Counterspy

But nothing could be worse if this release has any serious bugs in Mandrakesoft's programs in particular. Justifiably, the expectations are unusually high if they are to get themselves out of bankruptcy court. A less than adequate release could finish them off with so many additional eyes trained on their every move. I hope for all our sakes that for once they get it right. Counterspy

No, I don't believe so, but it depends on motherboard support as well as Linux support. I do not know whether is has been build into the kernel or Xfree as yet. Counterspy

I noticed today that the links to mandrakeuser and mandrake forum no longer appear on the top of Mandrakesoft pages. Also Vincent Danen of Mandrakesecure fame is a Canadian who runs Danen Consulting from here: http://www.danen.net/ . It seems Mandrakesoft employees are all over the world, not just in France. Counterspy

The possibility of a manufacturer's partition had not occurred to me previously. Left out in the discussion is the need to use scandisk and defrag before proceeding with the install. A manufacturer's partition is one put there to recover Windows using a custom CD and not a CD with a full version of Windows. One thing you could do is make room on the second drive and seeing if that makes a difference. If you have two CD drives, you might try reversing them on the cable so the one you are booting from is switched to the other. Note that you need to change jumpers if you try this. A clue to whether this is a CD problem is whether any other program has had trouble loading from the CD you are using now. From your description, I would try the CD switch before the other hard drive since it is not getting far enough to load the installer into ram. Counterspy

That looks quite adequate to me if this is a single user machine. If I was going to suggest a change, I would add a 1 or 2 Gb /var partition to prevent out-of-control log files from over writing root. Counterspy

I think his decision to withdraw from the mailing list deferring to the revenue stream MandrakeExpert, speaks for where he is coming from. Whether Mandrakesoft hires him back in better times is a whole other open question. I would hope that they act in an ethical manner bringing back those who they laid off. Counterspy

Prelude is on the Mandrake distribution disks. I don't know about the docs. If not, I'll upload them to the doc area. Counterspy

Those who may feel that they are sick to death of popups, banner ads and the other numerous net annoyances should have a look at Privoxy. This is an excellent program which does all of the above and also allows parent filtering that is customised by the parent rather than being a block list like some Windows programs. It can be found at http://www.privoxy.org with a default action file and extensive docs. If you do not want to build the Mandrake version form source, you can locate it on rpmfind for Mandrake although it is several versions behind the latest. Counterspy

Rebuilding form source is in the mdk-rpms doc in our download section. Counterspy.

The question is does it have ISA slots? Your motherboard manual or computer docs should tell you without taking the case apart. Isa slots are longer than PCI slots and usually a different colour. Counterspy

Are you saying that the install begins on one machine but not the one you want it on? If so, that suggests something is amiss on the hardware side. You should also run the md5sums on the disks you downloaded to see if you have a problem there. Get software calculating them for dos or Windows here: http://www.linuxiso.org/viewdoc.php/verifyiso.html . Get the md5sums from the site you downloaded the iso's from. They will be listed in the same directory. Counterspy

You don't need virus software on Linux distros, Mandrake included. Because open source is what it says, open, if one appeared, it would quickly be recognized and the information would be spread accross the net allowing changes to be made. A virus requires both a carrier and a spreader to have any significant impact. This is why Windows works so well as a virus carrier and spreader, with most viruses being carried and spread through email. The main concern in Linux security are root exploits in which a user gains root access allowing unlimited access to the functions of the computer. There is a chkrootkit program available if you suspect that this has happened to you. No Windows software will perform any virus detection on Linux systems. You can duplicate the main funtions of Zonealarm (which, incidentally phones home from the kernel level) by configuring Shorewall, one of two defaults firewalls installed with Mandrake. The other is msec. Shorewall is a bit daunting for new users and it is msec that you set when asked what security level you want during the install. You can change your Msec security level from the Security section of the Mandrake Control Center. Level 2 or Standard is the recommended setting for most users accessing the Internet only as a network service. Counterspy

ISA is a bus standard for onboard slots that support devices like modems that plug into the motherboard. It is now superceded by the PCI bus standard and has for the most part disappeared except on older motherboards. PNP is Plug and Play, a Microsoft/Intel invention that allows devices to be identified as soon as they are plugged in to the motherboard. Put ISA and PCI together and you get ISAPNP or PCIPNP. ISA was supported to allow legacy devices to be used, principally sound cards and modems. My motherboard is four years old and has two ISA slots and four PCI slots. I still use a 56K modem along side my PCI ethernet card for high speed internet. I For reasons I have never bothered to pay attention to, it is recommended that PNP be disabled in the BIOS for Linux installations. IIRC a new standard is intended to replace PCI to increase the speed of bus access as processors get faster and faster, making all PCI cards obsolete. Counterspy

There is also Tom's Rboot which fits on a single floppy. Get it here: http://www.toms.net/rb/ . Counterspy

Never feel sorry for not spending money you don't have. The guilt trip that Mandrakesoft tries to lay on its users is positively sickening and you would not find that kind of behaviour in many other businesses. It makes me think of a bad acid trip, which thankfully I never had, despite numerous excursions to that state of consciousness. Counterspy

