I upgraded my test linux box (dual boot Linux and Win98) to mdk 7.2 a couple of days ago and I have to say that overall I am quite impressed with the job that the Mandrake folks did. Unlike some OS's this OS and distr. just seems to dramatically improve overall with each new release. I still ran into a few minor snags though. One snag that I ran into was when I tried use the upgrade option on my test machine. (K6-3 400 MHz w/ 128 MB PC100 RAM and 17.2 GB 5400 Maxtor drive, 12x DVD and EEPRO 100 on 10/100 switched LAN. The server holding the distr. has a 3c905 c NIC.) Seeing that I like to test stuff out on this box I typically load the machine up with packages. (I've been using the development install option these past couple of releases). Two hours into upgrading from 7.1 to 7.2 over the network I noticed that the bar was slowly moving, but it was only a small fraction of the way across and the installer estimated that there was 16 hours remaining. I figured that 18+ hours to upgrade just is not worth it, so I reset the machine and installed from scratch. When I installed from scratch, it took two hours to do the development install with a few extra package modifications. Seeing that I was installing 2.4 GB of stuff on a machine like that, I was happy with that install time. (Especially seeing that the machine does have to waste a bunch of time rebooting over and over like Windows and I don't have to deal with a bunch of licensing and registration crap like I do when trying to load my broken window 98 up with useful stuff.) One other snag that I ran into that probably has a lot more to do with the release of XFree86 of 4.x being as recent as it is than the Mandrake team on mdk 7.2 are the resolutions that I was given. I have a ASUS V3800 Deluxe (which is a TNT2-ULTRA w/ 32 MB of 183 MHz 128 bit SDR SDRAM.) The installer recognized that it was a TNT2-ULTRA, but it only detected 4 MB of RAM and limited my resolutions based on that. I have to manually tweak the XFree86Config file in order to get all of my RAM to detect and to get Drakeconf to allow me to select 1600x1200x32bit color @ 75 Hz. I did notice that nVidia had its own set of accelerated drivers for XFree 4.0.1+, but then I noticed some interesting things on their bug list. The one that caught my attention is in http://www.nvidia.com/products.nsf/htmlmedia/detonator3.html section 6.5.6 stating "Corruption at very high resolutions." I live at the resolution that they say that they are getting corruption with. I was wondering if anybody has experiences that they can relate to me about what they witnessed at this resolution with the exact same card that I have under mdk 7.2? Another snag that I ran into was screen positioning. I have a total of 3 running computer in my bedroom (0 women) and not only are they networked, I also have a KVM switch to switch between them. (I used to just access my Linux boxes through an X server installed on my Win98 box, but I got annoyed with Windows always crashing on me while in the middle of doing something on my main Linux box.) I usually run both my main Linux box and Win/Lin box at 1600x1200x32 bit @75. A ways back when I first got a big enough monitor to handle that res I noticed that the two machines positioned the picture differently, so I tweaked my windows box to position the same as my main Linux box. But now when both machines are in Linux mode, the picture is positioned differently and I can't find any tools with the standard mdk 7.2 install to tweak the positioning. If I want the picture to be positioned properly I have to manually adjust the monitor each time a switch between the machines which gets annoying after a while even though it is not a really big deal. I remember back in the early RedHat 5.x days they shipped their CDs with Metro-X and that had a utility to tweak the screen position. Something else that I have been having fun with is trying to get hiccup free mp3 playback. On my win / Lin box (K6-3 400 MHz, SoundBlaster 128 PCI) under 98, the sound glitches up when there is a lot of movement on the screen, lots of disk access, and just randomly every couple of minutes. Under mdk 7.2 the story is much the same, except without the random hiccups. I remember back in my late RedHat 5.2 days on a K6 233 MHz with the exact same sound card, the sound seemed quite stable to me. (I sometimes wonder how much my long term memory distorts things.) When my brother plays mp3's on his 700 MHz Coppermine under mdk 7.2, the sound doesn't hiccup like my sound does. Then again on his system when he tries to add more songs to an existing play list or just sometimes randomly while playing, his system will lock up. It locks up so tight that the power switch (soft) stops working and he has to flip the switch in the back. (He has the power switch set to instant off.) He said that he has been experiencing this problem since our RedHat 6.0 days and it only happens under Linux (currently dual boots into Windows ME) when he uses XMMS under Linux. Winamp under under Windows ME on the same machine runs without a hitch playing the same mp3's off of the same server. (He and his roommates have a little Linux based file server set up.) For my brother's machine the three pieces of hardware that has remained since he claimed that he first started seeing this problem is his dual processor capable Supermicro motherboard (only one 700 MHz Coppermine in it now and the chip set is the Intel 440BX), sound card, and the case itself. This leave me the question of what needs to happen to get these machines to play mp3's back properly under Linux? I have been thinking about putting a sound card on my dedicated Linux box (800 MHz Athlon) to play mp3's among other things, but with the experiences listed above, I don't have very high confidence of succeeding at the level that I want to succeed at. I throw an array of tasks at this machine that are often CPU and/or disk intensive. The question would be is there any recommendations for a sound card for this machine that is not going to need a lot of CPU bandwidth and is not going to screw up even when I am abusing the system?
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