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ok I did the strace. Output was about a mile long...

I never heard of k9copy, thanks for the heads up. I just installed it with urpmi. Unfortunately, when I try to run it, it crashes with a signal 11 (SIGSEGV). Any ideas?

Yeah, I already had told the place that I thought $99 was high. But they told me that they are selling pretty well at that price.... so they wouldn't haggle... Ok, you talked me out of it...!

I wouldn't use it for anything other than to practice installing distros on. I have 2 decent boxes already that get daily use. This mandriva box is my main machine, and the win2k box I consider my spare. My win2k box is my most high-end machine - AMD-64, 1GB RAM, 160MB HD, Gigabyte Mobo w/SATA & RAID. I'm intending eventually to make it dual-boot with arch probably. I gave my 8 yr old son my "old" machine, which is a P-III 1GHz, 256 MB ram, 2 HDs - 80GB & 6GB. I would love to still have that one as a practice machine.... but can't very well take it back now....

The place where I buy all my hardware, which is also my ISP, has about 15 machines in the back room, made up of various "traded-in" machines and components. They are selling each one, no matter what the specs are, for $99. I was thinking about picking up one and using it to install various linux distros on. I figure I'll learn alot about installling various distros, partitionining during install, and whatnot. I would probably keep a distro on it for a week or 2 just to get a feel for each distro. Then install the next distro on top of the previous one. The machines all have win98, processors range from amd-350 to P-III 450 and everything in between, HDs range from 2GB to 10GB, RAM ranges from 64MB to 256MB, all have a network card, some have USB-1. I hate paying $99 for a crappy old box, but I wonder if its worth it for all the linux experience I would pick up by installing & reinstalling many different distros. I have a spare monitor, kb & mouse so nothing else would be needed. If I bought one it would a minimum of 128MB RAM, and a 6GB HD. I can't think of a faster way to pickup alot of linux experience. $99 bucks for an old box, worth it or not??

Here's a LinuxJournal article I found about using qdvdauthor http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8566

DVDstyler seems like a nice program. Nice GUI, drag & drop simplicity. It doesn't like anything I export with kino though. If I export as "mpeg2" in kino, dvdstyler doesn't like it. If I export as "DVD", dvdstyler gives me an error message "this is an audio file, you must have a video file". If I export as a dvd "vob" in kino, dvdstyler just freezes up and I have to "kill" it. could be "pebkac", but I'm tired of messing with it...

so if I now do another urpmi --auto --auto-select,, and since I have the SoS repo, it will think it needs to install the newer firefox. I assume it won't hurt anything, I can just keep using my already newer version, or I can start using the urpmi one, and then remove the one I installed yesterday... For me to remove the one I installed yesterday, it looks like its just a matter of deleting the folder.

ok something else. In the future, when I do another urpmi --auto-select to update everything, is urpmi going to know that I now have a newer firefox - since I got it myself and not thru urpmi...? After getting it from mozilla.com, I put it in /usr/share. The old one was somewhere else. So next time I do the "urpmi update everything" (since I now have the seerofsouls site) is urpmi gonna know I alread have the newer firefox?

was browsing through this book at a Borders Books and it seems like a great book. Most of my questions these days are multimedia related - ripping/burning DVDs, camcorders - capturing & editing & burning, audio stuff, working with images. The book pretty much goes into everything multimedia related in a brief but informative way. Plus it has a 2006 release date, so its not 5 years out of date like many linux books. The author doesn't talk down either, he assumes you are an "average" linux user - not a total noob, or an uber-geek. Anyway, the book is $30 list price at the USA stores (too much...) so I got it on amazon for only $18+.

I just got the newest firefox from mozilla.com, as daniewicz suggested. Very easy, and works great, no problems or anything. Will try to learn more about urpmi and 3rd party repos for future use. thanks!

thanks scarecrow & tyme for the tip about seerofsouls. I added it as a repository. Now I see that urpmi isn't "worthless" for upgrading packages to newer versions, you just have to point it to some other repos, other than the main,contrib and updates. I would think that the 2 plf repos would have package upgrades, but I guess not. Anyway, I see now that its really not much diff than say, FC. Back on FC, I had to use several other repos, such as livna ...

thanks, I did the addmedia for the SoS place. I notice when trying urpmi on firefox now, it wants to remove yelp and epiphany. Saying they require exactly firefox 1.0.6. Also wants to remove gnome cuz yelp will be gone. Dont care about yelp & epiphany, don't even know what they are. What about gnome? Will I have to re-install it after firefox is upgraded? Also since I'm not an urpmi expert yet, just specifying "#urpmi mozilla-firefox" will automatically get the latest 1.5 from SoS right? I already did an #urpmi.update -a to re-synch everything. thanks again

