🚀 go-pugleaf

root@e3315636.slip.cc.uq.oz.au (System Administrator) writes:
^^^^
Hmmmm....

>currently use kernel 1.2.3 and X11 3.1.1.  The other day I finally got sick
> [snip]
>What I would like to know is what is the best CD-TOM Linux package

I don't know about CD-ROMs, but consensus seems to be that Debian is
the best distribution thesedays, in particular because it has a sensible
pacakage system which allows you to upgrade your system without losing
your config files.  Unfortuanately the current Debian release (0.93r6)
is still a.out, although there is an ELF beta available.  I think I
recall one of the Debian developers saying that they hoped to have a
non-beta elf version out early next year - maybe you'd prefer to wait
until then.  From what I hear, Red Hat might be a good second choice.

>mostly a.out and I read somewhere that Slackware 3.0 is full ELF.  
>Will I have to replace everything to ELF?

Yes, for your own good.  Having a.out and ELF binaries running in
parallel will hit you about an extra 600k in memory usage.  Actually
I guess you could install only some of the packages (talking about
slackware here), but it seems to defeat the point of buying the CD.

>Will I have to upgrade to a new kernel version?

You *should* anyway, for security reasons, upgrade to 1.2.13.

>I really would like to avoid this as I have hand  patched this kernel to
>suit my particular system.  Don't want to go through that again......

May I humbly suggest that you should have kept a record of your changes
(ever tried RCS?).  You can probably do something like:

	cd /usr/src/linux
	mv linux linux.hacked
	tar xzvf .../linux-1.2.3.tar.gz
	cd linux.old
	make mrproper
	cd ..
	diff -u -N -r linux linux.hacked > MY_PATCHES
	rm -rf linux
	tar xzvf .../linux-1.2.13.tar.gz
	cd linux
	patch -p1 -E < ../MY_PATCHES

and then resolve the rejects by hand, but it might not be pretty.

 - Mike