| Previous | Table of Contents | Next |
Dealing with a graphics card has been one of the most problematic areas of Linux—or rather, of XFree86, which serves as the X Window System graphical interface to Linux. XFree86 deals directly with the graphics card and must know everything about the card in a configuration file (such as the amount of RAM it has, the chipset it features, and what modes it supports), putting more stress on you than the average software. Chapter 3 details how to configure XFree86, and in almost every respect this will be the most daunting task you will face as a budding Linux user.
If you’re a DOS/Windows user, you’re probably not too tuned into what sort of controller your computer features, because DOS and Windows are pretty tolerant of almost any PC controller.
This isn’t the case with Linux, which works directly with a PC controller and thus needs to really support it. In this next section, we’ll run down the controllers supported by Slackware Linux. There’s a domino effect to the controller compatibility: if Linux doesn’t recognize the controller, it won’t recognize anything connected to the controller. And most of us have many goodies connected to the controller, including hard drives, CD-ROM drives, and scanners.
Unlike most PC-based Unices, Linux isn’t too fussy about the hard disk or hard disks it supports; basically, if a hard disk is supported by a PC’s BIOS, it will work fine under Linux. This goes for IDE, EIDE, MFM, RLL, ESDI (with controllers that emulate the ST-506 interface, that is), and most SCSI interfaces. In fact, the following Enhanced IDE (EIDE) interfaces are explicitly supported, even on systems with up to two IDE interfaces and up to four hard drives and/or CD-ROM drives:
NOTE: If you’re using a hard disk with an MFM, ESDI, or RLL controller, you’ll need to use the ext2f file system format when installing Linux.
Regarding how large a hard drive you’ll need—as always, the bigger the better. A full installation of Linux takes up a little less than 275MB, but you can do quite well in 100MB (40MB if you don’t install the X Window System) if you’re careful about what you install.
NOTE: The price of hard disks has been falling rapidly, so many people will be able to afford 1-gigabyte drives. This is a good thing, of course; we recently noticed 1.2-gigabyte IDE drives advertised for less than $300. (SCSI hard drives, of course, cost a little more.)However, if you buy one of these mondo IDE hard drives, you’ll need to do a few things before you install Linux on them—or rather, not do a few things. MS-DOS can’t handle such large drives (in their infinite wisdom, the designers of MS-DOS placed a cylinder limit on DOS, and newer hard drives exceed that 1023-cylinder limit), so most manufacturers, such as Conner and Western Digital, ship disk-management software (such as Ontrack’s Disk Manager) that allow MS-DOS to deal with large hard drives. Don’t install this software. A program like Disk Manager is designed to work only with MS-DOS or a variant, not Linux or another operating system.
Instead, change your PC’s BIOS per the directions found in the hard-disk documentation. Then, using the steps detailed in Chapter 2, use the DOS FDISK utility to partition the hard drive into two smaller partitions that can be seen by both DOS and Linux.
However, there’s still a chance you could experience some problems. For example, the Hardware Compatibility-HOWTO reports that some Conner CFP1060S drives may have problems with Linux when using the ext2fs file system. The symptoms are inode errors during e2fsck and corrupt file systems. Conner has released a firmware upgrade to fix this problem (call 1-800-4CONNER), but you’ll need the microcode version (found on the drive label, 9WA1.6x) before Conner can help you.
In addition, certain Micropolis drives have problems with Adaptec and BusLogic cards. In these situations, contact the drive manufacturers for firmware upgrades.
| Previous | Table of Contents | Next |