Mitchell

Hi Adam, still not sure what was wrong, but fixed itself with the latest backport to compiz-fusion. I've been finding Kaffeine isn't as stable or seemingly reliable as mplayer though, and tend to use that. Have been doing video editing from low quality video footage, and every little bit counts. I'll mark this as solved, though it seems there are lots of bugs, mainly graphically related, which keep cropping up. Can't view gwenphoto in full screen mode, microsoft powerpoint presentations crash the windows manager when I try to view them as a slide show... periodically the windows manager crashes. Less frequently than with the last version of compiz-fusion, but slightly more annoying as the command "kde-window-decorator --replace" no longer does anything... also ksmoothdock won't work in 3d mode.... the list goes on. I'm beginning to think there may be a problem with a graphics driver somewhere, so I'm going to start poking around in that direction. But gee... 2008.0 works great without 3d mode enabled...lol! I'm still really impressed. I can even switch users without having the windows manager crash... anyway, thanks for all your advice... I'm likely to disable the 3d environment for awhile until I figure out what I'm doing, or some more updates that fix these problems come through. Thanks again.

Hi Yossarien, as far as running pcmcia wireless cards on a laptop, you're likely to have more luck with 2008.0. Not sure what version you were going to install, but the support for wireless cards in 2007.1 isn't great. Actually, it really sucks. I was using two Belkin cards, one on my laptop, another card for my desktop pc, and over time it corupted and became a real headache. Still don't know why, but it didn't die right away. I reinstalled a couple times (having just come from windows xp, that's what you do, right?), found the problem worse, and eventually got rid of it by jiggering off the wireless cards and uninstalling the bcm43xx packages. All that's been fixed with 2008.0 I've been told, the problem being the kernel with 2007.1 only supported a few cards with the bcm43xx firmware cutter tool. Apparently this latest kernel for 2008.0 does a much better job. So far I've had no problems with my pcmcia card on the laptop, which is purring like a kitten. Haven't been brave enough to reinstall the card back on my desktop pc yet...there are more than a few issues with compiz-fusion I'm not real happy about. Did I mention my laptop can't support 3d effects? 10 years old and running beautifully... I wonder when the next update for compiz-fusion comes out.... Anyway, good luck, to answer your question, I think your chances should be pretty good that Mandriva will detect your card and configure it correctly, judging from past experience and what other people have told me. Belkin definitely seems to be working... best off doing a search though and finding some cards that were also definitely supported well on previous kernels. Cheers.

No real reason, except a few obvious things. I find that if I'm logged into more than one account at a time, the 3d effects won't work, and I have no windows decorator. As far as I know this is something to do with how the permissions are set at default, and I haven't gotten around to figuring out how to change this yet. Other than that, make sure that you have enabled the 3d effects in the MCC, it's under the Hardware tab. I'm unsure about the 2008 live edition, but under 2008 free by default it's switched off after install. Are both user accounts 'essential'? I.e., do either of them have a home directory with information you can't live without? Can you get rid of the user who's 3D settings don't work and use the other one? I'm sure there are lots of other options, this is just off to top of my head. Good luck.

Basically, I've got no clue, though it sounds like it's a problem with your sata drive... are you able to try installing Mandriva 2008.0? The hardware support is much improved, and it might fix your problem. I'd recommend it over 2007.1 anyway. If you have a broadband connection I'd download the boot.iso, create a boot cd, then try to install over an ftp connection. Good luck.

I know how you feel, I found myself in a similar boat about 6 months ago... or is it longer now? Anyway, it's very easy in the end, perhaps easier than Microsoft Windows really... The two links given in the previous post will get you started, just remember if it seems too difficult it probably is; once I learned how to use it Mandriva is very easy to use... and keeps getting easier. A few important tips to remember: 1. You must always be root to install and uninstall software, by default. It is possible to change this graphically in Mandriva 2008.0, but I don't recommend it. While you can update your computer in 2008 as a regular user, (again by default) you need to have root privileges to install or uninstall anything else. 2. The easiest way to install software is from the rpm packages within the Mandriva repositories. Rpm's are like MS Windows executable files. They are packages which include information to install the software on your computer. There are other ways to install software on Linux, but this is by far the easiest. Keep in mind though that Rpm's for one distribution (Mandriva for instance) won't always work that well with another (Suse, Redhat, Debian), and you risk damaging parts of your system if you try. (of course I try, everyone does, but it's not recommended.) Once you set up your system with the Mandriva repositories, then there are literally thousands upon thousands of free software packages to download. While you can still install rpm packages by clicking on them (more or less) from the desktop (like MS Windows), then giving your root password when prompted, it's even easier using the rpm packages from the Mandriva Control Centre. Often when I search the web for a particular program, I can then find it in the Mandriva repositories. 3. www.tuxfiles.org Highly recommend this website. It will cover all the basic stuff you need to know about working with Linux from the command line. Most of what's there can also be done graphically in Mandriva, but it's a great base to have. Often I've learned how to do things from the command line, then figured out graphically how to do it. For advanced workings with Linux, you'll need to have a basic understanding of the command line. 4. Don't be afraid to ask for help. This is a very friendly forum, with lots of people willing to help. I'm around, and having recently been in your shoes myself, am very happy to help another person who's switched from Microsoft. Good Luck!

Yeah, it's not usually advisable, but if I were you I'd pull the plug, remove the usb devices, then reboot without them. I'll be surprised if you do that and are still in text mode. Linux is generally abit hardier than windows, you're unlikely to totally stuff your system if you pull the usb devices out, and reboot without doing it all properly. With Wiindows XP I'm not so sure...

hi adamw, I'm at a loss here. Works fine on one user account, and won't work at all with another... my business user account (normal user) I've been able to get the video out put wo work with either: "perl -pi -e 's|#video.driver:auto|video.driver:xshm|' ~/.xine/config" or "perl -pi -e 's|#video.driver:auto|video.driver:openGL|' ~/.xine/config" when I try the same commands as a normal user in another account, there's no change to video output. Have tried running the commands and restarting x-server, tried running the commands and playing video, tried changing settings inside kaffeine to xshm or opengl, nothing seems to make a difference. I was hoping this was solved, but why would it work on one desktop, and not the other?

Ouch... I'll give you some ideas on what I'd try, but please keep in mind I'm also new to Linux, and Mandriva. It's highly likely none of this will work, and you might want to consider waiting for someone with more experience to reply...but if you're desperate... Firstly, what usb devices did you connect? Also, what desktop environment are you using? If you are using KDE, there are options to be able to see some usb devices on the desktop when you connect them. To safely remove, you must right click on their icons, and select 'safely remove'. With my usb drives they will flash repeatedly then until I remove them, and the desktop icon will disappear. I haven't tried too many other devices for 2008.0, but I would assume it's similar. If you haven't enabled these to show up on your desktop, (right click on desktop and choose 'configure desktop', there are settings there under 'behavior' and 'device icons'). This will work for storage media, however for other devices I'm not sure. I'd try a couple things now. Firstly, can you shut down your box again? If you're in text mode, try hitting "ctrl+Alt+F1" (F2,F3, etc) This should (depending on how far your system has booted up) get you into a console, where you can access your system from there. Log in as a user, and type "halt" (without the quotation marks, that just tells you what to type). This should stop everything and shutdown your box. Then disconnect the usb devices, and try to reboot again. You can also hit "Alt+Prt Scn+B" to reboot your system, but this isn't much better than simply shutting off the power for your box. Mandriva 2008.0, and many modern linux systems, use the ext3 filesystem, which creates a journal of everything you do, so that if your computer mysteriously shuts down (power dies, whatever), you are generally safer and there's usually more chance of recovering data which you were working on. When the computer boots up it reads from the journal. Anyway, some useless knowledge for you to ponder. If all else fails, I would shot off the box manually, diconnect your usb devices, and reboot again. Good luck, sorry I can't be of more help.

Out of my league, but welcome to MUB. I had issues with bcm43xx under 2007.1, but so far using 2008.0 it's been fine. I am using Belkin wireless cards...what do you mean by 'it doesn't work'. Not working at all? I also found I had to totally remove bcm42xx from 2007.1. Apparently the support for this driver in the 2.6.17 linux kernel wasn't great. That's changed with 2008 though, what version of Mandriva are you using?

HI Adam, worked beautifully running as the regular user... with opengl at least. xshm also worked to fix the video resize problem, but was more choppy. Odd though, after running the opengl command as user, and restarting the xserver, when I try and change the video driver settings in the xine engine configuration within Kaffeine (mind you everything seems to be working fine at this point), if I set it to opengl, I get the error "Error: Can't init new Video Driver opengl - using auto!". What does this mean? As near as I can tell it resets the driver to the last driver that was used for xine, in this case "auto". Does this mean I'm not using opengl? Rest of my desktop seems so far to be working fine... am I now using opengl for that? Are there any additional packages I should install? Thanks.

Yeah...lets be cool... Actually, my current goal is to have an extremely stable operating system that does EVERYTHING I want, I'm very close to it. I love exploring all the new packages and settings, but I hate having my computer crash. It's one thing when I crash it, which has happened frequently as I've learned Linux, another when it won't work of my own accord... Just restored from Mondo again, after (yet another) crash. My fault of course... yet another setting not to play around with...lol. Best way to learn linux in my opinion... Anyway, I better mark this topic solved...lol. Have settled on installing mcnl and mud repositories as additional packages, and not using them for updates. I still want to be able to find them however at need. See 'ya.

Thanks dexter

Thanks Bingus. Tried all that, and all I got was a black screen...more or less. Actually I got the background I'd set in the 3d desktop cube box, but when that's disabled I get a black screen. Have "compiz-fusion plugins extra" installed, but this plugin doesn't work on my system...there are a few of them. Anyway, have been inserting pictures instead into the background of the cube, and using those. I like it. Not as flash, but does the job. Thanks mate.

Ah! Now THAT makes sense. Thanks adamw. I'll try it later today. And John, didn't anybody tell you? Australians are taking over Mandriva... it will come out officially in the next few days....lol. The more the merrier.

What are the backport repositories used for?

Thanks for that bingus. Glad to see there is a fix on the way for the window decorator crashing. How did you disable the splash screen? I think I'll follow suit. Ta.

ftp://ftp.mandrivauser.de/rpm/GPL/2008.0/i586/release Looks like www.mandrivauser.de lol. So that's a German site, what does that mean for me using their repositories? Also the same with mcnl. Apart from not using something 'official', are there any other issues? They look good as far as I can tell. Thanks people! ~Mitchell

Hi folks, last night I found a repository from smart urpmi called mud-free_release. What is this? Lliving dangerously, I added it to my repository list, then updated my system. Lots of useful packages came up, mainly updates which haven't officially made it to the Mandriva list yet. Now have firefox 2.0.0.8, the latest version of Amarok, etc. Is this a good idea? What actually IS MUD? Haven't found a home page like plf to check them out yet. Am not afraid of using non-official mandriva packages, and will deal with the consequences, but would like more information. Also added mcnl_release, which seemed to be connected to the Mandriva Club. Can anyone fill me in on this also? Thanks. ~Mitchell

Thanks Jim, truly awesome little tool. That has made my life a bit easier! Thanks mate, ~Mitchell

Thanks adamw. I saw this page last night, and so far haven't been able to do much with it. I'm mainly using Xine right now with Kaffeine, and tried to configure it for xshm last night, and opengl. I could get xshm working, though to be totally honest didn't see much difference. Things seemed to be running slower, actually. All the other driver options I tried didn't work at all, kept being told in the settings menu that they weren't available, and xshm would be used instead. Tried "perl -pi -e 's|#video.driver:auto|video.driver:xshm|' ~/.xine/config" and "perl -pi -e 's|#video.driver:auto|video.driver:openGL|' ~/.xine/config" and got error message "Can't open /root/.xine/config: No such file or directory." So in the end I switched back to the 'auto' setting, which works marginally better (still same problems, but in general graphics are faster) I've no idea which video driver I'm actually using...how do I find out, and are there other ways to switch drivers? Bugger about the bootsplash screen... ironic that the best one is redmond...lol. Anyway, I can live with that. I think the very basic simple one worked as well, will let you know. All up I'm still really happy with this, and just assumed there would be a few bugs to sort out after the first release. is there likely to be a 2008.1 coming out? For now I'll just switch off the 3d desktop when I need to use cinelurra and such, though it's a bit of a hassle. Any other advice you can recommend would be appreciated. Also, tried Metisse last night and found it very poor. A bit blurry, couldn't resize the screen, and nowhere near the functionality that 2007.1 had. Very slow. Is there more work coming on Metisse? thanks for your time adamw.

