Dyslexic

Yes, you can get rid of the older kernel. That was the kernel from Mdk 10.1 CE.

Do you have libxorg-x11-devel installed? Also, you should be able to install the cooker xcompmgr and transset packages if you have Xorg 2.6.8 installed now, saving you the trouble of compiling.

I compiled xcompmgr 2.0.2 against Mandrake's xorg 2.6.8. You might want to consider installing thac's xorg 2.6.8 packages. xcompmgr and transset are both in Cooker contrib.

Maybe Mandrake should just license the rights to the damn comic book character ;)

Do you have the xorg devel package installed?

1) when you make xconfig you can disable whatever you want. Things like opengl aren't compiled into the kernel. Video drivers are usually loaded as external modules. You can remove any framebuffer devices if that affects whatever you're doing. 2) No, Linux will not run Win32 files natively. As for the driver issue, how are you going to run virtualized executables that access hardware without drivers in the kernel? You've got a paradox there. 4) I think all GUIs use the X11 protocol. Even DirectFB based GUIs. 5) Mounting Fat32 is easy enough. Mandrake can do that automatically. You can use a simple bash script for the symlink. if [test -f .file.txt]; then ln -s... Emulating hardware is very slow, and will not be nearly as fast as translating the API into native calls. If Cedega was too slow for you, hardware emulation and virtualization is the wrong solution. To do what you want to do isn't a question of simply running PE files under Linux. You need to reverse engineer the windows kernel, the driver layer, the messaging system (Windows is a micro/monolithic hybrid if i recall), and the API. The performance penalty for doing this under another kernel will be high. Also, the reason for a 50% performance loss in Cedega is if you have a game that thinks your hardware doesn't support vertex shading. It's a not problem with API translation, it's just a bug in Cedega with that particular game.

I happen to use Linux, but supporting the open source movement is more important to me than supporting the Linux movement. Without the GPL, Linux is just another OS/2 or BeOS. A few years ago I would have been completely baffled to see a Linux forum where people were advocating proprietary software over open source, but I guess it's a sign that open source is succeeding when people can take it for granted. KPDF in KDE 3.4 is a perfect example of where supporting the open source alternative over the proprietary version pays off.

None of my suggestions from the original thread were meant to be taken seriously. In case it wasn't obvious that I was kidding about ConDrakula, I added ConMan and MaC OS 10.3 to list just to safe ;)

"Phantom" suggests something that isn't really there, like vaporware. There's already a distro called Source Mage in which you "cast spells" to install software, so that gets rid of Spellcaster and Wizard Linux. Also, these three names are nerdy and don't have much corporate appeal. Power Linux isn't bad, but it is very generic. I suppose a generic sounding name isn't so bad as long as it's unique.

Mandrake isn't ready for the OEM market yet. For the OEM market, you need a "click and run" type of software installer. The number of people on this forum asking for help installing basic software proves that. If an OEM user wants to install KOffice and does an RPMdrake search, he shouldn't see all the lib, devel and i18n packages listed. He should see one KOffice metapackage, with the correct i18n package installed based on his desktop settings. Lib and devel packages should be tucked away under an "advanced settings" area. You could even have a metapackage for required components, and a bunch of optional packages for addons, but these addons should be indented under the metapackage to make it clear that they are subpackages. As far as I can tell, Linspire is the closest to doing this. The old Ximian Red Carpet installer was getting close to this, too. The yearly release cycle will help with OEM adoption, but Mandrake still hasn't delivered a single product under this cycle. An OEM would be insane to consider Mandrake for bulk distribution before the successful completion of a couple cycles.

I agree with Arctic. Distrowatch isn't a voting system. It simply counts which distros people click on to get more information. Naturally, advanced users don't go to distrowatch to get information. All the current "ranking" means is that newbies are more curious about Ubuntu than anything else right now.

