Got my feet wet - now getting cold feet.

[Taavi Burns]

On Thu, Feb 19, 2004 at 10:07:22PM -0500, Noah John Gellner wrote:
> I expect that the BIOS is similar to the 5100, which I have. There were
> initially problems with APIC, but there are now patches to make it work well.

Is that APIC or ACPI?  They are two very different things.  APIC is the
Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller, which gives you 32 interrupts
instead of the old 15 (or 7, if you're REALLY old).  No more IRQ sharing!

ACPI is more closely related to power management, and replaces APM.  You
probably meant ACPI; I've never heard of a laptop with APIC, and ACPI is
far more useful on a laptop than on a desktop.

> >   * Will the Linux OS properly recognize my usb 2.0 wireless mouse and my
> >     plextor PX-708UF external drive? Will I be able to "plug and play" with the
> >     PC card slot - for instance I need to get a fire-wire jack to connect to
> >     the semi-professional digital video camera I'll soon be using?

The mouse should, afaik, just show up as a normal USB HID device, and
should work.  I'll guess that your Plextor is a USB2.0 external CD burner;
I don't see why it shouldn't work, too, but I have no personal experience
to back up that claim.

> >   * Is there open source DVD creation software available that will make full
> >     use of my px-708uf for creating and editing digital footage?

There is a version of cdrecord which can burn DVDs.  Google for 'cdrecord'.

> >   * Plus, I'm moving to India in 2 weeks. My work will keep me there
> >   indefinitely. If I make the shift and things start to go wrong how hard
> >   is it to switch back to XP?
> 
> If you want to switch back to XP you will need to basically rebuild your
> system. My experience is that this is typically a 4-5 hour process. If you
> have the equipment you can speed this up considerably using software to take
> a "picture" of your XP machine and then rebuild using that image. The
> software I have used for this at work is Symantec Ghost. I don't know if
> there are free tools to do same.

Mondo will do bootable CDs that you can use to re-image a system:
http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/

> My advice, perhaps heretical, is that if you are leaving for India in two
> weeks and only have one computer you should be very sure that you want Linux.
> I have a mixed OS network at home because there are a sufficient number of
> annoyances that keep me from taking the full plunge. 

If you're just about to move to India, need to do work, and do not
already have a Linux support net there, I'd say wait until you get
there and see how things are.  In moving you do NOT need more
headaches.  :)  Perhaps better to stick with the gangrenous dull
ache of windoze until you're in a good position to amputate it.  ;)

(my, what a horrible, smelly analogy)

GOOD LUCK!

-- 
?  Is this the end of the fil...!#$!#@$!#$%!NO CARRIER
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml