ianw1974

I've used HP 4 printers without any problems (albeit a 4000), but they're the same technology and the driver is pretty much the same whether a HP 4, 4+, and so on. Have you got cups installed? Where is the printer connected? In my situation, I was printing across a Windows share. Also, check your BIOS and make sure that Plug and Play isn't set to "OS" as this can cause problems with Linux detecting such things, especially printers. You shouldn't need to use anything from HP's website, the drivers are all within cups.

I remember thinking I wanted to try it out ages ago, and I bought a magazine which had the first CD with Mandrake 8 (I think), on the front. Or was it 7? Anyway, I installed, and it went on a breeze with no problems. I did want to put it on an older machine I had, but I couldn't boot from CD as the BIOS didn't allow me, and I couldn't figure out how to get it to boot from floppy and install. Nonetheless, I still went with it on my newer machine, and had a dual boot back then (not sure which version of Windows - prob 95). And it worked. I only looked at it briefly then, but probably should have taken more time to work with it. Now I have, and I love it. I've not tried any other distros, but then not had a need to because I like Mandrake/Mandriva. If I did try another distro, I would always be comparing it against Mandrake/Mandriva, because this is the first version I've used the most, and there is every chance that I might not like another distro "because it doesn't do what Mandrake/Mandriva does", or "it's not the same as Mandrake/Mandriva". I know that's not the best way to think, each version probably has it's good and bad points, like any software (blue screen's of death - hmmm which OS :P ), and every distro should be given a fair chance at least. It's always down to personal preference.

At the end of the day, there probably isn't a lot we can do. It's most likely that every system we buy will have Windows with it, regardless of whether we want it or not. Obviously, if we don't want, then we can inform them before purchasing, or return it afterwards provided they don't make it difficult, thinking we won't bother to push it, and just sit quietly in the corner and keep it. Then again, things could change in the future, and we may see people giving us the alternative of purchasing the hardware with an OS of our choice. That would be the best method, and as it seems, it's slowly starting to take place!

Netgear do a DG834 with four port ethernet and wireless. It has Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) too, as part of it's firewall, so is quite good, and relatively cheap also. It's actually an ADSL router as well as this, hence the firewall, but works a treat. Just need to configure IP addresses for the network cards to get access to the network and/or internet (will do DHCP too). I use Netgear without any probs, I just don't have the wireless part as I bought the router before it was available. But then there are others out there too, so it's personal preference. I like Netgear though lol.

I used to have problems with it loading, since my processor didn't support it. In a nutshell, it allows the speed to be altered based on running from battery or mains, plus some other stuff too. If you're not worried about this, cpqfreq can be disabled in Services, just by removing the check mark against it so that it doesn't start "On Boot".

You most likely need to download and install the NVidia drivers to get the graphics to work. You can boot "failsafe" from the menu to get to a CLI, and then install the drivers following the install instructions for them.

Sometimes an option called "Plug and Play OS" in the BIOS can cause problems with hardware. What is this set to at the moment? If it's set to OS, change this so that it's not controlled by the OS. See if that makes a difference. How old is the BIOS? Maybe update if you can.....

OK, I've given it a go, and everything seems to be OK so far!

Found I can't do that either. As soon as I create the partition /home before / it wants to rename them all. Basically what happens is: /home = hda5 / = hda6 swap = hda7 Since hda6 used to be hda5, I'll have problems booting the system, won't I?

Cool, thanks for that, I'll give that a go. I wasn't sure if I created a partition before it, that it would try to become hda5 and cause me further probs. In answer to your question about the 4GB, I previously decreased by 2GB, and then 2GB the other day, which was why I forgot to mention this! So the space is OK. If I create the Home partition, migrate everything across, and edit fstab before rebooting, will that save me having to use the rescue feature?

I just thought I would try this. I booted from the MDK 10.1 OE CD, and when I come to resize, the option is there, obviously since the partition is not mounted. However, I click the resize button, and it then says: I'm obviously thinking, this isn't a good idea, since this is where my whole OS is installed. I've read somewhere about XFS that there is a util to grow the partition, but you can only grow it to space after the partition, and not before. Perhaps this is why the resize option from the MDK CD says it will lose all the data. Is there any other ideas? I don't really want to have to reinstall since it'll take me six hours to get me back to where I am now! (updates from web, etc, etc).

