Hello,

Yesterday I burned and freshly installed SL 5.0 on my primarily
desktop oriented system, though I used it for ssh, ftp and http server
too. Here are some questions and remarks about the install process.

My system consist of: Asus P5B-Deluxe MB (with that hated JMicron
Controller), 512 MB RAM 800MHz, Intel Core2 Duo E6300 1.8GHz, 1 WD
320GB SATA HDD (+1WD 250GB from time to time for backups and storage),
nvidia 7300 GT video board.

I was affraid that the installer will not recognize my SATA HDD
(happened with all the distro except the latest Ubuntu) so I booted
the install DVD with "linux all-generic-ide"  parameter, soon to
realize that the installer was awfully slow, and I had to gave up
after waiting more than 15 minute after I pressed OK on selecting the
keyboard. I tried running without all-generic-ide parameter and it
booted flawlessly, my HDD was seen and installed on, with normal
speed. This was nice.

Regarding the installer, I saw some mentions of RHEL Beta. SL is
compiled using the RHEL final release sources, right? That mentions of
Beta was left accidentally from previous builds?

I have an Attansic L1 ethernet board, for which I need special
drivers. Using my MB CD I compiled and installed the drivers. Now, my
mistake was that I don't look previously to see if my new installed
system was able to detect my ethernet. I just saw that pings doesn't
worked and firefox wasn't displaying any pages so I get the drivers
and compiled them. After inserting the modules and configuring the
network using the applet from Administration, I had no problem with my
Internet connection.

For repositories, I've added freshrpm for ktorrent and vlc. Is
freshrpm a good thing for SL or not? I've chosen the repos for
RHEL5.0. Can I used it for updates too?

I let the computer run overnight for some downloading. In the morning,
I saw that my Internet connection was down. My eth0 was inactive and
when trying to activate it using the same panel under Administration
menu, give an error, being unable to detect my IP. Pinging my router
doesn't do any good. Now, since I don't have direct physic access to
my router all the time, it is possible that it was poweroff during the
night or some ISP problems happend in the mean time. I will check it,
though my first thought was that my ethernet driver failed somehow,
which seems stranger and less probable than my router powered off or
ISP problems. How can I identify the source of the problem, without
having direct access to the router?

Thank you and I apologize I my text is too long, but I wanted to give
you as much details as possible.

Claudiu Tanaselia,
PhD student and Assistent Researcher,
Institute for Analytical Instrumentation, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

P.S. One of the pictures from the Anaconda installer slideshow
featured a man in the shadow, on a circular background. That man look
very much like Arthur.C. Clarke, can someone confirm this? Just
curious :)