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viking777

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Posts posted by viking777

  1. I'm sorry to say that because of KDE4 i dumped Mandriva off my system, Which is sad because i've been using it since"Venus" Mandrake 6.0 And yes i also installed Kde 3.5 but within Mandriva 2009 it ran terrible.. Right now PClinuxOS is rock soild.. And as for Kde 3.5 is was IMHO almost perfect. Again if KDE4 worked for you than Great, To me it's a matter of preference and resources. Hopefully Mandriva 2010 will bring me back. Hopefully Kde 4.2 will fix all the problems but we'll see.

    :)

     

    I agree wholeheartedly with you about Kde 3.5 and Pclos, though sadly I don't share your hope that Kde4.2 will alter things. You can't 'fix' anything that is fundamentally flawed in its design and concept, you can only start again from scratch (or Kde3.5 :D ).

     

    You will just have to learn to like Xfce for now I think until the Kde team pluck up enough courage to admit their own mistakes.

  2. That is interesting my "Server Flags" section doesn't contain such an option, only these.

     

    Option "allowmouseopenfail"

    Option "Xinerama" "0"

    Option "ignoreABI" "true"

     

    When I used XFdrake to generate a new xorg.conf it had no "Server Flags" section at all!

     

    Never mind I have it working (for now).

  3. hi all,

     

    i have just installed a hdd in my tower, installed pclinuxos 2009 and alls working ok,

     

    the problem is when i boot into my mandriva i cannot add pclos as a boot option in my grub bootloader,

    i've tried everything that seems reasonable in mandriva to add it but all i get is error 13,

    i have booted into pclos but the sound and networking was not detected, so this is not an option

     

    the hdd in question is on my secondary ide, set to slave and on the middle connector,

    its showing as sdc (/media/sdc3) in my disk management

     

    i cannot add this drive to my primary ide, as i dual boot windows already and my windows hdd is currantly on my primary/slave

     

    my motherboard supports the F11 option (choose boot device), so i know that pclos is running ok,

    but i would prefer to have the boot option in grub

     

    any ideas

     

    ta

     

    Have you tried chainloading it?

    Put either:

     

    title Pclos
    root (hd2,2)
    chainloader +1

     

    or if that doesn't work then:

     

    title Pclos
    root (hd2,2)
    configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst

     

    Into the Mandriva menu.lst,

     

    Before you do it though check that Pclos is actually on the third partition of your third disk (if it is not then alter (hd2,2) accordingly).

  4. That is interesting scarecrow. I'll be honest here and say that my knowledge of 'evdev' is ever so slighlty more than zero, but not by much. I thought it had something to do with mouse/keyboard configurations, are you saying it could influence the graphical side of xorg as well? I just wonder if this is why I have had so many problems with Nvidia drivers since installing Cooker that I have never had before and don't have with other distributions - 2009 for example is quite OK. I do often use xorg.conf files saved from previous installs in new installations since that is often easier than trying to configure them yourself and has usually been 100% successful. Is that about to end?

     

    Incidentally, I didn't do that on the latest install.

  5. I have been having so many problems with my Cooker install just recently that I decided to start again with a fresh install of RC1. It has been the most difficult configuration of an instllation that I have had for a long time, and it looks as if the problems I am having with Nvidia are still there. This is what happened.

     

    I installed the Gnome version this time so as to avoid KDE4 which I don't like - did I tell you that before? :lol2: The install itself went OK, at least this time I got a graphical login (first time for months on Cooker) but only the 'nv' driver which just doesn't work with my screen setup. Normally I then install the Nvidia driver myself but this time I thought I would try it with the built in tools, so I fired up XFdrake (in a terminal login so that there was no running graphics to screw things up). Most distros these days would by now have mentioned that there was an additional driver available, but not Mandriva, in order to 'prompt' it I had to click on my graphics card (as if I were going to change it to something else) then select it again and only then did it mention the additional driver - not good. I elected to install it and it went away and downloaded all the required extra packages and then proceeded with the install. After a few seconds it came up with 'Install failed reverting to open source driver'.

     

    I then decided to use my normal method of installing Nvidia myself. This failed too. I booted back into the nv driver to get graphics back and then poked around in rpmdrake and found this. My kernel was 2.6.29-6.1.1, my kernel-devel and kernel-source files were 2.6.29-8.3.1 and my kernel-header files were 2.6.29-7.4.1. Is it any surprise that the poor old Nvidia driver can't install with this jumble! The point to bear in mind here is that I have had no input in this, it has entirely been the work of the installer + XFdrake, not me messing around and not updates either because at that stage I hadn't done any. I was able to sort this out by installing the correct kernel (which was available all the time), so why wasn't XFdrake able to do this? Again not good.

