[ltp] Linux for old Thinkpads: Slackware? Vector? (etc.)

[Richard Neill]

Jim Harvey wrote:
> 
> I tried a Knoppix hard drive installation mainly because it was the only
> one that detected and set up the MN-520 wireless on the first try.  But
> by the time I had kernel sources downloaded and several other things I
> wanted I was over the 2.5 G in the root partition.
> 

I have at one point managed to do a kernel-ectomy, to form a sort of
franken-distribution. I used the kernel from the latest knoppix to get
wifi support into my old Mandrake 9.1 system.

I think that I did something like this:

1)Start knoppix in order to get the cloop filesystem mounted. Copy over

* the kernel image: vmlinuz-something from /boot
* the kernel modules:  /lib/modules/kernel-number/

2) Reboot into mandrake system.

* edit lilo.conf
* run mkinitrd   (Mandrake's).
* /sbin/lilo


As a result, everything actually worked (!) except for

1)The CDROM didn't work - probably because I did something daft

2)sound didn't work quite right, because Mandrake 9.1 used AlSA and
knoppix didn't at that time.


Moral: you can mix and match your kernel and your distro.
Linux is good like that. :-)


Another possibility - though it will be ugly: you could compile on a
different machine to the one you will use, or temporarily mount eg
/usr/src  over NFS, or from an external usb drive.

Richard