adamw

It already is, if your mirror is synced - the broken update has been removed from the repositories. Just make sure there's no 'timezone' package in the update list before going ahead.

An update to fix this regression should hit very soon (it's already in /main/testing). Sorry for the screw up :(

kmilo is actually installed in a default KDE install on all systems. (Many desktops have multimedia keyboards these days). The bug doesn't affect all systems, only some where a keycode is incorrectly interpreted (IIRC what's actually happening is the system thinks the 'Volume Down' key is being held down permanently).

Yep, that's a fair point. I just tend to try and use currently maintained software out of principle.

If your card is working fine for everything you need it for, no, don't put yourself to the trouble. We'll provide that driver version in /backports soon (waiting on a bug fix for the udev package before doing it), but generally speaking I don't advise upgrading the NVIDIA package unless you have a specific reason to: you have a card that's only supported by the new version, or you're suffering from a bug that may be fixed by the new version.

ramfree17: hmm, from poking through drakconnect code, it *should* do exactly what you want it to do - it should have said "These packages can be found in Mandriva Linux One, Mandriva Linux Powerpack, or in the official non-free package repository". Did it not? Can you show a screenshot (or, even better, screencast) of exactly what it *does* say? Thanks!

AussieJohn: huh, dunno why we left it at that point. Maybe it was one of the times when I got really busy and couldn't come back to this forum. Anyhoo, all you need to do is edit /etc/X11/imwheel/startup.conf to look like this: IMWHEEL_START=1 IMWHEEL_PARAMS="-k --rc /etc/X11/imwheel/imwheelrc.MX500" and you should be good. If you give me the USB ID of the mouse (which you can get from 'lsusb' ) I can make sure it'll work in future releases. arctic: the problem is that that's one of the classic situations where the simulation *is* the process: the only reliable way to know if an upgrade is going to work correctly is to do an upgrade. :) When we find out about a problem with doing an upgrade, we fix it; this is usually actually easier than trying to write something to warn you there's going to be a problem. The only problems that are left are the ones we didn't *know* about - the ones no-one found before release - so obviously we can't warn you that they're going to happen... ramfree17: I'll see if we can improve that message.

This is in Cooker already. It will be backported to 2008 Spring (and probably 2008), but not yet, as first we want to fix a udev bug relating to the automatic loading of video card driver modules - if we don't fix that first, it'd be possible for some people to experience problems related to the backport.

The procedure is: * Enable the official repositories * Run XFdrake / drakx11 (same thing) * Re-select your card group (which will likely be GeForce FX to GeForce 8800) * It will ask if you want to use the proprietary driver * Say yes * Quit the tool * Reboot or restart X * Profit! :) Note that if you use the One or Powerpack editions, the proprietary driver will be used right out of the box, you don't have to do anything. Free doesn't use the proprietary driver because, well, it's not Free (hence the need to enable the official repositories before you can set it up).

John, did we go through your thumb button thing together? I don't recall. Do point me at the thread if we did...thanks. ramfree: we *do* include prism54 . However, it needs non-free firmware from the prism54-firmware package, which is not included in Free (because it's, well, not Free). It's in the public non-free repo, though, and included on One and Powerpack.

Great, glad it worked (in the end) :)

John: it's a known bug in 2008 Spring, actually, lots of people see it. Errata entry is: http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2008.1_Errata#..._at_0.25_in_KDE

theYinYeti: the only problem with that is that it hasn't had security updates for several years, so is likely subject to all sorts of vulns. Dillo is in the same state, but has only been so since Feb 2007, so probably less of a problem. links is actively maintained.

yeah, you don't have the backports bug, you have something else. You can upgrade to Spring, by all means. Or it should still be fixable. I forget to check one important thing, what kernel you're running - can you run: uname -r and paste the result? Thanks.

What exactly is failing during boot?

