Pulsar had a good idea, so instead of a big review at the end of a week, I'll post a log . . . . I hope no one minds. ;-)
My system:
AMD Athlon XP2000+ ECSk7S5A mobo (unstable, but it works.) 768mb DDR RAM ATI Radeon 8500 128mb SoundBlaster Audigy X-Gamer.
Day1
I installed Mandrake10 Official, and getting it up and running was a breeze. Simple. I sat back and watched. I was giventhe option at ther beginning to erase my empty drive (C) or create a differnt partition on my WindowsXP drive, etc. I simply chose to erase it and allow it to choose a file system on its own. It did. No problems. All my hardware was recognized, except my modem . . . more on that later.
When I got into KDE, I immediately noticed how different the "start menu" is. Although everything is there, I need to go 3 or 4 trees deep to find things. No problem. The taskbar seems a bit unpolished and thrown together, and the "Star" button (like the start button in windows) looks goofy. Otherwise, the GUI is pretty, with those nice crystal svg icons.
Prgorams and apps all loaded, and were all immediately accessible from the start menu. I found the fact that I couldn't really (or easily) access my drives like in WIndows, that is, Start----My Comp----, and I see my drive icons. It's irritating, but it's no big deal. The Mandrake Control Centre is sweet. It's like the Control Panel, and it too, is accessible from the start menu. Betwen KDE and GNOME, KDE has the most user-friendly start menu "out-of-the-box." Good stuff. Further, KDE's options to configure the "look and feel" of the desktop are second to none, I've never seen so many options . . . from menu behaviour, to widgets, to desktop sounds, etc.
Sound had to be tweaked (I have a SOundBlaster Audigy) and system had to be rebooted for it to work. It DID work, though, and I was pleased.
In short, I was up and working and printing in no time, no console/terminal necessary. Very impressive. Speed was very good, but not blazing fast - no problem. I was comfortable with the GUI in no time. MDK10 is a sweet deal for newbs.
Complaints:
-It didn't recognize my modem, which in the Windows Device Mangager is called a Generic Softk56. So, no internet, and no e-mail. I'll either need to find new drivers, or buy a new modem.
-Although it liked my Radeon8500 128mb, and even offered me hardware acceleration, which I have no idea how to access (Direct3D, OpenGL), the maxmimum available colour depth is 24-bit, not 32-bit as in XP. I find this irritating, especially when MDK10 (apparently) gave me hardware accelerated 3D. Is this a driver problem? and MDK10 problem? How can I get 32-bit depth?
-The MDK10 installer, despite installing the GRUB Bootloader, broke my XP installation, by erasing the "NTLDR" file. A friend told me that XP has to be on Drive (C) and MDK10 on whatever other drive (D) in order for the dual-boot to work. Irritating, but it can be solved.
I had to uninstall MDK10 as a result, but all in all, day 1 was a good learning experience, and I'm VERY impressed with MandrakeLinux10. The drivers aren't the geratest, however. My SoundBlaster Audigy has EAX on it, for instance, but I can't access those options. I can't access my 3D acceleration options like Direct3D settings, etc. BUT . . . the point is, nearly everything WORKS, without any headaches or extra work on my part.
TO DO: Solve my colour depth problem . . somehow. Either find new drivers or buy a new 56k modem that is MDK10-friendly. Set up dual-boot properly.
The reason you don't see drive icons is that *nix filesystems dont' have drive letters. That said, all drives get mounted into your main filesystem, which can make things difficult when you have multiple drives. The best thing to do is have an OS drive and a "data" drive...and set up a mount point for the data drive (something like /mnt/data) or something like that. You can look into it, but you will never know "multiple" drives under *nix as the filesystem treats all drives as part of the filesystem as a whole.
audigy and sblive cards will work, and should work out of box in most cases...I was surprised to hear that yours didn't but I'm glad you fixed it.
