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I did it! I found a Linux that works well with Laptops.


onederer

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For obvious reasons I did not install Mandriva FREE! I had no inclination of chasing all over the place for non-free drivers, and codecs. Although Mandriva ONE is a smaller package, this will suit me fine, since mostly everything works, including wireless laptop networking. And it was all inclusive in the "Live CD Installable Package". My only immediate concern is that I've not been able to install the printer drivers. The Mandriva printer setup is something that I've not encountered up 'till now. And my attempt only resulted in the whole thing bombing out.. It is supposed to go on the Internet and download some packages?? to be able to install the printers. But it seems that those applications are broken. They can't seem to be able to access the Internet (the Internet is working, I used it for upgrading the installation). If someone knows how to cope with this, please let me know. It took a few distros that I tried these past two weeks to find one that finally works. I had given up on Mandriva some years ago, when I started getting trouble with the installer programs, and not being able to even complete an installation. After trying three successive upgrades, at that time frame, and getting installation problems, I looked elsewhere for a reliable OS. So this time, it is a re-visit to Mandriva. I must say that Mandriva took much more effort to get wireless to run than PARDUS,Linux, but I'm relieved that it is now functional. It looks like I'll keep it around for awhile. Cheers! :rolleyes:

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Probably the main reason I moved on from Mandriva a few years ago was the unreliable speed for updates and installing programs. With Debian and Sidux I can get them at maximum speed (10 Mb/s) from Australian servers.

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V.T. Eric Layton
For obvious reasons I did not install Mandriva FREE! I had no inclination of chasing all over the place for non-free drivers, and codecs.
Pssst... just for future reference, Onederer., the only diff between One and Free is that Free does not come with proprietary video card drivers (e.g. Nvidia, Ati, etc.) nor does it use proprietary Flash (Adobe). Other than that, it's pretty much identical to Free. See the differences here --> http://www2.mandriva.com/linux/which/I went with Free because it had an x86_64 version and One only comes in 32 bit.
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Frank Golden

You thread title (...a Linux that works well with Laptops) is a little misleading Onederer, many distros work well on a variety of notebooks.Example: Most Centrino branded notebooks (with Intel Core processors, Intel chipsets and Intel Wi-Fi, all required to be branded Centrino)work well out of the box with a lot of different distros.Ubuntu comes to mind for one and PCLinuxOS the other.It seems that you have a particulary difficult notebook.Glad you found something it likes.That is the nice thing about Linux, so many choices.Thank goodness for Live CD's.

Edited by Frank Golden
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Pssst... just for future reference, Onederer., the only diff between One and Free is that Free does not come with proprietary video card drivers (e.g. Nvidia, Ati, etc.) nor does it use proprietary Flash (Adobe). Other than that, it's pretty much identical to Free. See the differences here --> http://www2.mandriva.com/linux/which/I went with Free because it had an x86_64 version and One only comes in 32 bit.
Thanks, but that's precisely why I didn't go for the "FREE" version. I've kind of had it with fixing broken OS's, or the ones with the missing parts that makes life so much more pleasant. And now, I discovered that the "ONE" version has a broken printer application, and missing C compiler to compile source code programs. No fix for it yet. Too many complications to get what's needed to get a good running application for printing purposes.Cheers!
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V.T. Eric Layton

Personally, I manually install Nvidia drivers and Adobe Flash on all my systems. However, that's not to everyone's tastes. Also, Free can easily be "pimped" by using Easy URPMI to set up custom repos, including PLF (Penguin Liberation Front) repos that have just about EVERYTHING you need driver/codec wise. That's on my agenda for this evening when I go back in to finish setting up my newly installed Mandrive Free. :whistling:

