On Wed, 14 May 2008 13:08:03 -0400, Old Man wrote:

<excrement wiped>

<modquote>
> Make a dumb-ass statement. When it is refuted, ignore that, and just
> repeat the same dumb-ass statement. Throw in some irrelevant bullshit
> as if it supports the dumb-ass statement. This is what passes for
> "debate" in the Land of Margarine Boy, Doctor of Scatology.
</modquote>

On Wed, 14 May 2008 13:08:03 -0400, Old Man wrote:

> Realto Margarino wrote:
>
>> If and when the so-called "Slackware Essentials" book, in hardcopy, is
>> included with every distribution, then it will be an "official" part of
>> the distribution. As it is now, included only as a file, it is no more
>> "official" than any of the other how-tos and FAQs that are bundled with
>> the system.
>
> Make a dumb-ass statement. When it is refuted, ignore that, and just
> repeat the same dumb-ass statement. Throw in some irrelevant bullshit
> as if it supports the dumb-ass statement. This is what passes for
> "debate" in the Land of Margarine Boy, Doctor of Scatology.

'
Join the Usenet, travel to exotic charsets,
meet mostly boring recurrent trolls and feed them
'

oh, well...

"Glyn Millington" <wistanswick@linuxmail.org> says:

>Any newcomers to this newsgroup reading this?

Me! Vista was the last straw for me, and the new laptops do not have
drivers for good old XP, so I went to http://www.emperorlinux.com/
and asked for Slackware. They treated me right. Now I have to unlearn
and relearn a boatload of stuff, but in the end Bill G. won't ever be
able to bend me over the table again.

>A. Before you trust RM on this just study his posting history - searching
> Google groups on "realto margarino" will reveal a sorry story spread
> over 3,540 posts.

OMG! In God's name, why? WHY would someone spend thousands and
thousands of hours with the only result being annoying a bunch
of people?? Is this dude mental?

Here is the web address.
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q...garino&num=100

>B. Slackware Linux Essentials is a fine place to start if you are new to
> Slackware.

I just ordered a copy. Thanks!

>Well, quoting from this page
>
>http://www.slackware.com/book/
>
>,----
>| The official guide to Slackware Linux, the Slackware Linux Essentials,
>| has been recently revised. If you want to be able to read it online, you
>| may want to visit the slackbook website.
>|
>| You may also want to buy a printed copy, in that case please visit the
>| Slackware Store!
>`----

That looks pretty "official" to me! When slackware.com calls
something an "official guide," and sells it on the web, how
much more official can it be?

Joseph Rosevear <joe@max.hopto.org> wrote:
> greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> wrote:

[snip]

> > PS, the CD system does not recognize my USB keyboard.

> Right. I haven't yet solved that problem. In the meantime please use
> a ps/2 keyboard. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Readers,

I did a little web searching and discovered quite a bit about this
problem. The impression I got was that Grub isn't able (yet) to handle
USB natively.

My point of view is that booting should go from the simple to the
complex. Since a keyboard is useful to interact with the boot process
(when using Grub), the keyboard should work in a simple way.

In other words keyboards should not be USB, because USB requires
modules that may need to be loaded/selected using a keyboard. Either
that or someone needs to figure out how to hack a USB keyboard so it
works without first loading usbhid.ko (other modules needed?).

The Cdrom drive is like that. I have marveled that Grub can boot from
a CD (apparently) before loading modules that enable the use of the
CDROM drive.

These are my thoughts. Anyone want to add anything to this?

-Joe

loki harfagr <loki@theDarkDesign.free.fr> typed on 2008-05-14:

<mod-quote>
> Join the Usenet, travel to exotic charsets,
> meet mostly boring recurrent trolls and feed them
</mod-quote>

--
Bartosz Oudekerk
I think a better name for PAM might be SCAM, for Swiss Cheese Authentication
Modules, and have never felt that the small amount of convenience it provides
is worth the great loss of system security. -- Patrick Volkerding

Joseph Rosevear wrote:

>My point of view is that booting should go from the simple to the
>complex. Since a keyboard is useful to interact with the boot process
>(when using Grub), the keyboard should work in a simple way.
>
>In other words keyboards should not be USB, because USB requires
>modules that may need to be loaded/selected using a keyboard. Either
>that or someone needs to figure out how to hack a USB keyboard so it
>works without first loading usbhid.ko (other modules needed?).
>
>The Cdrom drive is like that. I have marveled that Grub can boot from
>a CD (apparently) before loading modules that enable the use of the
>CDROM drive.
>
>These are my thoughts. Anyone want to add anything to this?

My copy of MS-DOS 6.22 was written long before there were USB
keyboards, and yet it reads my USB keyboard just fine. Why
doesn't *it* require "modules that may need to be loaded/selected
using a keyboard?" How is it that it works without first loading
some sort of module or driver? And why can't GRUB do the same?

BTW, MS-DOS 6.22 needs drivers to see the mouse and CD-ROM, even
if the CD-ROM is IDE and the mouse is PS/2. I *think* that MS-DOS
might boot from a CD if it was on a CD (my copy is on flopies). If
so there is some limited CD boot capability without the CD drivers.

me@privacy.net wrote:
> My copy of MS-DOS 6.22 was written long before there were USB
> keyboards, and yet it reads my USB keyboard just fine. Why
> doesn't *it* require "modules that may need to be loaded/selected
> using a keyboard?" How is it that it works without first loading
> some sort of module or driver? And why can't GRUB do the same?

That is actually because MS-Dos doesn't do much of keyboard handling
AT all, it is all done by the (ROM-)BIOS (and that one knows about
USB keyboards and "its own" USB controllers alright).
I think lilo uses the same trick, using the bios (which must be in
"USB legacy mode", that is, the USB keyboard leaves its data in the
same "bios area" as the original keyboard processor/bios did.

I _think_ (but I'm certainly no expert in grub) that grub uses more
like the same approach the Linux kernel does too, that is, handle it
mostly yourself - not through ROM-BIOS, and then you DO need drivers
for all of the kinds of hardware you're supposed to be handling.
--
************************************************** ******************
** Eef Hartman, Delft University of Technology, dept. EWI/TW **
** e-mail: E.J.M.Hartman@math.tudelft.nl, fax: +31-15-278 7295 **
** snail-mail: P.O. Box 5031, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands **
************************************************** ******************