The lists can be found here: http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/flists.php3 . For the most part, you won't learn much more than you do here and you will fill your mailbox with everything posted on the list. As far as MandrakeExpert is concerned, it is a Big Fat Waste of Money. The experts are second rate compared with the results you get here or in the newsgroup, alt.os.linux.mandrake. I don't exactly like the web interface compared with a list where you can see all of the responses but I support the ability of this site to be a stopping off place for many different services expanding as we speak with new and exciting offerings to make us one stop service for Mandrake users. The only reason the two lists, Newbie and Expert have not been shut down is that it would cost Mandrakesoft more ill-will than they want to incurr at this point in time. If they do manage to survive, a circumstance I am gradually loosing any reasonable hope for, you can count on their disappearance through benign neglect. If and when they close them down, you can count on this site seriously looking at picking up both lists. One thing needs to be faced from the administration point-of-view is that lists are time consuming and labour intensive compared to web or usenet support and once many users get their boxes full, they opt out in a hurry. To answer the question as to who Civilme is, and in this context was a Mandrakesoft employee, IIRC worked in quality control and was a victim of a layoff. He was extremely popular on the Newbie Mailing List and created close to a revolt there when the unfortunate consequences of mismanagement descended on him. He continued to volunteer on the list after his layoff which occurred some time ago and continued to volunteer his time but reached the end of his rope when put in the position of being in competition with a Mandrakesoft service, not exactly in one who when one would like a recall notice. As far as him coming here, he would need to change handles, since we are regarded as characters in Arsenic and Old Lace. Counterspy

Civilme speaks for himself. Counterspy

If you read cooker, you would see that they have been tossing out programs like mad. The last cooker apparently took four CD's so they must have tossed out quite a bit. If this is the case, 9.1, in my pessimistic view, will turn into another bust. It just might be that the two morons under him have done it again, assuring him that the real problems lay elsewhere, like getting more orders through the the Club or the store. OTOH, maybe he made them dump what didn't work, but then that would mean that most of the in-house creations would need to go. For a Sunday of interesting reading: http://www.mail-archive.com/cooker%40linux...x-mandrake.com/. Counterspy

Make sure KDE is not running when you try the install. I have have never removed the old kde first, but if you do, rename the hidden .kde file in your home directory to .kdeold and the rename it back to .kde to preserve your settings after 3.1 is installed. This would also be true for other users home directories since they may not be the same settings as yours. Counterspy

Sndconfig is on your distro disks but is not installed by default. Dig it out and install it. It should solve your problems. Counterspy

This is a problem that there is no way around except to look for the failed dependencies and install them. I used Texstar's version and I use rpmfind for dependencies. Be careful with cooker versions if you do this because Mandrakesoft is using glibc 2.3 and some may not work in 9.0. Look at the other sites on PCLinuxonline such as PLF which sometimes have them as well as what may or may not be on Texstar's download site. Use the apt directory with Texstar as well. Now if you're not totally confused, you can get on with it or forget about it. Counterspy

It has been mentioned in certain newsgroups that newer versions of Nero will not read older versions even if you are not using it to read a disk using Nero, possibly due one of the CLSID registry keys. This would happen particularly if you used a questionable copy of Nero. I was bitten once by this before my Linux days causing the loss of one CD. It has also been mentioned that current versions of Nero have additional piracy prevention built in such that questionable serial numbers allow the install bu do not allow the running of the program. Having not personally testing this, I cannot vouch for its authenticity. Counterspy

A brief lesson on Plato et al! Plato conceived the reality of the world we live in as images of an ideal world where the truth is scene over a wall as shadows on the wall behind. These he referred to as idealized images and would always be slightly beyond the grasp of man. The writings of St. Augustine incorporated the Platonic philosophy into Christianity. Aristotle on the other hand had a another way in saying 'being is, not being is not". His thinking was incorporated into Christianity through the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. Despite being a non-Catholic educated at a Catholic university, I emerged as a zen existentialist. Some may remember the wonderful lectures of Alan Watts on PBS many years ago. Existentialist philosphy was incorporated into Christian belief with a different interpretation than Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus based largely on the philosophy of Soren Kierkkegard. These thoughts were elaborated in the work of Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who reformulated the fundamentals of evolution into a divine existential principle in his writings, mainly in "The Phenomenon of Man". Linux is essentially zen and existentialist in nature. It is seen to exist and comprehended as Zen. Successful marketing of Mandrake Linux must take both into consideration. After forty years, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" is still on bookstore shelves, eloquently giving testimony to this way of thinking. Were Mandrakesoft to market with that frame of reference, how different things would be. Now how's that for thread highjacking. Counterspy

What was the outcome? Did you make a convert out of her? The kids are the future of this fight to blow Bill Gates into orbit around Jupiter where he can join the rest of the largest hot gas ball in the solar system. Counterspy.

I was more than a liitle surprised when I finally got around to trying the features of Software Manager. The Remove Software option seems to work as it says but the Install Software is fraught with gotchas. The first is that you will discover that some programs chosen in install (if you used Expert mode) did not get installed. The second is that if you check off a large number of files to be added, the program will remove software in order to install new the new programs. When it hits the first program with unmet dependencies, it bails out of the whole process leaving you without the programs it removed and depending on what it removed, you may need to reinstall. The solution to this is to only choose programs to be added in small chunks. This is particularly the case when the update sites have been chosen and are listed along side those on the install disks. It is here where program removal is most likely, and you should note that both the newer version from the update site is listed along side the original on the distribution disks. The next is that there are programs on your distribution disks that many have had to go looking for which will only be seen if you do not choose Mandrakesofts' ridiculous listing full of duplicates and go for a flat alphabetical list instead. Being interested in partitioning, I found that both gpart and parted were there. There were others as well that were not listed in the Mandrakesoft list. The last gem is that the list does not always remove software after you have checked it and it has been installed. The cute little message "Should this really be happening at all" will greet you when this happens. Since nothing happens, it is is not a risk but an acknowledgement that whoever wrote the program did not take care enough to make sure installed programs were removed from the list opting for a cute little message instead of finishing the the program properly. I regret not identifying and posting this type of issue months ago, but since I usually do console installs after the first, it never occurred to me to look at the whole contents of the install disks until recently. It won't happen again. Counterspy