I can see how it might appear that way to new Mandrake users, but Mandrakesoft isn't innocent in this matter. Mandrakesoft was unwise to think that the copyright would not be enforced. Yes, it's a big hassle to rebrand a company and an entire product line. It's a marketing nightmare, too, but Mandrakesoft took a big gamble and lost. It has no one to blame but itself. Changing the name is a good idea from a legal point of view. Names that seem "weird" to anglophones are OK for Linux distributions (Knoppix, Ubuntu). Combined names are also OK (Debian). The important thing is for the distribution to have a unique name, and a culture that can be associated with that name. Debian, Gentoo and Fedora have done this very well. Suse has completely lost its identity to anyone but longtime Suse users. The Novell site is a generic business site full of buzzwords and IT cliches, and doesn't tells you about the Suse community or what makes Suse unique. Mandrake alienated a large part of its community when it shut down Deno's original forum, but retained many of those users thanks to sites like this one, and pclinuxonline.com back when Texstar used to make Mandrake packages. Other distributions are becoming as polished as Mandrake now, so there isn't as much incentive for Mandrake users to stick around while Mandrakesoft experiments with new release cycles, mirror structures, etc. Marketing has never been Mandrake's strong point. I mean, they actually named a distribution "Limited Edition." The first thing people are going ask is "which features are limited?" Can you imagine the ridicule Microsoft would get if it released something called Windows Limited Edition? Mandrake needs to hire a vice-president of marketing who understands Linux, market competition and the Linux community. Product development should be part of his mandate.

Do you have the codec files themselves in /usr/lib/win32, or are they in subdirectories of /usr/lib/win32? Also, a lot of stuff isn't in the essentials package. I can't remember what's missing, but it's better to use the complete package.

Right now, Drupal is my favourite CMS. It's taxonomy system is slick, and development is very open. As a bonus, it's even packaged by Mandrake (in contrib, I think). http://www.drupal.org/

Tex did some great work. I still have his repackaging of KDE 3.1.4 on one of my boxes. The "real" KDE control panel he used to add was the Mission Control panel from Ark Linux. What is Mandrake stripping? I've never noticed anything unfamiliar whenever I've built KDE from source, and my Debian box seems to have more or less the same KDE. The differences are mainly in menus and Gnome/KDE desktop coexistence. Let me know and I'll be sure to include these tools next time I do a KDE build. Last time I checked, KDE's useless WiFi tool was in the KDE control center, and KDE's kernel config was there too, but only supported kernel 2.4. KDE's password and user account thing is still there, but it doesn't let me do anything with groups like Userdrake does. I was pleasantly surprised to see Userdrake in Fedora. It's possible that some of this stuff isn't in the default install, but of course a moderator on mandrakeusers.org would know that better than I ;)

I'd expect to get an error message since bash protects . and ..

I don't get it. I just tried the echo command on my system, and it does exactly what one would think. It returns everything in the current dir that starts with a dot.

Install drakwizard. Between that and the MCC tools installed by default, you should have most of it covered.

The win32codecs in plf are incomplete anyway. I just get the complete package from the mplayer site and extract them to /usr/lib/win32. Simple as that.

How about ConDrakula? Or ConMan? Or if you take "Ma" from Mandrake and "C" from Connectiva, you can have MaC OS 10.3.

No problems here with an LG DVD-R CD-RW and k3b-0.11.20-7mdk.

Believe it or not, open source software is important to a lot of people. The GPL is more than just a license. It's an ideal that guarantees Linux the freedom to grow without being undermined by commercial or other private interests. The GPL requires source code to be made available. Nvidia does not distribute the source code for its drivers, and therefore, its drivers do not meet the requirements of a GPL-licensed distribution. This is why Nvidia drivers cannot be included in contrib. I do use Nvidia products myself, and understand the need to have easy access to drivers. I also agree that the practice of providing Nvidia drivers to club members only is questionable, but Mandrakesoft has bills to pay just like any other company. These drivers belong in plf-non-free. That has nothing to do with Mandrakesoft. PLF just needs a volunteer to maintain Nvidia driver packages.

Where can we get Gnome 2.10 for 2005? ;)

Great work. The only remaining bugs I can see are with the desktop right-click -> Configure Desktop (no big loss there), and with Knode causing an error when Kontact starts. Edit: It turns out that Kontact needs knode-devel. Might want to add a require to the spec file.

Was it a GNU email address? I'd be surprised if MS ripped off GNU when there are BSD licensed implementations available. Also, MS did license Unix from SCO, so it has distribution rights to SysV implementations, too. Not that I expect BSD and SysV implementations of cp to differ.