tux99

I found there are 2 different versions available, the entry level AMD Geode based one and the mainstream Atom cpu based one:

eCAFÉ EC-800-H20G/S (Linux)

http://www.hercules.com/uk/ecafe/bdd/p/84/...-h20g-s-linux-/

eCAFÉ EC-900/H60G-IA (Linux)

http://www.hercules.com/uk/ecafe/bdd/p/92/...h60g-ia-linux-/

Are there any eCAFÉ users on mandrivausers.org?

I would be interested in reading some user experience reports about the eCAFÉ.

HERCULES 8" Mini-Netbook "eCafe"

German link: https://www.pearl.de/product.jsp?curr=DEM&a...amp;pdid=PX6588

AMD Geode LX800 cpu with 512MB RAM, 8" TFT Widescreen Display, 1024 × 600 Pixel, 1,8" 20 GB HDD, fanless, 770 Gramm, 225 x 165 x 35 mm, 2x USB2.0, 1x VGA (D-Sub), LAN, audio, in-built webcam, microphone and multi-cardreader for 199 Euros

Entry level specs, but not that bad for a small, very light, cheap netbook that can be taken anywhere without worrying too much about it getting lost or stolen.

Edit: found it in the UK too, with better spec (Atom cpu and 9" screen), but a bit more expensive (229 pounds)

http://www.cdiscount.co.uk/Computing/netbo...090-179799.html

[moved from Hardware by spinynorman]

AMD is giving away the same book as pdf too:

http://www.amd.com/virtualization

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_ty...for_Dummies.pdf

Also it's worth noting, that even if you do a "clean" KDE 3 install like this, you'll still get KDE 4 packages installed as dependencies when you install programs

That was already the case in 2009.0, the last 'pure' KDE3 version was 2008.1.

For me that's not a big issue because I choose KDE3 because I regard the window manager and the basic desktop environment as better than any alternatives, with regards to applications I use a mix of al sort of apps including many gnome/gtk apps.

Intel drivers have been bad even before the current problems, I'm currently temporarily using a Intel 945GC based mobo (with integrated Intel graphics) with a 3GHz Core2Duo and Mandriva 2008.1 with the standard included intel xorg drivers and when I play back a DVD in xine or mplayer I get very visible tearing during fast action scenes.

The intel driver seems to be incabaple of displaying a 50Hz PAL DVD smoothly on the attached LCD screen running at 60Hz.

This is an obvious driver issue as on a much older P4 2.5GHz (mobo died a few days ago) with an ancient Nvidia FX5200 attached to the same screen at the same frequency I never had such problems.

I notice that KDE 3 was MOSTLY in 2009.0 Contrib and thus those packages have been migrated to 2009.1 contrib.

 

BUT KDE 3's multimedia packages were in the 2009.0 MAIN delivery. They are not in the 2009.1 main delivery and seem to have been forgotten in the migration to contrib.

 

How do we fix that oversight?

I don't use 'artsd', in fact one of the first things I always do on a new install is disable the sound servers (artsd and pulseaudio) so I didn't notice that.

You might want to do a bug report for it at: http://qa.mandriva.com, create yourself an account and the go here:

https://qa.mandriva.com/enter_bug.cgi?produ...p;format=guided

Even though KDE3.5 is in contrib and unsupported on 2009.1, this is an obvious omission so they will probably still fix it.

2009 Spring again, using KDE3, and Firefox looks awful - really clunky toolbars and buttons. Under gnome it looks fiine. Is there a way I can configure the gtk stuff under KDE3?

Previously I used gtk-qt-engine but that doesn't seem to work any more...

It must be something specific to your setup as Firefox looks just fine on my 2009.1/KDE3.5 install.

As lexicon said, try it with a brand new user to see whether it's related to some user setting.

KDE4 got flushed

Maybe it wasn't a bug afterall... ;)

Sorry, couldn't resist.

if you chmod 777 the directory /usr/local/firefox then you will be able to update it as user within the program itself.

And open a huge can of security issues....

I absolutely wouldn't recommend a chmod 777 of your browser binaries!!

You might as well use Windows...

