New Release: PCLinuxOS Preview 4

[zox]

Owyn, do you know if Texstar is gonna implement Gnome as well?I mean down the road since there is Knoppix but there is Gnoppix too.I am saying this because Gnome might have great future.As you know Novell acquired Ximian and two main guys behind it Garcia and Nat have just started employing about 300 engineers in India for Novell's open source system which most of it will go back to community, aka Gnome.Sun is doing the same thing again on Gnome, Red Hat is doing Gnome so the main players are and will be contributing much more to Gnome platform instead of KDE.I like the look of GTK2 and Gnome and I think functionality is almost up to task with KDE, so later it might surpase it with all this push from big players.Just to let you know xres=1280x1024 worked like a charm

[jaquoval]

Zox - perhaps as a linux newbie I'm misunderstanding what you're asking, but when I start up the liveCD, on the login box there is a drop-down for Session type. Gnome is one of the options (along with KDE, fluxbox, failsafe and default) and it boots to a Gnome desktop if that is selected.

[Bruno]

I am curious for anyone that has done a hard drive install with this distro - is it faster than the live cd - this is the slowest live cd I have ever seen, which is understandable, but I am curious how the hard drive install performs.  I am seriously thinking about installing this, but I don't know if I can go back to rpm.  The debian package manager is much nicer

Hi Kelly, Several of us did a HD install, you can read about our adventures all through this thread . . . . . but you will also read that there ar a few hic-ups to take in account, so if you´re smart you wait for the preview 5 that will be on the mirrors this week, all HD-install bugs will be ironed out by then.About rpm: PClos ( like the modern Mandrakes ) works mainly with urpmi a more intelligent form of rpm´s and broadly seen as the best packaging system around. ;)So my advice: wait a few days for the next preview and I´m sure you will be pleasantly surprised. :DB) Bruno

[Bruno]

Zox - perhaps as a linux newbie I'm misunderstanding what you're asking, but when I start up the liveCD, on the login box there is a drop-down for Session type. Gnome is one of the options (along with KDE, fluxbox, failsafe and default) and it boots to a Gnome desktop if that is selected.

Jaquoval, you are 100% right . . I even booted Gnoome to see if sound was working there too ( and it was ). Did not stay long though because I´m really a KDE fan. BrunoPS: Jaquoval, allow me a little remark about the "N" word you used in your post:

We try to avoid the word ¨newbie¨,  it does no justice to the efforts we, also the beginners, put in to learn a new operating system. I think the wish to learn Linux shows a brave attitude and deserves a better qualification.  --Bruno

[jaquoval]

PS: Jaquoval, allow me a little remark about the "N" word you used in your post: ...

TX Bruno,I realize the 'n' word is tantamount to an epithet to some , but I was applying it only to myself to give fair warning that I'm still fumbling in the dark .I'm certainly open to suggestions for an alternate term (considered the use of 'greenhorn', but thought it's similarity to 'Longhorn' might limit its popularity... )

[Bruno]

Hi Doug,Look under your avatar . . . it says "New Kid" . . . . . . . we know Doug, don´t worry, we know . . . :DB) Bruno

[Owyn]

zox: Great. The mklivecd project has been wrestling with xres/xbpp defaults and changes after boot. Better in PV4 than PV3 and hopefully better again in PV5.Kelly et al: Unless you want to play with it, leave the hd install for PV5. Should be available soon and much cleaner. If you do want to play with it, make sure you review the posts in this thread before trying it. The kernel and initrd are not changing so any lilo set up will still work for PV5 if you use the same partitions for PV5 and PV4 hd install.One thing to remember is that Texstar's primary goal is to produce the best user desktop livecd. This means that he only tries to package the best tools that he can find. There is a limit to what can be stored on a single compressed ISO. Customization of the distro (additional applications) requires a hd install first.Bruno: If you are still concerned about the updated lilo procedure, it is very simple to test. Boot some other distro. Make a small change to your master lilo. And see if the change is installed. As far as the "-b /dev/hda" is concerned it was a belt and suspenders sort of thing. It guaranteed that lilo would be installed to the MBR of the primary hard drive.

[Bruno]

Bruno: If you are still concerned about the updated lilo procedure, it is very simple to test. Boot some other distro. Make a small change to your master lilo. And see if the change is installed. As far as the "-b /dev/hda" is concerned it was a belt and suspenders sort of thing. It guaranteed that lilo would be installed to the MBR of the primary hard drive.

It´s tested Owyn . . ! LOLB) Bruno

[havnblast]

I plan on waiting till the final, I'm still unsure if I want to mess with rpm based distro again, but it is a nice distro I have to admit.

