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Mandriva 2008 Spring Powerpack - A great Easy OS

Administrator — Thu, 29 May 2008 16:53:32 GMT

Well for years now I have used Ubuntu. Ubuntu has been a great OS for me over the years. Always up to date and really I have had no issues with this Linux distribution. Recently I upgraded my PC to a faster CPU and more RAM - now at 4 gigs and I decided that maybe it was time to try a new 64 bit OS. Yes I know I could have tried Ubuntu 64 bit but I decided to try Mandriva 2008 Spring Powerpack.

I signed up for a year subscription to Mandriva Club. What I like about this subscription service it it does help this commercially run organization, like they need the money but heah I do not mind contributing to the cause. After downloading the 64 bit iso I started my installation. I have written a few reviews on installing Mandriva and really it is an easy operation. I just let the install wizard handle the whole process and in no time I had a working copy of Mandriva Spring 2008.

My list of Gear:
ASUS P5K - E Motherboard
Intel E6600 CPU
OCZ Platinum XTC PC2-6400 4GB 2X2GB DDR2-800 CL5-4-4-15 DDR2 240PIN Dual Channel Memory Kit
Western Digital Raptor 150GB SATA
EVGA E-GEFORCE 8800GTS 670MHZ 512MB 1.94GHZ DDR3 PCI-E
Coolermaster CM 690 Case
Watercooling with Apogee GT waterblock Thermochill PA120.2 Rad, Res and 655 Pump

Using Mandriva now for over a month and without issues. Video card works great with NVIDIA drivers and all my other perfs work fine. Mandriva is truly a great everyday working OS and the powerpack does give you a few goodies that are installed automatically but are widely available if you went looking for them. Updates work fine and I do notice that the update schedule is not as numerous as Ubuntu but still producing a very stable and workable system. It took sometime to get used to command line stuff in Mandriva but thats half the fun in learning a new system. Linux is Linux and all the different blends of Linux make it fun at least for me to learn different ones.

Will I stay with Mandriva?

Well, I paid for a year subscription so probably yes! Their support forums are great and I always get a quick reply.

So if you are tired of your old OS and want to take a look at something new, try Mandriva. I feel you will not be disappointed.

M Perks - ReviewLinux.Com

Bored with Ubuntu 7.10? Move to 8.04 Beta!

Administrator — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 22:58:20 GMT

Well you know sometimes when you use an OS for as long as I have... One can get bored with it. Maybe it is just my personality but I was just sitting around the old computer the other day and well... I decided to upgrade Ubuntu 7.10 to the new beta release 8.04.

Yes, I know, it is coming out in just over a week but the upgrade was an easy process to begin. Using the old Alt-F2 and typing in update-manager --devel-release I was away.

The process took about 35 minutes to complete. A few packages were deleted and I was given the opportunity to reboot. At that moment, I always hestitate and ask myself "Did I do the right thing?" "I had a perfectly fine working OS" Well I clicked rebbot and once again my OS booted up without any issues.

I have to say that Ubuntu 8.04 beta is a great running OS and worked fine from the first bootup. With an upgrade version of Firefox 3 which took about an hour to get used too, I find it working great and I even like the bit of new eye candy that it presents to a user.

All in all the beta 8.04 works fine with the generic kernel on my Intel DG965OT mother board with 4 gigs of OCZ DDR2 - 800mhz PC6400 RAM. BTW I run 32 bit OS and only see 3.2 gig of RAM as I have not yet got around to compiling my kernel. I did however run the Ubuntu 8.04 Server kernel but my system had issues with this and load averages were running away. I was able to see 4 gigs with the Server Kernel but decided to move back to the generic one.

I look forward to the final release of Ubuntu 8.04 next week.

Ubuntu 7.10 update woes

Administrator — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 06:01:18 GMT

I do not know, but is it me? Does anyone else have problems when they just say "Yes" to the automatic updates on Ubuntu 7.10? The other day a new kernel came out that was related to Ubuntu 7.10. I woke up in the morning and saw the Red indicator of Ubuntu updates saying it was time to update my system. Still half a slepp I just clicked on it and proceeded with the update.

