Pzatch

I beleive you need to make new partitions for each install. Each install can share the /swap partition and sometimes the /home partition but I don't think you can place two distros on the same /partition. Each distro has a some what different package system and file order. So they can't work sharing the same place.

I can't see why linux can't be sold by anyone who wants to. To explain it a little further. If you think you can get a few clients to start using linux contact a few distro's and see what kind of reseller deal you could make. It's not like there are 1,000,000's of linux certified techs out there. I don't think they are going to be to picky about who resells their stuff. (As long as you don't have a bad Better Business Report) I can see a lot of offices switching to linux. Ask your doctor what software they use and see if linux has an equivalent. The same with your local lawyers office. Many small schools are looking to save money. All of these places will need a little retraining and hand holding. Basicly just showing them how to use OO, some few specialty apps and the new icons. Work that cost into the final price. Work in monthly security updates. The fact your local and available for a free phone call is a big advantage you have over the big guys. If you get a someone who is curious big still unsure. Offer to switch one of their old computers over to linux as a working demo. Most small places still own their equipment and prefer it to leasing so there is probobly one sitting in the back some place. They are probably still running 98 for this same reason. Let linux sell itself. It will after the first few crashes of that other OS. As for looking a little more pro when you do this. Its not hard to change the splash screens and backgrounds to reflect your companies name. Make it a small overlay in the corner of the origional splash screen and I don't think anyone from KDE, Gnome or Mandrake would mind much. Making new icons is easy. You can make all these changes and then rewrap it up into easy to install iso's. If one new reseller starts up in every city linux will explode on the local business market. Buisiness owner frequent the same places and clubs and they do tell each other about things. They help each other out alot. Saving a few thousand a year in software leasing and service calls really impresses them. Small local companies also love to help other small local companies. Selling linux is the one place being a computer geek is a real help.

CNR only works as well as it does because it only works in lindows. In a closed system with everything setup pretty much the same way for everyone. IE-partitions, files, libraries, and a single source. It makes it much simpler for the developers. As for Debian having more apps. Most are old and not updated as often as Mandrake. Mandrake was started as an offshoot of RH because RH was not compiling anything for i586 or i686. Everything was still only for i386 and its stability. Most things in RH still are only for i386. They are stable but not "cutting edge" or optimised for the new CPU's. Mandrake is one of the first distros running a 64bit system. Mandrake is geared more to the cutting edge and apps are updated often. Debian is geared for stability and apps are really only updated on an as needed basis. And then only if stability is reached.

Just out of curiosity what task did Xp smoke Mandrake on? And can we test it? If its for distributed computing it could be wholy dependent on the comunications card driver. The properly writen one for windows vs the hacked one for linux. And if thats the case then you can optimize Mandrake till the cows come home and never see a real proformance increase.

I have read on line ( so beleive it if you want) that M$ places a small portion of its partition table near the end of the drive. It then simply refuses to move this small bit of data itself during a defragment. Its placed there so that someone who tries to install linux can't take enough of the free space on the drive and if they do force it they remove that small data bit and screw up XP. Thats why everyone using XP needs to use a third party partition tool inorder to move that partition data to the front of the drive. Nice of M$ isn't it? As far as I know this has nothing to do with new 10.0 partitoning problems. Unless Mandrake tried to make their installer capable of moving this partition data like Partition Magic. This is what I've found online. If anyone know better please correct me. I try not to pass bad info about.

In your bios try changing the hard drive settings from auto the LBA. Then try getting inti Xp again. Its a known partitioning error. The numbers get a little off when Mandrake repartitions and writes the new partition data to the drive. You can leave the extra linux entries there for now. As for the video issue try running: xf86config from the commandline after logging in. Choose the genaric VESA driver for the video card instead of the nvidia one and make sure you use the correct monitor settings. This should get you to a GUI so you can then download the correct Nvidia drivers from Nvidia and install them.

Great. Keep us updated on anything odd that happens.

No problem. I just wasn't sure how much of a regular user you were. But since your quite comfortable with the risk then You definitely have it under total control.

Burning is WAY better in linux. There is a thread someplace on this site about making your own live distro from Mandrake. I don't think you'll need to do anything anymore than just use the Amd64 kernel.

Your best bet would be to either install 10.0 fresh and right overtop of 9.2. Or as I do and have a duel boot system. I put lilo on a floppy and use it to access 10.0 when I want. After the final is out I'll make it my primary system and use my old 9.2 as a back up untill I want to start testing the next Mandrake. Upgrades have always been quite flacky. They tend to miss installing some needed packages and leave a lot of stuff you'll never need behind taking up space. Either way it's your choice.

What type of Icons are they?

The driver for the Nvidia card whould be at the Nvidia site. They just love linux. Seriously, they do. Try for a text shut down and see if you can find out what is hanging up. Normally its something simple.

If the cdrom is still spinning then its more than likely getting a bad read. When this happens it looks just like a lock up. Either the cd is flawed or the cd drive is getting buggy.