[zox]

Owyn, I completly forgot about it.I have tried hd install several times to no avail.First, I guess it doesn't like mu chipset so fstab is all wrong and none of my disks or partitions can be mounted.Fstab looks for ide1/lun2/dev6/... something device for everything.This is from LiveCD boot.When I install to hd, it goes fine without complaining and when I reboot I get garbage and can't boot.While in liveCD boot, I edited my fstab and succesfully mounted my disks and partitions and then did install but same thing.In this testing I even resorted to wiping all partitions on my drive (including mandrake 9.2), started from clean state and devoted entire drive to PCLinuxOS preview 4 and still the same (including copying of /etc etc..) Anyway, I reinstalled my mandrake 9.2 back and that's what I am using but LiveCD works fine.Just to let you know that on the same PC I can't install Redhat 9 and only distros that work out of box are mandrake 9.2 and Vector 4.Well, I didn't test that many distros but it probably has something to do with cheap motherboard ECS K7S5Apro that I have and Sis chipset onboard.I also have problem with onboard sound in Mandrake 9.2 where in any game it doesn't work while regular playing audio/video works without problem for most part and loaded sound driver is alsa.Anyway if this helps Texstar with anything good, if not, well I might have to upgrade my comp

[Owyn]

Owyn, I completly forgot about it.I have tried hd install several times to no avail.First, I guess it doesn't like mu chipset so fstab is all wrong and none of my disks or partitions can be mounted.Fstab looks for ide1/lun2/dev6/... something device for everything.This is from LiveCD boot.When I install to hd, it goes fine without complaining and when I reboot I get garbage and can't boot.While in liveCD boot, I edited my fstab and succesfully mounted my disks and partitions and then did install but same thing.In this testing I even resorted to wiping all partitions on my drive (including mandrake 9.2),  started from clean state and devoted entire drive to PCLinuxOS preview 4 and still the same (including copying of /etc etc..)

Zox: You need to use the hd install procedure I posted earlier in this thread. In any event, the next release of PCLos will have a fixed installer. No real need to do any more testing with it unless you want to play.

Anyway, I reinstalled my mandrake 9.2 back and that's what I am using but LiveCD works fine.Just to let you know that on the same PC I can't install Redhat 9 and only distros that work out of box are mandrake 9.2 and Vector 4.Well, I didn't test that many distros but it probably has something to do with cheap motherboard  ECS K7S5Apro that I have and Sis chipset onboard.

What errors do you have with RH9?

I also have problem with onboard sound in Mandrake 9.2 where in any game it doesn't work while regular playing audio/video works without problem for most part and loaded sound driver is alsa.

I have noticed problems with Midi in Mdk92 and thence in PCLos. Try using an OSS driver and see if that is any better. Part of the problem is that some chipsets do not have a synth and require CPU synth for Midi.I will see what I can find about the support for your snd-intel8x0 : Silicon Integrated Systems [siS]|SiS7012 PCI Audio Accelerator sound.

Anyway if this helps Texstar with anything good, if not, well I might have to upgrade my comp

No need to upgrade on my part. In fact, things that fail are good. Gives a chance to try to fix them.

[zox]

Zox: You need to use the hd install procedure I posted earlier in this thread. In any event, the next release of PCLos will have a fixed installer. No real need to do any more testing with it unless you want to play.

After it failed couple of times I did use your install procedure but no success either.I might have been doing something wrong though

What errors do you have with RH9?

I can't remember but it just freezes at the beginning.I have to manualy hit restart button to get it going again.

I have noticed problems with Midi in Mdk92 and thence in PCLos. Try using an OSS driver and see if that is any better. Part of the problem is that some chipsets do not have a synth and require CPU synth for Midi.

i tried OSS but all I get is scratchy sound with sometimes resemblance to the actual sound from speakers.Alsa works fine on everything as I said but not under any game.I might have found solution on Mandrakeusers board, I'll have to test it when I get home.Apparently it can be "Arts" related.When Arts driver takes over in KDE it wouldn't let go of sound so nothing else can use it.I'll post back tonight if that fixes it or not.I'll play with my PClinuxOS but as LiveCD only for now.Mandrake has been good to me so far Thanks

[mhbell]

This was a easy install to the hard drive. I used Partition Magic on an old Maxtor 4.3 Gb HD. I made a 3900 Mb Primary Partition EXT3 and a 211 Mb Swap Partition. Then done the Hard Drive install from the Live CD as root. no problems with the install. so far all is working except my sound. have not finished all of the configuration yet. my Win Modem is not supported But I use Cable anyway so it is no big deal. I put the default boot manager in the MBR. I am using Mozilla Firebird as my browser and am writing this while using the HD with pclinuxos pv-4. Will start doing some serious testing now and will post results. Are you listening Oywn?Mel

[chr1s]

