Fed up with M$ Window$ !!! Why is Tux leaving me alone???

[fullmetalcoder]

Thanks all of you! I'll try to do it!

[GreyGeek]

Thanks all of you! I'll try to do it!

Let me add two recommendations.

1) Don't use ext2. When it comes time to reformat the new partition on which you will install Linux select the ReiserFS. It is a journaling filing system that recovers from all sorts of errors without hardly a moments notice. I call it "self healing". I've been using it exclusively since it first appeared in SUSE 6.4. I used SUSE 6.4 in production for 18 months running a BBS system where taxpayers could download the status of their refunds. it preserved the file structure and data during several incidents of lightening, power failures, and UPS failures, even when those failures occured over the weekend when no one was around to "recover" the system. It would just restart, heal any file problems and continue on, unlike the Windows based WildCat BBS system it replaced. That system was so unreliable it was turned off after 5pm and on week ends because IT staff got tired of coming in after hours or on week ends to reboot, rebuild or reinstall. They tried replacing the the video cards, the HDs, even different versions of the OS and Wildcat, but they couldn't keep the BBS running reliably. SUSE 6.4 with the ReiserFS and KDE 1.0 ran for 18 months without unschedules downtimes, which was once a week for ghosting. The clerk who was responsible for it had no prior experience with Linux but said that using KDE 1.0 was no different than using Win95.

Unlike ext2 or its newer cousin, ext3, ReiserFS will not force an fsck if it encounters problems, it fixes them! What's the point of ext3 if it is going to throw you into an fsck when it encounters problems? YOU DON'T WANT to be fscking 30GB or larger HDs. You've got more important things to do with the rest of your WEEK.


2) My I suggest that you download SimplyMepis-3.4.3-rc4.iso and burn it onto a CD.
ftp://ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu/pub/li...mepis/testing/

Don't let its "testing" status put you off. It's a solid release which I've already installed on 5 PCs, and upgraded them all to 3D accelereation and KDE 3.5.0.

MEPIS is a LiveCD that also allows for installation. It uses Synaptic as a front end to apt-get, which is a terrific tool for adding and removing files. Synaptic connects to several Debian repositories where the number of available files is now over 18,000 and climbing.

[fullmetalcoder]

2) My I suggest that you download SimplyMepis-3.4.3-rc4.iso and burn it onto a CD.
ftp://ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu/pub/li...mepis/testing/

Don't let its "testing" status put you off. It's a solid release which I've already installed on 5 PCs, and upgraded them all to 3D accelereation and KDE 3.5.0.

MEPIS is a LiveCD that also allows for installation. It uses Synaptic as a front end to apt-get, which is a terrific tool for adding and removing files. Synaptic connects to several Debian repositories where the number of available files is now over 18,000 and climbing.

nice !!! but I can't download a 600Mb iso file!

[yop]

nice !!! but I can't download a 600Mb iso file!

What did you expect? You're getting a full OS
You can get the ubuntu cds free of charge from https://shipit.ubuntu.com/ It will take sometime until you get them but you don't have to download/buy anything. If you're in a hurry you can go to your local sw store and buy a linux distribution.

[GreyGeek]

nice !!! but I can't download a 600Mb iso file!

Mail your addr to me and I'll send you an ISO of MEPIS no charge.

[fullmetalcoder]

Mail your addr to me and I'll send you an ISO of MEPIS no charge.

Very kind of you but do you live in France???

Moreover I failed shrinking my partition! I defragmented my FAT32 (took 6 hours but I managed to be patient ) Then I booted from an old liveCD I had, logged in as root and I launched QtParted. Until that moment, no problem! QtParted was very long to get infos about my partition but anyway it did it. My real problem is that after validating the resizing operation I got an empty warning box and nothing was actually performed!

Another thing to say : those who have already done a defragmentattion under M$ Win know that some files aren't moved. I noticed those files where everywhere on my disk :
- a few at the beggining
- a lot on the middle
- and too many to take chances of shrinking, If they're really important, at the end

So my questions are : Are they really important? If so how to force moving them? How to perform that damn partition resizing?

[michel]

If you can't download 600mb, can you download roughly ~110mb? If so, there is another Linux bootable with qparted on it called "System Rescue CD" that I used with a lot of success. I wasn't using it to install Linux, but I needed to shrink an NTFS partition on the local network and convert it to UFS (I had to compile Java and needed something crazy like 1.7gb of space for the build directory) slice, and it was by far the easiest way. Along with these tools, it also will autoconfigure your network if you're on one and allow you to go online in a web browser if you need to get help installing Linux. As someone already said, make sure 100% that you scandisk and defrag the drive from Windows before trying to resize it. Otherwise you might get some sort of "sector errors" problems or overwrite fragmented files accidentally.

http://www.sysresccd.org/
Viel Glück!

[Codepoet]

Another thing to say : those who have already done a defragmentattion under M$ Win know that some files aren't moved. I noticed those files where everywhere on my disk :
- a few at the beggining
- a lot on the middle
- and too many to take chances of shrinking, If they're really important, at the end

So my questions are : Are they really important? If so how to force moving them? How to perform that damn partition resizing?

