Well, as I'm sure others may know by now, Beta 8.0 is not quite ready for
prime time. I've gotten it up and running, but there are a number of
flaws. Here are the major problems I encountered (recommended approach,
all packages except mathematics stuff):
0) Don't try this at home without a floppy boot for your current system,
or you're screwed!!!
1) During install, the printer configuration does not create the right
samba and or CUPS entries for my remote printer (lp1 - a laserject on a
WinME box in my local lan). This worked aok on 7.2, inluding printing
test page during install. I still need to determine a fix for this.
The local printer (lp - a BJC610) works fine.
2) On initial reboot (boot successful, but ...) when attempt is made to
bring up the gui interface (I wasn't given a choice about this during
install!), the screen is filled with blue stripes and the box locks up
totally (no response to ctl-alt-bksp or ctl-alt-del or ctl-alt-fn). Had
to power off.
3) I booted my 7.2 system, mounted the 8.0 system, altered inittab to run
level 3, altered my 7.2 lilo to allow boot of 8.0 system. The 8.0 install
really should give you the opportunity to mount other distributions and
make them available via lilo!!!
4) On second boot, I was able to login to my normal user account, run
startx, and lo and behold KDE came up fine. Obviously a useable
XF86Config was created, but the gui boot screen must be doing something
really screwy, because it works from run level 3.
5) Machine seemed a little sluggish so I looked at the top display.
portsentry was getting most of the cpu, and syslogd (because of
portsentry) was right behind it. Stopping portsetnry did the trick. For
some time after stoppingportsentry, a process named kapm-idled was very
active, but this subsides soon. My box is a secondary on my local lan, so
from the evidence in /var/log/messages I presume that the lousy choice of
options installed for portsentry must have been interpreting normal eth0
traffic as a break in attempt!
6) Everything is loaded for sound (es1938 SOLO card), but no sound. This
worked on 7.2. Any clues anyone? Most of the modules.conf entries look
similar to those on my 7.2 system, where sound works.
Summary
-------
I was able to download and install XFCE (too bad this isn't a standard
offering on Mandrake!!!) and sylpheed although the sylpheed compiles
produced warnings that weren't there on the prior level of gcc/glibc.
The system is basically usable and stable once the portsentry crap is
stopped. I'm able to receive and send mail and Netscape and Konqueror
work just fine. Kmail works, too, although I don't use it on a regular
basis.
--
Collins Richey
Denver Area