Well....

After reboot the problems started. Now I cant say it was Ubuntu's fault totally, but on reboot of course my screen resolution and video card was not recoginzed... No big deal, I have Envoy and it is an automatic tool to reinstall my NVIDIA video card drivers. So in resolution of 800 X 600 I started the operation of getting the NVIDIA drivers installed back into the latest kernel.

Well...

It "Envoy" said that I had to install the Linux Headers for the 386 kernel. I just said yes... That was my first mistake... It installed the headers and patched the 386 kernel... Not the Generic kernel which normally happens..

Well...

My machine booted up with proper resolution but.... no sound... So I thought I would venture over to the Ubuntu Forums where I saw many many posts about similiar issues that I was having...

Well...

Knowing that I needed to use the Generic kernel I modified my GRUB records and told it to boot to my Generic kernel.

Once again I had 800 X 600 resolution after bootup and I again ran Envoy and it did what it needed to do and I rebooted and once again I had a correct running system with sound..

Well, I guess what I am getting at is this is not the first time that Ubuntu updates have screwed up my system.. Knowing that there is always help at Ubuntu forums is great but I would hate to be some novice that didnt have a clue what to do after such a mess.. If this problem didnt scare away Linux users i do not know what would.. This makes me think that Linux still has a way to go with being really user friendly.

Linux is great for me. It does the job I want it to do. Maybe one should think twice before updating at anytime or at least rebooting and maybe venture over to Ubuntu forums and see what is happening to the less fortunate.

I love Ubuntu but... Really get it together... Really.. Almost makes me go commercial with Mandriva or something else..

M Perks - webmaster

ReviewLinux.Com: Year in Review

Administrator — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:02:14 GMT

It's been a great year at ReviewLinux.Com. We have done many changes to better inform users about Linux. Our site has increased in traffic by almost double and we would like to thank everyone for making us a very popular site about Linux on the internet.

With the holiday season in full force we would like to take this opportunity to thank all our visitors for making 2007 our best year since the start of our site and to wish everyone a Happy and Safe holiday season.

Michael Perks - webmaster

Add HowTos to ReviewLinux.Com

Administrator — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 22:12:48 GMT

Well yesterday I added a new category to Review Linux called Linux HowTos. For a couple of years Falko over at HowToForge.Com had been adding his articles on various HowTos to my News category. Since I add alot of news throughout the day, I thought it best to give Falko a bit more exposure on my site. ( Like he really needs it as he has a very popular Linux site ) . Falko now can add his press releases to my Linux HowTos category plus this allows my visitors that may have a bit of knowledge on Linux to add their little tips and tricks to this category.

I am doing this all just to improve the site and i hope you will find it useful.

M Perks - Review Linux

Will distributions like gOS bring the masses to Linux?

Administrator — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 04:45:16 GMT

Over the last week since my short review on gOS and the introduction of the ASUS EEE PC with it's stream line version of Xandros I have been thinking about what value this has for the Linux OS and it's familiarity to the masses.

In the mainstream world of computing I think that Linux hasnt even touched everyone in a marketing sense of the word. I keep reading artciles throughout the internet about Linux and it's reference to being "The new Kid on the block" and even words like I have mentioned "The Scarce OS". Is Linux really that scarce? I suppose if one were able to count every Linux OS that is on a computer that it would indeed not mount to much in the big picture. Of course, I am comparing this to the total market share that Windows TM must have. It's strong hold on the whole computer industry is really staggering and give Microsoft credit they are a massive media machine and they did come along at the right time and provide everyone in my opinion probably their first look atr a computer going back to the old days of MS DOS.

