Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
John Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Tuesday 11 November 2003 10:50, Warly wrote: [snipped] Yes you are right. And this problem of the source is clearly the case when you remaster your own CDs with your own packages and sell or give them as a Mandrake distribution. Does this put me in hot water? I create DVD-R's with the 9.2 download + contribs (including jpackage); which I supply for ¤2 per disk (no profit in that, none intended). Well as long as the packages included are the mandrake ones, no problem I guess. -- Warly
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Robert L Martin wrote: Buchan Milne wrote: And where on the mandrake site is a listing of exactly what is on the commercial cds From: http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/9.2/features/ Additional drivers for NVIDIA-based and ATI videocards are available in Mandrake packs. or less than a week old list of whats on the club site?? http://rpms.mandrakeclub.com (which is where you get if you click on the big downloads link at the top of the mandrakeclub.com page) im going to assume that neither list is complete (the cd list only gives the download edition files and the club area doesn't seem to have any files (for 9.2)) the questions stand Your original question was how users would know the NVidia or ATI drivers were present (you don't need a listing of 5000 packages to find the answer to that). So, for your first question, my answer should suffice. For the second question, don't know what you searched for, but I got: ati http://rpms.mandrakeclub.com/rpms/MandrakeClub/comm/9.2/i586/ATI_kernel-smp-2.4.22.10mdk-3.2.5-2mdk.i586.html http://rpms.mandrakeclub.com/rpms/MandrakeClub/comm/9.2/i586/ATI_kernel-p3-smp-64GB-2.4.22.10mdk-3.2.5-2mdk.i586.html http://rpms.mandrakeclub.com/rpms/MandrakeClub/comm/9.2/i586/ATI_kernel-i686-up-4GB-2.4.22.10mdk-3.2.5-2mdk.i586.html http://rpms.mandrakeclub.com/rpms/MandrakeClub/comm/9.2/i586/ATI_kernel-enterprise-2.4.22.10mdk-3.2.5-2mdk.i586.html http://rpms.mandrakeclub.com/rpms/MandrakeClub/comm/9.2/i586/ATI_kernel-2.4.22.10mdk-3.2.5-2mdk.i586.html http://rpms.mandrakeclub.com/rpms/MandrakeClub/comm/9.2/i586/ATI_GLX-3.2.5-2mdk.i586.html (these are the original ones, new ones have been provided too) nvidia http://rpms.mandrakeclub.com/rpms/MandrakeClub/comm/9.2/i586/NVIDIA_kernel-2.4.22.10mdk-4496-2mdk.i586.html http://rpms.mandrakeclub.com/rpms/MandrakeClub/comm/9.2/i586/NVIDIA_kernel-enterprise-2.4.22.10mdk-4496-2mdk.i586.html http://rpms.mandrakeclub.com/rpms/MandrakeClub/comm/9.2/i586/NVIDIA_kernel-i686-up-4GB-2.4.22.10mdk-4496-2mdk.i586.html http://rpms.mandrakeclub.com/rpms/MandrakeClub/comm/9.2/i586/NVIDIA_kernel-p3-smp-64GB-2.4.22.10mdk-4496-2mdk.i586.html http://rpms.mandrakeclub.com/rpms/MandrakeClub/comm/9.2/i586/NVIDIA_kernel-smp-2.4.22.10mdk-4496-2mdk.i586.html http://rpms.mandrakeclub.com/rpms/MandrakeClub/comm/9.2/i586/NVIDIA_GLX-4496-2mdk.i586.html If you're going to ask rhetorical questions, at least check the answer first. Regards, Buchan - -- |--Another happy Mandrake Club member--| Buchan MilneMechanical Engineer, Network Manager Cellphone * Work+27 82 472 2231 * +27 21 8828820x202 Stellenbosch Automotive Engineering http://www.cae.co.za GPG Key http://ranger.dnsalias.com/bgmilne.asc 1024D/60D204A7 2919 E232 5610 A038 87B1 72D6 AC92 BA50 60D2 04A7 -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQE/s1IerJK6UGDSBKcRAvTKAJ492sl7NtyXYN+6MAsmCrKGpaD5wgCghCXb JS5+6Vxu4BMFpfiDrIvW/Q0= =WZF3 -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
Buchan Milne wrote: And where on the mandrake site is a listing of exactly what is on the commercial cds From: http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/9.2/features/ Additional drivers for NVIDIA-based and ATI videocards are available in Mandrake packs. or less than a week old list of whats on the club site?? http://rpms.mandrakeclub.com (which is where you get if you click on the big downloads link at the top of the mandrakeclub.com page) - -- im going to assume that neither list is complete (the cd list only gives the download edition files and the club area doesn't seem to have any files (for 9.2)) the questions stand
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Warly wrote: Olivier Blin [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Thu, 06 Nov 2003 21:48:14 +0100 Pascal Terjan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] Theoraticaly speaking they can just put then as this. The disc contain is free software, but the the Mandrake name is copyrighted and should not be used without Mandrakesoft agreement. It is not copyrighted but trademarked. And I think you can sell discs with a trademarked name (you can also sell an old TV on ebay, even if it has the trademark Sony stamped on it). According to US law a mark is infringed when you're use of it causes confusion as to the source of the goods involved. As long as you take care of that, there shouldn't be any problem. Reading the stuff at the club it seems to me himandrake is actually violating trademarks, because they claim to own the mandrake name. Unless ofcourse, they bought mandrake. but ofcourse, IANAL, Yes you are right. And this problem of the source is clearly the case when you remaster your own CDs with your own packages and sell or give them as a Mandrake distribution. -- Warly
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
On Tuesday 11 November 2003 10:50, Warly wrote: [snipped] Yes you are right. And this problem of the source is clearly the case when you remaster your own CDs with your own packages and sell or give them as a Mandrake distribution. Does this put me in hot water? I create DVD-R's with the 9.2 download + contribs (including jpackage); which I supply for ¤2 per disk (no profit in that, none intended). -- John Allen, Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] MandrakeClub Silver Member.