You'll prob find that none of the distros support soft modems! It's not unique to Mandrake.

I've had a look into it, and apparently since it's XFS I can't use the parted util, since it doesn't support XFS. I'll have a go at the partitioning shortly. Just gotta backup the data on / and then resize and hopefully I won't lose it and have to reinstall!!!

Check linmodems.org and see if it's supported, however, I don't think "soft" modems are.

Sounds like the remarking of search linksys (so that only DNS entries exist) did the trick, as he's downloaded without any probs now! However, I might be speaking too soon, so shall wait for his response when he re-enables :P

Summary is that I want to resize my Linux partition. The way my system was configured: (hda1) Windows: 13GB (hda5) /: 6.4GB (hda6) Swap: 512MB (this is left to right in the diskdrake utility) Since I found a problem accessing MP3's, large video files, I decided to move the data across to Linux and resize the Windows partition making it smaller. Effectively, I'm going to use Linux a lot more now, and get to a point of dropping Windows almost altogether. I resized my Windows partition, and now the diskdrake looks as follows: (hda1) Windows: 9GB Spare: 2GB (hda5) /: 6.4GB (hda6) Swap:512MB What I want to do, is allocate the spare 2GB and add it to /. I can't do this whilst the system is booted, since the partition is mounted. I can't really use any Windows based resizing utils, since they see my XFS partitions as EXT2, and I know it's likely to get trashed if I use these. What's my best way forward?

I'll give that a go. I've subsequently found, that it was my NTFS partition. I have moved everything off to my Linux partition, and it works a treat now! Had to use another computer as a dumping ground though, as when trying to copy through konqueror, it would stall. So I guess it was a partition issue. The settings were detected for NTFS when I installed MDK, so unsure as to why it's a problem with largish files. I have now resized the NTFS to about 9GB now, and the remaining 11GB on my laptop is dedicated to MDK 10.1. Although it will be shortly, I have another post to add now to find out how I can allocate the extra space to one of my existing partitions! :P

I noticed you've got "search linksys" in your resolv.conf. All I have are the nameservers. You could try removing this line if it's not already been removed by the steps completed above?!? Just place a # in front of it, you can always remove it later if it doesn't work.

Thought I would install XMMS and use this, but when I try to playback an MP3, nothing happens. In fact, XMMS just freezes, and I can't do anything after that with XMMS unless I reboot. I also found that with Amarok, some will play, and some won't play. They freeze Amarok too. I'm not sure why, since they play OK in Windows. The MP3's currently are on my NTFS partition, which I just access the MP3's from in MDK. It's not because of this is it?

Have you tried installing XPDF or KPDF to read it? I think there's a Linux version of Adobe Reader from their website too.

You can always give it a go, report any errors back if it doesn't work.

Glad it's all sorted :D

Type "updatedb" at the prompt, and then "slocate rpmnew". For any rpmnew that you find, you need to replace the corresponding file. For example: /etc/kde/kdm/kdmrc.conf needs to be replaced by kdmrc.conf.rpmnew There will be some others, the slocate will tell you them all, but you need to do the updatedb first, to make sure it knows where they all are. Try rebooting after that, and see how you get on and let us know what occurs next.

I looked into partitioning to see what was better and what wasn't. I can't find the exact article I googled now, but the main idea was that ReiserFS and XFS are faster than ext3. Whether ReiserFS is faster than XFS or vice-versa, I've no idea. I tend to use XFS, as the article I read mentioned that XFS had more features than ReiserFS, albeit that it might be a little slower (although another article I googled said XFS might be faster than Reiser). At the end of the day, most of this is preference, and what you're wanting to achieve from the system. Most of my systems are XFS, apart from one which is Reiser, as I wanted to get a comparison for speed.

Hmmm. What version of Mandrake/Mandriva are you running?