The DE, though, is only part of the equation. Actually, modern DEs in themselves don't eat so much RAM (though an appreciable amount for a 128MB machine). Bigger culprits are commonly used apps like Firefox (which *swallows* memory), mail clients, OpenOffice.org etc. I agree that you would be perfectly fine with a standard install on the 512MB machine. My system's currently using 432MB out of my 1.5GB, and I'm running gimmie (which leaks memory like a sieve) and Evolution with several gigantic IMAP boxes open, or else it'd be substantially less. For the 128MB machine, go with a light desktop like IceWM, Rox, EDE or something along those lines. But also look at light apps. Look at basic browsers like Kazehakase, Dillo and even links-graphic . For mail look at claws-mail or even go to an old-skool console client. Try and do all the editing you can in a simple text editor, rather than an office app. If you need an office app, go for something lighter than OO.o. Same for all areas generally - look for lighter weight alternatives to the fairly heavy apps most commonly used on systems with more resources. If you take a super-light desktop but then load Thunderbird, Firefox and OpenOffice.org onto it, things are still going to crawl.

Well, I'd say people are being a bit too gloomy... Someone mentions Ubuntuforums. Well, they didn't *have* a Mandriva forum until two weeks ago, so that's progress. It was added on request by the Ubuntuforums population, BTW, not me :). The volume of Mandriva-related posts there has increased appreciably over the last year or so, and the tone of those posts has got a lot more favourable towards MDV. The same pattern is visible everywhere. I probably track this closer than anyone else, as it's my job. If you look at the general 'tone' of the Mandriva-related comments you get on, say, OS News, Slashdot, Digg, Distrowatch - general places like that - they've been getting constantly more positive for a couple of years now. In 2006, you could expect a lot of people saying Mandriva wasn't free because of the Club, a lot of people who had genuine problems with MDV, a lot of heat about Gael, pokes at the artwork and Frenglish, and so on. These days, I haven't seen a post about MDV not being free for months. Even people who don't *use* MDV tend to be generally positive about it - they say they tried it out and it wasn't any better for them than what they were using but they think it looked like a fine distro, for instance. There's a lot more positive posts from MDV users. Look at posts about the latest releases - a lot of praise to MDV for going with KDE 3 and Firefox 2, people talk about things like /backports , the phone sync stuff, and so on. There's a lot more positive vibe about MDV than negative, which is great. I've noticed a lot more traffic in the official forums lately (it's taking me hours a day to get through the darn things, which is why I don't post here so much). Our Distrowatch HPD numbers, if you set any stock by those, have been rising constantly for the last year and a half, from a low of 600-700 up to the current status of 930. We came second in the distro popularity section in the latest Linux Journal 2008 Readers' Choice survey, somewhat to the surprise of many :) - http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10065 . Even the MDV financials are improving lately. I'd say things are actually improving appreciably and consistently at the moment, which is a nice position to be in. A lot of the issues raised in this thread are valid and important ones, but I'd say they're actually ones that are getting addressed, rather than the opposite.

It sounds like you did get affected by the bug you were talking about. You don't *have* to have backports repositories enabled, that's why it was such an annoying bug... Can you run this command: rpm -qa | grep nvidia and paste the output here? I'll probably know what to do then.

I love P.A., and they get crazy bonus points for a simultaneous Linux release. Yay.

That's right :)

Try loading the acpi-cpufreq module: modprobe acpi-cpufreq does that help?

It's likely just a mixer setting issue. Run: alsamixer -c0 and you should see a long set of volume controls for the card (identified as an ice1712) - if not, let us know. Play with the settings. Try and get them the same as under one of the distros that works okay.

You likely didn't have the -devel package installed. In Mandriva, library packages are split: the main package contains only the files needed to *run* applications which use the library. Files needed to *compile* against the library are in a separate -devel package.

You should only use packages from the correct repository for your version of Mandriva - so packages from the 2008.1 repository for 2008.1, from the 2008 repository for 2008, and so on. You will sometimes find an 'older' package in the correct repository - a package with a 2008.0 or 2007.1 extension in the 2008.1 repository, for instance. This is okay, it just means the package didn't actually need to be rebuilt during that development cycle. However, it's never right to use a package from a 2008 repository in 2008.1, or a package from a 2008.1 repository in 2008. As noted above, there's no reason you should be using Beryl these days. It's obsolete. Compiz and Beryl merged back together to produce Compiz Fusion. Both 2008 and 2008 Spring include Compiz Fusion, and if you want a later version than the one they shipped with, you can find it in the correct /backports repository.

There's no problem with your modules. There's only one actual hardware driver there, the correct one. All the others are just there to provide various ALSA features - the sequencer, OSS compatibility and so on. There's no conflict, and having them all loaded is normal. I would bet on it just being a case of a mixer setting needing to be changed.