Against my better judgement, I tried to install Gobuntu off a daily build CD because I wanted to get a look at it, and to see if I would have any hardware issues with it.
Unfortunately, as I should have known, there were some inconsistencies in the ISO (or perhaps a bad CD, or an incomplete download, who knows) that left me with a half-installed system. I RSOD’d three or four times during the installation process, and finally just hard rebooted with a “I’ll take it like it is, thanks” attitude.
Then, remembering how I circumvented a kernel crc issue with the Arch installation CD, I put that in, and gave it my half-installed root partition as a boot parameter.
And lo and behold, it worked great. Arch did it’s standard hardware detection, loaded all its modules, then passed control to the incomplete Gobuntu installation. It was exceedingly cool.
Aptitude was working, but I had to manually install nano off the Gobuntu CD (sorry, but you’ll never convince me to use vi), and then I could edit my sources.list. I updated to the repositories here in Japan, installed a kernel and grub over my network connection, and rebooted into a patched-up Gobuntu system with root account access.
Which kind of worked, but I was getting strange error messages and things didn’t seem to altogether function. I have a feeling I didn’t install enough, or there were broken pieces here or there. I tried to fix it again with the Gobuntu installation CD, using the rescue option, but it didn’t fly.
All in all it wasn’t a complete success, although Arch did hold up its end of the bargain.
The lesson here is that the Arch installation CD, aside from the wonderful benefit of installing Arch for you, has the added bonus of working as a rescue CD if your system won’t boot. I’m sure there are other distros that can do the same, but it’s another reason Arch is a keeper for me.
Motho ke motho ka botho 