WOW! I just downloaded this over the weekend and gave it a trial run on my PC on Saturday and it's fantastic! This has got to be the most new-user-friendly distro I have ever tried!I'd never even heard of some of the packages like smb4k (which is far superior to any other smb tool I've tried).I really do think that this is where distro's for new users should go. There should be a set of packages selected and installed by default that allow the user do most of the things they'd like to do. The addition of things like smb4k, apollon and juk are a few of the items that really made it stand out. The distro is just ready-to-go for a new user straight out of the box, so to speak, no messing around installing codecs for media players/ discovering how to mount Windows network shares etc.I'll be following this distro very closely but for the minute, here's a couple of things I think should be added by default:- Change the default mount point in smb4k. It currently mounts under /home/user/smb4k (from what I recall). I think this sould be changed by default to be called just "network" or "network neighbourhood" - somthing a little more descriptive. - I didn't check if the KDE Samba Plugin was installed in this distro. I'll check later, but if it's not, I think it should be.Chris.

[Rons]

Hi OwynI got to play with Pre. 4 this weekend. No problems to report. I look forward to the next release.

[Bruno]

Number 10 on the "Hitlist" of Distrowatch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Congrats Tex !! Bruno

[Owyn]

This was a easy install to the hard drive. I used Partition Magic on an old Maxtor 4.3 Gb HD. I made a 3900 Mb Primary Partition EXT3 and a 211 Mb Swap Partition. Then done the Hard Drive install from the Live CD as root. no problems with the install.

I assume you used the modified install procedures I posted. Correct?Initializing the hd with PM is fine but not strictly needed. Mandrakes diskdrake is included on the distro.

so far all is working except my sound.

Did sound work from the live cd?If you have more problems post the results from "soundchk.sh". It is included with the distro.

Are you listening Oywn?

Loud and clear Mel. Now. Was off the forum for a couple of days.

[Owyn]

The distro is just ready-to-go for a new user straight out of the box, so to speak, no messing around installing codecs for media players/ discovering how to mount Windows network shares etc.

That is Texstar's goal. Unfortunately future releases will be a little more difficult to use in two areas. libdvdcss and msfonts will be removed from the distro for legal reasons. But, it will still come with Texstar's choices for best plugins and tools.The other part of the goal is to let users customize the distro after it has been installed to hd. Tools that are not of use to the majority of users (such as KDE Samba plugin) not included on CD. There is a limit to how much can be included on one CD.

[Bruno]

Did you see the review at Mad Penguin ?http://www.madpenguin.org/Article757.html Bruno

[Owyn]

Had not seen it. Tx for pointing it out. Well written review. Think that MP is going to be a very happy Penguin in the near future. Many of his problems are either fixed and pending release or scheduled for work in the near future.

[Rons]

Great review!Thanks Bruno for the link.

[volunteer]

Did you see the review at Mad Penguin ?http://www.madpenguin.org/Article757.html Bruno

Thanks Bruno, I just read it. Great review with constructive remedies. In the PCLinux forum Texstar said, "....the kde code in Mandrake 9.2 is about 99% kde 3.1.4. Anyway kde 3.2 is starting to look pretty good. Cant wait to get it into pclos in January."Hard drive install fixed and KDE 3.2 in next release, what more could one ask!

[Owyn]

Tx to all who helped in the testing of PV4. Following is a copy of the test report FYI.PS: Get your burners warmed up. PV5 ready soon and I am working on the supporting notes as I type.