Ok, how does one use urpmi to actually get newer versions of packages - for example firefox. Need to add some other repos? I never did anything with cooker. How is it used? I gather it is mandriva's name for what other distros call "testing" or "unstable". Is it just a matter of adding a cooker repository to urpmi? really the 2 things right now I really want NEWER releases for are: firefox & kino. The other stuff like OO can wait. I can do those 2 myself I suppose, but was just wondering if there's a way urpmi can get the actually newer releases. thanks! edit: I really like mandriva, but I already decided to change to a rolling distro, where the pkg manager gets newer versions of your software, including the distro itself. I am gonna keep mandriva on this box for a while, but I'm gonna put arch on my windoze box as dual-boot just to play around with and learn something.

I have to revise something I said earlier: Well, I thought... but now I've been told that this only does minor fixes/bugfixes to the SAME OLD packages. Nothing is a newer version like I first thought. This isn't a mandriva complaint, but just a thing with "point releases" . I can't punish mandriva, because as a point release distro, its great.

That sucks. I may have to revise my mandriva review down in Everything Linux. I'm gonna read thru the "rolling releases vs point releases" thread again. So if you want new versions of your packages, urpmi is worthless. I hope this is true. My Firefox is so SLOW I can hardly stand it. And yes, I have done all the "about:config" tweaks recommended for speedier browsing. Yeah, I am not going to want a bunch of duplicate packages on my machine. Waste of space.

kino is what most people use for importing digital video from camcorders, through the firewire port. Seems like a nice program. I just started playing around with digital video on linux a few weeks ago. took a while to get the capturing figured out, but I did. Now I'm stuck on the exporting feature, where you take your edited video clips and export them to mpeg, or DVD files which can then be burned to dvd (or converted then burned?) with a dvd burning program. DVDStyler is a program that takes exported video from kino, and authors DVDs - you can make menu backgrounds, buttons, etc. Like I said, I'm still stuck on the part of exporting from kino and then using dvdstyler. I'm also having trouble getting help with this stuff, not only on this forum, but on other forums as well. googling turns up tons of info about this stuff though. Hopefully you are smarter than me, and soon I can get help from you...!! good luck edit: my camcorder is a miniDV, and kino imports very nicely from it. kino also has some nice editing features, mostly basic stuff.

ok, thanks. I'm wondering why upgrading everything with urpmi still gives you old versions of everything. Is there something else to be done after an urpmi --auto --auto-select ?

yeah, I also bought the powerpack DVD.

Been on mandriva 6 months or so. Did a #urpmi --auto-select a week ago. Looked like all my programs were being updated... took a couple hours... A couple of examples of versions I now have: Firefox 1.0.6 and Kino 0.7.6 The current issue of Linux Format calls both of these versions "old". The mag says that kino 0.8.0 is the latest release, and improved. Also mentions that the current Firefox is 1.5, also improved. I'm not a huge expert on urpm, but isn't one of its selling points that it can keep your programs updated...? What gives?

yeah, I remember looking around for k3b after I first installed mandriva. Took me a while to find it. Then I thought..."that's dumb..."

:D yeah, I had a thread about capturing video with kino and a digital camera... I was just talking to myself for several days.... but I got it fixed ... so did you get audacity fixed? I want to try it out also.

yeah, I remember being initially "turned off" due to a few weird post-install problems... but since then I've been pretty happy with everything.

yeah, I already d/l & burned the arch install CD a couple weeks ago. Gonna put it on my win2k box, as a dual-boot, and use it to learn more about linux. My win2k box is a little better than my mandriva box - its an AMD-64, 1 GB RAM. that reminds me, I have the mandriva DVD (I bought it) and when I use urpmi, its always asking me for my DVD... I think I did a urpmi.removemedia cdrom, but it still asks for the dvd. Guess I did it wrong. I'll try MCC software managment when I get home. But what's the right way to remove the DVD source using the command line? have to use mnt/cdrom or something?

after 6 months on 2006, its still working great and I haven't broken anything yet... :D So I'll have to give it a uprmi is pretty nice once you get it down pat. Did a urpmi.update -a, and then a urpmi --auto-select last night (took a couple hours). Went fine, no probs. Then a reboot to get the stuff situated properly (nvidia and whatever) and everything's upgraded... Pretty damn easy. Can't do that in winblows. I know mandriva is not really considered a "learning" distro, but I've learned a lot while using it. Especially while trying to get video capture working in kino. Learned all about modprobe, lsmod, rmmod, and "grep". Too bad its not a rolling disro. I've decided to change to a rolling distro, after all the discussions in the rolling vs point releases thread. So anyway, I think its a great distro, at least for the average home user, although maybe not for the linux uber-geeks.