I too had problems with an upgrade, though in my case it was from the 2008.0 cooker version to the official version. There was likely little difference, as I downloaded cooker only a few days before the official release hit the mirrors, but something buggered up. Forget now exactly what it was, except that there seemed to be lots of bugs which are now fixed in 2008.0 official. Anyway, the upgrade wrecked my system, couldn't even boot in. Tried repair reinstall, lots of things, could only get into root account as a gui, even though my whole system was still there... likely a problem with kde. Anyway, did a clean install from an ftp mirror, and it worked brilliantly. Only used about 2g as well... was very impressed. Love 2008.0, though therre are problems with compiz-fusion, mostly listed in errata. Still haven't found work arounds. The video drivers aren't that great with compiz-fusion, and kaffeine has problems. The kde window decorator keeps crashing periodically, even though I've turned off most of the graphical effects...only a few which I find helpful. Well...quite a few, but not all of them. All up 2008.0 is awesome, I'm using the free version with kde. Like alot of the new features about configuring security, and regular users being able to install updates without root. LIke the configurability. Metisse it total crap, worse than 2007.1, which had a few annoying bugs. Coiuldn't manage to run it at all last night, won't bother trying again. All up, 2008.0 polls well for me.

Right...just installed this, how do I use it? Can't find it anywhere on my system, and can't find any command to launch it from the command line...

That sounds very sensible. One of the things I've disliked about urpmi is that there is no link between the packages initially selected, and the dependencies installed alongside them. Ie if I uninstall an rpm package which I installed earlier, the dependencies usually stay in the system. To deal with this I've created a "/usr/local/system.info/dependencies" folder, with 777 permissions. Every package I install gets recorded there, and if I have to restore my system to an earlier time, usually with Mondo, then this info changes to that time as well. Has helped me out a few times. That said, sounds like the package you suggest sounds much simpler. Will look into it. Thanks! And I'm also curious linuxuser32, how did you solve your problem?

How unfortunate that I've just switched to kde then... what can I say bu that I like it better... thanks...

Firstly, how do I report bugs, rather than posting them in this forum? Is there a built in bug reporting tool with 2008, KDE? Secondly, I love 2008, kde, but there are a few annoying bugs. Would apppreciate any help, or even commiseration from fellow sufferers... Bootsplash screen isn't working properly when I log in. I have compiz-fusion enabled for my 3d desktop environment, but the boot-splash image only works when I disable compiz-fusion, and use the standard desktop without 3d. Otherwise, when I log into any account, after about a second my screen goes white, with those lovely swimming penguins in blue boxes with a white background. That lasts for a second or two, then goes back to normal before it logs in. What gives? Every theme has some kind of bug like this, though Redmond (ick) works the best. Have been showing this system off to friends (or trying to) and looks bad at the start. Minor bug, but irritating. Kaffeine is doing weird things... won't resize properly. When I hit shift-ctrl-F I get full screen mode, but then there's no way to get out of this. If I hit the same keys again, I get a white border around my screen, can't minimize it, can't do anything except switch to another desktop, then close the program from there. Frustrating. I've steered away from Kaffeine until now (mainly because I'm used to mplayer), but would like to have it working properly. I've tried erasing the config and applicaiton files in my desktop (haven't touched system files), and while I can start it normally next time (instead of in buggered full-screen mode), the same thing happens when I resize to full screen. I've tried uninstalling then reinstalling with the plf version, and the same thing happens. No change. Kde window decorator keeps crashing. It reached a peak the other night when I was using (or attempting to) cinelurra to edit some dv files. Took literally hours and hours, was up all night. (yes, I should have given up, but needed them for a project due next day at uni...typically leaving it all to the last minute...) In the end realized my box wasn't happy with the 3D enviro when Cinnelurra was running, so disabled compiz-fusion, and everything was fine. Perhaps this means I should not use the 3D environment with Cinnelurra, but it keeps happening periodically with other programs, usually graphically based. The last was with Kaffeine, and got an error message: 'The application KWD crashed and coused the signal 11" I love 2008. I love compiz-fusion. I really like kde. Would like to find the light at the end of the tunnel which says 'YES! these programs CAN work together!' Hoping such a light exists, or will in the near future. Thanks people.