dexter11

What are the backport repositories used for?

If a newer version comes out after the distro has been released then the newer package goes there. If you wanna use the latest from everything and don't mind risking a bit then you can do so.

The new fglrx driver can be downloaded. From reading the posts here and there it looks like a must have for AMD\ATI users.

Among the new features are:

* X.Org 7.3 support

* X.Org server 1.4 support

* AIGLX support

You can already read an article about it on phoronix.com.

source: hup.hu

Hi folks, last night I found a repository from smart urpmi called mud-free_release. What is this?

To setup which kernel to load automatically in the boot manager (GRUB by default) launch the Mandriva Control Center (goes by the name "Configure your computer" in the menu) and on the Boot tab choose the the monitor with a wrench icon. It says something like "Setting up system boot". Sorry but I don't use English here you have to find that by yourself. When that starts you should see a window where you can choose which boot manager to choose and the time delay before the automatic boot starts etc. By default GRUB is chosen. You don't have to change here anything click on Next. Here you can change which kernel to load when you change "linux" in GRUB. So choose it and click modify.

To make things clearer the option "linux" always points or at least should point to your latest kernel. So when you upgrade your kernel next time choosing linux will automatically load that.

Well then here's an experience report. I tried with the upgrade first. It asked 3 or 4 questions and then upgraded about 1300 packages without any error message. Granted it took a lot of time but I didn't care. Easiest Mandriva upgrade ever I thought. I rebooted with great expectations that's when it all went wrong. CapsLock and ScrollLock starts to blink and the system froze. Great :(

Then I downloaded the Free CD version made a clean install without any problem and the system works as it should and even more responsive than before. So I picked the "very problematic installation" and the "system is good".

A minor annoyance with GRUB. When I press F1 only an empty window comes up. I only get the help text if I press F1 again. If I press F2 it just freezes.

So far everything else works.

This is the first stable release of Compiz Fusion, the result of more than six months of work and polish. This stable release is based on Compiz Fusion 0.5.2, released on the 13th of August. This release is meant to be used with compiz 0.6.2.

Compiz Fusion is the result of a merge between the Compiz community plugin set "Compiz Extras" and the parts of the Beryl project that are independent of the window manager core. The two communities have re-united to create a user experience for Linux that rivals anything available on other platforms.

Read more...

Haven't they made a 64-bit recently?

You have 3 torrent clients in your repos, ktorrent, Bit-Torrent and Azereus.

And rtorrent, bitstormlite, ctorrent, deluge, gnome-btdownload, drakbt, transmission and probably there are others. There's a plenty to choose from.

There is no 64 bit Flash. You have to use the 32 bit version.

You need to recompile the nvidia kernel module note the whole kernel. And you have to do it every time you upgrade\update the kernel. To do that automatically there's a package called dkms-nvidia. For recompiling this module you also need the kernel-source-devel package or the whole kernel-source matching to your kernel.

This is the first update to GNOME 2.20.0. The update fixes all known and

unknown crashers, even for those modules which haven't released a new

version (AKA gnome-terminal).

The next development release contains all crashers ported from 2.20. The

release team wants your tarballs on November 10 23:59 UTC, although you

could release your tarball earlier as well.

The next stable release will be 2.20.2. The tarballs for that release

need to be delivered to our lovely window before November 26 23:59 UTC.

Read more...

Firefox 2.0.0.8 is released.

The following security issues were fixed.

Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Support:

Firefox 2.0.0.8 is compatible with Mac OS X 10.5, although there are some known issues affecting some media plugins.

Official releases for Georgian (ka) and Romanian (ro) are now available. Beta release for Kurdish (ku) is also available for testing.

The KDE Community is happy to release the third Beta for KDE 4.0. This Beta is aimed at further polishing of the KDE codebase and also marks the freeze of the KDE Development Platform. We are joined in this release by the KOffice project which releases its 4th alpha release, bringing many improvements in OpenDocument support, a KChart Flake shape and much more to those willing to test.

Read more...

