If any of you have some extra time and feel like writing a sort of walk-through to installing FVWM-Crystal on Slackware 11.0, I will love you forever. The problem is, it depends on so many things, and each thing in turn depends on so many other things, that I get all turned around trying to download and compile/install everything correctly in the correct order. Thanks!

Philip

PS I've been trying various distributions, trying to find the one that's easiest to customize to my liking (I figure using Ubuntu, for example, defeats the whole purpose of using Linux). I like Slackware so far, except that sometimes it's hard to install stuff. I was very proud of myself for getting my wireless card up and running with a kernel module =)

Oh, one other strange problem. Every once in a while, my terminal "freezes". The cursor keeps blinking, but when I type, it takes about 30-60 seconds for it to show up. The computer isn't grinding away or anything, it just takes forever to use the terminal. I have NO IDEA why this would be happening. Then, a few minutes later, the problem fixes itself and everything is back to normal.

Any insight, tell me =)

Philip

Two suggestions before I respond: Don't reply to your own posts, because it takes you off the "Zero replies" list so less people see this as an unanswered post; and don't post two problems in the same thread, as people who might know about terminal freezes won't think of looking in a post titled FVWM...

When your terminal freezes, are you able to switch to another terminal and run something like "top" to see what's going on?

For FVWM-crystal, you might find the FVWM forum at http://fvwm.lair.be/ a useful place to ask. Afraid I can't help much more on that score, as I felt that crystal was too much like cheating, so wrote my own config file

I'm able to do anything, it just takes about 60 seconds to happen. I type "top" and 60 seconds later top pops up. And according to top, top itself is using the most resources (like 0.2% of the CPU or something).

The only explanation I can think of is that I'm using a laptop, and Linux doesn't run well on laptops. But that's not a satisfactory answer for me...

Philip

I'm using a laptop and it runs very well, especially Slackware . (I have some strange problems with BIOS in all other distros ... it doesn't happen with Slackware, probably something about the kernel ?)

I dunno, it might be some program using up all the resources. Do 'ps -A', it might be a bit more reliable in such cases.

What terminal are you talking about ? rxvt ? konsole ? screen ?

Do you have anything in particular set to run at particular times ? (check '/etc/cron.*')

Might try lowering the number of things running (things you don't need ... prevent them from starting)

I'm going to take a look at "ps -A" and "/etc/cron.*" in the morning, I'm about to crash lol. I'm talking about the normal terminal, tty1 or whatever, without X Windows. I can't be sure, as the problem is intermittent, but things seem to work fine in X Windows.

What's got me, is that whenever anything goes wrong in Linux, the first thing I think is, "Ah crap, what have I screwed up now?" But this is a new Slackware 11.0 install, and all Linux distros always work perfectly right out of the box, and I haven't done anything yet. I reinstalled too just to make sure. But the point is, this is one problem where (cross my fingers) it isn't my fault.

"/etc/cron.*" would explain it's intermittentness, so that's definitely where I'm going to look next.

Seeing as it's late, I have a philosophical question to ask about Linux and networking. You take an Ethernet cable, plug one end into your computer, and, heck, throw the other end out the window, and chances are your computer will find it's way onto the internet.

Now, take a wireless card, stick it in the computer, and you might just have to learn to live without the web. So, just out of curiosity, why is it sooooo eeeaaassyyyy to get online via an Ethernet cable, and soooooo haaaaaard with a wireless card? Is there a nice standard for Ethernet that just doesn't exist with wireless? Do wireless cards just suck?

Now, I have a RaLink card, and I just downloaded their Linux module and it works fine, but the point is you don't even NEED modules for Ethernet. And if a company doesn't provide Linux support, what do you do? Try your luck with ndiswrapper?

Boy, I guess it's late. I get philosophical in the wee hours. But can't people just get together and say, "All right, whatever we did to make Ethernet work so well, let's do the same thing with wireless cards."?

=P

Philip

actually you do need modules for ethernet ... my card won't work without the right modules

the reason you need modules some times is that RaLink isnt built into the kernel. even if it was in the kernel you could still choose to use modules tho