Ok, so I installed (after downloading with bittorrent, without a gui on my P200 server -- no need to say I didn't want to use mozilla on this thing) Mandrake 9.2 download edition.

Install went smooth (except for the network printer, forgot the correct port address, have to check in my 9.1 install), took me about 1 hour in total (individual package selection).
Overall things looked ok, not very different from 9.1 that I could tell.

As usual, with my usb mouse (logitech mx700) after selecting the mouse as a wheelmouse things just flashed a bit and I got to the next part; later in the summary I went into the mouse config, and then got the image where you get to test the mouse (wheel scrolling, buttons). Seems it just flashed over this (as with 9.1) -- something to improve...

I had installed the standard kernel and the one '*4up*' that is for machines with more than 1GB; I have 1GB but the standard 9.1 only uses 890MB, so I figured I need that other one.

Reboot.
Lilo selection: 4up-kernel.
Then it stopped booting at:
Finding module dependencies
And then it said:
unable to load module pwc
(this is for my philips webcam). Darn!
And the machine didn't do anything anymore.
(but no blinking keyboard lights though,.. not a kernel panic, it just stood there)
So I reset the hard way, booted into the standard kernel.

Same thing, except that it didn't mention the pcw driver.
I really waited longer, couple of minutes, no go.
Then I reset, took out the webcam usb cable, and all was fine, it booted.
Shutdown, booted into the 4up kernel, all still fine.
And into 9.2 download edition. Darn, I will have to change that background image. Or modify it into 9.2 Standard Clubmember edition ...

Anyway, I linked the right dirs and program names to the appropriate ones on my 9.1 install ( root partition is mounted as /alt ) and launched opera.
No hassle, all fine.
Same for evolution.

So it seems that 9.2 is an improved 9.1 with updated packages. IMHO, just what the doctor ordered. Now if I can only fix my webcam problems, then .....

More later!

I've had 9.2 running since Sunday, and overall I'd give it the thumbs up. Two things which annoy me are that DVD playback is jurky and it takes about 20 seconds for Konqueror to open my /mnt directory. I'll have to find time to tinker with it. Otherwsie much better than 9.1 thanks Mandrake.

9.2 up and running for 3 days on my laptop. Big improvements in ACPI support (2.4.22 kernel ?). Bumpy install and some mess in the KDE menus. 270 Mb of updates already.

Apart from that, nothing really astonishing. Looks like a well polished 9.1.

You got 9.2 up and running on your laptop? With ACPI and everything? Lucky! My boss' toshiba Satellite loathe Mandrake 9.2. As soon as I turn acpi on (to enable sound, acpi must be turned on), it hangs at boot up. I am waiting to get the 270 mb download from my friend before I retry installing it again.

In desktop it's stable as a rock though.

Well, it took me time. I had to recompile the kernel, remove APM, set ACPI for modules (not kernel built in support, modules ! don't ask me why...), remove CPU frequency scaling support, and set local APIC support on uniprocessors to NO. And I set the "load DSDT from initrd" to OFF.

Then, I updated lilo for kernel options "acpi=force" (new 2.4.22 feature) and "noapic", and installed acpi and acpid rpms. Reboot and bingo ! /proc/acpi is fully populated now (although I've no fan and thermal zone support). Anyway, CPU and fan go to sleep gently when on battery only. And when I press the power button, "shutdown -h" is called. KDE battery applet works too (although the alarm is triggered a bit early). Still working on power suspend.

The http://acpi.sourceforge.net site has very good explanations about incomplete/corrupted DSDT problems.

Thanks for the tip Pierre, I'll try it tomorrow. I recompiled my kernel for 9.1 anyway (to remove the keventd 100% cpu usage bug in acpi) so recompiling the kernel in 9.2 is not a hard thing for me to do (with exception of the waiting).

Although it seems that the newer kernel (2.4.22-18mdk) added a few features (or fix them), so I may upgrade to a newer kernel once I receive them. Ah.. the joy of mandrake linux "beta testing" again (and me without good broadband )

I must be sleeping a bit, I just wrongfully urpmi'd the kernel sources for the 2.2.20 kernel,... now getting the right ones, after adding also 'main' (which I forgot before, hence kernel-source lacking from the list and me getting the wrong sources..) to my urpmi sources.

So that was a little setback on trying to get 3d accelleration. Also got the nvidia drivers of course, 4496. ( 7MB )

Anyway, so far so good, except that webcam thing; doing too many other things so don't want to fix that now.

I set up the dvd for playback with
urpmi --noclean libdvdcss2

and xine and mplayer (started with command: gmplayer ) both can play my dvd's. Sweet.

mtweidmann, dvd playback jerky???
Do you have a mobo with unsupported chipset? Is your dma good (hdparm /dev/hda (-b-c-d) )?
Works like a charm here...

Sound is also fine, got a 4 channel surround system here, playing with the volumes in kmix did the trick; no problem with surround from the dvd (matrix), so all is well.

On with the rest, need to get the laserprinter sorted, and the scanner (and webcam too)..

I may just want this too much,.... the kernel sources I got were from 2.4.21-13 from a mirror that wasn't updated..... or just plain wrong.

Anyway, I'm now getting the right ones from an ftp site (handpicking to get 2.4.22-10mdk sources)...

another 40MB, and the wait for the download to finish. It's not too bad at 30kB/s, but then, if you're waiting for it... :(

Ah well..

Got the right sources, 3-d accelleration is ok.

Found out that all systems that need the webcam module pwc will have problems, see here:

]http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.mandr...vel/63085



I will try tomorrow, it's past bedtime!!

If this works, I'll happily go over to mdk9.2 (ah, have to get the printer and scanner configged, but it should not be a problem)...