Maybe he left the sinking ship? Linspire6 seems to be a dead horse, according to some reviews.

You never know. IIRC wobo wrote in the mandriva forum that Xandros (his new employer) sales are rising after the Microsoft deal. Not on the desktop but in the enterprise sector.

Thanks for the wallpaper Arctic.

Kervin Carmony, CEO for Linspire resigned due to Linspires recent move regarding Microsoft.

Anyway he seems like a controversial man with great potential.

Am I? If the DVD/CD's are Free, they do not include the Nvidia/ATI drivers, for example. So what happens? And if I install from the network, will everything be upgraded, or will it be identical to the DVD upgrade?

What I was trying to say is that the CDs or DVD contains the same rpm packages like the ftp mirrors. There are only less packages on the CDs\DVD of course. The package manager doesn't really care about where the packages are coming from it installs them just the same. It's generally the same process.

Those packages which are not on the CDs or DVD obviously won't get upgraded. But you can upgrade them later if you like by adding the non-free or the plf repos and using "urpmi --auto-select" again.

Thank you. You were great help.

If anyone's interested you can find the modified kmenu buttons in the attachement for all available resolutions. To use it you first of all have to get rid of the text "Menu". To achieve this you have to add

ShowText=false

into your kickerrc under the [KMenu] section.

Now you have to copy the image as mdv_kmenu.png to /var/lib/mandriva/kde-profiles/free/share/icons/crystalsvg/32x32/apps. If you want to keep the old file then rename it first then copy the new one. Note that this path can change according to your arch, release and kicker size. The path I wrote is correct if you are using the 32bit edition of Free release and the kicker is using the 32 pixel size button (which is the default). Now you have to restart kicker so the changes take effect. Either logout and login or there's a command you have to issue using konsole:

dcop kicker kicker restart

By using this command net_applet and mdkapplet disappeared from my kicker but they were there again after restarting.

The buttons: mdv_kmenubuttons.tar.bz2.txt

remove the txt extension from the file name. It's there because the board won't let me upload it otherwise.

I like the new menu button I just want to make it smaller. Basically I need to crop out a piece of it. The problem is that the GIMP crop tool keeps what I selected with it and throws away the rest instead of throwing away what I selected and keeping the rest.

You can see the original button (the bigger of course) and what I'd like to achieve in the attachments. To workaround the problem with the crop tool I just made a new image and copied over the parts I need. Now it's almost what I wanted but this new image has white corners I don't want. How can I make an image without the white corners? Because I have 4 more resolutions to crop.

The original:

The new one:

OK, I downloaded the One CD and the Free CD's, and after backing up my home directory I'm ready to rock n' roll. Now, has anyone actually try to upgrade from 2007.1 to 2008.0 via the network (using the boot image) and/or the CD's? Which is better in your opinion?

It's generally the same thing. You are upgrading using the same packages. The only difference is where are those packages stored. So the answer is if you have unreliable network connection use the CDs or the DVD.

I upgraded from several Mandrake releases starting with Mandrake 9.something IIRC until Mandriva 2006 and it worked. But when I upgraded from 2007.1 to 2008 though the upgrade process itself looked to work flawlessly when I rebooted the system was broke so I did a clean install.

First of all I didn't read it thoroughly but 2007 is superb 2007.1 stinker? 2007.1 is nothing but an updated 2007. I personally found it more stable than 2007. And reading the topics here and the club forum I can see I wasn't the only one.

Now let's see the final conclusions.

Here's exactly what I'd like to see in 2008.1:

 

* Better release testing. In every Mandriva review I've written over the past year or two, I list "better release testing" as the top issue that needs to be addressed. In this case, the stupid bugs that should have been found and corrected are the French switchover in the post-install configuration utility, ACPI problems for upgraders, and the tendency of Beagle to usurp system resources without warning (or any way to reasonably disable it in GNOME). This is only what I found after a few days of testing on two machines. What would I have found if I'd had more hardware and time to test with? The same things that the release engineers should have found and fixed during beta testing -- that's what.

