Monday, May 05, 2008

Slamd64

I've installed Slamd64 on my new AMD system. Initially, I had SATA issues that have mysteriously disappeared (no idea why, other than maybe swapping out that SATA cables helped). I installed using Disk 1 only (I didn't download anything else), which has the core system components. I then wanted to boot X, which required me downloading the X and KDE software. In fact, I went ahead and copied a whole mirror site and will continue to rsync the site against my local copy, using the updated local mirror as a upgrade repository.

I had issues getting my mouse recognized. I've a Logitech MX1000 wireless mouse, which is connected to a KVM. Slamd64 detects it as a PS/2 mouse. Slamd64 has PS/2 mice blacklisted, so I had to unblock the psmouse module from /etc/modules.d/blacklist (by uncommenting the module entry). Then I loaded the module and rebooted. The reboot detected the mouse. It took me a while to find this tidbit of info (although, it was recorded on the Slamd64 forums). I'll be adding this to my local knowledgbase (in fact, I need to add a whole Slamd64 category first).

I've also installed phpsysinfo on this machine, so I can see the hardware and how it is detected by this tool. From what I've seen so far, the second CPU core takes the brunt of the load, with the first CPU core assisting when the second is maxed out...I don't know if this is normal or a software issue (maybe phpsysinfo needs to be optimized for dual core usage?), but I only tested this by refreshing the phpsysinfo browser session (it appears to put a quick load on the system...dunno if that's normal or not).

Anyways, if things go well with this distro, I'll be using this machine as my main Linux machine, eventually.