[Novalug] Why? And More to the Point, What Do I Do Next?

[William Bean]

Thank you Igor Birman, Greg Pryzby,  Nick Danger,  Peter Larsen, and Karhun Hammas for your very quick and VERY helpful replies.

At the end of this message, I have copied the Smolt profile to detail my hardware.

In writing that Linux is still "unbelievably buggy". I made the common mistake of attributing to 'Linux' the faults of others.  In fact, as far as I recall, I have never had the kernel itself cause a crash.

Following the advice of everyone, I have reinstalled Fedora using the defaults.

As you had guessed, previously I had relied on my general knowledge of Unix to partition the install drive and allocated inadequate space to /var.  That experience prompts a new question.  I take as a given that RedHat knows infinitely more about Linux and Unix than me, but why would you want the whole filesystem (apart from /boot) in a single partition?  (My understanding has been that, at minimum, /tmp and /var should be in separate partitions to protect the rest of the filesystem from runaway processes.)

With respect to my Google Earth font problem, a link to the Google instructions for fixing the problem popped up with the error message.  As noted, those instructions were wrong but I'll deal with that later.

As Peter Larsen correctly guessed, my problem with tiny Firefox fonts is attributable to my small (by today's standards) 15" LCD monitor.  He also correctly observed that there's "no such thing as linux instructions". One of the strengths of the Microsoft, OpenBSD, et al. approach is that a single organization (or individual) guides the process, whether it's writing code or writing instructions. One of the strengths of the Linux universe is that NO single organization or individual guides the process of writing code or writing instructions.  As basic and obvious as the distinction is, my frustration led me to overlook it.

It looks like I need to read some detailed UP-TO-DATE information about the philosophies and intricacies of current distributions.  I usually look to O'Reilly for such writing; can anyone suggest something better than their Fedora Linux (1st edition, October 2006) by Chris Tyler?

Thank you again to all of you for your help.

Bill Bean

*  *  *  *  *

Operating System Fedora release 8 (Werewolf)
Platform  x86_64
System Vendor  Unknown
System Model
Kernel  2.6.23.1-42.fc8
Formfactor  desktop
Last Modified  2008-04-12 12:30:18
Admin Password
    
Devices
Device    Class
VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller Oce' Printing Systems GmbH  AUDIO
Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture Anritsu Corp. FlyVideo'98 - Video (with FM Tuner)  CAPTURE
Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link) Oce' Printing Systems GmbH  FIREWIRE
VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE Oce' Printing Systems GmbH  IDE
3Com Corporation 3c940 10/100/1000Base-T [Marvell] Oce' Printing Systems GmbH  NETWORK
VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South] Oce' Printing Systems GmbH  OTHER
VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI bridge [K8T800/K8T890 South]  OTHER
Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture Anritsu Corp.  OTHER
USB Vendor Specific Interface  OTHER
USB Printer Interface  OTHER
Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3112 [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller SiI 3112 SATALink Controller  OTHER
Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller  OTHER
Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration  OTHER
Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map  OTHER
Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control  OTHER
VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8385 [K8T800 AGP] Host Bridge Oce' Printing Systems GmbH  OTHER
Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3114 [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller SiI 3114 SATARaid Controller  RAID
VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller Oce' Printing Systems GmbH  RAID
VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 Oce' Printing Systems GmbH  USB
VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller Oce' Printing Systems GmbH  USB
ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200 SE] (Secondary)  VIDEO
ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200 SE] ASUS Radeon 9200 SE / TD / 128M  VIDEO



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