VectorLinux 6.0 SOHO Alpha2 bugs and discussion go here

[Joe1962]

Managed to download and install this over the weekend. After a few day's testing and tweaking, I must say it is a very good release, even though I used to be one of the anti-KDE4 people. After taking a long hard look at KDE4 in this VL6, I must say I now understand the changes and like most (not not quite all) of them. The greatest caveat for me I think is the new menu, but switching to Classic fixes that. After the first working week on this VL6SOHO, obviously, I've got a few notes:

- Midnight Commander pops up in terribly unreadable colours. Added a few colour settings to mc.ini, but still haven't managed to fix it all. What gives? We never had this issue before, did we have colour settings in mc.ini, or is it sonething else?

- No libmtp installed, which causes an Amarok plugin error on launch.

- Slackware 13 has a very nice keyboard layout configuration applet in System Settings, but it is missing in VL6 SOHO.

- Maybe nitpicking, but there is a gnome database access properties option in the Settings Menu, which calls gnome-database-properties-3.0 and it simply gives the following error:

gnome-database-properties-3.0: error while loading shared libraries: libgtksourceview-1.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

- I can't remember if I got graphics acceleration working on the HP Probook 4510s after install (check previous thread on this for VL6 Std: http://forum.vectorlinux.com/index.php?topic=10633.0), but since I was unable to change LCD brightness, I compiled kernel 2.6.31.4 and then upgraded to the Slackware 13 xorg. Now it all works, but a couple of settings in the ~/.Xmodmap from the VL6 /etc/skel kills the Down Arrow and Page Down keys. Nearly drove me crazy till I figured it out. Seems that Slack13's xorg runs Xmodmap on startup, but VL6's doesn't. An empty .Xmodmap fixes this.

- WHAT! No SeaMonkey? After Puppy, we were the next distro brave enough to make SeaMonkey the default Browser/Mail Client, given it's real benefits vs. FF and TB in terms of stability, use of resources, speed and interface consistency. Now Slackware 13 comes with SeaMonkey on the install DVD, and we don't... I vote we ask Incognu to make us a build of the very nice SeaMonkey 2.0 RC1, (I have been using the 2.0s for months now without issues) and go with that.

- WHAT! No Gimp? Now that we are on 2 CDs, there is probably no excuse to leave out the Gimp...

- Following on the 2 CD theme, I vote we also put in the KDE4 KOffice as an optional install.

Might post more later, if I remember to write down the stuff as it happens...



EDIT: Oops, I'd been offline since last Friday night, so I missed the release of SeaMonkey 2.0 RC2 on the 19th...

[lagagnon]

OK. Finally got around to burning and installing the 2 CDs. Here are my points so far:

Bugs
===
- the text installer throws an error, before even getting to first text install screen: "Kernel Panic: - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs from unknown-block (1,0)"
- although choosing "local" time and my correct time zone, the installer somehow picked up my hardware clock and set it 7 hours ahead to GMT time.
- other than above two I have yet to find any other real bugs. Well done to the developers.

Annoyances
=======
- the KDM login screen username font is not very professional looking. I think we should have a nicer font there....
- firefox does not know what to do with PDF's. This should be set because a newbie would not know where to hunt for the correct application

Concerns
======
- were a user to install via the script "vinstall-iso", will the installer still work fine with the 2 CD system ??
- booting into default KDE system plus Konsole up requires 535MB of RAM. So 512MB machines will need swap to boot up, causing possible slow down of the boot time. Just an observation....
- are we fixed with kernel 2.6.27.34 for this release? It is getting a tad old now when we already have a 2.6.30 packaged up

Larry

PS: I have not yet tested every application. I hope to spend more time with the distro early this week and report back on any more relevant findings.... 

[TLM]

Yes, I had the same kernel panic issue as lagagnon did when attempting to use the text installer. Like he also mentions, a newbie will most likely have neither the know-how or the patience to browse to usr/bin/okular to get Firefox to open PDFs.

