very few post asking for help with Mandriva 2009 Gnome

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that there are very few people asking for help with Mandriva 2009 Gnome on the AAO (Acer Aspire One)?

I know there are several people using Mandriva. So why aren't more people asking questions?

Could it be that it is because so much works with Mandriva 2009 Gnome without fixes?

 

Not being a real Mandriva fan, I could be completely wrong, but is it simply possible that most use KDE, as it seems to be the main desktop for Mandriva?

A bit of history for you young 'uns....
Back in the 90's, I think, first there was RH, Slackware and Debian, more or less. RH was mainly a Gnome centric distro, as it is today.

Mandriva started as a company called Mandrake. They were, more or less, a somewhat more user friendly version of RedHat. The big difference was that they concentrated on KDE, whereas RH concentrated on Gnome.

If I remember correctly, which I may not, you could usually easily use rpms from one on the other, but I wouldn't swear that I'm right about that part.

 

You're right in that the company started off with the Mandrake name. It was a French distribution. It was just a few years ago that Mandrake bought a large Latin American Linux company called Connectiva and following that merger, Mandrake changed it's name to Mandriva. Apparently, the "Mandrake" name was being challenged because "Mandrake the Magician" was copyrighted. Mandrake/Mandriva has always been a commercial distribution. Although Mandrake would allow anyone to download the basic version, more advanced versions were only available to those who were supporters and purchased membership in their "club". Mandrake never offered a Gnome version, but was strictly KDE. At the time, Mandrake was probably the easiest Linux distro to use by new users just escaping the Windows world. It bundled a number of applications it developed that made hardware setup much easier than any other Linux at the time. The last version of Mandrake I ran was 10.1 and never did keep up with what was happening with Mandriva after that version. Ubuntu had come on the scene based on Debian and pretty much stoled the show. It quickly developed into having the largest and best community support system and took on the mission of coming out with new releases every 6 months to keep users on the bleeding edge.

Cheers.

 

...or maybe they release every six months because that's what ubuntu does. I tried to toss Mandriva on my Aspire One; I moved on after the third time Mandriva froze while loading the installer.

Anyway, the logic of the OP is flawed. By his logic, OS/2 is the best operating system to run on the Aspire One. I mean, nobody's asked a single question about OS/2, so it must work perfectly.

 

You are correct in saying that Mandriva 2009 Gnome is the LEAST problematic distro you can install on the AAO right now. I'm not a big fan of Linux, and yet I got everything to work... all this and only got to use terminal ONCE to edit a simple file to get the right side SD slot working, hehehe.

I'm probably going to make a youtube video showing the AAO with Mandriva 2009 Gnome this weekend.... To show those who are skeptical on how it works.

 

Another early Linux known for being very user-friendly was Caldera Linux, which I believe was also a Red Hat-based KDE distro. Caldera Systems later became The SCO Group, which foolishly tried to sue IBM and other companies for distributing and using Linux, claiming it (SCO) owned the copyrights to Linux. SCO is in bankruptcy following that stunt.

 

Tamrac,
What would really help the non-linux competent majority out here is if people could create iso images of their AAO once they've got everything working - then we could download them, make USB pen-drive versions and try them out.
So far as I can tell, people have managed to get Hardy Heron and Mandriva 2009 fully working having done their own tweaks, which is great but a lot of people just aren't up to it or don't really have time to learn - perhaps the organisers of this website could consider adding an iso download area specifically for this purpose?

 

And it should be added that SCO was only able to afford to sue thanks to the cash injection that Microsoft provided them with. Thankfully SCO failed.

Cheers.

 

And who do you suggest is going to pay for the extra bandwidth required to download such large files?

Cheers.

 

That's a fair point, but on the other hand Tamrac's suggestion is basically a good one; sort of mini-distros for the AAO. I think it would need some sort of reasonably disciplined way of discussing the pros and cons of any one offering, too, but good sense on the forum might enable that.

Anyone got any idea how you get torrents started? I've downloaded the odd one but never started one off; if torrent technology could work the costs are well spread.