Strange the 2008 release wasn't so widely tested IMHO as the previous ones due to the lack of live CDs through out the testing phase. The first live CD was made from RC2.

* Premium download options for subscribers and paying customers. Whether you buy a single copy or pay for a year's subscription, you should be entitled to fast ISO downloads. openSUSE and Ubuntu are free of charge, and they offer insanely fast download links. Why can't Mandriva, with people paying money for PowerPack edition, offer the same?

It was discussed a million times before. While it's true Mandriva still hasn't got a billionaire behind its back.

* Mirrors that work. Mandriva's package repository mirrors get overloaded, are improperly seeded, or are out of sync after every new release. Mandriva doesn't provide its own package repositories -- you have to rely on other servers around the world to get the software you paid for. I don't know if Mandriva pays for these mirrors or not; if so, then it needs to find other, more reliable service providers. If Mandriva is not paying for these mirrors, then what on earth is it doing with subscription and sales income? What are Mandriva's customers paying for, if not reliable package mirrors? Granted, this is not as bad as it was with 2007.1, but it's still not as good as it should be. Again I'll point to the general reliability of openSUSE's repository mirrors. PowerPack users deserve dedicated, fast, up-to-date, flawless package repositories. Leave the crappy third-party mirrors for the Free edition users.

See the previous point because this is the same.

* Handheld device support. I can't connect my (modern, USB-equipped) PocketPC or Palm handheld devices to Mandriva. It's not a big problem for me because I use my Palm Z22 for task tracking and appointments, and my workstation for email and contacts. I should be able to synchronize the two devices without any trouble, though. I'd like to see a standard, operational program for this task -- not a handful of potentially available applications that either don't work or work unpredictably.

Guess that means his Palm was working flawlessly under a different distro. But I guess that different distro has some gadget which doesn't work there but works with Mandriva. That's usually the way it is.

* Forget about the fancy special effects. XGL, AIGLX, Compiz Fusion, and Metisse are a total waste of time for developers and users alike. These technologies are not -- and may never be -- stable enough to rely on for everyday desktop computing, and serve no useful purpose. They ruin functionality with 3D games and screen savers, cause crashes and performance issues, require video drivers that may not work correctly, and in general do not make anyone's life easier. Get rid of them until they're proven to be as reliable as Kwin and Metacity and other standard parts of the graphical environment.

Wonderful idea :-( This is the fastest way to say goodbye about half of the fan base.

And LinDVD IS important because it's one (out of two) of the legal way to play DVDs out-of the-box.

The KDE community today released KDE 3.5.8. While the developers' main focus lies on finishing KDE 4.0, the stable 3.5 series remains the desktop of choice for the time being. It is proven, stable and well supported. The 3.5.8 release with its literally hundreds of bugfixes has again improved the users' experience. The 3.5.8 info page lists how to get the sources and distribution packages.

For a detailed list of improvements since the KDE 3.5.7 release on the 22nd May 2007, please refer to the KDE 3.5.8 Changelog.

source: dot.kde.org

Actually Microsoft did opensource some things before without these licenses though nothing really important.

The GNOME version of Mandriva Linux 2008 One has been released and is now available via BitTorrent or from the mirror sites. Featuring all the same great new features as the other editions of Mandriva Linux 2008, with a fully up-to-date GNOME 2.20 desktop. Hope this makes all our GNOME-using members happy!

source: Mandrivaclub

You don't have a section called [KMenu] yet so you have to add it.

Looks like I'm in that group too because your solution didn't work here either. This is on Mandriva 2008 Free. Since the word menu is written in Hungarian (Menü) on my button so I think the text is not part of the picture.

edit:

I found it. You have to add

ShowText=false

to your kickerrc file under the [KMenu] section and text won't be there. The bad news is that the button remains the same size. So if you want the nice round button but only with the star in it you have to edit the icon. The question is which icon cause I can't find it. More precisely I found it under /var/lib but I can't find the original one.