Will Mandriva work "COMPLETILY" with AA1?

I have been trying to find a replacement for Linpus. I heard that Mandriva 2009 will work with it, but I have read a few post in this forum saying that not every thing are working. is this true?

 

Everything is working for me at least as well as in Linpus.

There are a few configuration issues though. The following relates to Mandriva 2009 running a KDE4 desktop - different issues may crop up under Gnome for all I know, I have only tested under KDE4.

It also assumes you have the software repositories set up correctly. This should be easy to do - visit this site:

easyurpmi.zarb.org

and follow the automated steps there. After that you should be OK.

1. Suspend to disk/suspend to RAM works, but not with the default kde4powersave. You should uninstall this and install guidance-power-manager (available in the repositories). You should now be able to suspend via the point and click interface, by pressing Fn+F4, or (if you configure it to do so in the guidance-power-manager configuration window) by closing the lid.

2. Recording sound via the internal microphone may need a few steps to configure it properly. In KDE4, you should first open the Mandrake control center (Tools -> System tools -> Configure your computer), select the hardware tab, and click on sound configuration. Uncheck the "Enable PulseAudio" box. (If there's a way to get sound recording to work without disabling PulseAudio I'd be grateful to hear about it.) Next, make sure you have kmix running - there should be a little loudspeaker icon in your system tray. If not, run it from the menu: Sound & Video -> kmix sound mixer. When it's running, click on the speaker icon. When the volume slider appears, click the Mixer button. When the mixer window appears, click "settings", then "Configure channels". Tick all the boxes down the left hand side. You should now be able to configure your microphone in the mixer window. Check the capture box, and under input source, select i-mic (internal mic, I suppose). Turn up the level to an appropriate point and test the microphone using sound recorder or similar. It should work.

3. It is supposed to be recommended to have a card in both slots when installing so that the installation program detects and configures the slots correctly. If you don't there is supposed to be a way to configure the slots anyway, but I haven't had to do that as my card slots are working OK.

4. If you use the default wireless driver, your little yellow wifi light may not work. (Some do, some don't apparently.) If it doesn't and it really bothers you you can use ndiswrapper to load a Windows driver, and the light will work.

Everything else, as far as I can remember, works straightforwardly.

Rob

 

From what I have read it is possible to get everything working. With that said here is what I suspect and what I have personally found. BTW! I am running Mandriva 2009 Gnome and completely happy with it.

The Gnome version on the SSD version AAO has fewer issues. The sound won't turn off when headset being used without adding

to your /etc/modprobe.conf file. Also the SD card readers won't work regularly without adding

to your /etc/rc.d/rc.local file. With those lines added then you will get a warning when you change the SD card but just ignore it and it will work. Also the sound will work properly when headsets are used.

The only other complications I have found is that (I believe due to the fact I use an SDHC card for my home partition) the suspend function does not work and causes crashes. I don't use it or see a need for it so it doesn't matter to me. Mandriva can not format the SDHC card but you are able to format it with MCC if you put it in a USB SD card reader.

That is the extent of problems with Mandriva 2009 Gnome on an AAO with the SSD.

The hard drive version seems to have issues the LED wifi lighting also.

On another note it should be realized that there are no OS's that "completely" work with all hardware and computers.

 

OK, a correction to my previous post - donec is quite correct, the card slots do seem to be flaky (they were working when I last checked, but ... ) unless you run that command.

I get no error messages though.

You can format the SD card from the command line. Do:

Code:

mkfs.ext2 /dev/mmcblk0p1

to format it with a Linux ext2 filesystem, or

Code:

mkfs.vfat /dev/mmcblk0p1

to format it with FAT32. (You need to have dosfstools installed for the latter. The device name may be different if you have a card in each slot.)

 

I am one of those that do almost nothing with the CLI and that was where I was coming from in saying I could not format SD cards in the SD card readers but had to use the USB card reader.

 

It is annoying that graphical utilities for partitioning and formatting SD cards seem to be absent. Maybe there are some out there somewhere that we haven't found yet ...

