tux99

I guess that can be convenient, but mounting the partition of some other distro release to edit the grub config isn't a lot of hassle either given that it's needed only very rarely. I'd be concerned though, that some newly installed distro overwrites files in /boot required by one of the other installed distros.

True, that's why I'm of the opinon that the less partitions you have, the better it is (the more flexibility you have). The only separation that's advantageous is keep the OS separate from your home+data. scarecrow, I don't quite get it why you say /boot is useful for playing with distros in parallel? I do that without /boot, what you need is another OS partition like I suggested in my first post. /boot used to be required when boot managers were incapable of handling large disks, but that's a thing of the past now (same as the need for swap, unless you want to suspend to disk on a laptop).

With 4GB of RAM you don't need any swap at all, the "double the RAM" rule is no longer valid these days, that rule was made when a good Unix server had 64-128MB RAM... I run all my systems that have 2GB of RAM or more without any swap and none of them has ever run out of memory. root and usr separate also is not necessary, and 20GB for root and usr together are PLENTY. I would do: partition 1: / 20GB (root partition for the OS) partition 2: <empty> 20GB (empty partition for testing new distro releases) partition 3: /home rest of the disk (you can still put other files here too and you have more flexibility if you keep it all on one partition)

I don't want to be listed in the credits, I'm not doing it for the fame! ;) If I find some time I'll do the new stuff too, but I can't promise that I will have time for it... :(

Italian done (in the wiki). BTW, you should try 2010.0 KDE on your K48, it's very nice, much better than Lenny, KDE4 is finally becoming usable.

Oops, I guess I didn't read your first post accurately enough... Anyway should you ever do anything with a GUI, then I highly recommend Perl/TK, it's very easy to learn, especially for someone who knows Perl already.

Try Perl/TK, I have recently used it to write some small GUI app and I learned it in no time it's really easy. Here are some links to tutorials I used: http://www.bin-co.com/perl/perl_tk_tutorial/ http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-perltkmodule/index.html http://oreilly.com/catalog/mastperltk/chapter/ch15.html

Since many of my less computer literate friends just store their digital camera pics and camcorder recordings on their desktop or laptop hard disk (with no backup!), I though it could be useful writing an article on how to store these files safely for the long term, otherwise I fear there will be a whole generation of kids that don't have childhood pics since their parents lost all the photos when the hard disk died... :sad: How do you store your photos and personal files? Anyone keeps at least 2 or even 3 backups in diverse locations? Here's the article: Best Reliable Long-term Data Storage Media

Tiger-gg from mandrivauser.de has made a 64bit package based on my spec-file: http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?p=765498#765498

I'm glad 2010.0 solved it all for you. Merry Christmas to you too! (no NWO slogans from me!)

Yes there is a link to it on the same page I mentioned above below the source code link.

My guess would be broken videocard or defective memory/mobo/PSU. Try run memtest: http://www.linuxtech.net/tips+tricks/hw_diagnostics-pt1.html

What problems were you having with Mandriva 2010.0 kde4 live CD? It should certainly be able to play youtube videos, as it comes with flash preinstalled.

The Mandriva rpm package of the 9.11 Camelot official release of XBMC is now available to download from the following page: http://www.linuxtech.net/downloads/XBMC_media_center_mandriva_rpm.html If you were running a svn rpm until now, please uninstall it first, before installing this release version (use either the package manager GUI or rpm -e xbmc in a terminal as root to uninstall it).

I'm surprised Knoppix can see the on-board ethernet, as far as I knew lspci would show all PCI devices regardless whether Linux supports them with drivers or not, as lspci simply reads the info from the BIOS. In any case you could try a Mandriva 2010.0 One Live boot CD too as that boots up to a much more complete desktop environment than Knoppix without requiring installation. From that you could determine if the newer Mandriva supports your mobo better.

Pine still rules :)

post the outpost of rpm -qa|grep kernel and ls -la /boot and cat /boot/grub/menu.lst

For some reason your soundchip is not correctly recognized, the /dev devices would be generated automatically if it was recognized correctly. Check in /var/adm/messages and in the output of dmesg if there is any sound related error message.

at the grub boot screen try selecting the dvb kernel explicitly, it should be listed as the last option on the bottom.

Could be a pulseaudio issue (almost as bad as KDE4, but pulseaudio also works fine for the first time in 2010.0), do aplay -L and aplay -l and post the output here (aplay is in the alsa-utils rpm package). Also the command line tool play (part of the sox package) is better for testing audio than kaffeine, as it accesses sound drivers directly.

KDE4 is actually a lot better in 2010.0, I would actually call it usable and that comes from someone who has really disliked KDE4 up to know. Mind you I'm still using 2008.1 myself on my main desktop PC, I only have 2010.0 installed on my test PC for now. Give Mandriva 2010.0 KDE a try, you might like it. If not, there is someone who has packaged up KDE3.5 even for 2010.0! (I haven't tried it, so don't know how well it works): http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?t=120735 I generally agree with your observations about drivers and stuff going stale fast, but that is the price to pay for the fast evolution of Linux (that doesn't mean you have to always upgrade, but of course it makes finding compatible hardware harder, when you buy new hardware and want to use it with older distro releases). Edit: I would never recommend an upgrade always a clean re-install especially when jumping several releases. Hopefully you keep your /home and data in separate partitions from the OS partition, then it should be fairly straightforward.

I just checked, unfortunately CONFIG_DVB_USB_DIBUSB_MB_FAULTY is not set, at least not with the 2.6.31.5-desktop586-1mnb kernel of Mandriva 2010.0. You will have to build a customized kernel or ask Mandriva to enable this kernel feature in the next update.

That is possible as the G41 is fairly recent while 2008.1 is 2 years old now. You can't just update the drivers as with Linux they are all part of the kernel (well you could get a newer alsa sound driver but that means compiling from source), you could update the kernel, the newest kernel available for 2008.1 in the Mandriva repos is 2.6.26.5 (in the contrib/backports repository), don't know if that one is new enough for the G41, it might be. Why are you still keeping 2008.1? Is it because of KDE3.5? If yes, KDE3.5 still works well in 2009.1, I have it running fine, see this thread: https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?/topic/83894-mandriva-2009-1-with-kde-3-5-10-how-to/

I think that's normal, if I look at the user agent strings in my web server log I see for example: "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; nl; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091102 Firefox/3.5.5" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.8) Gecko/2009032802 Mandriva/1.9.0.8-1mdv2009.1 (2009.1) Firefox/3.0.8" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.4) Gecko/20091105 Gentoo Firefox/3.5.4" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.4) Gecko/20091030 Pardus/2009 Firefox/3.5.4"

Yes it looks like the ethernet controller is dead, as it should always show up in lspci regardless if Linux has a driver for it or not. Foxconn mobos are well known for being POS (as you say), I generally stick to Gigabyte, although Asus and Zotac make good boards too (but not all of their boards are good). Some MSI boards are good too.