     

    I would normally put this down to it being a testing distro, but if it is at release candidate stage it should be capable of better than this.

     

    I have not had any kernel updates come up yet so I don't know if it will handle these by itself, it certainly didn't on my previous install, that was its biggest problem.

     

    The other problem that I had with the previous install was Virtualbox puel not running. I have managed to solve it on this install, but what a performance. Before I could even install it I had to trawl around the net for obscure python libraries that are not installed in Cooker, then to make the VM run I had to manually edit the makefile, then install vboxdrv over again. It doesn't sound much when you write it like that, but if you throw in all the searching I had to do to find the solution, again it was not easy.

     

    I know that if I reported this as a bug to Mandriva I would just be told that it was 'upstream' and therefore nothing to do with them, but when you release it there are going to be a whole lot of people that want the puel version running on Mandriva and they are not all going to be as patient as I am. I also had a lot of problems with AWN, which I won't bore you with because again that is 'upstream', but people are going to want to run that on 2009.1 as well.

     

    Overall I was not really impressed, this was almost back to the bad old days of Linux when you spent a day installing and a couple of months to get things working! That kind of performance is not acceptable any more.

     

    Having said that it now has Xfce running over Gnome and everything seems to be working, but it hasn't been easy. Both Mint and Pclos, which I have installed recently, were much easier to work with.

     

    EDIT. If the above wasn't bad enough I now find it doesn't produce any sounds - not a peep. Bloody pulseaudio again I presume :wall:

     

    EDIT2. OK I solved that one as well. It just depends which one of the 37 different installed volume controls you choose to work with.

  6. On my wife's laptop I have installed Mandriva 2008 and 2009. 2008 works perfectly, but every time you boot/reboot 2009 you get a scrambled graphics image that looks like it is being viewed through some particularly irritating filter. This does not occur up to and including the log in screen, but after that the screen is pixellated and horrible to look at. Normally you would expect this to be a problem with xorg.conf, but I know it isn't, because if I restart the X server then the screen returns to normal - now xorg hasn't changed because of an X server restart, but what you see has, so wihih?

     

    Since 2008 is perfect, I tried copying xorg.conf from there to 2009, but it makes no difference. I can't think of a way around this at the moment, can you?

     

    Incidentally, it is an ATI graphics card using the fglrx driver, and I have tried 'aticonfig --initial --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf' and that doesn't make any difference either.

     

    Any ideas?

  7. midday is right, when you get to the pin entry you just make it up. 1234 is good (but not 0000). From then on you just fill in any required data. I am writing this from memory so it may not be totally accurate, but I think it offers you the choice of one or two providers none of which are ever any use so you look for an option to 'add provider' or something like that. This will ask you for username, password, and apn (if you don't know those you do have a problem!). From then on it will look for a provider based on the data you have entered and if it finds one it will offer to connect to it. For later connections you just click on the tray icon and select 'connect ppp0'.

     

    Your problem comes if you have more than one provider, because it will only remember one set of connection info. Other distros have got around this by asking you to provide a name for the connection (not just ppp0) then saving each set of connection info under the name you gave it (eg Connect Vodafone instead of Connect ppp0). It is way past time that Mandriva developed this functionality as well (saying that I haven't tested this in Cooker, maybe they already have?). Don't post to tell me about network profiles, I know about them and they are a complete disaster, mixing up network profiles into the boot process is nonsense, the boot process is slow enough as it is.

  8. LOL, I just couldn't let this one pass. viking777, you have consistently (i'm going to drop the word bashed as it is too vague) criticized the new desktop from day one and vowed never to use it! Now you reveal you have been using it all along. You've confused me now :huh: ;) I thought I could rely on your hatred for KDE4 to keep me warm on cold nights :lol2:

     

    Simple answer to that my friend, I haven't been using it all along. When a new version comes out (like 4.2) I read all the reports saying how good it is and I am open minded enough to give it a try, but up to date it has never failed to disappoint and I go back to Xfce or KDE3.

     

    Still I am glad I keep someone amused with my rants, they are kind of therapeutic, but I wouldn't like to think I was doing it entirely for my own amusement :D

  9. I agree with viking777, the problem with KDE 4.x is not so much the missing bits (which will eventually disappear) but the fact that they have made it very unintuitive and frustrating to use, it's not even in it self logical, it uses different ways to do the same things in different places, in other words, IMHO it's a usability nightmare.

    Yes I know it's possible to get used to everything, but I refuse to try to get used to an irrational desktop evironment, a desktop environment is supposed to help you make efficient use of your computer, ideally a perfect desktop environment should not require any time to be accustomed to by being completly logical and intuitive, not force you to almost do a training course for it's usage first.

     

    I think the KDE4.x developers got off the right track with KDE4.x creating a self-celebrating desktop, with the idea in mind that the user should spend more time playing around with the desktop environment than actually using real programs.

     

    Congratulations tux99 that is an excellent post and one with which I wholeheartedly agree. KDE4 is the Linux equivalent of Windows Vista, the software that nobody wants because it just doesn't work - and it never will because it seems to have been designed by 10 year olds who only value form over function. {BBI}Nexus{BBI} says that it has been bashed for stability - well not by me- I have run every single version that has been released from day 1 till now and I have never had it crash, ever. But that doesn't matter because, as you said, it is so irrational, in fact it is a disgrace to the Linux name. I have got to be honest with you, I have an almost fundamental hatred of this DE. The reason for that is exactly as I posted above, they know how to produce a world beating DE, they have done it in KDE3, but they persist with this crap which is eventually going to be consigned to the dustbin of history amongst the other also ran's like Vista and ME.

     

    :zombie:

  10. I installed it yesterday to replace Opensuse which I don't like much. I need a KDE based distro as they seem to be the only ones that the BBC IPlayer download service will work with. It works with Opensuse and Pclinux but won't work on any of my Xfce/Gnome based distros.

     

    It has two very major advantages over Suse, the first is that they have made the decision to stick with KDE 3.5.10 as the default DE instead of going with KDE4. I haven't set up a KDE3 distro for a while now (my Suse desktop was KDE4.2). It hits you straight away how wonderful it is compared to that dreadful 4 thing. Everything works, is easy to set up, easy to use, fully functional and looks good. In other words the diametric opposite of KDE4.

     

    The other advantage of the distro for me is that they use Synaptic as a package manager. Yast as a whole is pretty good, but the package manager part of it is terrible, Synaptic is superior in every respect, also incidentally superior to rpmdrake (speed). They are using a slightly out of date version but even with that it is a joy to use again, same goes for KDE3.

  11. Hey John Good to hear form you again.

     

    I think I get what you are saying which is that you have to install nvidia every time, you do it via the 'nv' driver I do it direct from the terminal - no real difference there. Thing is though dkms is supposed to take care of this automatically, but it isn't on Cooker and hasn't been for a long time. Not only is it not taking care of Nvidia but it is not taking care of vbox either, ie it is constantly failing to do anything.

     

    But here is the latest. This morning I had a working system with the kernel-desktop586-2.6.29-0.rc7.4.1mnb-1-1mnb2 (except for vbox). I went away to another distro then came back and kernel-desktop586-2.6.29-0.rc7.4.1mnb-1-1mnb2 is useless. No compositing, no window borders, window tweaks menu inaccessible - just useless.

     

    So, I reboot into kernel-desktop586-2.6.28-2mnb-1-1mnb2, which I have been using for ages, and what happens - no graphics! This kernel (apart from vbox) has been working perfectly up till now, I haven't altered anything in it but now I have to reinstall the Nvidia drivers yet again - WIHIH??

     

    At the present moment in time Mandriva Cooker has become so unstable it is virtually unusable, it is even worse than Opensuse and that is saying something. I have stopped using Mandriva as my default distro these days because of this instability which seems to be creeping into 2009 as well. I would love for it to work properly again (2008.1 was the best - it broke my heart to uninstall that) but 2009 doesn't deliver any more. I will stick with it, but only in a secondary role, it is no longer good enough to be a first choice distro. Sad but true.

     

    EDIT. I open it up today (2.6.28 kernel), do a urpmi auto-update and it threatens to remove the whole of xfce4 due to various unsatisfied dependencies. I am not going to let it do it of course, but it is just an illustration of how bad things have got right now. I go back into the 2.6.29 kernel and the graphics have gone completely - again! Then whilst I am posting this the Mandriva bug report tool pops up to tell me that mdkapplet has crashed and would I report a bug. When I try to do that I get:

     

    The requested URL's length exceeds the capacity limit for this server
    .

     

    See what I mean?

  12. Thanks Ken - I just picked that up myself. However - yet again it failed to install properly. This has happened on every kernel update that I have done since since I first installed Cooker I think (my memory is not that good!). In Cooker I don't mind because it is a testing distro, but the worrying thing is that the last time I did a kernel update on 2009 it happened with that as well.

     

    The sequence of events is this:

     

    Kernel update shows up in urpmi. I specifically checked this time and it included the kernel-desktop-devel files.

     

    I update and all proceeds normally.

     

    I reboot and I am in a shell - always.

     

    I now know that the reason I am in a shell is that the kernel-devel files have not been installed - I install them with urpmi from the shell and reboot.

     

    I am back in the shell. This time the reason is that the Nvidia drivers have not been installed.

     

    I install an Nvidia driver myself (I keep the package in my home folder now as this occurs so often) reboot and at last I have a desktop.

     

    That is the Nvidia side of things. The Virtualbox side of things I have never got working. The boot process always gets interrupted for about 30 seconds whilst the dkms module attempts to install vboxdrv, but it always gives up and fails. It is exactly the same from a terminal

     

    Stopping VirtualBox kernel module							   [  OK  ]
    Recompiling VirtualBox kernel module							[FAILED]

     

    The rest of the story is in this post here: https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=80724

     

    It has certainly been like this for the last three kernels, probably longer. It isn't a great deal for me, I don't use Vbox all that much and I can just run it from another distro if I want it, but if 2009.1 is supposed to be at the RC stage, I think it is a pretty fundamental problem to still have - it doesn't bother me, but it will bother other people.

  13. Scoonma, sorry it has taken me so long to reply to this post. I log on to MandrivaUsers.org every day and use the 'view new posts' link, but it didn't show up. I do wish they had a 'view your posts' link like many other forums but they don't so I have only just found your question.

     

    Even now I am finding difficulty answering it.

     

    rpm -qa | grep kernel-source
    kernel-source-2.6.28-2mnb-1-1mnb2
    kernel-source-2.6.29-0.rc5.1mnb-1-1mnb2

     

    So you see it is installed. But:

     

    urpmq --sources kernel-source-2.6.29-0.rc5.1mnb-1-1mnb2
    No package named kernel-source-2.6.29-0.rc5.1mnb-1-1mnb2

     

    Says otherwise?????

     

    All my main sources seem to consist of this:

     

    http://api.mandriva.com/mirrors/basic.cooker.i586.list

     

    and my plf sources of this:

     

    http://plf.zarb.org/mirrors/cooker.i586.list

     

    It must be in there somewhere, but I don't know where. I am sure there is some clever command line way to ascertain where it came from but it is not obvious to me.

  14. One word of warning here alanman. I have just done that update and unfortunately it didn't include the kernel-devel files for the -19 kernel, with the result that dkms can do nothing and drops you into a shell. You will then have to use urpmi to download the kernel-devel file for that kernel and reboot before anything will work.

  15. Yeah, using "set" for (environment) variables is quite common in shells other than bash.

    Guess it should be this way:

     

    set -x PATH $PATH:/opt

     

    scoonma, since you are the one who told me about this (and I thank you again) it seems pretty churlish of me to go correcting you, so I apologise in advance. But I tried your command and it didn't work, a little bit of digging and I found the answer. This is what you need (in the fish shell anyway):

     

    set PATH[7] /opt

     

    This command will set /opt as the 7th entry in your environment variable PATH.

     

    It does seem to be a lot easier than the 'export' command in bash.

  16. Thanks people.

     

    I was aware of the MCC and rpm routes, my question was specificaly related to urpmi/f/q.

     

    It looks as if that question has been answered and I think the answer is 'no'. That is why I can't find any information about it despite a lot of searching.

     

    Strange though isn't it, you would think there would be such an option.

  17. Better use gksudo, not gksu.

    The situation is explained here: http://linuxgator.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=1563

     

    That is an interesting post indeed, although I would have to read it more than once to take it all in. The only problem with it is that it isn't true. I am using a buntu base distro to post this (Linux Mint) and if I run:

     

    gksu thunar

     

    or

     

    gksudo thunar

     

    the result is exactly the same in both cases - I get a root instance of thunar. I do not get any warnings at all. (except the one that says 'be careful you are running this as root')

  18. The words 'enjoy' and 'KDE4' don't belong in the same sentence unless you are a masochist :D

     

    I have 4.2 running on Suse 11.1 and it is even worse than 4.1 and I didn't think that was possible. My opinion is that the KDE team have sacked all the developers that worked on the wonderful 3.5.10 and replaced them with redundant corporate bankers because they are cheaper to employ.

     

    Thank the Lord for Xfce.

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