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Guest Chadd
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Hello Patrick,

so I'm here.

 

Regarding NVIDIA card, it's obvious that 1.0-4191 driver shipped with ALJ2.2 didn't handle that and thus ldetect-lst didn't contain the proper PCI IDs; I've packaged up 1.0-4363 set for 2.4.20-alt7 kernel from updates.

 

It's relatively minor woe though; we have had worse luck with upstream alsa2 which was apparently broken enough on a *lot* of common "soft sound" devices but somehow got through the beta testing stage.

 

FWIW, I've packaged current ALSA too. RPMs are at ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/people/mike/kernel/ and ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/people/mike/alsa/ (several build at once since I didn't want oder URLs to break yet and don't want to build some complex hierarchy there :).

 

The comment in our English mailing list will be posted below, but as per my opinion, ALT has some distinct strong points as compared to e.g. Mandrake and some weak ones being compared to most of the "more mature" distros.

 

The latter being:

 

less consistent/tested hardware support in general (testing base is less wide). That changes but slower than I'd like; on the upside, sometimes ALT distros happen to support (or tune up) hardware refusing to work with another ones out-of-box :-)

 

less extensive English-language support as most of the user/developer community uses Russian to communicate, usually being native speakers of Slav languages. Developers commonly know English quite good though.

 

less "predictable" releases, at least for now I can be sure 2 Juniors come out in a year and one Master (full release) would.

 

The better sides are:

 

more proper localization/internationalization. In fact, some locale oddities that weren't fixed in Mdk for ages were one of the factors to produce Linux-Mandrake Russian Edition (Mdk-7.x based) which then became standalone ALT Linux distro.

 

vastly better security. Our sec team cooperates with colleagues quite closely, but examine e.g. this to see how they do :-)

In fact, sometimes "oversecured" defaults do lead to complaints of users but they tend to become more manageable within "control" framework -- and the very same users tend to find themselves thankful later over Bugtraq. :-)

 

strong server side. Sorry Mandrake people, but you've seemed to screw things up too much that way during 7.x--8.x :(

 

better package management system. We have apt-rpm and team members that improve on it; f.e. we have working apt-rsync module.

It's also significantly decreases upgrade pain and improves sharpness of what you can do with the package base. urpmi just didn't do that :-(

Along with decent macro set, which is on par with current PLD, Conectiva, Mdk ones this gives the developer quite comfortable environment.

 

decent multimedia support at package base. I do know of Thac's RPMs and it's awesome, but having all just at hand in a box buys me :-)

The only painful side seems be installer-wise problems with sound.

 

At last, ALT isn't a venture company so while it has less resources to throw at the distro, they are better controlled and relied upon.

 

So while it may not beat Mdk at the desktop outside xSU (it does so inside thanks to l10n) -- it is definitely work a look for the server.

 

I doubt desktop part will have all user-manageability parallel to e.g. drakes in a year but the framework to drive the configuration is being worked on, see here.

In the mean time those drakes which lived their life since Mdk days of the distro can still be found here and there, but, frankly, they're dated and sometimes partially broken.

 

Well I hope I've not distracted you either from ALT or from Mdk too much since as per my opinion they're both well worth looking, and I mirror both on local LUG mirror site (if there's anyone here from Ukraine, it's ftp3.linux.kiev.ua, but "invisible" from outside per ISP arrangement for local traffic).

 

PS: and one more thing -- the team and the company do well regarding support of other localization and development projects -- providing hosting, help and exposure with the distro. e.g. mozilla.ru, openoffice.ru, accounting software and so on are now hosted and helped by ALT.

 

The projects tend to grow like mushrooms :-) -- you can even listen to the music from an OpenMusic project at http://om.lrn.ru (Russian, but ask babelfish.altavista.com to translate it to navigate to .ogg's)!

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On Sat, Jul 12, 2003 at 08:14:54PM -0600, Chad wrote:

> Can you give me a rundown on what I need to do to get and

> install? I will give the new package a try.

 

OK, so you've asked :-)

 

Then you have either 2.4.21-altX with binary bootloader-utils and

mkinitrd from Sisyphus (they're binary compatible with ALM2.2,

should work on J2.2 too), or 2.4.20-alt7 -- but then later since

I've somehow failed to rebuild the package, now taking a second

look.

 

...ah, done.

 

So.