Generic Softk56...this signals to me that you have a software driven modem, sometimes called a "winmodem." This used to be a big issue, but these days, there is support available: http://linmodems.org/ You should be able to get your modem working using their tools.
As far as your color depth issue is concerned, X does not yet support alpha channels on the desktop, and thus does not support "32-bit color" The truth is that 32-bit color does not really exist, it's the exact same number of colors as 24-bit color with alpha-blending (which makes the edges of icons and such a bit smoother, but when using SVG icons, or even PNG icons, they are alpha-blended at the desktop level so you won't ever notice a difference.
As far as dual-booting is concerned, they do not have to be on separate drives, but there are certain things that have to happen...like, you have to use the windows boot loader because it doesn't like to be loaded from anywhere except the MBR. That said, there are tuturoials out there about how to set up yoru windows boot loader to run GRUB or LILO to get Linux going.
Hope I've been some help.
darksheer [ds] Customize.org Staff Business Development
From my XP installation, on the LARGER drive (60gb), I reformatted my SMALLER drive (30 gig), in FAT32 format. Don't ask me why XP allowed me to use the FAT32 option, maybe it is because the drive is smaller than 40gig.
Anyway, during the Mandrake10 reinstallation, I chose to customize the partitions. I chose the 30gig partition, deleted it, chose "empty" or something, then pressed "done", and Mandrake went on to install it and also install LILO automatically. Don't know exactly what I did, but it might have something to do with MDK10 preferring smaller HD sizes. There is a known bug with MDK10 and XP dual booting, that is, that the Madrake OS files need to be on a smaller HD, I think the rule is less than 40gig . . . .
In any case, the dual-boot setup works like a charm now.
I also got my hands on a cheapy 56k modem, with an Ambient MD3200 chip, which has equivalent INTEL drivers that apparently work with Mandrake 9.2 and even beta with the 2.6 kernel. I have the driver, I just need to learn how to install or "compile" it.
the standard process for compiling software involves 3 commands from within the source directory
./configure make make install
For about 90% of things, that will be exactly what you do to compile. Just check the "INSTALL" file in the docs. If you see at the top "these are generic installation instructions" then you know the commands are going to be those I listed above.
I just hope you installed all the development options.
darksheer [ds] Customize.org Staff Business Development
Just a little update before I post another log this evening.
An AMAZING thing happened in Linux MDK10.
I had a number of things open: my OpenOffice document (a report I'm working on), my music folder, and K3B, a CD-Burning app that does it better and easier than any Windows ripping/burning app I've ever come across (including Easy CD Creator and Nero.)
So, I minimized everything to the taskbar, went for a drink, came back, and I simply rebooted the system because I wanted to use the net in XP. I expected MDK10 to quit all the applications as part of the shutdown process, and maybe even hang for a bit like XP does now and then, but . . . . not so. It simply quit flat out like a lizard drinkin'. Nice . . . I think. Then came the treat. When I was done with XP, I rebooted into MDK10, and BOOM! Everything was there, AS I HAD LEFT IT. MDK10 seemed to "remember" what I was doing, and I was right back where I left off! It was all nicely minimzed to the taskbar, ready for my use. I tried this again, and opened another app. Rebooted. Same deal. Sweet.
These little things make MandrakeLinux10 feel like home (linux users will note the pun.) ;-)
heh this isn't exactly a new feature for gnome / kde personly I've always found it to be a bit annoying to have gnome opening up the last 6 terms I had open before shutting down.
Yeah, i see your point . . . but if you have a document that you're working on regularly, it's nice when it's right there for you when you boot in again. In this case it's a useful feature. If you just left something open by accident or you forgot about and didn't want to continue with it, then yes, it can probably get annoying.
Still no internet for me. Looks like even the best drivers for PCI modems are shaky at best.
I think I'll pick up a hardware modem . . .Zoom looks to be a good brand.