Apologies but I am not sure here why there is the need of a kernel, I was thinking I needed only the driver, ie aa package called

x11-driver-video-nvidia71xx and this is not there.

 

This is what I see in the current version of the driver...

This NVIDIA driver should be used with GeForce 6 and later cards, including the associated Quadro cards. For older cards, the packages x11-driver-video-nvidia96xx and x11-driver-video-nvidia71xx should be used instead...

 

Confused :(

Nvidia and Ati binary drivers require several packages, one of them is the kernel modules I listed in my previous post.

You could open the bug with Mandriva as I suggested but I think Greg2 is right, the nvidia71xx is not compatible anymore with the latest xorg, there is likely nothing Mandriva can do about it apart from fixing the documentation.

You could get a second hand (usually very cheap, less than 10 Euros or Dollars) Nvidia FX5200 card, these are available for PCI and AGP, still well supported by the Nvidia driver (I know it because I have a FX5200 myself) and run fine on older PCs too, I have installed them successfully on ancient Pentium 3 machines, with Linux with no problems.

The FX5200 is quite a bit faster than your card too, so you will see a noticeable improvement too.

Else you will have to live with the opensource driver, or downgrade to 2009.0.

I think pmpatrick is right, those errors

/var/log/messages:May 3 17:51:01 beeker klogd: Buffer I/O error on device sdb6, logical block 77203464
/var/log/messages:May 3 17:51:01 beeker klogd: lost page write due to I/O error on sdb6

look like a kernel driver / libata issue and are very likely the cause of your issues.

I noticed your mobo has an onboard IDE connector, can you not connect the sdb disk there, or is it already in use for something else?

If it's already in use for your DVD drive, you could still connect it there dasy-chained (master/slave), while it's not ideal to have a DVD drive and a HDD on the same cable, it will still be much faster than the current situation.

Or you could buy an IDE<>SATA converter (dirt cheap on ebay) to plug sdb in one of the onboard SATA ports, something like this one:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/IDE-TO-SATA-100-133-...emZ220290745525

You might also want to report this as a bug to Mandriva: http://qa.mandriva.com

although given the issue, I doubt it will be fixed quickly, so you will still need one of the above workarounds.

It will be easiest for you if you wait and install Mandriva only once you have both HDDs installed in the laptop together.

You can do it the way you suggest too, but if you are not very experienced with Linux it could be difficult for you.

While there are no errors in the /var/log/messages output you posted, I find it weird that there are no entries for the initialisation of sdb in there, that looks very unusual to me.

Doea a 'zgrep sdb /var/log/messages*' give you any output at all?

The /proc/interrupts output doesn't show anything obviously wrong to me.

msec does periodical fs scans and anacron can launch cron jobs (for example a rebuild of locatedb) that you missed when the PC was shutdown, shortly after you boot it up.

Can you maybe also post the output of 'ps aux' run during one of the moments when the problem appears?

I guess Mandriva Free gets more software than Mandriva One.

 

And what kind of none-free software or drivers does Mandriva One have? Just things like flash, video drivers? Can I easily install those drivers in Mandriva by package manager?

 

How would you recommend me to install Mandriva?

If you are new to Mandriva I guess you are better off with Mandriva One as you get to test it from the live CD before even installing, and you get the Nvidia or Ati proprietary drivers and the Flash plugin all installed automatically.

Also downloading the CD takes much less time than downloading the DVD.

Once you have configured the online repositories all versions of Mandriva have access to the same packages so you can install the same software regardless which install CD or DVD you used.

I can only think of one situation where the Free DVD edition is better: if you have a slow or unreliable internet connection, as in that case you have all the software on DVD and don't need to access the repositories often (only for updates and non-free software).

Of course in that case you also need to get the DVD somehow, as with a slow connection downloading the DVD will take forever...

See also here for an overview of all available versions of 2009.1:

http://www.linuxtech.net/news/mandriva_lin...ing_is_out.html

I have a TNT2 card. I am using the free driver now but the screen is moved to the right and is not that nice :( It used to work with 2009.0 so I am really not sure what happened.

 

Thanks!

I don't know why you are not seeing the 71xx driver but it's still available for Mandriva 2009.1. make sure you have the non-free repository configured in drakrpm.

