[geeks] Dos and similar games

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Tue, Aug 15, 2006 at 11:15:48AM -0400, Joshua Boyd wrote:
> 
> Well, to be honest, the LFS is giving me some trouble with a particular
> mode of a particular video IO card anyway.  The card works fine with a
> custom kernel on Ubuntu (which is also wildly unsupported by the
> vendor), so maybe DSL would be worth a shot.

I don;t know what you have, so I can only speak generaly. DSL (and probably
KNOPPIX and MORPHIX) detect the video card at boot time. Since my needs
were very specific, I wanted to boot X with a minumum of time and no user
interaction, I changed the /etc/X11/setup script to:
(note the split line)

#!/bin/bash
while true; do
/usr/X11R6/bin/xinit /usr/bin/xterm -geometry 45x17 
	-fn lucidasanstypewriter-24 -e pdmenu /ramdisk/opt/gizmo-menu --
		/usr/bin/X11/X -screen 640x480x16 -shadow -3button 
			-nolisten tcp
done

This starts X windows with the screen resolution I want, fills it
with a X terminal in large enough text to be comfortably read of the
320x240 resolution screen of one of the units and runs pdmenu for a 
text menu.

Since I'm never sure what dosemu or WINE does to the Xserver, I kill it
after I'm done running a task. 

> 
> I've generally been compiling my dependencies from source rather than
> relying on packages, even when the original prototype was based on RH9.
> If nothing else, some dependencies have required a fair amount of
> examining the source and putting a print statement here or there to find
> out why it isn't working the way I expected.

That's the usual way of doing things. :-) I've also been installing things
using apt-get, but sometimes I get things that are too old. What I've
been experimenting with is keeping a second copy of the file system with
gcc and the full development libraries installed. 

Once I get the program where I want it to be, then I just move it over.
Staticly linked things are easy, other things require me to move the compile
directory to the other tree, chroot to it, make install and move it back.

If I understood the debian package system better, I'd probably just make up
the debs for it. 

Obviously when this is done for real, it will have to be smoother and simpler.




> If shoes are anything to go on, in a few weeks people will think we've
> never been allowed drinks on the plane.

Don't feel bad, we have security guards on most of our buses.

Geoff.
-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
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