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You thread title (...a Linux that works well with Laptops) is a little misleading Onederer, many distros work well on a variety of notebooks.Example: Most Centrino branded notebooks (with Intel Core processors, Intel chipsets and Intel Wi-Fi, all required to be branded Centrino)work well out of the box with a lot of different distros.Ubuntu comes to mind for one and PCLinuxOS the other.It seems that you have a particulary difficult notebook.Glad you found something it likes.That is the nice thing about Linux, so many choices.Thank goodness for Live CD's.
Simply put, I was talking about a couple of laptops and as it pertains to wireless computing. I've got one desktop running Kubuntu LTS, with no problem. However, that same OS was tried it on my two laptops, and when it came to wireless networking, it was a drudge to setup and try to get it working. PCLinuxOS was much better, but I found that it kept on losing the security key quite frequently, and when it came to putting the key back in when setting up wireless again, sometimes, it took up to a dozen times doing it, before it retained the information. I siimply got tired of doing that procedure. Mandriva wasn't bad, but it did take more effort than some of the other Linux'es. Pardus was way much easier to do but only with the "Live" version. So far for me the very best that I've encountered is the now defunct DesktopBSD. Everything worked like a charm right from the start. However, I still don't know why it committed suicide while I was in the hospital, and totally trashed it's hard drive. So for now, It immediately boils down to Mandriva ONE (good wireless networking, missing "C" compiler, broken printer application), and DesktopBSD (Everything functional and well organised. These two offered the easiest, and best working wireless GUI setup application of all the ones that I've tried so far.
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Frank Golden

I've found WICD to be a great replacement for the default Network Manager in Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS.No issues with lost keys etc.

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securitybreach
:whistling: for Wicd. I use it on all my laptops. The only difference is I use the ncurses instead of the gui: wicd-curses
wicd-curses is a terminal application for controlling Wicd. It supports everything that the GTK GUI does. It is only available for the 1.6 series, which was released on 5 June, 2009.
http://wicd.sourceforge.net/moinmoin/FAQ
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OnedererWhere are we with this? Are you keeping Mandriva One?
Well, unless I can get the printer function working, I might have to go back to DesktopBSD. It makes no sense to quit Linux and crank up Windows, because I need a printer function. Now, I have an idea that might just work for me. But it will only work for people who own HP printers. It's called HPLIP (the open source printer application for Linux users). If HPLIP works, then I'm all set. It's nice to see that Mandriva ONE has a good wireless GUI setup application which actually works. That was a very important factor in my decision, and also being able to use a printer when needed.Cheers!
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securitybreach
Well, unless I can get the printer function working, I might have to go back to DesktopBSD. It makes no sense to quit Linux and crank up Windows, because I need a printer function. Now, I have an idea that might just work for me. But it will only work for people who own HP printers. It's called HPLIP (the open source printer application for Linux users). If HPLIP works, then I'm all set. It's nice to see that Mandriva ONE has a good wireless GUI setup application which actually works. That was a very important factor in my decision, and also being able to use a printer when needed.Cheers!
Well I have a HP printer/scanner/copier with HPLIP and everything works perfectly. I have owed probably 20 HP printers and they all worked with HPLIP on multiple distros. So basically what I am saying is you cannot go wrong with HP printers on Linux.
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OnedererOk, I have a few questions.1st Did you update after the install, if you open MCC, >>> software management>>>configure media sources and update...does it show a list of mirrors? If not , click add >>>the click the "full set of sources" tab after the media is added, update(you can use software management--update software..or su to root in a terminal and #urpmi --auto-update it's a fairly large up-update.if you have a full set already , back out to software management>>>go to>>>install /remove softwareYou should have drop down tabs in the upper left corner..click the first one and select meta packagesunder development ...you see an icon to the left with a C beside it..click and see if task c dev (to the right)is checked if not..check it.Under Development C++ (left) then check Task-c++- dev (right)Under System, sub menu printing(left) check task- printing(right)or Task-printing-HP and task scanningthen applyafter that, go back in and on the search line..search cups and check cups-windows.See if that gets you the where you want to go( it will be a fairly large amount of packages..but task printing should address your needs.

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Onderer, I feel your pain. I had Mandriva One 2009.1 installed and all I could ever get my printer to do was print one or two lines and stop. Lights continued to flash for hours on the printer but nothing else ever printed.For some unknown reason, Mandriva would not print to my HP 5550. I know it works for others but after 2 weeks of struggling, I gave up; it simply did not work for me. Of course it saw my printer because it printed to it 1 or 2 lines. My solution was to replace Mandriva with PCLinux 2009.If a distro doesn't do what you want, then it isn't the distro for that computer and associated peripherals.

