Counterspy

What an argument for a brand new computer center desk. Counterspy

It is a sad fact that Mandrakesoft cannot even carry itself at tradeshows, where they take a corner of AMD's booth. Denis Havlik is the one tagged to do the pitches for Mandrake products, illustrated well in a collection of pictures Wolfgang Bornath posted the URL for in the newgroup. Today I saw the same two copies of Mandrake 9.0 PowerPack on the bottm shelf in the OS section at Staples, for C$79.95. There is no Linux user group in my city and a weak clone group that doesn't bother updating their website. I have often wondered what a difference it would make if there was a package of countertop cards I could leave at computer stores, were the owners open to it, a tear-off prepaid postcard for more information. This requires money that Mandrakesoft does not have. So we are left in our present situation. Marketing to the retail sector and the distributers is their first priority. Counterspy

I think you need to realize that in Mandrakesoft's current financial position, they are simply not staffed well enough to fix these issues properly in every case. I have seen many bugs "deprecated" on the cooker mailing list since I discovered it. The other problem is the limited number of hardware configurations they have at their disposal meaning that some bugs are never caught. They rely on a dedicated group of cooker volunteers who perform the functions that would be done in house by larger and better financed software manufacturers. It is also the case that many of Mandrakesoft's issues are reported with in days on other distributions using the same software. Those of us who want to see the company survive are really in the position of putting up with some inconvenient bugs, some of which are tracked and fixed by the people here. A good example from the a.o.l.m newsgroup is a user there who posted his own Mandrake 19-20 kernel fixing the supermount problem. He looked at the Mandrake 19-24 release which is supposed to have resolved these issues and found out that there were still unresolved issues that "may" not affect most users. Look up kernel 19-20 with author Bill Unruh in Google groups advanced for the discussions around this issue. 9.1 is make it or break it time for Mandrakesoft and I dearly hope they don't rush it out the door. Counterspy

Disable supermount with this in console mode: supermount -i disable. If you look farther down this thread of do a search on supermount, you may pull ip some other messages that includes another command following the one above. Use that command when you find it but only right after the supermount command. Sorry I can't remember it at the moment. Counterspy

Did you change brands? There is an interminable argument going on about the dye colour in the cd newsgroup about which brand is the best and which to avoid. Counterspy

You have highlighted an ongoing problem where getting the distro out the door takes precedence over bug-fixing. Mandrakesoft has never cleared out all of the bugs and does so by minimizing them to insignificance. Nothing short of an email to the new CEO will change the habits of some employees. They continue to flog things like supermount instead of making an autofs configurator is one example. Peronally, I would like to take Duval and duct tape him to the Eiffel Tower with a sing reading "Failed Executive". Was it really Red Green who turned us on to the magic of duct tape? Counterspy

Those members here who have kids in school are the best people to start leaning on their school boards to kick Windows out and replace with Linux. Get the kids using it and Microsoft will be pushed out of that market. Some boards are married to Steve Jobs, so there is a hardware issue there too. Counterspy

There is this how-to you might look at to see if it works internally: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Bandwidth-Limiti...OWTO/index.html . Counterspy

I think different people have different problems with Texstar's RPM's. He updated almost all of it and it is now on his web site. See if you are using it and if not, I would suggest you download it. Counterspy

It seems like we have this subject posted at least once a week and we still get a preponderance of posters supporting the club over retail sales. Joining the club may make you feel better, but it does nothing to secure a long term future. The last time I looked they had ony a few corporate members which should tell you something about the appeal of the club to business. I would really like to hear from the new CEO who by now has plenty of time to scope out the situation. Perhaps someone from France can see if the bankruptcy court records are on the web and put them here in translation. We are totally in the dark as to the progress of Mandrakesoft in recovering from bankruptcy. In my short dalliance with Redhat, I was surprised by the fact that they packaged far more KDE apps and toys than Mandrakesoft, despite the criticism they received for "butchering" KDE. True, their dialogue boxes looked like Gnome to some extent but I was able to make my desktop look much as it does now under Mandrake 9.0. I tossed it because it didn't fix any of the things that didn't work in Mandrake and they seemed to have twice as many bugfixes and security problems than Mandrake. It's really not an issue, since I can't go out and find their distros either. Marketing, marketing, marketing must be Mandrakesoft's mantra even if they have limited funds to carry it out. Without retail sales, they're down the tubes, Club and all. Counterspy

I still believe that the boxed sets form a retailer are more important in the long run. Mandrakesoft must get those packages out where the public can see them before they develop market momentum. If you look at the Linux news stories since January, you will not see much about Mandraksoft. This is not a good thing when only their release candidates make news. Only Linux users read Linux news so this makes it worse. People need to think Mandrake along side or trailing slightly behind Redhat. I know that's a tall order but even their Walmart deal is not discussed. Make your local retailer order 9.1 for you. That is one small step for Mandrake.... Counterspy

The key is the kernel module that failed, described in an earlier message. Thanka for your try though. Counterspy

Consider the following partitions: "/" root (necessary), /home (to save unformatted in future upgrades/installs to preserve the settings you choose), /usr (where your files go) and /var (to stop it from overrunning root). Sizes are indicated in the old doc section at the top if this page under install>partitions. Counterspy

They well may be offended. And some of the most distninguished members of the Linux community at that. That doesn't mean that their assessment is objectivley true. They are expressing a feeling which is entirely within their right to do so. I also support the PCL boycott, not that I can find an SCO product anywhere in my city. All they have succeeded in doing is greasing their own slide into bankruptcy. If they lose they will be assessed IBM's legal costs. That's a lack of judgement and foresight. Why would you feel insulted with that kind of behaviour? When people act in such a fashion, I'm for bring back the stocks in the public square where we can throw rotten fruit, eggs and vegetables at them. Counterspy

To the extent that it is an insult, which I don't think it is, SCO is already reaping the consequences of the symbolic slap in the face with a glove. Suse has distanced itself from SCO and still remains committed to United Linux. The only possible outcome from this is that SCO gets kicked out by the other three. This is their reward for the perceived insult. Other news articles also predicted that this was the end for SCO. Unlike Mandrakesoft who went for bankruptcy protection, it is entirely likely that SCO creditors will call their notes and accounts receivable and force them into a bankruptcy without court protection for embarking on a windmill tilting exercise with other people's money. This is what I meant by foresight and the lack thereof. Counterspy

That avatar is quite clever. Did you do it yourself? Counterspy

I don't know why anyone gets all in a knot everytime a lawsuit is filed. Most of the time it is a company who is in need of serious money looking for a way to get it from another company that has it. The only people who profit from all of this is the lawyers. Some companies do get a fraction of what they ask for in out-of-court settlements because the larger company wants to do a flea or fly flick like a horse's tail just to get on with things. A good example is Rambus, who has sued practically every memory company and now turns out to have shredded key documents that would have damaged their case. SCO and most other Linux companies have been run by a greedy little bunch of comp sci dot com geniuses (including Mandrakesoft until recently). Few have sought the experience of those in the business world who could have probably made many a success. Others are doomed to go down the tubes because they lack two crucial dimensions of business success, judgement and foresight. These are not common attributes in recent grads even from business schools so it is not a surprise when some greasy shyster goes from medical insurance claims to giant successful companies. Counterspy

The Large Disk How-To installed in the doc section of your Main menu explains in detail how this whole business works. It is mandatory reading for anyone with large drive. If you didn't install the how-to's find it here: http://www.tldp.org. IIRC, this does not explain the missing 8 Gb although who knows. Counterspy

There is a new kernel, 19.24 2 which fixes supermount on the Mandrake update mirrors. It is not shown in Mandrake Update to prevent new users from installing it improperly and then having to reinstall. The instructions are here: http://www.mandrakesecure.net/en/kernelupdate.php and one update mirror is here: http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/os/Linux/distribut...dates/9.0/RPMS/ . There are several versions so download the correct one for your system. Counterspy

My compliments to you for taking the time to post these here where they are far likely to be seen. Counterspy

You will need to wait for version 9.1 before updating Freeciv. Glibc is the backbone of the entire system and you will seriously demolish your install should you force it on your system. There is really nothing else to say about it. Unfortunately, that's it. Counterspy

I see no problem with that drive. I would certainly want to check out any add-in cards to see if they have kernel support or if a module can be compiled. What I see you doing here is buying for the future as well as today. That drive should be good for the next few years and will fit nicely into a faster box. Counterspy

I have never been overly impressed with the interface design in Linux. One thing that Windows has consistently done is test interfaces on a variety of users. Apple to has spent much on a clean, functional design. Even if you don't like the results personally, there are things that they both do that Gnome and KDE could learn from. Sometimes I feel they needed to reinvent the wheel to avoid the predecessors and are now going back to a more Windows look which is a serious mistake. Interface design is not a trivial issue and their is much in the literature about doing it to maximize user ease and functionality of use. Here are some sites that deal with the subject: http://www.usernomics.com/user-interface-design.html http://www.engr.sjsu.edu/~knapp/hci.html http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Aug-97/rough.html http://www.anacapasciences.com/computers.htm http://turing.acm.org/crossroads/xrds3-3/color.html While most comp sci students can and do take courses in this subject, it seems to soon forgotten once out in the workplace world Counterspy.

From the Boot config section of the Mandrake Control Center. You could have used it to change the default boot as well. Counterspy

I'm happy ot worked out for you. Enjoy your new Mandrake Installation. Counterspy