Greetings fellow listers,=20 I have been playing rather extensively with Mandrake 9.1 on my test machi= ne, which has been an interesting, fun and horizon expanding experience. = My initial install of 9.1 was successful but when I attempted to log-in f= ollowing the initial reboot, the system would lock up. Remembering that I= had previously successfully installed 9.0, I decided to do an install of= 9.0 and then upgrade to 9.1, which I have been able to do successfully n= ow on three different occasions. However, this is a rather, in Linux inst= allation time, time consuming process if you do a "complete" install and = then a "complete" upgrade. The initial install takes close to 2 hours on = my test machine and then the upgrade takes even longer, which I do not un= derstand at all. The machine is composed of the following:=20
AMD K6-500 CPU on unknown motherboard (I don't remember at the moment and= am at the office) 256 meg PC100 ram Various hard drives (I have one of those quick change HD drawer thingies)= - Mandrake is on a Fujitsu 12.6 Gig, 5400 RPM IDE drive nVidia GeForce2 DDR AGP 64 meg video card driving an AOC Spectrum 19" CRT= Monitor ATI Radion 7000 PCI 64 meg video card driving a Hansol 530 15" LCD panel QPS 24X10X32 CD burner (Linux sees it as an ATAPI 24X10) Generic 52X CD-ROM drive Ensonic PCI 128 sound card (ESS1371 I think) Logitec wireless keyboard & optical wheel mouse (both connected to PCI po= rts)=20 ATI TV Wonder VE TV card NIC (I don't remember which one at the moment)=20 I have managed to get everything working rather easily, with the exceptio= n of the dual heads/xinerama which is the ultimate focus of this post. Th= e two previous installs have been the result of trying to implement the d= ual heads, which I have managed to do in the past through a series of tri= als and errors, but on two occasions have "hosed" the system and I ultima= tely did a complete reinstall. Even going to the command line,=20 # su=20 $ cd /etc/Xll $ cp ./XF86Config-4 ./XF86Config-4.bak $ cp ./XF86Config-4.old ./XF86Config-4 and restarting X doesn't always work, and the exact procedure for making = dual heads/xinerama work in Mandrake isn't well documented or I haven't f= ound it yet. All that being said, I would like to be able to "clone" my e= xisting Mandrake 9.1 installation to CDs, much like Partition Magic does,= in order to be able to quickly and easily reload the current configurati= on after I break it again, and I WILL! I downloaded and installed the RPM= packages of mindi/mondo for Mandrake 9.0 (there isn't a 9.1 specific pac= kage yet) from http:www.microwerks.net/ but haven't gotten it/them to wor= k successfully yet. I was able to generate both the rescue floppys and a = bootable CD from the iso that mindi created but once it loads it gives me= an error and mondo won't run. I am going to send an e-mail to the develo= pers with the error log file. I also installed parted ( http://partimage.= org ) and mkcdrec ( http://mkcdrec.ota.be ) but haven't had a chance to p= lay with them yet as I thought that mondo/mindi was (and may yet) going t= o solve my problem. Does anyone have any other suggestions as to applicat= ions that I should look into. I would also like to be able to clone my Xa= ndros installation on my production machine so a DEB package would be nic= e, but I am not opposed to compiling, once I find something that works.=20 As an aside, Mandrake 9.1 is really sweet and the installation/configurat= ion by the end user using a GUI is MUCH improved over previous versions, = but still has a ways to go to catch up with some of the other distros tha= t are targeting the desktop market, not the least of which is the dual he= ad configuration mentioned above. The network configuration stuff has com= e a long way as well, but the user still has to find and mount any Window= $ partitions as well as network shares, but SAMBA configuration is easier= , printer installation is a breeze, as is the TV card configuration. KDE = 3.1 is SWEET and Zapping is the best TV application for Linux that I have= seen yet. It is every bit as good as anything that ATI bundles for Windo= w$ and is MUCH more flexible/configurable. K3B is the best audio CD burni= ng app that I have found so far, and, with the exception of being able to= directly creating CD labels, it does everything (including writing CD te= xt) that EZCD Creator and Nero Burning ROM do and does it faster and with= greater flexibility than either of them. I am amazed at how fast and how= far things have progressed for the benefit of the desktop user/newbie in= the short year that I have been playing with Linux and can't wait the se= e where we will be in another year. My next adventure after solving the a= bove described challenge is to investigate the Eastman Computer Music Cen= ter Turn-Key package ( http://lulu.esm.rochester.edu/kevine/turnkey/home.= html ) and Thac's RPM's for Mandrake ( http://rpm.nyvalls.se/ ), both of = which are "distros" that package a collection of applications targeted sp= ecifically at multi-media enthusists and developed to run on Mandrake 9.0= and 9.1.=20 Any and all thoughts and comments will be greatly appreciated, Ed Richards This email, including any attached files, may contain confidential and pr= ivileged information. Any review, use, distribution or disclosure of inc= luded information by unintended recipients is strictly prohibited. If yo= u are not a named recipient or authorized to receive and / or act on info= rmation sent to a named recipient, or have reason to believe you are not = or should not be one of the named recipients, please notify sender accord= ingly by reply email and delete all copies of this message prior to forwa= rding, copying or otherwise reproducing this message or attachments there= to. For information regarding the export control status of items discusse= d in this document, please refer to the project control list. Thank you.
