scarecrow

Please type "groups" first as plain user and then as root, and pass the output here.

I'm sorry, but you are wrong. There is no working automated way to install the proper driver for the videocard. You GOT to know if your videocard is supported by the regular, or the legacy driver ( http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/185.18.29/README/appendix-a.html ) and act accordingly.

cat /etc/fstab and paste the output here, please.

You can --force the rpm to install, as suggested. To see what happens, run as root in a console sane-find-scanner I can also suggest Vuescan (www.hamrick.com), which is a wonderful commercial application, and apparently it supports V300 (as well as most digicam RAW image formats). You can test it as long as you like, but the output will be watermarked. The pricetag is rather steep, but if you want the scanner for serious usage then (IMHO) it's moÏe than justified.

Surely enough the reason you cannot boot normally is not the failure of the sound server. The reason is different. For fixing the sound issue, run "alsaconf" in a root console.

Actually it is not easy at all to use Cooker/Mandriva alpha with PLF. Same goes for any release which has "stable" and "development" branches. Many binaries that are present in the regular PLF repos are missing from the cooker PLF ones, and in general the whole cooker PLF is a mess- you can find in there packages 4+ years old, which are unlikely to work. Anyway, this is natural: PLF is an unofficial repo, and rather unlikely to be maintained properly- more so for the "unstable" branch. And, in any case, don't expect Mandriva Alpha to last for long. the reason is... it's alpha. Sooner or later something will break, and you got to know how to fix it.

Tux Commander- although it needs gvfs for full functionality, and feature-wise it does not come anywhere close to krusader. Also pcmanfm- although this one has a sigle pane ui, not "orthodox". IMHO you should use krusader- there is no other graphical filemanager that offers its functionality.

You don't need kernel-devel to build the nvidia driver. kernel-headers is just enough. Do you probably use the server kernel image? (give the output of "uname -a") Under that kernel, the prorietary nvidia driver won't build- you need to boot the desktop kernel, or some other one- just not the kernel-server. PS: Reinstalling for such common issues is always a bad idea under Linux- or at best time not well spent.

Suspend and hibernation is done using three different methods: the kernel pm_suspend and pm_hibernate (least reliable, but also simplest- if it's working then there's no need to look further), uswsusp (useprspace utils, probably needs rebuilding the ramdisk) and tuxonice (most sophisticated, but it needs a kernel rebuild). Do you know which method is used for suspending? On my current laptop pm_suspend works perfectly right out of the box, while on the older one I had to use tuxonice (...and none of them was a Thinkpad).

Thanks to jkerr for saving me typing a few chars more. Actually, the main advantage of installing Mandriva with the boot.iso is that it allows you almost full control over what you install. You want a no-gui server? No problem, tick a couple of boxes, you have it. Want KDE? Same procedure. Want a minimal Fluxbox/LXDE desktop? Two clicks, and there you go. The only "minus" is that you need a working net pipe to install from boot.iso. For me, it's a non-issue, as I generally install Mandriva under VirtualBox/VMware, where the virtual network interface is working without any fuss, but I can't tell if networking is working with boot.iso when you are on wifi, and using a peculiar wlan interface, which requires ndiswrapper, and/or firmware uploading.

Indeed, a netinstall is the most reasonable way to test cooker. Actually I am using the boot.iso image to install even stable Mandriva releases.

It's rfather natural: All cheap laptops are currently made in China, buy two or three major manufacturers. Even my Jap/Corean LG E210 subnotebook, is 100% made in China- not Corea.

The binaries at Gnome-Look.org are generic ones, which expect to find configuration files and other binaries to trigger at very specific places. But since the specs of oendesktop.org do not cover every app and every distro, chances are that either you will do some damage installing stuff from there, or it will simply not work properly. But since 95%+ of the stuff there is prepackaged for your distro (either in official, or unofficial repositories) there should be no worries.

First run iwconfig, to get sure wlan0 is an active interface. Then the command suggested by ianw1974.

You can choose either KDM or GDM. On KDM, simply disable autologin. If you switch to GDM, then delete the .dmrc file first, else it won't work properly. And, you should not install anything from gnome-look.org - mixing RPM packages is the safest way to break your system. GDM is easily available via URPMI.

If I recall well, the only font Google-Earth wants explicitly is ttf-bitstream-vera. Is it installed? (I guess yes, as it's a very common font).

"qtconfig" as plain user? If you are mainly using GNOME/GTK apps, pick "gtk+" as qt UI. Fonts are also configurable from there.

No, of course not. "foo" has to be replaced by the actual package name, and "%PATH/TO/RPMS%" with "/home/Paulkruger/rpms/" or whatever that bloody path is.

True... but the unlicensed rar version never stops working. It's just that your rar packages are unsigned/made by unlicensed, which may not worry many people. Other than that, CLI rar for Linux does not have ANY other restriction.

# rpm -iF foo.rpm This will likely bring some dependency issues, but you can fix it afterwards. Or, # rpm -Uvh %PATH/TO/RPMS% to install all rpm packages inside a directory.

America is a continent, not a country. Or maybe I'm missing something?

I had this issue once, and it was the mainboard the one to blame. Anyway, I don't think anyone will point you to the trouble source with any degree of accuracy.

Comment or delete the ENTIRE line on fstab that refers to your CD-ROM drive. The only case you will need such an entry is a few windows apps you will run via WINE.

99.9% this is a hardware issue. A server is typically a system with no graphical environment- so a "Kubuntu server" is some sort of a paradox.

I don't think you can use something like "iocharset=blah" for an "auto" filesystem. Could you repair your fstab, or completely remove that entry? (for the CD-ROM drive). It's not needed, and it can only lead to trouble.