This report consolidates test results for 15 systems on Preview 4. All systems are desktops (ie. not laptops).Testing (with exception of hd install) was generally very favourable. The following is a typical comment."Texstar is my idolGreat job.Can't wait for full stable version. "A separate test report is being filed with package related problem reports.The systems varied from a P2-400 through P4-2.8 with RAM from 256MB through 1GB. All systems have been used with Mandrake 9.2 plus a variety of other distros. Two systems were using SuSE at the time of the tests and could not be directly compared to Mdk92 lspcidrake. SusSE lspci was translated to Mandrake equivalent for purpose of eliminating duplicates in the following component lists.MB Asus A7V KT133AMB Asus A7V-EMB Asus A7V133MB Asus P4S533 /PA/LAN-UAYZMB Dell Precision Workstation 410 440BX Chipset (Intel)MB Dell TBDMB EagleTec M825ML KM266 chipsetMB ECS K7S5AMB ECS K7S5APRO Chipset:SIS 735MB HP xl844  Asus A7V-MMB Intel D845SPPEBT2MB MSI KM2M Chipset:VIA KM266MB Shuttle SS51 Barebones PC Sis 651 ChipsetMB Tyan 1854CPU AMD 850 T-BirdCPU Athlon 1700CPU Athlon Thunderbird 1.2 GHz 266FSBCPU Athlon XP 1600+ (1.4 Ghz)CPU Athlon XP 1800+CPU Athlon XP 2000CPU Duron 1100CPU Duron 850CPU P2 400CPU P2 400 - Dual CPU capableCPU P3 1GHzCPU P4 1.6 GhzCPU P4 2.5 GHzCPU P4 2.8 HT 533 Mhz bux, 512 CacheAll systems with one exception are IDE. IDE was primarily onboard but 3 systems used Promise controllers.The exception is a Dell Precision 410 workstation with dual scsi and dual cpu capable. At the time of the test only one CPU (P2-400) was installed. A second CPU will be installed shortly. SCSI used:SCSI Adaptec|AHA-2940U2/W / 7890SCSI2 Adaptec|AIC-7880UNetworks tested were all 10/100 ethernet. Internet connections were primarily via router but PPPoE/DSL and direct Cable were also tested. Two systems had dual ethernet controllers. No problems reported.NIC used:NIC [siS]|SiS900 10/100 Ethernet (Onboard)NIC 3Com Corporation|3c905C-TX [Fast Etherlink]NIC D-Link Inc|DFE 538 TXNIC Intel Corporation|EtherExpress PRO/100    NIC National Semi|DP83810 10/100 Ethernet NIC Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10) NIC Realtek|RTL-8029(AS) NIC Realtek|RTL-8139 NIC Realtek|RTL-8139 (onboard) NIC VIA Technologies|VT6102 [Rhine II 10/100] (Onboard RTL8201BL) NIC2 3Com Corporation|3c905B 100BaseTX [Cyclone]  NIC2 National Semi|DP83810 10/100 Ethernet Video tested were primarily to a variety of 17" to 20" monitors. One system used a LCD monitor. This system also used a Radeon 8500 and could not switch resolutions from default 1024x768 to 1280x1024 (got black screen). Using "livecd xres=1280x1024" worked.3d Testing using "glxgears -info" was a mixed bag. In some cases (nVidia) results were better than Mdk92 or Knoppix 3.3. In other cases (ATI Radeon 64/ Mdk92 ATI 9000 with fglrx) results were worse. In one strange case (S3 Savage4 : S3 Inc.|VT8751 [ProSavageDDR P4M266]) glxgears worked from the CD but crashed from a HD install. This will be retested with the new hd installer for Preview 5. I will post a separate message re 3D.Monitor NEC Multisync LCD 1700VVideo ATI Technologies Inc Rage 128 PF/PRO AGP 4x TMDSVideo ATI|Radeon 7500 QW (All in Wonder 7500)Video ATI|Radeon 8500 QLVideo ATI|Radeon QD (Radeon 64 DDR VIVO)Video ATI|Radeon QD (Radeon 64 DDR)Video ATI|Radeon RV250 If [Radeon 9000]Video Matrox Millennium G400 DualHeadVideo NVIDIA GeForce FX (generic): Nvidia|0x322Video NVIDIA GeForce2 DDR (generic): nVidia Corporation|NV11 geForce2 100/200Video NVIDIA GeForce2 DDR (generic): nVidia Corporation|NV11 Geforce2 MX/MX 400Video NVIDIA GeForce2 DDR (generic): nVidia Corporation|NV15 Bladerunner (GeForce2 Ultra)Video RIVA TNT2  : nVidia Corporation|Riva TNT2 Model 64 [DISPLAY_VGA]Video S3 Savage4 : S3 Inc.|VT8751 [ProSavageDDR P4M266] (Onboard)Sound testing was generally favourable. Selection of default OSS or Alsa was arbritary but consistent with Mdk92. With one exception (cs46xx) alternate Alsa drivers could be selected from CD boot. The cs46xx driver is blacklisted (oops when unloaded). The alternate driver could be selected from a HD install. Mixer results were not as good. Aumix is the only mixer which worked reliably for all cases. Several problems were detected with muted initial volumes. Running soundchk on these systems quickly identified the problem and running aumix fixed the problem.Sound [siS]|SiS7012 PCI Audio Accelerator (Onboard)Sound Cirrus Logic|CS 4614/22/24 (Turtle Beach Santa Cruz)Sound Creative Labs|EMU10K2 Audigy 2Sound Creative Labs|SB Live!Sound Creative Labs|Sound Blaster AudioPCI64V/AudioPCI128Sound Ensoniq|CT5880Sound Intel Corporation|ICH4 845G/GL Chipset AC'97 Audio Controller (Onboard)Sound VIA Technologies|VT8233 [AC97 Audio Controller] (Onboard)Sound VIA Technologies|VT82C686 [Apollo Super AC97/Audio] (Onboard)

[Rons]

Thanks for the update Owyn -