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Bruno Prior wrote: Buchan, As was explained earlier in this thread, plenty of people have 9.2 now, because it is being included with various linux magazines. I don't know about the Spanish one, but the Linux Format DVD looks pretty official to me - there is a full-page advert for MandrakeClub in the same issue, so I assume Mandrake knew about its inclusion. What is happening is that magazines like Linux Format, who have a pretty positive impression of Mandrake's user-friendliness, have included 9.2 (original, without updates, due to publishing timescales, presumably) and encouraged people to give it a go. Many of these are inexperienced linux users, and are running up against the usual problems - most commonly patchy support for video hardware. Mandrake and Radeon has been a bad combination since at least the Radeon 7500. And it's a copout to say it's because of ATI's attitude to Open Source drivers (not that I expect you will) because other distros handle this aspect better than Mandrake. Sure, for the Radeon 7500, there is no excuse (but AFAIK it should work fine out-the-box on 9.2), but for newer Radeon's, there isn't much we can do, since no free software driver supports them yet. And, as has been discussed in other threads, what really needs to happen if new users are not to be put off, is that X configuration falls back to a basic default (VGA or Vesa @640 x 480, say) or the console interface to XFdrake, rather than simply fails and dumps the user at a console. You could see this for yourself if you check out the Linux Format Help forum, but as a taster, here's a quote from a thread titled 'Install Mandrake 9.2 with ATI Radeon 9600 card?': XFree86 doesn't support these cards yet AFAIK. You have to have the non-free ATI driver. Fedora won't ship it, and the drivers are: - -on the commercial CDs - -on the Club. Well listen guys, I've given up. After struggling through to a root prompt, then downloading the drivers from ATI, I tried following the install instructions. Now believe me, this is no exaggeration: There are 664 lines of instructions on how to install the drivers. 664 lines! And they aren't the easiest of instructions to follow either, here's a small random snippet: This is ATIs problem, if they can't sort out their driver installation routine for non-free software. They are the ones providing bad support for their products. Most NVidia newbies don't have this problem. Since the rpm program does check any sort of dependencies to system libraries you might observe that you are requested to install certain revisions (or compatible versions) of other packages in order to install the driver package. Advanced administrators can decide to override specific dependencies by the --nodeps switch as described in the RPM manual pages, but in general those dependencies should be fullfilled. Sweet mother mary. I know you'll all flame me for saying this (the Linux community isn't known for being very subjective ) but Microsoft has nothing to worry about! Say what you like, but this is archiac stuff. Sorry folks, this won't cut it. Windows is years ahead. And this guy isn't the only one feeling this way. So you can say that all bar one bug has been fixed by now, if you like, but that doesn't make any difference to the fact that 9.2 in its unadulterated state got into the open with far too many faults. There is currently nothing that can be done about this issue. Nothing. Unless you are volunteering to write a free software driver that supports these cards. It's no consolation to newbies that many of the bugs are fixed, because they are dumped at a console with no idea how to install these fixes. If people get bitten by the LG issue, that will only add insult to injury. And whether or not LG replace the drives (is that confirmed?) Steffen Barzus had his device replaced, no-one has reported *not* having their device replaced. , you can bet that Mandrake will get a reputation (deserved or not) for breaking hardware. And, so will Gentoo (who had the same issue on one of their releases and on their America's Army bootable game CD). But, the bug would not have been discovered this early without Mandrake, Gentoo only found the source of the problem after Mandrake 9.2 was released. It's unfortunate, but this would have happened to some distro (whoever merged packet writing first), since it's very unlikely the problem would have been found by people manaully patching packet writing into their kernel (the patch has been available and in use for a long time). It seems to be a fond idea of some contributors that fixing a raft of problems in short time after release gets round the fact that the problems were there. No one takes that attitude with bugs in Windows or hardware faults. So, I guess no-one applies service patches etc (some of which cause bigger problems, such as XP SP1 messing up virtual
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Bruno Prior wrote: Buchan, As was explained earlier in this thread, plenty of people have 9.2 now, because it is being included with various linux magazines. I don't know about the Spanish one, but the Linux Format DVD looks pretty official to me - there is a full-page advert for MandrakeClub in the same issue, so I assume Mandrake knew about its inclusion. What is happening is that magazines like Linux Format, who have a pretty positive impression of Mandrake's user-friendliness, have included 9.2 (original, without updates, due to publishing timescales, presumably) and encouraged people to give it a go. Many of these are inexperienced linux users, and are running up against the usual problems - most commonly patchy support for video hardware. Mandrake and Radeon has been a bad combination since at least the Radeon 7500. And it's a copout to say it's because of ATI's attitude to Open Source drivers (not that I expect you will) because other distros handle this aspect better than Mandrake. Sure, for the Radeon 7500, there is no excuse (but AFAIK it should work fine out-the-box on 9.2), but for newer Radeon's, there isn't much we can do, since no free software driver supports them yet. And, as has been discussed in other threads, what really needs to happen if new users are not to be put off, is that X configuration falls back to a basic default (VGA or Vesa @640 x 480, say) or the console interface to XFdrake, rather