Joho the Blog
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July 22, 2003
Ok, I'm up and running in Mandrake, using kde as my desktop. So far so good... The only hitch I hit when installing Mandrake was that it asked me for a CD that I didn't have. I thought it must have been the third CD in the set, but I downloaded it twice and burned the image 3 times and it still wouldn't accept it. So, I finally said to just skip it, which it did without complaint. I think it might have been internationalization settings. The kde desktop looks pretty and the file browser is modeled on Windows Explorer, which isn't a bad thing. Since I'm writing this entry from the linux desktop, I am apparently connected fine. It looks like it's playing mp3's, which I couldn't get the RedHat distribution to do. Of course, I don't hear any sound, but the file is generated a graphic sound wave in the xmms player, so that's pretty much the same thing as hearing it, isn't it? I refuse to be stopped by details! The Mandrake Control center tells me that it didn't install samba, required to see the Windows machines on my network. Hmm. I could have sworn that I checked that box during the installation process. Well, it's installing samba now. And it's found the folders on my XP laptop. Cool! And now it's lost them. Oh well, it was cool for a moment...Wait, they're back!...But it can only see the directories...But it's auto-configured the fstab file.... Alternating fits of coolness... Posted
by D. Weinberger at July 22, 2003 02:14 PM
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Comments
Great to read that Mandrake 9.1 works on your laptop. I'm a recent convert myself, having used SuSE for a long time now. As for the sound issue: for some reason all the Linux distros I've installed insist on having the sound set to minimum volume. Changing the settings with kmix - specifically the "Master" slider to the left in the application window - did the trick for me. You'll find it somewhere in one of the configuration menus (yep, Mandrake has some way to go in the usability department), or you kan launch it from a terminal window.
Posted by: Eirik | July 22, 2003 03:21 PM
Thanks. Some of the volume controls were down. And, btw, xmms started up with its own volume control at 0. But still no sound...
Posted by: dweinberger | July 22, 2003 03:46 PM
As a Linux user, I can really appreciate the phrase "alternating fits of coolness"! It describes the Linux desktop experience very well.
Posted by: Tom Sinclair | July 22, 2003 09:31 PM
Mandrake has a cool utility called "linneighborhood" that uses Samba to give you a 'network neighborhood' like Window's one.
Posted by: Howard Greenstein | July 22, 2003 09:44 PM
There now, didn't I say Mandrake way back when? Would you listen to me? ;)
Another common sound gotcha -- to allow multiple sound sources, Mandrake uses the "esd" sound daemon, but I find that sometimes, when you boot, the esd gets muddled; try a "killall esd" and then start xmms, and see if the sound comes back. You can also try just "esd" on a command line and if you hear a series of rising beeps, your sound is working fine (also check xmms preferences to see that it is using esound as the output; this applies to RealAudio's realplay as well).
Also, when it comes time to install new software, "urpmi" (or gurpmi if you like point and click) is your friend -- these are the apps from the admin program under "manage your software" but, and here's the tip, issue the following commands as root-user in a terminal window and it will add some of the non-official but very useful and reputable software archives (esp useful if you go looking for things like digital video tools and other odd devices)
Posted by: mrG | July 22, 2003 10:59 PM