[vox-tech] emergency: please help. /lib keeps disappearing

[Jonathan Stickel]

Issac Trotts wrote:
> On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 09:08:39AM -0700, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> 
>>On Wed 26 May 04,  8:48 AM, Issac Trotts <ijtrotts@ucdavis.edu> said:
>>
>>>On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 06:52:22AM -0700, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
<snip>
>>>>That's about the only thing I can think of to try (other than installing
>>>>Gentoo which I've been thinking about for a few weeks now).
>>>
>>>Is there a reason to think Gentoo would have fewer problems than Debian?
>>
>>thx, by the way!   :-)
> 
> 
> No prob!  :o)
> 
> 
>>at some point during the history of this machine, a number of problems
>>developed with X:
>>
> 
> [...]
> 
>>they didn't happen all at once.  it's been incremental, as X got
>>updated and ran the course of a couple of years.
> 
> 
> Well, that's no fun.  I've only used Debian for a couple of years,
> but have installed it on maybe 8 boxes so far.  The slowdown hasn't
> happened to me yet...
> 
> 
>>when i use a live CD, like knoppix, these problems go away.  i believe
>>these are compilation / packaging issues.  i'd like to see if compiling
>>everything from scratch fixes them.  i just booted knoppix for the first
>>time a few weeks ago, and the difference between X on my hard drive and
>>X on knoppix was startling.
> 
> 
> I wonder if there's a way to get a blend between knoppix and hard-drive
> based installation.  It would be nice to be able to save files and
> keep programs around that become available...
> 

You can in fact install knoppix directly to your harddrive, as was 
demonstrated at our most recent installfest.  There is a script on the 
knoppix disk to do this.  Apparently, you can then use debian tools to 
install and configure software beyond what's on the disk.  However, it 
seemed difficult to make changes to the auto-detection boot magic.

> 
>>i realize that you can certainly compile your own on debian, but from
>>what i've read about gentoo, the whole concept appeals to me.
> 
> 
> One thing that's been keeping me from using gentoo is that I'm worried
> that installing packages will take way longer than with Debian.
> Are there binary i686 or i386 versions of most of the packages?
> 
This is the one inherent "problem" with Gentoo.  Although you can do a 
binary install of many packages, including Gnome and KDE, any package 
upgrades revert back to compiling from source.  But once you give Gentoo 
a worthy chance, you are hooked and put up with lengthy upgrades.  I've 
gotten in the habit of leaving upgrades for a once-a-month 
leave-overnight deal.

Jonathan