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lol, yep you left me hanging in the wind... haven't really messed with debian after the install. I take it that during the install, apt was set-up (with whatever default repositories, and whatever) ? edit: since I have an nvidia card, I suppose this is the thing to do: apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-nv

ok, I finished the install. The net install is the way to go, everything went fine. I chose "separate home", but I selected a diff user name as arctic said. grub bootloader installed fine, gives me choice of debian, or the old mandriva. However, if booting into debian, X doesn't work. I grabbed the net install today 1/5/07, so I expected X to work, like arctic said it should... Well, at least it's installed... I thought it was pretty simple and troublefree.

ok, I brought an old ps2 kb home from work. This one works during booting. However, the CD 1 of debian testing keeps failing during the Load Components from CD step. So I went back to debian, got the net install testing cd image, burned it to CD, and am now booting it. I am at the partitioning step. I chose the first one "guided - use available contiguous free space". Then it found the available 10.5GB that arctic help me resize from mandriva the other day. so far so good. Now for partitioning, which do I want? I plan to use /home from my mandriva install as discussed above: 1. all files in one partition 2. separate /home 3. separate /home /usr /var and /tmp thanks!!

la de da... I'm still at work... I was thinking about linux mediacheck, do debian ISO CDs have this feature, and if they do, is it reliable?

yeah, I already thought of that. Yep, its usb. I had a spare kb around here a couple days ago (ps2) but I threw it away. I do have one of those adapter thingies, hope I can find it somewhere... got to go to work now.... will try again this evening. Thanks!

it's kind of getting off track here... I logged in as root last night, went to mcc, got into the tools and then did the "resize" of /home. It worked great and was very easy... only problem now is that my kb does not work during booting, so when I get the boot prompt from the debian CD, when I hit enter to boot, it just sits there. No keys work.

yes, you just type in "root" for the user name, and then the password at the kde log in... and when kde comes up, its a weird red background color, and a warning pops up telling you "you're logged in as root, hope you know what you are doing" or something like that.

well, that didn't take long... booted with CD1 of debian, got the boot prompt "Press F1 for Help or Enter to boot: but the keyboard doesn't work, so I can't even tell it to boot... it's a standard "corded" kb (usb)

I just did what arctic suggested above, about using mcc and draktools to resize the /home. Worked great, and was very easy.... I'm flabbergasted. The things I don't know...! now df shows this: Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda2 16G 3.7G 11G 25% / /dev/hda5 158G 77G 82G 49% /home so I have around 10GB unused now. How'd you know my name was Bob? lol, just kidding...! If I like debian and get used to it, I'll probably make the whole box debian sometime later. If I get to a part of the install where I don't know what to put, I'll come back here using my other machine and ask. It's 6:30 in the evening here, what's it where you are arctic?

that would be great. wow, wasn't sure about that. I remember some old threads around here about sharing one home with multiple distros... arctic: I downloaded the 3 debian testing CDs on 12/29 and 12/30... should I use these, or do the net install to get some fixes? Will I have duplicate programs after both distros are on? I mean, will there be a firefox in mandriva, and another firefox in debian, etc? I am doing this so that I can continually roll forward and get newer packages, such as firefox, and all the other major ones, with debian, rather than be stuck with old stuff in mandriva 2006.

I'm at work now... I'm pretty sure it's ext3, but I'll check when I get home.

ok thanks. yeah I figured the space available in /home wouldn't be able to be taken and reused by debian. Is it complicated to resize the mandriva /home to, say 85GB? that would leave 83GB as available for the debian install.

well, 6 months after my "rolling distros" thread, I'm finally going to do something. I've d/l the 3 debian testing CDs a couple nights ago, and am now ready to install it on my mandriva box. Six months ago I was intending to try out a rolling distro by installing one on my win2k box, but I changed my mind. I have backed the important stuff in /home, so I'm not really paranoid about screwing up mandriva by installing debian. Here's what df shows: Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda2 16G 3.7G 11G 25% / /dev/hda5 168G 77G 91G 46% /home When I install debian, I want it to use, say 80 GB out of the 91GB available. I'm not sure if debian will consider this space "available", it probably won't. any tips or pointers appreciated. I suppose that since I have what I need backed up already, I can just let debain testing have the whole drive. I'd prefer to keep mandriva though. edit: after reading arctic's review of debian etch a few days ago, I decided to grab it and try it out. Great review arctic.

me neither. my 2006 doesn't ever shut down all the way.

I'm pretty sure I did install the newer version, cuz I remember coming here and getting help (as always...). It worked good, and when I got into firefox after installing the new one, firefox told me something like "congratulations, you have the newest firefox!"... Also when I checked the Help/about mozilla firefox, it showed the newest version. Yes, I remember having 2 firefoxes on my computer.... not sure about the directories.. I'm at work now, will check at home later. I didn't know that, thanks! I'm going to install the new mandriva anyway, maybe the newer firefox will be included... so I should just wait.

