[elrepo] Announcement: EL5 Updated kernel-ml Release [Version 2.6.37-0.3.el5.elrepo]

[Nikki Locke]

54530.22547 at pikachu.3ti.be>
Reply-To: elrepo at lists.elrepo.org

Dag Wieers wrote:
> Normally, you buy your hardware based on what your needs are. If you 
> planned to run Linux all along, you look for the hardware that has the 
> best support.

I spoke to the hardware supplier. I said I wanted to run CentOs 5. I said I 
needed dual monitors, plenty of grunt, and at least 8 GB of memory. USB3 wasn't 
an issue at the time (it wasn't available at reasonable cost yet). They provided 
a machine according to those specs. Or so I thought.

Later, I saw a USB3 2TB drive at a reasonable price, and checked on the Web 
where it said Linux was the first O/S to support USB3, long before Windows, so 
bought one. And started down this twisty maze of dead ends!

> For a desktop that's more important than for a server, because you have 
> more specific requirements (video drivers, wireless, suspend/hibernate, 
> ...).

Video drivers are important to me. This machine is used mainly as a desktop. I 
run VMWare Workstation on the machine, and my main desktop environment is one of 
the VMs I run. It extends over the two monitors.

> But for a server the video and USB3 are hardly important, so I guess 
> whether it is Linux or Windows is not that big of a deal to you.

This is not a server, really (although it does run multiple VMs). Its primary 
purpose is to host my desktop VM, and display it over the two monitors.

Anyway, I'm not sure why USB3 would not be important for a server - it seems to 
be the most efficient way to do backups these days, and surely backing up is an 
important requirement for a server?

I've been booting into Windows for the past couple of days, and using that as 
the host for my VMs. (The VMs are on a separate disk partition, formatted as 
NTFS, so both Linux and Windows can get at them). I don't like it much - the VMs 
are much slower to get started, and tend suddenly to decide they only have 1 
monitor (kindly rearranging my desktop accordingly).

However, I can back up the whole 400GB of the partition with my VMs on it in 
just over an hour (using the USB3 drivers I've installed in Windows). I can also 
use Skype with my USB headphones (when the host O/S was Linux, the microphone 
recorded nothing but crackling noises).

It's all a pain in the proverbial.

-- 
Nikki Locke, Trumphurst Ltd.  PC & Unix consultancy & programming
http://www.trumphurst.com/