Linux in the past has been considered a "Hackers OS" and probably in it's early days not given much respect. I suppose like my grandfather says to me "Respect is earned" and with the advancements of Linux in the past couple of years I feel it is time that the world should at least appreciate this OS.

gOS and others I feel are heading in the right direction. Why not market a Linux OS in it's simplest form. The gOS has a great frontend which has at ones hands all the neccessary tools to get one up and running on the internet. After all, that is what I feel the masses are after. A stable OS with all the tools to read email, post in a blog and browse the net. If you want the masses to stand up and notice I feel distributions like gOS are hitting a home run.

What is nice about this OS is that it still has the backend of Ubuntu 7.10. Ubuntu has really helped put Linux on the map and gOS has just made things a wee bit simpler.

Should Linux distributions head into this direction. I feel probably yes, distributions can still have their technical savay programs hidden in the background but really as gOS has done it has created a desktop that anyone can handle and after all that is like a baby beginning to walk and then after a while running it is a process that needs a beginning so marketing a Linux OS like this at least gets people in the door. After time, those new users of Linux are going to want more. This is human nature and Linux as we know it has that plus more.

Just a few comments I wanted to pass on as I follow the growth of Linux. Anytime we can bring another person into the Linux world is a plus and I feel gOS is just hit it right on the head of the nail. Good Luck gOS and I am glad you are here...

Michael Perks
ReviewLinux.Com

Linux Mint 4.0 Beta on a Dell Inspiron 8100 Laptop

Administrator — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 20:59:34 GMT

The other day my father dropped off his old Dell Insprion 8100 laptop that I think he has had for many years. It had Windows XP on it and well he thought my son might like it. Well, the first thing my son said was "Gee is it heavy and slow" he was right. Its not the fastest laptop in the world and it is build rather solid. My son has a gaming Intel 3g machine and he likes his video game so I could see his point.

I thought I would install Linux Mint 4.0 Beta on this laptop. I wanted to keep Windows XP on it just in case my son ever wanted to use it.

Here are the specs of the Dell laptop:

Pentium III 866 MHz processor,
384 MB of RAM
20 GB hard drive
15 inch Ultra XGA TFT active-matrix display
DVD CD-RW drive
Onboard ethernet card
Video card is a nVIDIA GeForce2 Go with 32 MB of RAM

The first thing I did was boot up with GParted ( Great Partioning Tool ) and I resized the 20 gig drive so that Windows would have 10 gigs, my Linux root would have 5 gigs; home 2 gigs and remainder for Linux swap. GParted handled all of this without losing any Windows XP data.

I saved all the settings in GParted and rebooted the laptop with the Linux Mint 4.0 Beta CD in the drive. I was actually surprised at how fast Linux Mint 4.0 Beta booted and presented me with the LiveCD interface.

I decided to install Linux Mint 4.0 Beta because I had looked at it in an earlier article where I tested it on a much faster machine. This laptop has plenty of RAM to do the basic web surfing and word processing applications. Plus I wanted to keep this old unit going as I think of it as a form of recycling and keeping this machine out of our land fills. Even though it had a working copy of Win XP on it...

I was able to install without any problems. I let Linux Mint do it's thing and I had a working Linux OS in no time.

Speed

If I wanted the fastest laptop in the world I guess I would go out and buy a new one. This laptop is what it is. Not fast but at the same time not slow. Linux Mint performs well on this laptop. The OS loads fast from boot up and all programs though not as fast as my desktop will load without any problems.

Multimedia

I do not recommend playing a DVD while on battery but this laptop played a couiple of my favorite DVD's without any issues. The media player popped up and started the movie. Sound worked fine right out of the box without any configuring by me. Sound wasnt even really that bad. Music CD's worked fine too.

Network

Linux Mint 4.0 saw my network card that is built onboard this laptop. I was able to download all updates immediately after installing the OS.

Conclusion

This laptop runs Linux just fine. I see on the web that you can buy one of these laptops for less than 300.00. Is it worth it? Well if you want a laptop next to your lazyboy chair and do not want to spend too much money I can say that this is a good way to go. If you want the latest and greatest, forget about it.