 

I see that I'm talking nonsense here. It's not about the availability of tools. It appears that there is a problem with some newer kernels in relation to flash cards - i.e. for some reason they do not show up in fdisk, gparted or whatever unless they are called specifically by name - making it harder to do stuff like partitioning and formatting because you have to know the name of the device (usually /dev/mmcblk0, /dev/mmcblk0p1 etc., depending on whether you have one or two cards inserted and how they've been partitioned in the past).

This is annoying to some degree, but running the command dmesg immediately after inserting the card should identify how the system sees it, and you can then run

Code:

gparted /dev/mmcblk0

or whatever on it.

Obviously you can't do this either without opening a terminal of some sort, so if you're allergic to doing so you're stuck, unfortunately.

 

I am very happy with Mandriva 2009 and Gnome on my AA1. Before you start the install, connect to the Internet using the wired Ethernet port and install SD cards in the SD slots. Wait until the install is complete to connect with wifi. I found the wifi connection very easy. (No wifi light on the right side,)

 

For me sound works,card readers do not.
Wifi is now stable after much agony, I finally set my router to channel 11 and so far *touches wood* it is very stable even after multiple reboots, but the lights do not work
I applied the files to quiet the fan so thats ok now.

Suspend and hibernate DO NOT WORK, (at least for me) i found this out, this morning after i hibernated my netbook last night and the thing would not boot.
I had a black screen, no hdd lights nothing! bricked ARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH Mandriva bricked my netbook and I need it today!!!
I grabbed my other laptop and searched about and came across http://macles.blogspot.com/2008/08/acer ... overy.html and thanks to him my AAO is back up and running.

I can't make my mind up about Mandriva, i like it but it seems sluggish especially when adding software.
I have trouble with compiz and VLC (see my other post)
If anyone has any tips on hibernate and suspend I would love to hear them.

Regards

GM

*edit
Just after I posted this I jinxed myself and my wireless has dropped.....
**edit
A reboot fixed it and I booted with an sd card in and it was there on boot.

 

I only have the one I gave above - uninstall kde4powersave (and kpowersave if you have that installed) and install guidance-power-manager.

 

Thanks, i'm running gnome though, i'll uninstall the gnome power manager (is that the same thing?) see if that helps..

Thanks.

GM

 

Yes, worth a try.

Actually, I do have another tip. I have sometimes found that resuming from hibernation doesn't work if you have compiz-type effects enabled.

And of course, there may be issues relating to SD cards.

Finally, sometimes a network adapter can make suspend/hibernate and resume fail. Perhaps you could try disabling the wireless card with the little switch (and perhaps also unloading the driver (modprobe -r ath5k as root in a terminal).

 

The Mandriva 2009 Gnome installation when done correctly, will have no problems whatsoever. Sound, wifi, compiz, webcam, sd slots(left side), suspend will work right away. A couple of edits to a conf file will make the speakers auto disable when headphones are insterted & right side SD card slot to work. That's basically it. It really all depends on how you did the initial install. Plus I find that BIOS .3305 seems to favor Mandriva 2009.

 

Hi Tamrac, are you using the default setup for Mandriva or did you put your home on an SD card?

 

Suspend and hibernate are definitely not working correctly with Mandriva One 2009. You also need to adjust certain file to get a working -Wifi Led
-Card reader
-speaker /headphones

If you got everything working right away, please post how to do it !

 

Are you using the KDE version? I did not have to do anything on the Gnome version, to get the LED to flash when the wireless is actually accessing the network.

 

Using the Gnome version (Mandriva One 2009)

 

What are you wanting the LED to do? I did not add anything to get my LED to work as I think it should. Which is it should flash when the network is being accessed, continued flashing means constant connection. Like when I do a speed test at speedtest.net it flashes so fast that it seems to be just on yet normally it is just on when I am downloading a page or uploading something. If you have a very high connection then the LED may not need to be on very much. Try running a speed test and see if the LED is lighting during the test.

 

Does sleep work with /home mounted on a left hand SDHC?

 

Not for me.