See here:

ftp://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/mandrake/of...n-free/release/

File: nvidia71xx-kernel-desktop-latest-71.86.09-1.20090326.1mdv2009.1.i586.rpm	  3 KB	  23/04/09	  20:39:00
File: nvidia71xx-kernel-desktop586-latest-71.86.09-1.20090326.1mdv2009.1.i586.rpm 	3 KB 	23/04/09 	20:39:00
File: nvidia71xx-kernel-server-latest-71.86.09-1.20090326.1mdv2009.1.i586.rpm 	3 KB 	23/04/09 	20:38:00

Edit: hmm, I just noticed those are just the virtual packages that are supposed to link to the latest version, but the actual latest version packages are not there, this seems like an oversight to me, maybe you should open a bug report with mandriva: http://qa.mandriva.com

can you also post the output of

cat /proc/interrupts

and of

grep sd /var/log/messages|grep kernel

(you need to run the last one as root)

Actually now Mandriva is at 5% (165 votes), 30 more and we overtake Suse for the 4th spot behind Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora! B)

This is now solved, for the solution see here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread....64#post16389164

Actually the poll is also on the front page (lower end of the left hand side column) of the LinuxJournal:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/

Definitely poor design, I have been asked to vote occasionally again when I only wanted to check the current status (and I'm on the same IP address and haven't restarted the browser, so all cookies are still the same...).

I dunno if it's me, but I don't seem to be able to vote? There's nothing to click, just results..... :unsure:

are you blocking cookies in your browser or on your proxy? Are you using a proxy shared with other people?

They might be allowing only one vote from each unique IP address in addition to tracking cookies.

The LinuxJournal is doing a distro poll, get your distro choice counted!

http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/which-...most-frequently

Edit:

If you are also a member of a non-english mandriva forum, please post about this poll there too, to increase awareness!

2nd edit:

If you don't get the option to vote with the above link, then go to the main page, the poll is in lower end of the left hand side column:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/

I have been trying unsuccessfully to get a Creative infra receiver (CIMR 100) connected to a serial port (/dev/ttyS0) + a Creative PC-DVD credit card sized remote to work with lircd on Mandriva but despite reading up countless how-to's, docs and forum posts all over the net (and trying out everything) i still don't have it working.

This remote is supposed to be well supported by lircd and allegedly easy to set up...

Does anyone have this IR receiver + remote working and is willing to share his/her configs?

I would need the contents of /etc/sysconfig/lircd and info on any related kernel modules you have loaded (lsmod|grep irc).

Many thanks in advance!

this is probably due to the new modular xorg 1.6, everything is modular in xorg now, so for some reason it hasn't loaded the correct module for your keyboard. I'm not sure how you can debug this but maybe have a look at the xorg logfile in /var/log/ and post the exact make/mode/spec of the laptop that is giving you problems.

As there are still many people who prefer KDE 3.5 as their default DE I thought it was important enough to summarize the various posts about this into a dedicated thread.

how to do a new 2009.1 install with KDE 3.5.10:

This is what I did:

- installed Mandriva 2009.1 from the Free dual arch ISO with LXDE as desktop environment

- added all repositories (official and plf) with http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/

- opened a root console

- typed: urpmi task-kde3

- after that, at the next login I had the choice of KDE at the gdm login screen and selecting this fired up the great beloved KDE 3.5.10 desktop!

https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtop...st&p=603444

how to do an upgrade to 2009.1 keeping your KDE 3.5 desktop:

Upgrading from previous releases

Please note that if you use the Free or Powerpack editions to do an upgrade install from a previous Mandriva Linux release, KDE 3 - if installed - will be replaced by KDE 4, and your personal KDE settings and customizations will be lost. If you do not want this to happen, we recommend you either use the installer's ability to add internet repositories prior to doing the upgrade, or do a network installation, or use the newly-introduced ability of Mandriva Online (the Mandriva update notification applet) to perform upgrades from one release to the next. Using any of these methods, the upgrade process will have KDE 3 packages available, and your upgraded Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring system will have KDE 3 and your personal settings preserved.

http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.1_Notes#U...evious_releases

[moved from Software by spinynorman]