use Blitzmax on an old PC with arch linux
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| I installed Arch Linux to use with blitzmax and I found it is light on RAM usage and CPU power. Im using a 128MB RAM 600mhz PC with an 82810 intel graphics card Here is a small guide to get started, the official arch linux site has more detailed guides but this guide is a good overall checklist of things to do: burn arch linux to CD, you have a choice between core and FTP iso versions I used core, FTP installs from internet. I tried to do a FTP install but it didnt work. then when you reboot you are faced with a black screen and an input prompt. type in 'root' to become the root user First thing to do is get online. You have to use a text editor called nano to edit a file called /etc/rc.conf so type in: nano /etc/rc.conf If you are using an ethnernet cable connected to a cable-modem you change the network part of the file to look like this: eth0="dhcp" INTERFACES=(eth0) ROUTES=(!gateway) press CTRL O to save and CTRL X to exit then type in dhcpcd eth0 to get online, if you are succesful you go on to the next step otherwise:http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Configuring_network now you need to make sure Bash is the latest version you can type pacman -Syu to update all system libraries at once or pacman -S bash to get the latest bash then you need to install some things to get a windows like environment pacman -S Xorg pacman -S xf86-input-mouse pacman -S xf86-input-keyboard pacman -S xorg-driver-evdev pacman -S hal pacman -S dbus pacman -S xfce4 edit the /etc/rc.conf file again and put the words dbus and hal into the DAEMON section inside the brackets a daemon is merely a background process reboot the PC to get hal and dbus working there are a lot of video card drivers with names like xf86-video-intel I used xf86-video-intel-legacy because its the best fit for my 82810 graphics card so I typed in: pacman -S xf86-video-intel-legacy you can search for your best driver here: http://aur.archlinux.org/ now type in Xorg -configure and it will automatically write out a xorg.conf file to tell the system which drivers to use reboot the computer and type startxfce4 to get into the windows like environment |
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| What packages did you need to get Blitzmax working? |
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| Ok, you can disregard my question Jeremy since I finally installed Arch. First, I'd like to note that Arch won't install to older i386/i486 architecture, so the title of this topic is somewhat misleading. It does state this on the FAQ but since these terms are a bit ambiguous I thought I could probably get it working on my old amd 1.1ghz. Wrong! Second, I tried Frugalware as an easy alternative. A word of advice, don't try this distro as it wouldn't even work on my intel dual-core cpu. It did look sort of promising though, so maybe later when they've fixed the bugs in their installer. Ok, so I followed this and the Arch guides (of which there are many) and had a few differences which I'll note down. When you boot the cd, choose the first option, it says it's a 'live cd' but I don't think that's quite right. When you get to 'select source' use the ftp/http option (with ethernet) so that when you reboot you don't have to update a whole load of packages. If you've got a Linux and swap partition already you can skip to the 'set filesystem mountpoints' option in the partition step. Once I selected packages, installed them and rebooted and entered 'root' I didn't need to edit /etc/rc.conf to get online with ethernet but this may be due to my ISP. Next I updated the database with 'pacman -Syu' and installed nearly the same stuff. pacman -S xorg pacman -S xf86-input-mouse xf86-input-keyboard pacman -S xf86-video-intel pacman -S hal dbus pacman -S xfce4 After editing rc.conf as above and rebooting I spent a while trying to get 'xorg -configure' to spit out a file before I gave up and typed 'startxfce4' which worked quite happily. Then I copied /root/xorg.conf.new over to /etc/X11/xorg.conf just to be on the safe side. Finally, to BlitzMax. There is only one package you may need to install and if you installed the optional 'base-devel' group then you'll already have it. Anyway, to install this package type. pacman -S gcc The other packages BlitzMax needs are part of xorg and are required by the system so you can forget about them. They are: libx11 mesa libxft libxpm. And the dependencies below. gcc + mpfr + cloog-ppl + ppl |
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