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Mandriva 2008 first impressions


ilia_kr
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Finally got compiz-fusion working, well almost, after finding out that the mandriva fglrx package messed about with the DRI (I have the fglrx installed on Fedora but use the radeon driver for AIGLX, DRI works fine :unsure:). Anyway, drak3d now gives me the option to use metisse and Compiz-fusion with AIGLX. I tried metisse for five minutes, wasn't impressed, looked like too much effort required to do gimmicky things. Moved over to compiz-fusion, but for some reason the window manager is borked :wall:

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Installed Mandriva 2008.0 Free last night on my HP laptop, then added all the 'extra' repos with easyurpmi. I've had no problems at all with the new 2008 install on my laptop. This is the first time I could use my BCM4318 with the native drivers on Mandriva without any problems, and I really like the new Network Center. I can turn on or off both my Ethernet and Wireless LAN without any problems. Kpowersave is also working perfectly.

 

What else can I say... I'm a happy Mandriva user! :)

 

Thanks, Mandriva devs!

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Works pretty well for me and is quite fast booting and starting up apps (seems to be faster than gutsy), just a few little things: my multimedia keys don't work, with none of the supplied keymaps for my brand of keyboard unless I change the keyboard layout to "evdev" and remove the Option rel bits "+0+1+2" from xorg.conf (or something similar, I am not at home at the moment) and my old parport scanner stopped being recognised (inspite that it still works in ubuntu). Oh and those drop shadows mentioned before are sort of annoying because they clash with compiz effects...

 

All in all a very good release

 

edit: i meant evdev not xev

Edited by ffi
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Here's my thoughts on 2008. I think it's shinier (at least KDE) and better "out of the box" than 2007 was. I think that Mandriva team has done a great job!

 

The biggest improvement from my perspective has been the compiz fusion! For some reason I have been unable to make 3D to work perfectly in 2007 or 2007.1, but now it's working fine!

 

There are two points I didn't like in the new 2008 (please take this as a constructive and positive feedback!):

1) when installing the system I chose the KDE installation version in stead of the one I should have chosen, i.e. select individual packages. For me this was a bit confusing... I thought that that was just the major choice (I do use KDE most of the time, but want to choose to boot to Gnome if needed) where you could choose to install several other options as well afterwards, but no. I did a new install after I made that choice and could select freely what I wanted. (perhaps I would have needed a heads-up for that, but I managed OK in the end).

 

2) Why is it that the default choice of the installation DVD is installing 2008? This is a bit bigger nuisance than the first one. All the other Mandriva versions I've had (from 2006 on) the choice of install has not been the default choice and I have booted my PC without having to watch by the PC while it fires up just to choose to boot from HDD. I know I can take the DVD out, but it sometimes stays there for weeks (if I need to install something, you know... :unsure: ).

 

All and all, I honestly think that this is by far the best Mandrvia version thus far! Good work guys!

 

Me likes! :thumbs:

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I am absolutely amazed. For the first time, I installed Mandriva on my laptop and got my wireless going with the native driver..... and it actually works!!!! :thumbs:

I did not have to mess with anything. Now I am feeling a little insecure. B)

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After flattening my cooker and installing the fresh 2008 I must admit that - apart from the default artwork - that this release is by far the best Mandriva release since Mandrake 10.1. Two thumbs from my side. Keep up the good work.

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The only problem i've had with installing 2008 is Grub, every time is boot 2008 it hangs before KDE came up.

After several times reinstalling i choose as bootmanager not the graphical Grub but the textbased Grub, that was the trick.

I've a IBM R31 with a i810 graphical chipset.

For the rest it works fine.

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TV tuner works in 2008 so my wife is happy.

 

PC freezes randomly with no reason, just mouse works. When I try to choose Nvidia proprietary drivers (I have managed urpmi database -official, nonfree etc) it goes to black screen and black pointer with white borders. Reboot if press reset button only, no key combination works. Freezes if I just switch off PC, blue screen with lower bar at ~95% full.

 

Having installed ntfs-3g and ensured there are no restrictions I cannot write to ntfs partitions.

 

Shortcut to switch language input does not work, I use clicking on the icon.

