Mandrake 10.0 Community Edition review

[Ixthusdan]

Note: nvidia solution

 

For the first time, I had to create a folder according to the readme! The driver would not load. If I modprobed, it worked, but it would never stay. I added the line to /etc/modules.conf, but it still would not load. I then added /dev/nvidia* to the tree and it worked!!! That's a new one.

[thinkliberty]

Mandrake 10 is (hopefully) still a release candidate.

 

1) Nvidia drivers need to be modprobed with every boot. I know I can fix it, but why should I have to?

2) Internet is slow. And slow. Did I say slow?

3) Network configuration is not as nice as the past.

4) Font program in mcc is not as nice as the previous release. In both 3 and 4, they have opted for streamlining and elimenated some useful function in the tools.

5) The auto mouse feature is a dawg. I spell it that way so as to not insult real dogs! My scroll wheel was sensative to the horizontal anywhere on the page, but I had to be on top of the verticle in order for it to work. That is backwards. Getting it to go to ps/2 mouse was difficult; it wanted to hang on to the new auto mouse thing.

 

Good stuff?

1) new kde gui is excellent, especially the transparent kicker.

2) I like the new menu lay-out.

3) It seems to boot faster and shut down faster, although I would rather that it boot correctly into x.

 

I'll go back to 9.2 if I can't speed up the internet.

For me the 10 kernel was what was causing my problems. a ww.kernel.org kernel fixed all these issues for me.

[Steve Scrimpshire]

Well, I'm not afraid of giving constructive criticism. This part:

The nvidia driver still doesn't allow hardware overlays on the second head, not even in a selectable way so that it doesn't work on the first head anymore. This means there is no way around 'tearing' on the second head, and for me this means I have to crawl under my desk each time I want to use my home cinema projector and swap cables - instead of using some dual monitor setup. Nvidia, nothing you can do about this??

 

is very 'technical'. Can you possibly clarify this? I don't even know what hardware overlays are or what they do.

 

Also, minor spelling error in the section where you mention your mouse:

The only minor grip I have is that the button...

 

Should be 'gripe'

All in all, a great article. I wish I could write as well as you and have a site that good.

Edited March 16, 2004 by Steve Scrimpshire

[Darkelve]

Maybe a picture of your dual monitor system would come in handy also?

[aRTee]

Ix, I got nvidia to start on each boot fine when still using the standard kernel - but it wouldn't give me the use of all my ram (896MB instead of 1024).

 

Switching to the 4GB-up kernel forced me to reinstall the nvidia driver, but on each subsequent boot it wouldn't run.

Found out the nvidia module didn't get loaded, loading by hand and doing telinit 3 telinit 5 worked fine.

 

The new file to load modules is /etc/modprobe.preload instead of /etc/modules, so I stuck 'nvidia' in there and all is well.

 

 

Steve!!!! Thanks man, will correct that spelling error first thing!!

Finally someone who really answered my opening post.

 

About the overlay thing, I know it is very technical, for me the point was that this bugs me, and I had to say something -- I had email discussions about it with an Nvidia driverguy, who said it might be fixed in some subsequent release. My (only?) way of increasing the heat.... :P

 

 

As it stands, I don't have a dual monitor setup, I use only one connector of the graphics card, since the mechanism necessary to create smooth video (called overlay - just a name) is only available on the first connector that the graphics board sees a monitor on. So the second connector is not of any use to me, I would like to use it for video playback, but that just doesn't work properly.

So this means I have to crawl under my desk to exchange vga cables each time I want to watch a movie on the projector (and once again when the movie is done)....

 

I will see if I can word things better in the article, does the above paragraph make things clearer?

 

 

Steve, why would you wish 'a site as good as mine'? Thanks a lot for the compliment (let's just say that DOlson left a great gap to fill and I was there to fill at least part of the space), but trust me, you're on the good end of this deal, it's a time sucking black hole...