than simply fails and dumps the user at a console. You could see this for yourself if you check out the Linux Format Help forum, but as a taster, here's a quote from a thread titled 'Install Mandrake 9.2 with ATI Radeon 9600 card?': XFree86 doesn't support these cards yet AFAIK. You have to have the non-free ATI driver. Fedora won't ship it, and the drivers are: - -on the commercial CDs - -on the Club. IIRC Fedora does support them with free drivers : http://rpmfind.net//linux/RPM/rawhide/1.0/i386/Fedora/RPMS/XFree86-4.3.0-42.i386.html snip * Fri Oct 03 2003 Mike A. Harris [EMAIL PROTECTED] 4.3.0-36 - Added XFree86-4.3.0-ati-generic-shared-chip-data.patch to unify changes to atichip.h into a single harmless patch to avoid patch overlap and merge conflicts - Updated XFree86-4.3.0-radeon-support-from-ATI-backport-from-CVS.patch to remove changes to atichip.h as they're merged into the above patch instead - Added XFree86-4.3.0-radeon-support-backport-from-CVS.patch backport of support for newer Radeon 9600/9800/IGP/Mobility hardware from CVS head, along with a few minor bug fixes for Mobility and IGP. Very low risk change which is heavily audited, however currently configured to only build for cambridge and psyche until runtime tested sufficiently - Renamed XFree86-4.3.0-ati-radeon-dpms-on-dvi-v2.patch for consistency, to XFree86-4.3.0-radeon-dpms-on-dvi-v2.patch - Added XFree86-4.3.0-Xserver-xf86PciInfo-updates.patch which from now on will hold all xf86PciInfo updates. Moved all Radeon, s snip svetljo -- NEU FÜR ALLE - GMX MediaCenter - für Fotos, Musik, Dateien... Fotoalbum, File Sharing, MMS, Multimedia-Gruß, GMX FotoService Jetzt kostenlos anmelden unter http://www.gmx.net +++ GMX - die erste Adresse für Mail, Message, More! +++
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
Buchan Milne wrote: XFree86 doesn't support these cards yet AFAIK. You have to have the non-free ATI driver. Fedora won't ship it, and the drivers are: - -on the commercial CDs - -on the Club. And where on the mandrake site is a listing of exactly what is on the commercial cds or less than a week old list of whats on the club site??
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
Buchan Milne wrote: Sure, for the Radeon 7500, there is no excuse (but AFAIK it should work fine out-the-box on 9.2), but for newer Radeon's, there isn't much we can do, since no free software driver supports them yet. That's not absolutely the case. The Vesa driver supported my Radeon 9600 without acceleration, which is all you need to get a workable desktop, which is what we should be trying to provide at install as a minimum. There would be much less issue if problems were along the lines of my games run slow, than I get dumped at the command prompt after installation. For some reason, this guy says the Vesa driver doesn't work for him. He hasn't provided enough info to be able to figure out what's going on, and probably won't now. Could very likely be user error (I suspect it may be configuration of his monitor rather than his card that is failing), but we will probably never know now, because he was put off by the difficulty of it all. It might be annoying, but we need people like that, and we certainly don't need them telling stories about how lame Mandrake is. XFree86 doesn't support these cards yet AFAIK. You have to have the non-free ATI driver. Fedora won't ship it, and the drivers are: - -on the commercial CDs - -on the Club. Yes, I've pointed this out, and that it would be fairer to compare the Mandrake box-set with Windows, but you aren't going to get many people spending money on Mandrake box-sets or Club membership, if it gets a reputation for being hard to install or (in extremis) damaging hardware. This is ATIs problem, if they can't sort out their driver installation routine for non-free software. They are the ones providing bad support for their products. Most NVidia newbies don't have this problem. Agreed. It is frustrating that the only distro they support without having to compile modules (and therefore download the *%^ing missing kernel-source) is RedHat. Can't Mandrake contact them and provide modules to bundle with their install package, the same way they have bundled RedHat modules? Presumably it would be in ATI's interests to make this work as easily as possible with as many distros as possible. There is currently nothing that can be done about this issue. Nothing. Unless you are volunteering to write a free software driver that supports these cards. As I say, Vesa works with at least some Radeon 9600 cards, so presumably there _is_ something that can be done about this. Steffen Barzus had his device replaced, no-one has reported *not* having their device replaced. Good news. It's unfortunate, but this would have happened to some distro (whoever merged packet writing first), since it's very unlikely the problem would have been found by people manaully patching packet writing into their kernel (the patch has been available and in use for a long time). True. Mandrake has always been bleeding-edge. But if it's risky installing it before more experienced users have had a chance to test it, what were Mandrake doing providing it for inclusion with a UK magazine before it had even gone on public release? I thought the idea this time was that the public download edition and box-sets would be delayed for a while, to give Club and Cooker members a chance to run it to spot and fix the most serious gremlins (and provide an incentive for people to join the Club). This pretty well undermines that. So, I guess no-one applies service patches etc (some of which cause bigger problems, such as XP SP1 messing up virtual memory management)? Exactly. And why do you think Windows has the reputation it does? It's a regular refrain of linux advocates that linux is more stable than Windows. Is this not a part of what they are referring to? I'm a long way from being a Windows advocate. I just don't think it helps for linux to suffer from the same problems as Windows. I want linux to be better than, not as good (or bad) as Windows. Well, the only additional issue you have mentioned (besides the LG issue) is totally out of our hands. No distro can currently support the latest Radeon cards without free software. So, users should either bite the bullet and install the ATI drivers manually, buy the release, or join the club and use the packages there (and hope they have been updated for the new kernel too). I gave you an example. I don't think it will help anyone for me to copy every problem on the forum to this list. The problems are many and varied, but they mostly resolve to either (a) I couldn't complete installation, or (b) I was dumped at a console when rebooting after installation. It's easy to belittle less experienced users' problems one by one, but if Mandrake wants to be seen as a user-friendly desktop OS, it has to cope with these problems. Maybe it's only a matter of not putting the new release out too early to the public in the way that they did, but if you've got a lot of people with problems like this, it's a sign that something is wrong. Cheers, Bruno