 

I use Russian localisation because my wife does not speak English. Is there a possibility it is translation issue? Say, someone put extra comma or has missed a letter?

 

Bluetooth crashed.

 

I cannot paste logs of this crash because I have not installed something called "gdb".

Edited by Valikhan
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Saw this on Cooker ML relating to multimedia keys:

 

"kmilo is not installed by default anymore. It was coming with klaptop.

I think it's the reason why multimedia keys are not supported under

KDE."

 

so try installing that.

kmilo is installed. I made a mistake I wrote xev when I should have written evdev. Anyway using evdev as the driver for the mouse causes the keycodes to change for many keys, so they don't match any keyboard map. See this bug report where a solution can be found too:

 

http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=34344

Edited by ffi
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More wireless news. I have the typical inexpensive (OK, cheap) Broadcom wireless in my laptop. At one time, only ndiswrapper would work for me; the bcm43xx native Linux driver simply would work. And, I would have to blacklist the native driver before ndiswrapper could assume control of the device. Otherwise, one would get a loaded module and a known device, but no internet link! But, with 2008, I can simply choose either driver and switch, all fro the GUI, without any hassles! That is a major improvement for wireless networking and Broadcom devices. 2008 is great. :D

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My laptop is linux certified, and with Mandriva Linux 2008.0 even the built in cardreader finally works.

 

Installation is fully functional out of the box. I kicked out lindvd before running it, since I know it would set the zone of my dvd drive, which I don't want (it's 'good as new' as it is, I want to keep it that way, even though with libdvdcss it shouldn't matter).

 

I have tremendous problems with compiz fusion - was very happy with beryl on 2007.1.

Setting certain options completely freezes the machine; sometimes I can ctl-alt-F1 or ctl-alt-backspace, sometimes not even that, and I have to resort to alt-sysrq-[esuib]. And sometimes even that doesn't help.

Basically, this happens when I turn on the 'reflection' thingy (there's one option called only reflection, that's the nasty one). Worst: I don't even know if it's cool, since I apparently can't run it....

 

Once I turned this off, it looks like things are more stable; I love the shift switcher (for looks) and the desktops overview (forgot the name, not on my laptop now; 4 desktops next to each other, to see and modify window placement).

 

I do think that the system sometimes gets very slow/unresponsive due to compizfusion - which I didn't have with beryl on 2007.1.

Need more time...

 

Some things from beryl that I liked are gone now; I used the setting that sticky windows and objects (including kicker) should stay put whilst rotating the cube, as if they're stuck to the 'windshield' - that seems to have been taken out.

The moving skydome doesn't move properly - it always resets to have you start from the same viewpoint, no matter what viewport /cube side you're on, meaning: I only get to see the half of it unless I switch more than one cube face.

 

I miss beryl-manager; there should be something called fusion-icon (from ubuntu info on the web) but (afaics) Mandriva 2008 doesn't have it..!

Makes it more difficult to choose different wm's and decorators.

It's better to turn off compiz/beryl when using 3d apps like stellarium, celestia and games like glest... and without the tray icon, how are people going to do that...?

(Yeah, I like the command line, so I can manage. It's not just about me, though on my laptop it certainly is..)

 

I tried to use the iwl3945 to forego the ipw3945d proprietary daemon, but alas, no clue as to how to set it up. I do get as far as to have it show the device wlan0_replace, but it won't show any network with iwlist scan, so no joy there.

It will need some more time.

 

I had a look at kde4, not sure what I should look at exactly, but looks like a work in progress that's coming along fine.

 

 

Other than some serious problems with compiz fusion, I must say that this Mandriva 2008 Powerpack is the best Linux (also the most recent, mind you) that I have ever installed/used (installation about 25mins, tops... great looking too).

Everything works out of the box (well, it should, it's linux certified hardware, Intel core2duo and iig 945, but still): wifi, graphics, bt, gigabit ethernet, cardreader. With Lindvd even dvd playback in a legal way (for those regions where it matters) and with fluendo codecs the same for audio (mp3).

 

Great work Mandriva developers (AdamW, I'm sure you'll pass it on)!

Edited by aRTee
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