scarecrow

Mandrake's K3B uses libmad for MP3 decoding, via the program plugin (libmad is a requirement for installing k3b* and libk3b*). libmad is fast and uses 24-bit decoding, but has problems with corrupt MP3 headers and cluttered ID3 v.2 tags, where for instance images/covers are stored. What is that FC3? Gimme a hint... Oh yes, now I remember, it's that distro which doesn't support anything MP3 related out of the box, unless you use unofficial repositories (MDK doesn't need PLF in for most of the MP3 stuff). Mihaj Maties explains in detail in the K3B website how to make Fedora sort-of-working with K3B, pay a visit...

XMMS does not playback mpeg per se, unless you have installed mplayer, the xmms-mplayer wrapper and (for many video formats) the mplayer codecs package. Since most "codecs" distro packages, including Mandrake's, are more or less crippled, I suggest getting the initial package from http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/dload.html and deflating it at the place mplayer wants it.

Tried the lion's mouth? http://download.openoffice.org/680/index.html

Ubuntu is slightly silly a name as well, and IMO it has not improved Debian at all, as the initial intention was. Rebuilding a lot of KDE modules just to get MP3 support is definitely NOT a "Debian improvement"... I could use Linux from scratch and get to the same result instead.

Mandrake has a future, cause eyecandy and ease of use is all that counts in the market. Of course the new name is slightly silly, and 10.2/2005 limited a bughouse deluxe, but it ain't easy to persuade a noob jumping onto a serious distro (Slack, or Arch for bleeding edge... even Ubuntu might be a tad too cryptic for most of them).

Wrong urpmi repos- fix them.

Does it allow you login at single user mode when you boot, or failsafe mode, so you can change the password?

For KDE 3.3.X just type on the Konqueror or Krusader address bar "smb://thismachine" and here you go... the samba daemon does not need to be running.

Is it 8169 or 8139? For 8139 the module which must be loaded at system startup (or via "modprobe") is "8139too" while for 8169 it is "r8169". If you are running a new 2.6.X series kernel and udev/hotplug are running then the module should be automatically loaded, at least the 8169 one- the one for 8139 might have to be inserted by hand.

Same problem here (Acer Travelmate 291 laptop) either on Mandy-any version or Arch Linux 0.7. It seems that this is a limitation of the "ltmodem" driver, so far I haven't found a workaround.

Either run the x-server configuration in Mandrake Control Center ("mcc" as root under console mode), or alternatively "xorgconfig" as root again. It would be helpful if you attached here your /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Framebuffer is just eyecandy when no X-server is running. Failsafe is single user mode (in Mandy you don't have to insert the root password). Most services are not running in that mode, and only the basic kernel modules are loaded.

Are you using 10.2 beta and/or 2.6.10 kernel?

Like crap- at least for the time being. K3B is ages better.

Edit your .bash_profile and add to the PATH the j2sdk /bin directory. Then re-login and it should work.

NEC 3520 is about the best drive on the market currently- mainly regarding burning reliability.

Which kernel version do you use?

Why not "sudo nano /etc/fstab" (or whatever text editor you like...) Simply change there the windows partition filesystem from "ntfs" to "vfat", set your mount options and reboot...

Try kernel 2.6.10 combined with udev, dbus and hal... Everything is done much more easily, without having to touch udev.rules at all.

Yeah, excluding the insignificant fact that Azureus is several light years ahead regarding everything, they are "about equal"... Of course it needs a gutsy system (can eat up to 128MB of RAM).

Don't use kernel RPM's from Cooker. They are compiled using a different gcc version than your system, and that spells trouble. But you can get the 2.6.10 .src.rpm package, and compile the kernel yourself (you will also need the initscripts package): rpm --rebuild kernel*.src.rpm (it surely will take quite some time to finish). The built packages can be found at /usr/src/RPM/RPMS/somewhere (depending on your system architecture). All that said, currently all 2.6.10 kernels from Cooker I've tried (on Mandy 10.2) are at the very best problematic.

Kernel 2.6.8 which comes with 10.1 is a mess... suggesting using some 2.6.7 from contrib or rolling 2.6.10 yourself. Most K3B problems are kernel related. "Fast and stable" is the definition of Slackware, which ain't terribly noob friendly, though.

Most "major" distros use heavily patched kernels, for the sake of ease of use... so "vanilla" is faraway, and more than that building and using a vanilla kernel on MDK/SuSE/RH/whatever popular usually leads to problems. AFAIK Slackware uses vanilla kernels, and 10.1 is simply gorgeous- so you could give it a try. My fav currently is Arch Linux, which with ome audacity can be labelled "Slackware on steroids". Regards.

smb://winmachine/blahblah under Konqueror or Krusader, and all is fine, if you are using KDE 3.3+ samba daemon is not needed to be running at all, nor is something like smb4k or Network Neighborhood. Works equally well under XFCE 4.2, if you have enabled XFCE running the KDE services. No idea about Gnome, I don't use it at all (gstreamer excluded).

"ln -s /usr/src/linux-2.4.10.SuSE linux" (for example) is the typical symlink you can create to the sources matching the currently running kernel.