I don't think the actual "program" is installed. It's a popup that comes up occasionally without warning. I'm not sure if it was only when I was browsing with firefox, or if I was just on my desktop... and not really doing anything... My firefox blocks almost every popup... don't know how this one gets thru... It's an annoying popup that warns you that you have tons of porno traces on your computer... and that you should buy drivecleaner to get rid of it... It's a scam since I've never looked at any adult stuff with my linux machine... really... I have a windows machine also, and occasionally the drivecleaner popup comes up even when I'm not browsing... such as maybe right after a boot up... I think my freebie adaware or freebie spybot S&D may have gotten rid of it though... haven't seen it lately... I don't know how to install anything on linux such as adblock or whatever. You can't just go to mozilla and click on install adblock... I guess that is just for windows versions. Besides that it tells me my firefox is not the right version... (I have 1.0.6). I could have sworn I installed 1.5 a while back, not sure how I got back to this old version.

there's this "drivecleaner" thing popping up on everyone's windows computers, and there are removal instructions all over the web... but I've also got it on my mandriva 2006 machine... I'm not used to programs getting installed on my linux box without my permission... I thought that did not happen with linux how do I get rid of it ?

ok, thanks. It's good to know that it's not just me... I'll wait a few days, and try again.

all I get is: [root@localhost Desktop]# urpmi mplayerplugin ftp://ftp.phys.ttu.edu/pub/MandrivaLinux/official/2006.0/i586/media/contrib/ mplayerplugin-3.11-1mdk.i586.rpm 0% of 0 completed, ETA = --:--:--, speed = 0 ...retri eving failed: curl failed: exited with 9 or signal 0 Installation failed, some files are missing: ftp://ftp.phys.ttu.edu/pub/MandrivaLinux/official/2006.0/i586/media/contrib/ mplayerplugin-3.11-1mdk.i586.rpm You may want to update your urpmi database ...retrieving failed: curl: (9) FTP: access denied so then I did: [root@localhost Desktop]# urpmi.removemedia -a removing medium "main" removing medium "contrib" removing medium "plf-free" removing medium "plf-nonfree" removing medium "updates" found 0 headers in cache removing 0 obsolete headers in cache wrote config file [/etc/urpmi/urpmi.cfg] and then I went thru the easy urpmi steps to add everything again, with different sources this time: plf-free and plf-nonfree both worked ok, but all the others failed: [root@localhost Desktop]# urpmi.addmedia --update updates ftp://mirror.umr.edu/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandrakelinux/official/updates/2007.0/i586/media/main/updates/ with media_info/hdlist.cz added medium updates wrote config file [/etc/urpmi/urpmi.cfg] examining synthesis file [/var/lib/urpmi/synthesis.hdlist.plf-free.cz] examining synthesis file [/var/lib/urpmi/synthesis.hdlist.plf-nonfree.cz] retrieving source hdlist (or synthesis) of "updates"... ftp://mirror.umr.edu/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandrakelinux/official/updates/2007.0/i586/media/main/updates/media_info/hdlist.cz ...retrieving failed: curl: (9) FTP: access denied retrieval of source hdlist (or synthesis) failed no hdlist file found for medium "updates" examining synthesis file [/var/lib/urpmi/synthesis.hdlist.updates.cz] problem reading synthesis file of medium "updates" found 0 headers in cache removing 0 obsolete headers in cache wrote config file [/etc/urpmi/urpmi.cfg] unable to update medium "updates" is it just a matter of trying and trying and trying over and over again until you find sources that work? if so, the "easy urpmi" name should probably be changed...

I can't ever play any videos on the web, well hardly ever. For example, I have tried to play many "help" videos for some equipment I own, or am thinking about buying. most videos are wmv, and all I get is messages that "can't play this file, you may need to install additional plugins". How do linux users play these videos? edit: sorry, I just noticed the windows media thread started by oldnoob... I'll try the suggestions in that thread... ok, I tried #urpmi win32-codecs, and it said "the packages are already installed" I thought so, I installed that codec stuff way back after I installed mandriva. Don't know why I haven't ever been able to watch videos.

I thought I installed the mplayer-plugin a long time ago. When I click on a wmv video, FF only gives me the option of opening it with Totem. I'll mess around with it when I get home later.

I've been using FF for quite a while now, but it seems like now (new version 1.5) I can't play half the video stuff I come across on websites. Just get messages like "firefox can't play this" (after I waste time waiting for the video to d/l). I think its shockwave, and also .wmv stuff. Is there another linux browswer that handles this stuff better? edit: according to the mozilla site, this stuff is "unavailable" for linux.

I just noticed my k3b also won't erase a CD-RW... Not too handy...

I decided to wait just a little, until I get another HD. That way I'll just leave the original 160GB drive as all windows, and the new HD (prob 120GB) will be for any linux distro I want to play with. That way, both drives will have enough space for me to experiment with importing video from my new digital video camera. Plus, I got into the windows disk management, expecting to be able to work with my partitions a little, but I didn't see how to.

I'll plug in the ethernet cable tonight and tryout the install again. I just want a working connection so the "net-install" can go along ok. I'll worry about the usb wireless connection after the full install is done...