Re: Three questions

["SN_Diamond" <Norman.Diamond@example.com>]

Jim Breen wrote:

> (a) I have decided to bite the bullet and get a new notebook here. I've
> been checking out the ones at Akihabara, and Laox's place that
> specializes in stuff for foreigners has "Western" Toshibas, etc. at
> bearable prices, albeit higher that I'd pay in Australia for the same
> gear.

No kidding.  You really need to go to places that don't specialize in stuff
for foreigners.  More on this in a moment.  Meanwhile, begin your search
on-line at http://kakaku.com

By the way, someone else suggested Sofmap for used stuff.  I disagree.
Often you can find better prices for better new stuff on kakaku.com than you
can find for used stuff at Sofmap or even at cheaper dealers of used stuff.

>    I really want a non-Japanese keyboard.

(1)  But do you really want to pay a price 40,000 yen higher and get a less
powerful or less convenient machine?  Shop around and you'll suddenly find
it not too hard to adjust to a Japanese layout.

(2)  You'll really regret saying that, if you end up with a German or French
or even English keyboard layout, so you get to pay 40,000 yen extra and get
a less powerful or less convenient machine and have to learn yet another
keyboard layout.  (Yes English is different from both US and Japanese, and
if I recall correctly Australian is the same as US.  In fact the genuine IME
included in W2000 US and W2000 Japanese can't deal correctly with English
and German and French keyboard layouts, let alone of course the "global" IME
downloadable for other infamous non-X non-11 windows systems.)

(3)  As someone else suggested, if you really need a US layout, attach an
external keyboard.  I guess I can send you my external US keyboard and PS/2
adapter, bought new and hardly ever used, for 4,000 yen, if you don't find
them cheaper at T-Zone.  That is the only component that I would recommend
paying T-Zone's price for, if you really need it.

> (b) Q: If I get a system with a 10Gb HDD, what is a good partitioning
> strategy? I want to have a usable Windows (probably 98) partition, and I
> expect I'd need to give it about 2G. What would be appropriate for the
> rest? If it's a 128Mb system, what is the optimal swap size?

In my experience you must put a /boot partition within the first 8GB of the
drive, whether or not the BIOS can handle more than 8GB.  Modern Linux
drivers can handle larger disks (even sometimes when the BIOS can't, I
think) but that's only after the kernel gets loaded.  LILO still has to load
the kernel first.  The LILO configuration file can have an entry for LBA32
but in my experience it still failed when the kernel was located past the
8GB mark.

At present on one 12GB drive I have:
2GB FAT32 C drive (I wanted it to be smaller but...)
9.5GB extended partition containing:
3GB FAT32 D logical drive for Windows 2000
16MB Linux logical drive for /boot
1GB Linux swap logical drive
5GB Linux logical drive for / (I wanted it to be larger but...)

> Q: where is a good place to obtain the CDs of RH6.2 (non-J) around
> here?

In my experience, 7.0 J is no worse than 6.2 non-J.  They both make it easy
to install partially working systems and really painful to tweak into better
working systems.

Yours sincerely,
Norman Diamond