That's probably your swap file. Just delete it or reduce it's size temporarily to zero.

[fullmetalcoder]

That's probably your swap file. Just delete it or reduce it's size temporarily to zero.

Swap file under M$ win??? I've never heard of that! How to make it my bitch???

If you can't download 600mb, can you download roughly ~110mb? If so, there is another Linux bootable with qparted on it called "System Rescue CD" that I used with a lot of success. I wasn't using it to install Linux, but I needed to shrink an NTFS partition on the local network and convert it to UFS (I had to compile Java and needed something crazy like 1.7gb of space for the build directory) slice, and it was by far the easiest way. Along with these tools, it also will autoconfigure your network if you're on one and allow you to go online in a web browser if you need to get help installing Linux. As someone already said, make sure 100% that you scandisk and defrag the drive from Windows before trying to resize it. Otherwise you might get some sort of "sector errors" problems or overwrite fragmented files accidentally.

I downloaded it but currently didn't manage to make it work! Anyway it's not the point now! Are you sure QtParted can resize FAT32 and not only NTFS? If so why did it show me an empty warning and refused to perform the requested operation?

It's driving me mad!!! Help me!!!

[GreyGeek]

Very kind of you but do you live in France???

Moreover I failed shrinking my partition! I defragmented my FAT32 (took 6 hours but I managed to be patient ) Then I booted from an old liveCD I had, logged in as root and I launched QtParted. Until that moment, no problem! QtParted was very long to get infos about my partition but anyway it did it. My real problem is that after validating the resizing operation I got an empty warning box and nothing was actually performed!

Another thing to say : those who have already done a defragmentattion under M$ Win know that some files aren't moved. I noticed those files where everywhere on my disk :
- a few at the beggining
- a lot on the middle
- and too many to take chances of shrinking, If they're really important, at the end

So my questions are : Are they really important? If so how to force moving them? How to perform that damn partition resizing?

If you want to continue to use the Windows partition then I'd imagine those files are important. It has been my observation that the defag program seems to leave important files at the end of the HD for what I would assume would be no other reason than to prevent a dual installation. That's why I use PCMagic 8.0, which moves files that are in the region that will be shrunk.

And yes, I would mail you a CD of SimplyMEPIS-3.4.3.iso, which was just released today, even if you do live in France! I've already burned two CDs.

[fullmetalcoder]

If you want to continue to use the Windows partition then I'd imagine those files are important. It has been my observation that the defag program seems to leave important files at the end of the HD for what I would assume would be no other reason than to prevent a dual installation. That's why I use PCMagic 8.0, which moves files that are in the region that will be shrunk.

And yes, I would mail you a CD of SimplyMEPIS-3.4.3.iso, which was just released today, even if you do live in France! I've already burned two CDs.

You're one of the kindest person I've ever meet! Thanks GreyGeek for allowing a tiny little frog to have his way in the world of freedom!!!

But... What is PCMagic 8.0??? Is that PowerQuest's Partition Magic or a linux software I've never heard of ???

[GreyGeek]

You're one of the kindest person I've ever meet! Thanks GreyGeek for allowing a tiny little frog to have his way in the world of freedom!!!

But... What is PCMagic 8.0??? Is that PowerQuest's Partition Magic or a linux software I've never heard of ???

Just msg me your addr and a fresh CD of SimplyMEPIS-3.4.3 will be on its way!

You're right, it is PQMagic. Version 8.0 is the one I have because it was the first to allow safe repartitions of NTFS. (See what happens when your brain reaches 65 yrs )

[fullmetalcoder]

Just msg me your addr and a fresh CD of SimplyMEPIS-3.4.3 will be on its way!

You're right, it is PQMagic. Version 8.0 is the one I have because it was the first to allow safe repartitions of NTFS. (See what happens when your brain reaches 65 yrs )

We ot a new problem : PQ Magic isn't free! I don't feel like buying a more than 50$ soft that I wouldn't use more than 5 times in my whole life!!!

Is there another program able to do the same job for free?

[jacek]

Is there another program able to do the same job for free?

Why do you need windows anyway?

You could try this --- it's only 50 MB, but it contains parted and other usefull tools. If you don't have SATA drives it should work.

Just do backup your data.

[fullmetalcoder]

Why do you need windows anyway?

You could try this --- it's only 50 MB, but it contains parted and other usefull tools. If you don't have SATA drives it should work.

Just do backup your data.

Why do I need M$ Window$ ??? What a good question! Maybe I'm not the only user of that damn PC...

What about backuping data... Well... backuping 25Mb (used space only!) is not gonna be easy!!!

[dublet]

What about backuping data... Well... backuping 25Mb (used space only!) is not gonna be easy!!!

Don't have a CD burner? CDs easily fit about 650MB of data, don't you know? 25 Megabit shouldn't be a problem. :P

[GreyGeek]

We ot a new problem : PQ Magic isn't free! I don't feel like buying a more than 50$ soft that I wouldn't use more than 5 times in my whole life!!!

Is there another program able to do the same job for free?

Not that I know of.

I guess that narrows your choices to two: parted or QParted, and good luck.

