Saturday, 07 December, 2002
Pearl Harbor Day. RIP.
Now that I got Win98SE installed on the laptop for testing of the client app, I decided to mess it up by trying a dual boot with Linux. I used the Partition Magic 8.0 disk to repartition: dropped drive D:, added a Linux partition, moved drive C: so there was a 500 Mb swap partition first on the disk, and then installed Red Hat 8.0. The disks from GLGDW were bogus, but I had a previous set I’d burned, so I got it installed.
The RH installer didn’t like the partition configuration at all. It complained that the other partitioner did not properly understand the geometry of the hard disk, but that it was recoverable. It created a 100 Mb boot partition out of the swap space and installed GRUB as the boot loader. The rest of the install went without a hitch, and I was up and running Linux.
Next came the interesting configuration challenges. Restarting the machine, the Win98SE loader would fail to start Win98, asking for the location of C:\Windows\COMMAND.COM. Tackle that tomorrow.
The other challenge is getting Linux to recognize the wireless card, a LinkSys? WPC11. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.
Finished off the day by sitting through the entire showing of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” While I had seen bits and pieces before, I am sure I had never seen the whole thing, as several plot twists surprised me. Enjoyed it, and feel that I have now plugged it a little better to American culture. Some day I’ll understand this stuff.