Run the md5sums on those downloads first. You can only use the AMD64 on a AMD64 CPU. Try booting with the second disk then follow along. 10.0 had a little trouble with the first disk. Post back any errors.

Basicly its an effort to slow down Suse. I don't really think M$ needs a sales man whos best skill is breaking into NEW markets. What NEW markets does M$ have left to get into? Well everyone. It looks like its up to us to fill in. We'll just have to keep bad mouthing M$ and pointing out its flaws to every tech person we see. Show everyone your desktop. Thats the best feature for getting new home users interested. Then point out you have nothing but a good firewall running for defence. Sign all email with something about linux. Point out you don't have any extra spyware running and can't have any running. Point out that a normal teanager can't screw it up if they are not given the admin password. That makes parents think they have controle over the computers again. If they have little kids point them to http://dansguardian.org/ for a good content filter. There are so many good points about Linux I tend to get carried away sometimes.

If the screen background is red your logged in as root and you'll not have as many icons and things as normal. Make your self a user id and log into as that. The background will be the normal blue and you'll have more stuff on the desktop. What hardware are you running? Maybe you need more memory to speed things up a bit. How big is your swap partition?

I only assumed you didn't buy anything from America. I live here and can't find any. Well except for two or three very expensive ( very good also) stereo systems. I know I don't need to buy either of those since the one I have is still good enough and their price is stupidly high. But your right in that American laws need to move in the direction of europe more but I do beleive Europian laws could move a little our way also. Sort of a meeting in the middle. Best for all concerned. As for any distro leaving out cirtain libs in order to sell in the states. Well. redHat did it just for legal safety and people found ways of putting them back in. Which way perfectly legal by US law since the libs are free(not distributed by the distro) and the end user choose to put them in.

Gowatar The reason some engines don't make it to america is because we have higher EPA standards. Its easier for an American engine to be sent to the rest of the world than the rest of the worlds engines to be reworked for here. The other reason is racing and the culture associated with each type. There is not a whole lot of flat track or open road racing in the states but then again there isn't much nitro/alcohol drag racing in europe. There are small companies in America making 600+ cubic inch V8 engines. Not many of those in europe. As for the other stuff in your post. Its a nice opinion. As for a product having to comply with any nations laws or rules. I'm sorry but thats the way it is. If America makes something for export we have to abide by each importing nations rules and standards. Seriously a new .50$ transformer is killing the electronics industry? Thats all it takes to make something American/Europian compatable. Don't forget, Canada and Mexico work off the same power grid as America(USA) So actually the whole continent is the same consumer base. As for all this flap over drm or whatever the latest security measures being looked at is. They can only be implimented on a volunteer basis. Linux is a world wide product and can't be forced to do anything. I also will always have the option of downloading from someplace other than the US like I do now. If its hardware security your worried about, don't be. The rest of the world will ensure I have a steady supply of security free chips. Since you don't order anything electronic from America then you should not worry either. Its all good. Have a nice day. Please stop worrying so much. America is not out to get you. They can't take over the world for the very reasons you've already stated. So don't worry so much. In my personal opinion even if all cpu's in the states are locked up and closed the US government will find out that just as many hackers are overseas and untouchable. It will not last long.

Installing to an all Linux machine is fine. The problem with CE was it would mess with the partitioning a bit and even though the windows OS was still there it would not run. It looks like it only happened on systems were the partitions were changed and not just reformated. Changing the hard drive setting to LBA in the bios fixed everything for me.

You mean that that pop up is wrong!!!!??? I don't have any spyware on my system?? Dang, and here I've been trying like heck to get wine to install their helpfull spyware tracker software. Funny how they always insist I'm on M$. Do you think they might be lying just to get me to install something bad? Guess I can turn on that pop up blocker now.

I'd just like to see them make it as simple and current as Nvidia does.

You know its the simple things I forget. Or just never look into. Thanks.

Yeah, lately I've been running across allot of web sites that say I have spyware on my system. What can I do about this? Even though my prior statement was sort of tongue in check I would like to know too.

I'm not sure if this might help but I used to always get an eth0 failed everytime I booted up. It turned out to be a sinple problem. My cable modem, when turned on at the same time as my computer, would actually take longer to make the internet handshake than it took for my computer to ask for and accept an ip address from the cable modem. Therefor no address no connection. Have you tried turning on the ADSL modem a minute or so before booting the computer? Just a shot in the dark. Some IP's and modems only accept one MAC address. So you might not be able to use a second machine untill you get a router setup. That happened to me also. Call you IP if you suspect this problem. Once I got the modem to accept my router I got all four computers hooked up fine. Have you tried turning off the phone modem or uninstalling it when trying the ethernet card? Sometimes this causes small problems. Just a few ideas.

Just put lilo on the floppy instead of a special small kernel. That way you don't need a larger formated disk. The Mandrake Controle Center should have that option. If you need a repair disk Mandrake Move is probably the way to go.