Solo Technology

I had been running Damn Small Linux on my old Thinkpad for the last few months. It generally worked well, but I’ve had a few stumbling points with my somewhat goofy hard drive install of it. I never did manage to get sound going and I hadn’t really stumbled over a way to ensure that I was staying current. It was time for a change.

And really, that paragraph is a bit of a load. The real story is I like to experiment, and I had stumbled over a “new” linux distribution I wanted to try: Zenwalk.

Zenwalk is a GNU/Linux operating system, designed to provide the following characteristics :

• Modern (latest stable software)
• Fast (optimized for performance capabilities)
• Rational (one mainstream application for each task)
• Complete (full development/desktop/multimedia environment)
• Evolutionary (simple network package management tool - netpkg)

The screen shots looked sparkly and shiny too. How could I resist?

The install was easy enough. In general, it ran well enough. But… my old laptop struggled with it a bit. The built-in “pencil eraser” mouse worked great, but the USB mouse was a lot like mousing through syrup. Awful, really. I tried a post at the support forums, but got no love. My initial run at getting sound going didn’t go well (but really, does it ever on a Thinkpad?) After poking around a bit, I decided that if I was going to stick with the Xfce world, I’d go back to Xubuntu where I’m more comfy.

So I did. I haven’t got sound working yet… but maybe this weekend I’ll have time to try some more. Might be related to the fact that I’m running “pre-beta Fiesty Fawn” — which I’m really liking so far.

2 Responses to “DSL to Zenwalk and back to Xubuntu”

1. zenwalker on March 3rd, 2008 8:13 am
   

   hi

   with this solution:

   http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Script_for_configuring_the_CS4239_sound_chip_in_PnP_mode

   it worked for me, now mplayer is playing movies with sound perfectly

   can your xubuntu do it?

2. Chris on March 4th, 2008 10:13 am
   

   Hi zenwalker. I eventually solved the sound challenge ( http://www.solo-technology.com/blog/2006/10/21/my-xubuntu-laptop-has-sound/ )

   However, that link looks pretty good. I’m getting ready to resurrect my old 600E (all the newer laptops died on me) so I’ll give this one a shot when I do. Thanks!

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