[fullmetalcoder]

Not that I know of.

I guess that narrows your choices to two: parted or QParted, and good luck.

Hopefully I found an Abexo product who perform a full defrag (removes swap file before) and does that really fast (75% time saved). It's a 5days trialware but was much sufficient for what I needed!
Then I used QtParted from a liveCD and manged to resize my hd after unmounting it
Finally Kanotix has a built-in installer that took care of the rest (formatting with reiserfs, copying files, installing bootloader...)

Freedom came, but I can't compile Qt 4...
It looks like there's some packages missing. Any ideas ???

make[3]: Entering directory `/home/fullmetalcoder/qt/4.1.1/src/gui'
g++ -c -pipe -g -fvisibility=hidden -fvisibility-inlines-hidden -Wall -W -D_REENTRANT -fPIC -DQT_SHARED -DQT_BUILD_GUI_LIB -DQT_NO_CAST_TO_ASCII -DQT3_SUPPORT -DQT_MOC_COMPAT -DQT_RASTER_IMAGEENGINE -DQT_HAVE_SSE -DQT_PDF_SUPPORT -DFT_CONFIG_OPTION_SYSTEM_ZLIB -DQT_NO_STYLE_MAC -DQT_NO_STYLE_WINDOWSXP -DQT_CORE_LIB -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -I../../mkspecs/linux-g++ -I. -I../../include/QtCore -I../../include -I../../include/QtGui -I../3rdparty/libpng -I../3rdparty/zlib -I../3rdparty/freetype/src -I../3rdparty/freetype/include -I../3rdparty/freetype/builds/unix -I.moc/debug-shared -I/usr/X11R6/include -I. -o .obj/debug-shared/qapplication.o kernel/qapplication.cpp
In file included from ../../include/QtGui/private/qt_x11_p.h:1,
from kernel/qapplication.cpp:51:
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:50:22: error: X11/Xlib.h: No such file or directory
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:55:23: error: X11/Xutil.h: No such file or directory
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:56:21: error: X11/Xos.h: No such file or directory
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:63:23: error: X11/Xatom.h: No such file or directory
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:252: error: 'Colormap' does not name a type
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:253: error: ISO C++ forbids declaration of 'Visual' with no type
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:253: error: expected ';' before '*' token
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:266: error: 'Window' does not name a type
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:269: error: 'Window' has not been declared
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:270: error: 'Window' has not been declared
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:270: error: 'Atom' has not been declared
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:271: error: 'Atom' has not been declared
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:272: error: 'Window' has not been declared
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:272: error: 'Atom' has not been declared
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:283: error: expected ',' or '...' before '*' token
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:283: error: ISO C++ forbids declaration of 'XSelectionRequestEvent' with no type
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:285: error: 'Atom' has not been declared
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:286: error: 'Atom' does not name a type
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:334: error: ISO C++ forbids declaration of 'Atom' with no type
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:334: error: expected ';' before '*' token
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:336: error: ISO C++ forbids declaration of 'Window' with no type
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:336: error: expected ';' before '*' token
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:338: error: 'Window' does not name a type
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:344: error: 'Time' does not name a type
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:345: error: 'Time' does not name a type
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:371: error: ISO C++ forbids declaration of 'Visual' with no type
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:371: error: expected ';' before '*' token
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:372: error: 'Colormap' does not name a type
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:524: error: 'Atom' does not name a type
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:534: error: 'FocusOut' was not declared in this scope
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:535: error: 'FocusIn' was not declared in this scope
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:536: error: 'KeyPress' was not declared in this scope
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:537: error: 'KeyRelease' was not declared in this scope
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:538: error: 'None' was not declared in this scope
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:539: error: 'RevertToParent' was not declared in this scope
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:540: error: 'GrayScale' was not declared in this scope
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:541: error: 'CursorShape' was not declared in this scope
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:556: error: 'XPoint' was not declared in this scope
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:556: error: template argument 1 is invalid
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:556: error: explicit specialization of non-template '<type error>'
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:557: error: 'XRectangle' was not declared in this scope
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:557: error: template argument 1 is invalid
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:557: error: explicit specialization of non-template '<type error>'
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:558: error: 'XChar2b' was not declared in this scope
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:558: error: template argument 1 is invalid
../../include/QtGui/private/../../../src/gui/kernel/qt_x11_p.h:558: error: explicit specialization of non-template '<type error>'
kernel/qapplication.cpp: In member function 'void QApplicationPrivate::initialize()':
kernel/qapplication.cpp:724: warning: unused variable 'q'
make[3]: *** [.obj/debug-shared/qapplication.o] Error 1
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/fullmetalcoder/qt/4.1.1/src/gui'
make[2]: *** [debug-all] Error 2
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/fullmetalcoder/qt/4.1.1/src/gui'
make[1]: *** [sub-gui-make_default-ordered] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/fullmetalcoder/qt/4.1.1/src'
make: *** [sub-src-make_default-ordered] Error 2

[jacek]

It looks like there's some packages missing. Any ideas ???

Try installing package called X11-devel or XFree86-devel or xorg-devel or whatever it's called in your distribution.