Edited by zlim
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OnedererOk, I have a few questions.1st Did you update after the install, if you open MCC, >>> software management>>>configure media sources and update...does it show a list of mirrors? If not , click add >>>the click the "full set of sources" tab after the media is added, update(you can use software management--update software..or su to root in a terminal and #urpmi --auto-update it's a fairly large up-update.if you have a full set already , back out to software management>>>go to>>>install /remove softwareYou should have drop down tabs in the upper left corner..click the first one and select meta packagesunder development ...you see an icon to the left with a C beside it..click and see if task c dev (to the right)is checked if not..check it.Under Development C++ (left) then check Task-c++- dev (right)Under System, sub menu printing(left) check task- printing(right)or Task-printing-HP and task scanningthen applyafter that, go back in and on the search line..search cups and check cups-windows.See if that gets you the where you want to go( it will be a fairly large amount of packages..but task printing should address your needs.
HI,I did the upgrade after installing Mandriva ONE. But I guess that it didn't install everything. I'm not sure if there were some mirrors missing. It makes too long ago that I've used Mandriva. I've forgotten a lot on how to setup this OS. I will however, try again some of the things that you suggested, to see if there is something that was missed. Is there a development mirror that's not usually included with MDK ONE? I'm still questioning why the " C" compiler was missing. Also, I'm not sure if HPLIP needs an existing "CUPS" to be able to function. If that's the case, then it will surely fail.Cheers!
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Mandriva One isn't really meant to be a complete install system(though many do and build up using it as a baseline), hench the left out development packages..and some others and added some that aren't usually included with Mandriva Free. The Task-Printing will add cups as well as HPLIP, but I wasn't sure if you had already added CUPS.

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Mandriva One isn't really meant to be a complete install system(though many do and build up using it as a baseline), hench the left out development packages..and some others and added some that aren't usually included with Mandriva Free. The Task-Printing will add cups as well as HPLIP, but I wasn't sure if you had already added CUPS.
According to Mandriva, Cups is broken, and I was sent to Red Hat Linux to fix the HAL/CUPS problem. It was broken there also, and the writeup showed that it has been broken since last year. CUPS was missing. And I ended up in a mess because of missing "C" compiler", missing and broken HAL/CUPS. The problems kept on getting deeper and deeper and lots of missing dependencies.Cheers!
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V.T. Eric Layton

You know, I haven't set up my printer in my new Mandriva Free installation yet, but this issue you're having has me curious. I'm going to logoff Slack and go over to Mandriva right now and see what happens when I try to set up my old HP printer. Back in a few...

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Well, I'm printing from a few boxes, running Mandriva and using Cups..so I'm slightly confused here(but then again I'm using a network printer)...also what dep errors are you getting. BTW did you do the Task-Printing...and what are you using to set-up your printer..MCC>>Hardware >>>setup printers(if there are missing packages it will prompt you to download them there too)

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V.T. Eric Layton

Well, I've just spent nearly two hours trying to set up my little plain-jane HP printer using MCC and CUPS in Mandriva. NO JOY! I'm getting pretty disgusted with Mandriva, folks. :hysterical: I've NEVER spent more than 2 minutes setting this printer up in ANY distro that I've had on this or previous systems. What's up here?

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Well this bites, I can certainly understand getting ticked off..I don't have an HP printer to test through with this. Are the printers even being seen? or is it setting up and just not printing.BTW, what models of HP printers are we talking about.