Linux Mint 4.0 Beta runs perfectly in all my tests. The boot loader was configured fine and I have a dual boot system if I need it. I often read about alot of people placing less resourceful Linux Distributions on slower laptops ( Xubuntu, DSL, etc ). Well I can say that if you have a similiar config for a laptop that you will not be disappointed in Linux Mint 4.0 Beta

Upgrading to Ubuntu 7.10

Administrator — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 02:25:04 GMT

Well today was the day! Its a Saturday and what else does one have to do on a raining day in beautiful British Columbia Canada, Upgrade to Ubuntu 7.10!

I have spent the last few days since the release of Ubuntu 7.10 reading all the various info I could find on Google about the experiences people were having upgrading to the new release. My experience with any upgrade whether it be Linux or Windows has not always been a successful one. Looking back I think every release of Windows I basically just wiped out the hard drive and started again. Sometimes not even backing up a single file.. :) With Linux, most of the time I have just backed up my home directory and again just re-installed the newer version of whatever Linux I was using at the time.

Todays upgrade was the easiest I have ever done without losing and or even backing up anything.

This morning I woke up and went downstairs with my first cup of coffee. I again read a few more things about upgrading to Ubuntu 7.10 from 7.04. Some good comments and some bad. With that info in my head I began my upgrade with no hestitation what so ever.. Ya right. I stared at the computer for about another minute and after doing a final check for updates on my Ubuntu 7.04 system I clicked on the "Upgrade to 7.10"

After the various checks started it prompted me to read the list of software that were not needed anymore for 7.10. In that list was only one piece of software that I used everyday. XVNCSERVER as I do all my cd business on Windows machines I need the ability to VNC into each of them. Knowing that I was sure Ubuntu would still have some way for me to get into those Windows boxes I proceeded with the upgrade.

Now at the end of all this I was presented with once again another screen saying that I was about to download 900 megs of packages totalling 1200+. One more second to think about what I was getting myself into as I had spent months getting Ubuntu 7.04 just the way I like. Being the true pioneer in Linux.. ya right... I pressed the button and away the downloading went. Fast connection at 1.2 megs per second the downloading was done I think in under 15 minutes.. Maybe more.. :) Then.... The installing began...

35 minutes later after my DG965OT Intel 3g Pentium D machine chunked away at installing every piece of new found gold.. :) I only had a few screens to replace the odd config file and then the message saying installing was completed and you must now reboot.

You know the feeling you get when you are totally not in control of your system is usually at that moment. Will it start? Will your system see the HDD and reboot. Bad things have happened to me before at this moment but I had total faith in my Ubuntu.. Well as much as one can have with a binary system that you have not compiled.. :)

One system survived! My new Ubuntu 7.10 system came back up without a hitch. Everything even seemed to work. I still had Flash on websites. My Ubuntu 7.04 system had on a couple of occasions after updating had lost Flash. I had my movie player and all my other much needed software, even my VNC.. :)

After about 15 minutes of looking around I did come upon one thing that didnt work. My VMWARE SERVER was not happening any more.. Well after a quick look on the web I found a tut of how to get the newer version of VMWARE SERVER to get going and after using the provided patch even that was working.

There you go, no backups not worrying about anything and total faith in an OS. Thats hard to find these days.. :)

This upgrade was at least painless for me and I hope yours is too.

Check out My Ubuntu 7.10 Short Flash Video in Action!

Michael Perks
ReviewLinux.Com

Week Ending: Review Linux Oct 13 2007

Administrator — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 23:56:33 GMT

This week was a busy one at Review Linux. We had a few reviews added to our database. Mandriva 2008 Free came out and hit the review sites with a presence. Many people were waiting for this release and it showed by the number of visitors we had to the site. Linspire and Zenwalk had not as many hits but still in the run. Zenwalk is a distribution I am really going to take a good look at in the coming weeks. I think it is time for myself to try another distro. I think I may give it a try at least on another machine that I have lying around. Funny how you use a particular distro for a couple of years and either one is afraid to attempt a switch or as in my case just plain old lazy. We will see what I finally do. Switch or Stay with Ubuntu? Who knows.....