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Bruno Prior wrote: Buchan Milne wrote: Sure, for the Radeon 7500, there is no excuse (but AFAIK it should work fine out-the-box on 9.2), but for newer Radeon's, there isn't much we can do, since no free software driver supports them yet. That's not absolutely the case. The Vesa driver supported my Radeon 9600 without acceleration, which is all you need to get a workable desktop, which is what we should be trying to provide at install as a minimum. Sorry, I was not aware it was this bad (DrakX not using vesa if it does not know the card). There would be much less issue if problems were along the lines of my games run slow, than I get dumped at the command prompt after installation. BTW, you may have missed a lot of threads on cooker here where I have been advocating that all display managers (not just gdm) kick off XFdrake if X fails to start ... For some reason, this guy says the Vesa driver doesn't work for him. He hasn't provided enough info to be able to figure out what's going on, and probably won't now. Could very likely be user error (I suspect it may be configuration of his monitor rather than his card that is failing), but we will probably never know now, because he was put off by the difficulty of it all. It might be annoying, but we need people like that, and we certainly don't need them telling stories about how lame Mandrake is. XFree86 doesn't support these cards yet AFAIK. You have to have the non-free ATI driver. Fedora won't ship it, and the drivers are: - -on the commercial CDs - -on the Club. Yes, I've pointed this out, and that it would be fairer to compare the Mandrake box-set with Windows, but you aren't going to get many people spending money on Mandrake box-sets or Club membership, if it gets a reputation for being hard to install or (in extremis) damaging hardware. Chicken and egg problem, and there's no real solution to this. This is ATIs problem, if they can't sort out their driver installation routine for non-free software. They are the ones providing bad support for their products. Most NVidia newbies don't have this problem. Agreed. It is frustrating that the only distro they support without having to compile modules (and therefore download the *%^ing missing kernel-source) is RedHat. Can't Mandrake contact them and provide modules to bundle with their install package, the same way they have bundled RedHat modules? Presumably it would be in ATI's interests to make this work as easily as possible with as many distros as possible. There is currently nothing that can be done about this issue. Nothing. Unless you are volunteering to write a free software driver that supports these cards. As I say, Vesa works with at least some Radeon 9600 cards, so presumably there _is_ something that can be done about this. Steffen Barzus had his device replaced, no-one has reported *not* having their device replaced. Good news. It's unfortunate, but this would have happened to some distro (whoever merged packet writing first), since it's very unlikely the problem would have been found by people manaully patching packet writing into their kernel (the patch has been available and in use for a long time). True. Mandrake has always been bleeding-edge. Compared to say Redhat who ships with cvs snapshots of unstable versions of glibc (and then has to issue updates to glibc so users in large installations can see all users), and similar things? But if it's risky installing it before more experienced users have had a chance to test it, what were Mandrake doing providing it for inclusion with a UK magazine before it had even gone on public release? Who said Mandrake provided it? I thought the idea this time was that the public download edition and box-sets would be delayed for a while, to give Club and Cooker members a chance to run it to spot and fix the most serious gremlins (and provide an incentive for people to join the Club). And provides users who have already downloaded the ISOs (likely 85% of users) absolutely no incentive to pay Mandrakesoft, buy boxed sets, or join the club for no other reason but charity. This pretty well undermines that. So, I guess no-one applies service patches etc (some of which cause bigger problems, such as XP SP1 messing up virtual memory management)? Exactly. And why do you think Windows has the reputation it does? It's a regular refrain of linux advocates that linux is more stable than Windows. Is this not a part of what they are referring to? Stability doesn't have that much to do with how many updates are available (IMHO). I'm a long way from being a Windows advocate. I just don't think it helps for linux to suffer from the same problems as Windows. I want linux to be better than, not as good (or bad) as Windows. Agreed, but you (and a lot of others) are concentrating on two hardware issues, and not seeing a lot of
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Robert L Martin wrote: Buchan Milne wrote: XFree86 doesn't support these cards yet AFAIK. You have to have the non-free ATI driver. Fedora won't ship it, and the drivers are: - -on the commercial CDs - -on the Club. And where on the mandrake site is a listing of exactly what is on the commercial cds From: http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/9.2/features/ Additional drivers for NVIDIA-based and ATI videocards are available in Mandrake packs. or less than a week old list of whats on the club site?? http://rpms.mandrakeclub.com (which is where you get if you click on the big downloads link at the top of the mandrakeclub.com page) - -- |--Another happy Mandrake Club member--| Buchan MilneMechanical Engineer, Network Manager Cellphone * Work+27 82 472 2231 * +27 21 8828820x202 Stellenbosch Automotive Engineering http://www.cae.co.za GPG Key http://ranger.dnsalias.com/bgmilne.asc 1024D/60D204A7 2919 E232 5610 A038 87B1 72D6 AC92 BA50 60D2 04A7 -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQE/r4lErJK6UGDSBKcRAmc0AJ9Ut47/gX2DvV+LNRzyMuFt0G94lgCff4aX 2YFk8bWchfQNPDIxbRb4mb8= =16Q0 -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