 

Like you, I've always downloaded torrents, but never initiated one, so I don't know how that is all done.

I agree that working ISOs would be a good idea. What one would have to be aware of is the whole question of whether the ISO would be a basic one that still required the initial user setup or a complete one that had all the tweaks, but then the end-user would have to deal with username/password. This can become problematic, as in the case of Ubuntu for example, where the first user installed gets not only sudo rights, but also the Keyring Manager assumes this password and it certainly isn't easy to change after the fact. That's just one example. Maybe other distros have similar problems with this whole idea of providing working and fully tweaked ISOs? Just something to consider.

Cheers.

 

re: working image was: Mandriva GNOME

I idea of a working image is certainly a good one. The only live iso I've ever created is a Puppy Linux remaster, and I have no idea how Barry and others worked their magic to make that happen. What I have created are compressed Partimage images of working installs (Linpus and Ubuntu w/ LXDE). The Ubuntu/LXDE image is less than 1GB, but the LXDE Network Manager doesn't work, so I don't recommend it for the less technically-inclined. It would certainly be possible to do an Ubuntu install giving the first user a dummy name and password, tweak it, shrink the partition to its smallest possible size with Gparted, then use Partimage to create a compressed image. The most obvious problem I see with that is how to install grub and configure menu.lst (alias grub.conf). That being said, an image for the SSD version(s) of the AA1 where Ubuntu completely replaces Linpus should be doable

 

Yes, you could give the first user a dummy name/password, but if they go to change it, their Keyring Manager would still require the use of the initial password. Becomes a bit of a hassle. That is what I was trying to point out. There are some gotchas with this system.

Cheers.

 

Looks like the first user is automagically made a member of the group admin. Would editing /etc/group do the trick?

I'm getting way off-topic here, but I wonder if the out-of-the-box experience might be better with Fedora. On one hand, the latest Fedora Rawhide kernel includes the ath5k driver, which eliminates the most-often posted problem with a new Ubuntu install. On the other hand, either a non-root user will need to know the root password, or we've got the same situation as with Ubuntu where there's a known user who can use sudo. As I recall, the tweaks were virtually identical for both distros

 

Making an ISO to download is not necessary. All that needs to be done to try out Mandriva 2009 Gnome working like mine is to install it to a USB and then add the following lines to make the USB Mandriva 2009 Gnome work.
Add the following lines to my /etc/modprobe.conf

Add the following lines to /etc/rc.d/rc.local

The # makes the line following it to be just a comment.
Then if the person trying it out they can install it onto their SSD and the again make the line additions and they are done.

 

donec,

With the instructions from your post above, will SD cards be recognized if you boot with both card slots empty then insert an SD card? It's an important question for newbies

 

Yes sometimes you will get an error but just ignore it because the window will open with the files showing. You will also see (in the browser) there are 2 devices of the same name but only one will work but since they are the same it doesn't matter and only the working one is seen on the desktop.

Note: you don't have to have an SD card in the right side reader when you boot. I just tried it and when I inserted the card it came up with an error message and then opened a window to the card and put the icon on the desktop.

BTW when you reinsert the card the icon changes to the proper one of a blue SD card instead of a hard drive.

 

i've tried quite a few distributions on the one and the gnome mandriva is the least troublesome for me. I have some linux experience having several laptops and desktops mostly running ubuntu. I would suggest tha mandriva is probably the best distro for beginners as it has the least problems, but all the help seems to be around ubuntu and the commands don't always match up and the amount of software seems much less than with ubuntu. So if you are a beginner who doesn't like to play then mandriva. If you want to play and need the support then go for ubuntu.

 

My turn :lol: :lol:

i've tried quite a few distributions on the one and the gnome Fedora is the least troublesome for me. I have some linux experience having several laptops and desktops mostly running Fedora. I would suggest tha Fedora is probably the best distro for beginners as it has the least problems, but all the help seems to be around ubuntu and the commands don't always match up and the amount of software seems much less than with ubuntu. So if you are a beginner who doesn't like to play then Fedora. If you want to play and need the support then go for ubuntu.

 

Sorry???? :roll: :roll: