Mandrake 9.1 went on the laptop yesterday after 3 attempts. The install would just hang half way through. The second install I told it to show me the details of what it was doing as it progressed and I found it was failing to read the cd when installing the zip package, so the third time I didn’t tell it to install zip and it worked …….
….sort of. I can’t get the boot menu to default to windows, as that is what the pc will be used in most of the time. I’ve edited /etc/boot.conf (i think it was) so the default now says windows instead of linux.enterprise but it still boots to linux unless I scroll down the menu and select windows.
The other annoying problem is that I can’t get the wireless network to work. At the moment I use WEP encryption and I don’t really want to turn that off although I guess I might have to temporarily to see if the card works with no encryption and then if it does tighten it up afterwards. There is NO interface to configuring the card either.
I can’t work out how to add root to the list of users who can log on at the x window prompt – at the moment it’s only me, but some of the tools you need to be root to run but the menu items don’t give you a “enter root password” prompt that some do and there is no right click/properties menu to work out what it is doing so I can drop to a shell, su and *then* run it.
The nvidia graphic install had to be run as root, with ld loaded (default wasn’t!) and not in Xwindows and when you install it, it breaks the Xwindows config file so you have to edit it by hand.
So with those few stumbling blocks, its no wonder linux has not hit the home desktop yet.
Comments
When I was running MDK 8, it was very very locked down in terms of running root. In fact, I don’t remember a time when I did run as root other than using su. Also, I managed once as root to horrendously foul up the root x-windows desktop.
Anyway, what environment are you using? You can’t find a console?
I found the console easily enough but what i couldn’t work out is what command to type in on the console! I thought i could do the equivalent of right click on the shortcut in the menu, properties, get the command it was running and then type it in the console after su’ing but oculdn’t get the properties.
I can’t work out whether to use gnome or kde – each have their advantages so far. From what I’ve seen of it so far its the worst implementation of “getting it working out of the box” but then again
its the first laptop install :-). Desktop installs in the past have worked for everything with no real tweaking. This one needs a thumping not a tweaking!
Now I am intrigued. I’ll need to try MDK on my laptop. I have been using RH since 7.2 on laptops. I have 9 on my current one. 8 needed some kernel patches for the WIFI but 9 saw my prims II w/out issue. But needed kernal Patches for PPTP (Work Connection) (don’t ask 😉 )