The thing that I was most excited about here at Review Linux was my addition of ReadSpeaker SayIt to my site. What is ReadSpeaker? Lots about it at ReadSpeaker.Com of course but basically it is a program that with certain html tags that I place in articles will actually read the article to a visitor. Just click on the SayIt now image or the listen to article link. Why is this exciting, well I do not think I am the only one in the world with poor vision and or a disability. I am personally legally blind and I browse the web with my screen fonts at very high levels. Sometimes at these high levels sites are hard to "see" so by adding this option to all my articles I feel some people will benefit from it. Please email me if you find this useful. I am in the process of trying to cleanup my site. You may have noticed less graphics. and in the coming weeks I will try to get the html code more accessible to those that may have low vision and or other disabilities. I am not the best at html coding and if anyone wants to help me out with this project, please email me.

I am so glad that ReadSpeaker was able to add this feature to my site.

That sums up the last week at Review Linux.

What Linux Do You Use? Poll - ReviewLinux.Com

Administrator — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 20:59:38 GMT

Well our poll at Review Linux has been on our main page for almost 3 days. There have been well over 1500 votes in those 3 days. I did subnit the poll in a news article to both Linux.Com and Lxer.Com as well as Digg.Com. Not sure if it made it to any page at Linux.Com ( too lazy after turkey night to look up here in Canada ) but it was on the others. Funny how any of these so called Favorite Linux OS polls work, they really are in no way a scientific poll what so ever as they can be manipulated in many ways. Double answering the poll question comes to mind.. :) Yes even my poll has its weaknesses but I never said it was a solid scientific poll did I?

One thing I enjoy about any particular brand of Linux is it's user base. You have the guys that just jump on the band wagon when they see a vote question and call to arms the masses and practically get car loads of people to vote or even a vote robot as I saw on one post from a Linux group I will not mention here. But heah, the more press the merrier I think. I have no issues with anyone getting out the call to vote on any forum. I do however have issues with forums that deny such a calling.

Here are some links to forums that mentioned the poll. I think you will find them an interesting read and probably see why this poll is the way it is...

http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?t=71393 Oct 6 2007
http://www.blogdrake.net/node/9116 Oct 7 2007
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=32927.0 Oct 7 2007
http://blog.mandriva.com/2007/10/07/...-2008-release/

I do have to say that all this poll is on Reviiew Linux is a snapshot of 3 days worth of visitors that have ventured to Review Linux and have decided to enter in the poll. The question asked was What Linux Do You Use? A very simple question. This poll in no way I believe represents a true popularity of any brand of Linux. As a matter of fact I would like to know where I could find a poll on the web that would represent a true snapshot of what brand of Linux a person may be using and its overall popularity? If you know of such link, send it to me.. :)

Week Ending: Review Linux Oct 5 2007

Administrator — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 22:10:55 GMT

Well it has been a great week for us. We added a few reviews to the site and pretty well have stopped with anymore improvements to the overall layout. It took some work with the added new design and wiki but we feel it is added resources for our users.

Our Puppy Review went over great and currently we are receiving alot of traffic to the opensuse tour.

We feel these short tour articles at least give our users a quick glimpse at a particular linux distribution that they may/or may not be using.

I do receive some good with the bad comments about the reviews but please keep the input coming into my mailbox as I have lots of room.

It's Thanksgiving Weekend up here in Canada eh? so I have to get my fat paints out for dinner. Take care and have a safe weekend.

M Perks

ReviewLinux.Com New Look Forums plus Wiki

Administrator — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:51:51 GMT

I have been doing this site now for about 2 years. I have changed the layout of the main site ReviewLinux.Com once in that time and I have never changed the basic forum layout. Over the last few days I have improved the layout of the site plus the layout of the forums. The forum layout was provided by a company that I use to help make my forum site more SEO friendly. They are called vBSEO.Com. This software package basically makes all forum threads SEO friendly plus a few more things that I do not have time to get into. I think the new colors and layout make browsing the forums much more easier.

