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Alright, so things don’t always go the way you planned them. But, everything’s looking better and better.
It turns out that the USB functionality I was noticing with my USB mouse under Kernel 2.4 was an illusion. There must be some core mouse compatibility built into Linux that functions outside of the actual USB Bus Controller system. In fact, I think I remember that from when I was compiling kernels. I wasn’t even seeing my controllers in the /proc/bus/usb directory under 2.4.
The Kernel 2.6 upgrade went smoothly, as I did not choose to build my own. Pat’s (the guy behind Slackware) build of the new kernel worked absolutely wonderfully, especially given that I had already fixed the module-loading snafu before upgrading. I set up LILO to retain the Kernel 2.4 booting options if I ever want them, but I doubt I ever will.
ALSA (the new Linux sound driver system) has been installed for 2.6 compatibility, and I’m anticipating upgrading to the 2.6 wireless drivers so I can actually try out my USB wireless NIC, which never worked on the old build (I don’t think I knew to install the drivers package at that point). I might bring up the GCC compiler to 2.6 status, but I’m nervous about this. I haven’t even installed the 2.6 headers, because I’m nervous about compiling anything under 2.6. This reluctance shouldn’t be a problem. And, the GCC for 2.4 should work for most things anyway. This is just a problem inherent to using a non-standard kernel in a distribution.
The machine is running great, and I’m especially pleased that I can get an SVGA console (which was impossible for some reason on my own kernels (dang you Pat and your mad skills!).
I think I’ll fix the blackbox bug and maybe get wireless working tonight. I’m back at work now (hence the long blog), so it’ll have to wait a little while. It’ll be nice when I have a (graphical) web browser.