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I wrote this a couple of days ago. I don't know if it's any help at all, or even harmful, but I installed a printer into Mandriva/KDE and decided to write about it, that also being a way of testing out KWrite.___Today I connected a printer in both the XFCE and KDE versions of Mandriva. For me, the process was almost identical. I opened Mandriva Control Center (MCC), opened Hardware, and chose Configure Printing and Scanning.MCC then told me that it needed to download some files. In KDE, this was in two steps; it asked me to let it download three printer configuration files, and I said OK, and then it came back and added about twenty other files that it wanted to download. In XFCE, the first three printer configuration files were skipped (these must be what Onederer discovered were missing off the install disc), but otherwise the process was identical amongst the 2 environments. It took a few minutes to download and install this stuff. The Foomatic printer definition file is huge. MCC also fetched some Gutenprint (high-quality open source printer files) and even some HP files, which also take up a lot of room. I can certainly understand why these aren’t included on the live CDs.Then the Configure Printing and Scanning module closed, and I had to start it again.I chose New, then Printer, then Network Printer. There is a line that says “Find Network Printer”. But before I was able to do anything, one of my two network printers appeared. (The other one is turned off.) I selected it, chose Next, assigned some slightly more readable names, and said OK, and printed a test page. MCC found and assigned all the ports; I didn’t have to type in any arcane smb:// strings.I don’t have any local printers. They’re all network printers here. So I cannot address whether local printers are as easy as network printers. The only thing I might mention is that people may be prompted to click through before MCC is done with its behind-the-scenes work. It took about 10 or 12 seconds for my printer (the one that was on) to appear in MCC’s list.

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I wrote this a couple of days ago. I don't know if it's any help at all, or even harmful, but I installed a printer into Mandriva/KDE and decided to write about it, that also being a way of testing out KWrite.___Today I connected a printer in both the XFCE and KDE versions of Mandriva. For me, the process was almost identical. I opened Mandriva Control Center (MCC), opened Hardware, and chose Configure Printing and Scanning.MCC then told me that it needed to download some files. In KDE, this was in two steps; it asked me to let it download three printer configuration files, and I said OK, and then it came back and added about twenty other files that it wanted to download. In XFCE, the first three printer configuration files were skipped (these must be what Onederer discovered were missing off the install disc), but otherwise the process was identical amongst the 2 environments. It took a few minutes to download and install this stuff. The Foomatic printer definition file is huge. MCC also fetched some Gutenprint (high-quality open source printer files) and even some HP files, which also take up a lot of room. I can certainly understand why these aren’t included on the live CDs.Then the Configure Printing and Scanning module closed, and I had to start it again.I chose New, then Printer, then Network Printer. There is a line that says “Find Network Printer”. But before I was able to do anything, one of my two network printers appeared. (The other one is turned off.) I selected it, chose Next, assigned some slightly more readable names, and said OK, and printed a test page. MCC found and assigned all the ports; I didn’t have to type in any arcane smb:// strings.I don’t have any local printers. They’re all network printers here. So I cannot address whether local printers are as easy as network printers. The only thing I might mention is that people may be prompted to click through before MCC is done with its behind-the-scenes work. It took about 10 or 12 seconds for my printer (the one that was on) to appear in MCC’s list.
I too am using two network printers. An HP 3210 ethernet, and an HP 8500 wireless. In the MCC, it asked me if I wanted to download some printer files, and I allowed it. That's when I found error messages instead. I haven't been able to download HPLIP direct from the HP Web site yet, due to other circumstances that have to be take care of here. I know that currently, I will not be able to download HPLIP from the MCC. I'm confused now, because we don't all have the same results. I'm just very disappointed that this has occurred, and it puts a tarnish on the situation.
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V.T. Eric Layton

Well, would you believe that installing my printer with CUPS worked in 30 seconds just now. I had shutdown earlier after being frustrated. Evidently, rebooting (which restarted the CUPS server also) resolved the issue. Printer working great now. :hysterical:*sigh* I have a headache. :P

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V.T. Eric Layton

Onederer,Have you tried to set up using CUPS rather than the Mandriva Control Center? Just click this link to get to CUPS:http://localhost:631/Once it loads, just click Administration --> Add Printer --> type in root/password --> follow along...

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OnedererWhat errors are you getting? Man, this has got o be frustrating, I know the feeling...I have distros that just drive me crazy..everybody else has them working perfectly..me..well..not so perfectEric....glad to see it's working for ya.

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