For about a year I have wanted to add a Wiki to my site. MediaWiki is a great free software package that handles wiki sites. What was always holding me back from the wiki was the look and feel. I have solved this as I am using a software package called vbWiki Pro which allows me to incorporate my vBulletin forum design into the wiki. Great software and I look forward to the masses adding anything linux related to our Wiki.

Feel free to send me an email and comment on the changes. Send the good with the bad as I can take it.

Novell Sales Up Due to Microsoft?

Administrator — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:28:08 GMT

Interesting article over at news.com where the author Colin Barker was saying that Novell ( makers of SUSE Linux ) had a great 243 percent increase in business due to their new partnership with Microsoft of Redman Washington. Now I can see maybe a small percentage of profit but 243 percent! That's huge! I could see maybe profit arising from the lack of partnership with Microsoft as saying Linux is an alternative meaning more secure and so on but a true on paper partnership with Microsoft means $$$$ for Linux distributions. Look out, the flood gates will open now for the distribution's that want to sign up with Microsoft to make that huge money!

Is this good for Linux?

Well, I think probably Yes. It will bring more possible capital investment to those Linux distributions seeking to reach the commercial market. After all the money making machine of Microsoft is well oiled and ready to team up with anyone that helps their cause.

Will it hurt the Little Distro's?

Probably not, as they have their little pocket communities that will support them till the death. Linux is based on this and I do not see it going away anytime soon.

What I see with Microsoft making all these deals with Linux is the advancement of Linux. Linux will not just be a "What OS did you say you use?" anymore. Heah I have experienced this from many people so the more press, the better for Linux!

Just a few thoughts of the day.

Change of Design in Forum

Administrator — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 20:47:29 GMT

Well I did it. For the last few days I have been changing both the look of ReviewLinux.Com as well as the look of ReviewLinux.Com Forums. I did this with much hesitation as I wanted to carry the look of Review Linux into my forum theme. I always thought that maybe user's like this. Over time though, I was wanting a new forum theme that was a little easier on the eyes and maybe just a bit better in SEO - Search Engine Optimization.

ReviewLinux.Com Forums are well ranked in Seach Engines but we do not get alot of posts by users. Hopefully with this new look ( much more pleasant on the eyes ) we will see a bit more traffic to the forums.

I use an add-on package for Vbulletin called vBSEO that has always made my url's a little easier to understand. vSEO opened up their own Vbulletin theme to customers so I thought I would give it a try. Let me know what you think. Just send me a message.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post I will be adding new forum areas related to Linux probably by the end of the week.

Once again, I thank everyone for their continued support of ReviewLinux.Com.

Release of Linux Mint 3.1 Celena

Administrator — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:10:00 GMT

Today I'm going to be doing a short screenshot tour and flash video of Linux Mint 3.1 Celena. I had installed this distribution sometime ago and liked its multimedia aspects and thought it would be an interesting distro to keep. I played with it for a while but decided to go back to Ubuntu even though Linux Mint is of course based on it.

Later today I will have the article online and ready to look through and I hope eveyone enjoys the flash video to get a sneek peek at Linux Mint 3.1 Celena.

Edit: Here is the Artcile.

M.P.

Webmaster Blog: ReviewLinux.Com

Administrator — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 06:38:29 GMT

Well today is September 24 2007 and it is the first day of My Blog. Not really sure where this is going but I thought I would purchase the Vbulletin Blog add-on and see what kind of response it will bring me.

I think my Blog will be mostly about daily changes that I see in Linux. Hopefully I will pass on a bit of humor too.

I would like to see other Blogs get going on this site and in the coming days I will be adding more forums to see if I can get poeple asking questions.

M Perks
webmaster