 

_Unofficial_ build of fresh NVIDIA driver set and ALSA tools

(should be mostly compatible with an existing 2.2+updates setup

-- by "updates" I mean kernel24 security update, too -- see below):

 

* NVIDIA 1.0-4363; should enable FX cards and such

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/people/mike/ke...3-alt1.i586.rpm

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/people/mike/ke...3-alt7.i586.rpm

 

* ALSA 0.9.4; reportedly behaves better with some hardware, esp.

* software codecs like via/intel onboard ac97 sound

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/people/mike/ke...4-alt7.i586.rpm

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/people/mike/al...4-alt1.i586.rpm

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/people/mike/al...4-alt1.i586.rpm

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/people/mike/al...4-alt2.i586.rpm

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/people/mike/al...4-alt2.i586.rpm

 

This should go with minimal hassle, but "old" alsa2-*, libalsa2-*

may need to be removed with rpm -e --nodeps (since newer packages

supercede them but rpm is too low-level to "understand" it).

 

Also see the note below regarding NVIDIA_GLX.

 

For _testing_ 2.4.21 (Sisyphus URLs; should work with

Master/Junior 2.2 as of this writing; much more challenging):

 

* kernel itself and supplementary packages:

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/...l-alt3.i586.rpm

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/...alt7.noarch.rpm

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/...7-alt2.i586.rpm

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/...5-alt1.i586.rpm

 

* NVIDIA:

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/...3-alt1.i586.rpm

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/...3-alt3.i586.rpm

 

* ALSA:

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/...4-alt4.i586.rpm

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/...4-alt1.i586.rpm

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/...4-alt1.i586.rpm

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/...4-alt1.i586.rpm

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/...4-alt1.i586.rpm

 

* additional packages likely to be in need:

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/...0-alt4.i586.rpm

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/...0-alt3.i586.rpm

 

Also this checklist (command are to be executed by root):

* if you feel like OK and don't need/really want to mess with

kernels, DON'T -- screwing the system up is surprisingly easy

this way;

 

* if in slightest doubt -- use the kernel from updates which

doesn't get installed by "apt-get upgrade" automatically for

obvious reasons, and thus should be installed like this:

 

apt-get install kernel24-up#2.4.20-alt7

 

if feeling brave and going bloody edge -- then Sisyphus

may be for you;

 

* run this script as root (taken from alsa-driver tarball):

ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/people/mike/al...ting/snddevices

-- it will recreate /dev/snd as permanent directory and not a

symlink to deprecated /proc entry (changed in alsa-0.9.2).

 

* newer NVIDIA kernel module requires newer GLX package which

won't work with older kernel module AFAIR. So if you need to

rollback, have the CD at hand to be able to boot into console

mode (passing additiona parameter "3" to the kernel) and:

 

mount /dev/cdrom

rpm -Uvh --oldpackage /mnt/cdrom/ALTLinux/RPMS/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0.4191-alt2.i586.rpm

eject

 

* 2.4.21rel-alt3 specific issues:

 

* kernel package apparently has a gotcha regarding bootloader

setup update; could be fixed with

 

cd /boot

ln -sf vmlinuz-2.4.21rel-std-up-alt3 vmlinuz-up

ln -sf initrd-2.4.21rel-std-up-alt3.img initrd-up.img

lilo # only if using LILO!

 

or checking the bootloader configuration to contain a proper

pair of kernel and initial ramdrive images;

 

* 2.4.21rel-alt3 has OpenWall patch applied which disables

wine/winex (and seemingly win4lin) -- fixed with chstk:

 

chstk -e /usr/bin/wine

chstk -e /usr/bin/winex

 

* 2.4.21 kernel and kernel module packages should be

*installed* (rpm -ivh) not to remove existing kernel; alsa

userspace packages don't allow for duplication though and

should be upgraded (rpm -Uvh);

 

* software modem and ATI drivers as kernel-modules-*.rpm are

there, too, but I've no experience with them -- you may have

to get a few more packages if going 2.4.21;

 

All packages should be signed, you can do "rpm --checksig" on

them.

 

Problems and misunderstanding are better reported here *before*

you tell it blow up everything so we can try to sort it out

together ;-)

 

---

 

PS: getting libalsa packages on a neigh system showed that rpm -Uvh removed previous versions (libalsa2) without any problem automatically, and one more comment on NVIDIA: I'm afraid XFdrake/kudzu won't handle FX automatically due to the very same PCI IDs, so either use --expert and some handpicked nvidia card, or modify/borrow XF86Config-4 by hand.

 

On the bright side, ALT builds libXft2 with additional algos which uield better rendering of antialiased fonts.

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