After the basic installation of MuLinux earlier this week, I have been looking around and expanding the system during the last days.
The whole thing is mature and really well though out, with lots of user-friendly scripts and help files.
The core of the system is the setup script. This script is used to create configurations, and to configure modules. In the configuration is specified which modules are loaded and with what parameters. It is loaded during boot, so that all modules are loaded correctly.
To save a configuration as default simply type setup -s. To load a configured module MOD use setup -r MOD and to force reconfiguration use setup -f MOD. Setup also can be used without parameters, to start the setup menu. This menu shows all available add-ons and modules and lets you configure them from one screen. Besides setup, there are a lot more scripts. Even well known UNIX command like grep are implemented as a script. I was really impressed!
After looking around and playing with all options, I decided that it was time to expand the possibilities of my system. So it took the WKS (workstation), SRV (server) and X11 (X window system) add-on floppies and installed them from the setup menu.
The WKS add-on gave me applications like mutt, ssh, pgp, tyhe SRV add-on gave me samba, smail, web-based system administration and PCMCIA support. X11 has the x-windows system with VGA-16, fvwm95, Afterstep and wm2.
At this moment I had an incredible amount of features, using only 4 diskettes. I played around a little bit again, and started configuring xf86 to have a graphical interface.
Usually this is the most difficult part to configure, since you need to know a lot of parameters from your system (OK, not in the modern Linux systems), but MuLinux was perfectly able to configure X using its probe feature. After 5 minutes I had a screen like this:
Not bad, isn’t is? For next week, I’m planning to get Internet connection. First I want to put the PCMCIA modem from my Toshiba into the MuLinux machine (which is by then an IPC Porta-PC P5E-486/DSTN) and get it connected to Internet. Furthermore I want to try to connect it to another computer using a LapLink cable. And maybe, I’ll download some more add-ons (GCC TCL TEX PERL EMU JVM NS1 NS2).
I haven’t finished playing yet!