Olivier Blin [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Thu, 06 Nov 2003 21:48:14 +0100 Pascal Terjan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm pretty sure the magazine didn't even bother to tell Mandrakesoft they'll distibute the 9.2... They don't need MandrakSoft's agreement, it's free software. Sure, it would be nice that magazines tell MandrakeSoft when they distribute Mandrake, but it's legal not to tell it. Do you warn the developper(s) each time you package a new piece of software ? It's almost the same thing ... Theoraticaly speaking they can just put then as this. The disc contain is free software, but the the Mandrake name is copyrighted and should not be used without Mandrakesoft agreement. -- Warly
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
On Monday 10 November 2003 02:01 am, Buchan Milne wrote: Well, the only additional issue you have mentioned (besides the LG issue) is totally out of our hands. No distro can currently support the latest Radeon cards without free software. So, users should either bite the bullet and install the ATI drivers manually, buy the release, or join the club and use the packages there (and hope they have been updated for the new kernel too). they have been I grabed them from the club. However this does not solve the menu issue. Which is the only ligitimate thing I have found. Having said that what about all the other things that mandrake does right. 1) This is the first time i have had autodetection of hardware work correctly on boot. Never ever has it worked correctly before. It would hang or not remove old hardware correctly or simply not set up the new hardware correctly. I added a new dvd burner after install and guess what it installed it more or less correctly and it was working perfectly. That did not work even with 9.1. Now I will admit I had to edit lilo a bit to get my original cd burner running in ide-scsi again but that was minor. and could be handled easily enough. 2) The networking now works better to use this as a firewall. The built in firewall scripts for 9.1 on every machine I tried on would simply not set it up correctly. On 9.2 it's better but not perfect yet. I do understand though that this has to do with the kernel handeling dma or irq differently and so multiple nic cards are not always detected properly. At any rate with 9.2 it works better. Now if I could just figure out why it has not worked with my macs since 8.2. There are quite a few other small things that I cant think of right now but all in all 9.2 is much better than anything previously. -- New and improved with advanced outlook crash handler. !--input type -- -~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~- Brook Humphrey Mobile PC Medic, 420 1st, Cheney, WA 99004, 509-235-9107 http://www.webmedic.net, [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Holiness unto the Lord -~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
On Monday 10 November 2003 02:17 am, Svetoslav Slavtchev wrote: * Fri Oct 03 2003 Mike A. Harris [EMAIL PROTECTED] 4.3.0-36 - Added XFree86-4.3.0-ati-generic-shared-chip-data.patch to unify changes to atichip.h into a single harmless patch to avoid patch overlap and merge conflicts patch was completed after 9.2 was finished. Thanks though because it could now be added to cooker and available for next release. -- New and improved with advanced outlook crash handler. !--input type -- -~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~- Brook Humphrey Mobile PC Medic, 420 1st, Cheney, WA 99004, 509-235-9107 http://www.webmedic.net, [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Holiness unto the Lord -~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
On Mon, 10 Nov 2003 14:40:51 +0200 Buchan Milne [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: BTW, you may have missed a lot of threads on cooker here where I have been advocating that all display managers (not just gdm) kick off XFdrake if X fails to start ... An additional difficulty in this instance is that with the radeon 9600/9800 the chipset is correctly identified as 'radeon' but that driver does not work. When that test fails it would be prudent for XFdrake to then suggest the 'universal' vesa driver rather than assuming that the user would know what option to change. Also of note is that on my system, in 9.1, with a radeon 9600 when using the vesa driver the system was still useless unless I also used vga=normal. Charles -- Gibble, Gobble, we ACCEPT YOU ... - Mandrake Linux 10.0 on PurpleDragon Kernel-2.4.22-21.tmb.2mdkenterprise http://www.eslrahc.com - pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Warly wrote: Olivier Blin [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Thu, 06 Nov 2003 21:48:14 +0100 Pascal Terjan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm pretty sure the magazine didn't even bother to tell Mandrakesoft they'll distibute the 9.2... They don't need MandrakSoft's agreement, it's free software. Sure, it would be nice that magazines tell MandrakeSoft when they distribute Mandrake, but it's legal not to tell it. Do you warn the developper(s) each time you package a new piece of software ? It's almost the same thing ... Theoraticaly speaking they can just put then as this. The disc contain is free software, but the the Mandrake name is copyrighted and should not be used without Mandrakesoft agreement. It is not copyrighted but trademarked. And I think you can sell discs with a trademarked name (you can also sell an old TV on ebay, even if it has the trademark Sony stamped on it). According to US law a mark is infringed when you're use of it causes confusion as to the source of the goods involved. As long as you take care of that, there shouldn't be any problem. Reading the stuff at the club it seems to me himandrake is actually violating trademarks, because they claim to own the mandrake name. Unless ofcourse, they bought mandrake. but ofcourse, IANAL, d.
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
Buchan Milne wrote: Sorry, I was not aware it was this bad (DrakX not using vesa if it does not know the card). It selected Vesa for me straight off, but seems not to have suggested it to the guy who had the problem. Don't know why. BTW, you may have missed a lot of threads on cooker here where I have been advocating that all display managers (not just gdm) kick off XFdrake if X fails to start ... Didn't miss them. I agree with what you suggest, and thought this was a limitation of Mandrake that you would appreciate. True. Mandrake has always been bleeding-edge. Compared to say Redhat who ships with cvs snapshots of unstable versions of glibc (and then has to issue updates to glibc so users in large installations can see all users), and similar things? I wasn't really comparing it - what matters is whether users should view Mandrake as a safe bet or a risky install. It seems from everything that has been said that they should view it as the former. But if we are comparing, Mandrake's origins are as an upgraded version of RedHat that included packages that RedHat left out because of licensing quibbles (e.g. KDE). So I guess you could say that it always used to be reasonable to expect Mandrake to be a little more cutting edge than RedHat. Whether that's still the case is another matter But if it's risky installing it before more experienced users have had a chance to test it, what were Mandrake doing providing it for inclusion with a UK magazine before it had even gone on public release? Who said Mandrake provided it? The accompanying eight-page article in the magazine - for one. This includes the comment that the screenshots were from RC2 as Mandrake provided the final packages too late for the publishing schedule. I take it from this that Mandrake cooperated in their inclusion. After all, as the public ISOs were not available at the time that the magazine was being prepared, I doubt Future Publishing (publishers of Linux Format) would have taken the risk of nicking the finished item from Club without Mandrake's permission. But maybe someone from Mandrake would like to clarify this. And provides users who have already downloaded the ISOs (likely 85% of users) absolutely no incentive to pay Mandrakesoft, buy boxed sets, or join the club for no other reason but charity. Exactly. I understand the logic of the decision to hold back the public ISOs for a while. But I don't understand the logic of taking this decision, and then undermining it by including it on the cover of magazines before public release. Stability doesn't have that much to do with how many updates are available (IMHO). Don't you have to reboot every time you apply a service pack? That doesn't help your uptime. And didn't the virtual memory management issues you mentioned cause stability problems? Agreed, but you (and a lot of others) are concentrating on two hardware issues, and not seeing a lot of improvements in 9.2 (and the development process). 9.2 really is a substantially better release than 9.1, but no-one is prepared to tolerate even one hardware issue that affects them. For my uses, the principal improvement in 9.2 is the inclusion of OOo v1.1. And they had to be badgered into doing this. You are a much more high-powered user than most, so you are probably better able than most to see the improvements, and I don't doubt that they're there, but what lesser mortals wanted above all was a release with as few bugs as possible, and that was yet again not the focus. I think you are probably misjudging people's motives when they criticise the condition of 9.2 at release. I don't believe people are just trying to knock Mandrake. I expect most people want the best for Mandrake, the same as you. It's just that they are hoping to persuade Mandrake to change their priorities for the next release by pointing out how the current priorities (new features ahead of bug-fixing) cause problems. And, I have seen many complaints on forums about beta2/rc1/rc2, and many of the reporters didn't report their issues, so how should they be fixed? Of course, you have a valid point. But the volume of issues I have seen over the 9.2 final release is an order of magnitude greater than the issues reported to forums for the betas and release candidates. Simply because the final release is described as such and therefore seen as fit for public consumption. So it gets installed by a wider range of users, and those users don't expect the problems that one would naturally expect with betas. Did you test the beta release? Did you report that your card wasn't automatically configured to work? Did you report that the vesa driver worked? I tested to the extent that I had time available and hardware to spare. That wasn't as much as I would have liked, but I run my own company and work a 80-hour week, so opportunities were few and far between. I would have tested the 9600 earlier, but I didn't actually own it until very
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
9/11/0312:06 The LINUX FORMAT magazine carried a very prominent warning about LG on their website following the publication of their issue with 9.2 as a cover disc. john. *** - Original Message - From: Robert L Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2003 3:24 AM Subject: Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel Francisco Alcaraz wrote: I just have bought a linux magazine (Todo Linux) that comes with the two first Mandrake 9.2 and, of course, with the old kernel. Nothing in the magazine warn about the possible problem with LG cdrom drivers. It could be problematic have lot of people having their LG cdrom-drivers broken. At least a note about the danger should be put. :-( Mandrake should be more carefull with this, shouldn't it? Regards You may have done this but CALL THE MAGAZINE and report this since they may be getting calls (okay so they aren't really liable but ) The problem only showed up in the release kernel so given that the roms had to be pressed a couple months ago /dev/oops
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
sionii wrote: The LINUX FORMAT magazine carried a very prominent warning about LG on their website following the publication of their issue with 9.2 as a cover disc. And when was the last time you checked a magazine website before installing a package included on a CD or DVD? Most people won't go to the website until after they experience the problem. This is not going to save more than a handful of those who could be affected by this problem. For those who think that 9.2 was in a fit state to be released and that those who have criticised were over-reacting - have a look at Linux Format's Help forum. It is being swamped with installation support requests for 9.2. It is _very_ bad news for linux (and Mandrake) that the latest release of the distro that has the best reputation for being user-friendly is going to leave so many people stranded or even damaged at install time. We are already seeing sweeping generalisations along the lines of linux isn't ready for primetime, because people assume Mandrake = linux. This sort of damage to reputations could take years to undo. Bruno
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
sionii wrote: The LINUX FORMAT magazine carried a very prominent warning about LG on their website following the publication of their issue with 9.2 as a cover disc. And when was the last time you checked a magazine website before installing a package included on a CD or DVD? Most people won't go to the website until after they experience the problem. This is not going to save more than a handful of those who could be affected by this problem. For those who think that 9.2 was in a fit state to be released and that those who have criticised were over-reacting - have a look at Linux Format's Help forum. It is being swamped with installation support requests for 9.2. It is _very_ bad news for linux (and Mandrake) that the latest release of the distro that has the best reputation for being user-friendly is going to leave so many people stranded or even damaged at install time. We are already seeing sweeping generalisations along the lines of linux isn't ready for primetime, because people assume Mandrake = linux. This sort of damage to reputations could take years to undo. If you are talking about only the LG issue, I think your point is moot. 1)LG will replace or repair the devices 2)An exploit of this is possible on Windows, and I am sure we will see one soon, and then I guess people will say Windows isn't ready for the desktop? If you have any *real* reasons why your claim that 9.2 was not in a fit state to be released, please give me your bug numbers. AFAIK, the only major as-yet unfixed problem on 9.2 is the disappearing menus issue. And any people who are running 9.2 now are either: -Club members (and there has been enough coverage on fixing and working arounf the issues -installing from FTP (these aren't newbies then) -getting the ISOs via some other means, and can't really complain until official ISOs are out (which will address the LG issue).
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
On Monday 10 November 2003 00:27, [EMAIL PROTECTED] rakstija: -getting the ISOs via some other means, and can't really complain until official ISOs are out (which will address the LG issue). Are you sure that _official_ PowerPack DVD's which supposedly are alrady sent out contain version which is NOT harmful to LG drives? I should better know this for sure because I have LG drives on several machines and do not want them to be killed. Theoretical possibility to send them for repair remains only theoretical because shipment costs from my country would be several times bigger than cost of new drives themselves, which nevertheless also is quite a money here. Before asking about bug numbers, please remember that people were (and still are!! I tested right now) specifically discouraged to post new bugs on http://qa.mandrakesoft.com because it is meant only for Cooker. Instead, for 9.2 anyone was and is readdressed to non-existing host bugs.mandrakesoft.com OK, maybe it's obvious for gurus that anyone should know the right link http://bugs.mandrakelinux.com instead of clicking on link provided by Bugzilla New Bug page, however in these circumstances it still might be not right to ask how many bugs everyone has registered. Vote for bug 6301 first ;-) http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/show_bug.cgi?id=6301 Harry
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
Bruno Prior wrote: For those who think that 9.2 was in a fit state to be released and that those who have criticised were over-reacting - have a look at Linux Format's Help forum. It is being swamped with installation support requests for 9.2. It is _very_ bad news for linux (and Mandrake) that the latest release of the distro that has the best reputation for being user-friendly is going to leave so many people stranded or even damaged at install time. We are already seeing sweeping generalisations along the lines of linux isn't ready for primetime, because people assume Mandrake = linux. This sort of damage to reputations could take years to undo. Bruno I think that the person(s) that changed the kernel in a To BE RELEASED FOR PAY version and caused this bug should have his/their wine allowance cut to 1/10.
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you are talking about only the LG issue, I think your point is moot. 1)LG will replace or repair the devices 2)An exploit of this is possible on Windows, and I am sure we will see one soon, and then I guess people will say Windows isn't ready for the desktop? If you have any *real* reasons why your claim that 9.2 was not in a fit state to be released, please give me your bug numbers. AFAIK, the only major as-yet unfixed problem on 9.2 is the disappearing menus issue. 1) And how many folks know the part numbers for everything in their computer? How about the person that has a Dell and is now explaining to Dell tech support that I tried to install Linux and my cd doesn't work? Any Bets on wether the subject of the drive OEM will even come up??? 2) Non issue besides to many folks are paid to push Windows (If you had a country would you be concerned that a group of day school crossing guards or the US Army showed up??)
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
Buchan, As was explained earlier in this thread, plenty of people have 9.2 now, because it is being included with various linux magazines. I don't know about the Spanish one, but the Linux Format DVD looks pretty official to me - there is a full-page advert for MandrakeClub in the same issue, so I assume Mandrake knew about its inclusion. What is happening is that magazines like Linux Format, who have a pretty positive impression of Mandrake's user-friendliness, have included 9.2 (original, without updates, due to publishing timescales, presumably) and encouraged people to give it a go. Many of these are inexperienced linux users, and are running up against the usual problems - most commonly patchy support for video hardware. Mandrake and Radeon has been a bad combination since at least the Radeon 7500. And it's a copout to say it's because of ATI's attitude to Open Source drivers (not that I expect you will) because other distros handle this aspect better than Mandrake. And, as has been discussed in other threads, what really needs to happen if new users are not to be put off, is that X configuration falls back to a basic default (VGA or Vesa @640 x 480, say) or the console interface to XFdrake, rather than simply fails and dumps the user at a console. You could see this for yourself if you check out the Linux Format Help forum, but as a taster, here's a quote from a thread titled 'Install Mandrake 9.2 with ATI Radeon 9600 card?': Well listen guys, I've given up. After struggling through to a root prompt, then downloading the drivers from ATI, I tried following the install instructions. Now believe me, this is no exaggeration: There are 664 lines of instructions on how to install the drivers. 664 lines! And they aren't the easiest of instructions to follow either, here's a small random snippet: Since the rpm program does check any sort of dependencies to system libraries you might observe that you are requested to install certain revisions (or compatible versions) of other packages in order to install the driver package. Advanced administrators can decide to override specific dependencies by the --nodeps switch as described in the RPM manual pages, but in general those dependencies should be fullfilled. Sweet mother mary. I know you'll all flame me for saying this (the Linux community isn't known for being very subjective ) but Microsoft has nothing to worry about! Say what you like, but this is archiac stuff. Sorry folks, this won't cut it. Windows is years ahead. And this guy isn't the only one feeling this way. So you can say that all bar one bug has been fixed by now, if you like, but that doesn't make any difference to the fact that 9.2 in its unadulterated state got into the open with far too many faults. It's no consolation to newbies that many of the bugs are fixed, because they are dumped at a console with no idea how to install these fixes. If people get bitten by the LG issue, that will only add insult to injury. And whether or not LG replace the drives (is that confirmed?), you can bet that Mandrake will get a reputation (deserved or not) for breaking hardware. It seems to be a fond idea of some contributors that fixing a raft of problems in short time after release gets round the fact that the problems were there. No one takes that attitude with bugs in Windows or hardware faults. And they won't take that attitude with Mandrake, and by extension (as you can see from the above quote) linux. This is what I am worried about. It doesn't matter whether the people who make these comments should have known better - they didn't. And that damages the perception of linux as a whole. Anyway, this issue has been done to death in other threads, and I won't extend the pain by carrying on the argument beyond this post. I just wanted people to see that the faults in the initial 9.2 release were causing real-life damage amongst less sophisticated linux users than Cooker subscribers. And that this damage hurts more than Mandrake - it hurts linux. Cheers, Bruno [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you are talking about only the LG issue, I think your point is moot. 1)LG will replace or repair the devices 2)An exploit of this is possible on Windows, and I am sure we will see one soon, and then I guess people will say Windows isn't ready for the desktop? If you have any *real* reasons why your claim that 9.2 was not in a fit state to be released, please give me your bug numbers. AFAIK, the only major as-yet unfixed problem on 9.2 is the disappearing menus issue. And any people who are running 9.2 now are either: -Club members (and there has been enough coverage on fixing and working arounf the issues -installing from FTP (these aren't newbies then) -getting the ISOs via some other means, and can't really complain until official ISOs are out (which will address the LG issue).
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
On Mon, 10 Nov 2003 10:09, Bruno Prior wrote: I just wanted people to see that the faults in the initial 9.2 release were causing real-life damage amongst less sophisticated linux users than Cooker subscribers. And that this damage hurts more than Mandrake - it hurts linux. I think if Bill Gates really *understood* how much similar pain his own users go through with MS-Windows bugs, in *every* release, it'd be wrist-slitting time for him. The Mandrake people are a lot less subject to unreasonable denial than Bill is, but still they're human and imperfect. With 9.2, there's very little that they can do, and they're doing all of it. The LG issue really is an LG problem: their firmware is not ATAPI compliant, their drives are broken. However, I do think that wider testing before release is a fine idea, and I do think Mandrake could do with an extra Alpha release about a week or two before they would normally start the Betas, specifically to get any changes crammed in early so that they have time to be exposed to lots of machines. About all else Mandrake could do would be spend money they don't have on a wide range of cruddy bottom-of-the-range hardware they don't really want and then spend time they don't have installing to it to see if it breaks. Cheers; Leon
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
Francisco Alcaraz wrote: I just have bought a linux magazine (Todo Linux) that comes with the two first Mandrake 9.2 and, of course, with the old kernel. Nothing in the magazine warn about the possible problem with LG cdrom drivers. It could be problematic have lot of people having their LG cdrom-drivers broken. At least a note about the danger should be put. :-( Mandrake should be more carefull with this, shouldn't it? Regards You may have done this but CALL THE MAGAZINE and report this since they may be getting calls (okay so they aren't really liable but ) The problem only showed up in the release kernel so given that the roms had to be pressed a couple months ago /dev/oops
[Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
I just have bought a linux magazine (Todo Linux) that comes with the two first Mandrake 9.2 and, of course, with the old kernel. Nothing in the magazine warn about the possible problem with LG cdrom drivers. It could be problematic have lot of people having their LG cdrom-drivers broken. At least a note about the danger should be put. :-( Mandrake should be more carefull with this, shouldn't it? Regards -- Francisco Alcaraz Ariza Murcia, España (Spain)
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
Francisco Alcaraz wrote: I just have bought a linux magazine (Todo Linux) that comes with the two first Mandrake 9.2 and, of course, with the old kernel. Nothing in the magazine warn about the possible problem with LG cdrom drivers. It could be problematic have lot of people having their LG cdrom-drivers broken. At least a note about the danger should be put. :-( Mandrake should be more carefull with this, shouldn't it? I'm pretty sure the magazine didn't even bother to tell Mandrakesoft they'll distibute the 9.2...
Re: [Cooker] Danger: Magazine with 9.2 with problematic kernel
On Thu, 06 Nov 2003 21:48:14 +0100 Pascal Terjan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm pretty sure the magazine didn't even bother to tell Mandrakesoft they'll distibute the 9.2... They don't need MandrakSoft's agreement, it's free software. Sure, it would be nice that magazines tell MandrakeSoft when they distribute Mandrake, but it's legal not to tell it. Do you warn the developper(s) each time you package a new piece of software ? It's almost the same thing ... -- Olivier Blin