Otherwise, other than having to learn a few things here and there, I have absolutely no complaints with MandrakeLinux 10. I've relegated XP to a games OS (and an internet one for the time being.) Nothing has gone wrong yet, and it seems rock-solid stable. The Mandrake Control Center is a dream, and installing/uninstalling rpm software is a breeze. Apparently, compiling software into a usable ".exe" (in windows terms) is also easy, though I haven't tried that yet.
Ok...I got a question, I made the mistake to shutdown the package installer *cough* while it was installing the dev tools. Now I can't deinstall/clean reinstall the packages because it says that make and gettext are missing. Now I tried to download these as Rpm's to reinstall them manually but no success, it says make exists already...argh! Any ideas?
Sorry, Pulsar . . . I wish I could help you. I suppose when Linux is busy with a "process" like detecting hardware or installing stuff, you shouldn't interrupt it. Yeah, yeah . . ."no shit, LTD" . . . . :-)
With MDK10, if something's wrong, it usually corrects itself by asking me if I want to quit the process/application. You're using a different distro, so I'm not sure how it works.
Go to the forums at Justlinux.com. The people are really good there, and just post your question. Registration is free. I'm there as LTD602.
so your RPM database got updated....but the packages themselves did not finish installing.
Best thing to do is try to clean out those packages. download the RPMs you need, and look at them. do they look like:
automake-devel-x.x.x-i386.rpm
where x.x.x is the version.
The part before the version is the rpm name. So, you want to remove the rpms that are broken:
rpm -e rpmname
if it won't let you, do rpm -ef rpmname, then install.
If you can't work it out, this is the type of thing a newbie might want to reinstall on; mostly because you're gonna have to track down a LOT of rpms which may or may not be installed correctly.
darksheer [ds] Customize.org Staff Business Development
Ok...fixed it :) Digging deeper now... Thanks for your help! Another question (if I may) I have this old laptop. P133 48MB Ram a true classic, runs like a baby. How suicidal is it to try to install Linux on it? Would Fedora be too heavy? Should I go with a different distro? Should I be happy with Win98SE and calm down?
True, I guess I got carried away by the sheer idea of a brave new world. Well I really only want to write on it. Maybe get a network connex to Windows to work. A little bit of webbrowsing...that's it. Since I write screenplays I need to install open office. Sadly there is no version of dedicated screenwriting software out there for Linux, so I have to install write and get templates...
If you're looking to use dialup with Linux, an external serial modem is the way to go. I'm typing this from Mozilla 5.0, running on MandrakeLinux 10. Installation was a snap. Linux autodetected my used ($10) US Robotics 56k Sportster serial modem, and all I did was input my ISP info.
More later.
___________________________ "Arguing over the internet is like running in the special olympics: even if you win, you're still retarded."
heh, I remember paying almost $200 for my first 56k modem...a USR Sportster.
If you're using Mozilla, the absolute highest version you could be using would be 1.7...but more likely 1.6. You're confusing the architecture number with the version number....all mozilla-based browsers identify themselves as some variant of mozilla/5.0
darksheer [ds] Customize.org Staff Business Development
I have this old laptop. P133 48MB Ram a true classic, runs like a baby. How suicidal is it to try to install Linux on it?
No problem. just dont use X. or if you really want to use X, go with a lightweight WM like blackbox
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Apparently, compiling software into a usable ".exe" (in windows terms) is also easy, though I haven't tried that yet.
*chuckles* sorry its been such a long time since ive used linux. i remember i detested procompiled binary packages (esp. rpm's) back when i was using linux. i opted to compile all my apps myself. quite depressing to see that it's a decaying practice now.
Yep, I've got Firefox installed and themed nicely, but I find KDE's own Konqueror broswer fastrer than the others. Hmmm . . . .
Konqueror is what Safari for OSX is based on. Personally, I have always disliked Konqueror and I don't think its rendering engine stacks up to gecko in any way. It's good for "basic browsing"...but it certainly pales in comparisson to Firefox.
darksheer [ds] Customize.org Staff Business Development
