: do i have to use nopcmcia now? no, that's good.

and does it have better usb support than dsl? well, i never tried in dsl-n (never got to it) but there's already a 1gb device that i couldn't use in dsl that i can use in tc.

biggest gripe so far: internet... hmm. i'm so used to pump -i eth0 (but i've used dhcpcd) and udhcpc isn't doing it for me, neither was the control panel. udhcpc says i have no eth0, eth1, ath0, ath1, which you and i know is a lie because i always use one of those (and so do most of you probably.)

first thought about that is i'll need pump as a package, or i'll have to try copying it from dsl. second thought is that probably won't help, what i need as a package is the support for nics that dsl had.

i tried the nic i usually use, then i tried the other nic i usually use on another box, then i tried the nic i used to use with dsl. i know all 3 work in dsl with pump, and on another distro (2.6 kernel) that uses pump.

so far that makes tc unusable for me, but i'm still excited.

jwm, yay! and configured more like i like to use it (i'll still need to add keybindings unless fltk has those, and move the taskbar to the bottom, but sometimes i use it at the top.) fltk wbar too? adorable.

love the no-bs background. does it have xsri? *tap* (i'm using two boxes right now, typing this from dsl) no xsri, no xwd, no xli (basiclinux!), no bsetroot or xsetroot... let's take apart... oh no, cpanel isn't a script anymore i'm guessing that script utility was too big for 10mb.

well i have no idea at the moment how you change the background using the console.

at first when i tried leaving xwin, startx just took me to an "x" mouse cursor and no wm, and it had been 1024x768 (which is all i need, but we all like more) and i found no mention of xvesa around. then i found xsetup.sh and that was fine, later i found it in the menu. after running that not only did i have the proper settings, startx also ran.

but even though i really hope the net situation improves, i have to say tc is the most exciting thing i've read about in a month, and even though i'm really excited, it's already exceeded my expectations (except for the net thing.)

love to see more. not every day (there's never been a day before) that you find a distro that might completely replace dsl. very impressed.

[Jason W]

Tobiaus,
Sounds like you need to modprobe your network card.  What kind of card do you have? (lspci will give hints.)

[tobiaus]

now we get into unfamiliar territory for me, with any distro less exciting than this one, i would just use something else if it didn't see my nic. (i'm usually pretty happy with that.)

but let's try an easy one (?) because the box i'm running tc on as we speak (typing this in dsl) gives me this information from lspci:

admtek nc100 network everywhere fast ethernet 10/100 (rev11)

i've heard of modprobe, but you might as well have just started reciting magical spells. lots of things i don't know. any thoughts on how to use it? surely if i can make this one work i can adapt that to the other ones. (well, i guess.)

[Jason W]

Try in a root terminal

# modprobe tulip

before issuing the dhcp commands.

[^thehatsrule^]

Currently the tools change the background in jwm.  See /usr/bin/set_awk_background.awk

The fltk apps are now in c++

[tobiaus]

thanks to you both.

jason: that was awesome! posting this from tc now i need to find a table that tells me how you got tulip from the info i posted. i tried $ find /sys/module but none of the things i tried with modprobe there worked on the other cards. so there is probably a topic on the old dsl forum about modprobe, or maybe tldp. this one with tulip is good for now, until i know other nic module names to try. thanks so much. tiny is really cool, i've installed chimera, links, leafpad, and ff3.

[^thehatsrule^]

As one of the other members pointed out, you can use `lspci -k`

[Jason W]

lspci will give info about your cards, and the drivers are located in /lib/modules/2.6.26-tinycore/kernel/drivers/net/.  I have a few nc100 cards around, but I forgot the driver it uses even though I often modprobe for tulip (everything I have is either 3c59x or tulip).  If looking at lspci and the module directory does not give you an obvious match, then google what you see in lspci and there is a good chance you will find one of the kernel modules supports it.  In this case, I googled "linux 2.6 nc100" and the second result listed nc100 as supported by tulip. 

EDIT: A faster way to achieve the above is with the 'lspci -i' mentioned by Hats.  Learn something every day.

[tobiaus]

thank you both again. actually, i thought lspci was giving me the info that was needed, and jason had a secret i didn't.

no one had mentioned -k yet, that did what i wanted. usually i do linuxcommands --help and i chose the wrong day not to add that. got two boxes running tc now and i learned a new trick. (non sequitor, i love the fonts in tc, looking at them as i type.)

[^thehatsrule^]

FYI, TC 1.0rc4 should remove need for the manual look up

[curaga]

If you want to change the background manually, edit .jwmrc in /home/tc, the Background tag is near the bottom.