My latest issue: Knemo. Knemo is in the repos, however once installed, it does not work. Does not create a menu entry either. Had to browse to usr/share/applications/kde/kcm_knemo.desktop to find it. And even then it will not execute. Pops up an issue about cannot find kcmshell.

I realize that knemo is not a critical component, however it has been made to work in KDE4 because both PCLinuxOS and Sidux will run Knemo in KDE 4.3.2. I am not techie enough to know how to fix it or I would create a new package for it.

Another small issue. When installing extremetuxracer, gslapt comes up with dependency warning, however the game still works if you ignore the warning and install it anyway.

Overall tho, for surfing and email and just plain running for hours on end, SOHO 6 Alpha2 is performing very well and is stable with my hardware. I will definitely buy the final release. SOHO 6 is one release I have been looking forward to and waiting for. 

[vector]

thanks for the heads up on knemo there is a version for kde4 and it works............watch for our beta release............





cheers,
Vec

[Joe1962]

To go back to the SeaMonkey issue, I feel it could be pretty important, as with a bit of luck, we just might be in a position here to be the first distro to release an iso (at least a major release and not an update iso) with SeaMonkey 2 final. It has a probable release date before the end of the month.

[M0E-lnx]

I agree with Joe here.
By the time this thing goes final, we might be able to ship the final seamonkey release too.

PS. The only reason i'm votin +1 on seamonkey is because I've had issues with FF and opera which I suspect are related to this one hardware configuration. I have no issues on that box with our old seamonkey package

[lagagnon]

More observations.....

Menu Items Not Functioning
=================

-Settings, System Settings, Advanced, Destkop Theme Details: unable to apply any change of theme from this facility, even as root.
-System, Manage Printing. The command "htmlview" should be changed to "browser"
-Internet, ZenMap: throws error: "No module named dbapi2.pysqlite2 or sqlite3".
-Multimedia, HDSPConf. Just hangs.
-Settings, Database Access Properties. Just hangs.
-Settings, slapt-update-notifier. Just hangs.
-System, KWalletManager. Does nothing.
-Utilities, HP Device Manager. Just hangs.

Other
====
-are we not including The Gimp with this release???

[vincent2]

Boujour!

Tried soho alpha2, I didn't burn 2 CDs,just draged "A2 iso" to (hd0,0)and decompressed "isolinux"in A2.iso  to "/bootsohovl6",use GRUB to boot into installation:
--------------------------------
root (hd0,0)
kernel /bootsohovl6/sata root=/dev/ram rw
initrd /bootsohovl6/init.gz
-------------------------------
the whole installation went smoothly on old sharp laptop,GUI installation interface appeared nice,it automatically found two A2 iso images on (hd0,0)...while at "bootload LILO install"GUI, no Option for "/dev/fd0"if need to install LILO to floppy........
Then booted laptop into KDE4 GUI,all looks cool...dissappointedly rtl8187 usb wifi card still doesn't work properly,via WICD it gets connected with router but connection only last half minute then dropped (which's daunting sickness for VL6 with rtl8187),while on WICD it still prompted that wifi was connected to 192.168.1.100,signal level was good,etc..in fact can't ping 192.168.1.1 at all....
ALSO tried ndiswrapper driver for rtl8187, network drop syndrome remains...

In my test install of VL6-kde3-b3.iso, under VL6 kde3 b3 ,WICD found rtl8187 and wifi worked very stable for a whole day(no such network drop syndrome with rtl8187 usb).

ANY FIX COMMANDS FOR WIFI CONNECTION WITH RTL8187 USB?otherwise i can't access onto internet from the laptop,having to rolling back to "relegated" vl6-kde3-b3???

[vincent2]

P.S.
ALSO I tried kernel 2.6.28.4& kernel 2.6.30.4, network drop syndrome remains for rtl8187...

[Joe1962]

- Slackware 13 has a very nice keyboard layout configuration applet in System Settings, but it is missing in VL6 SOHO.

Did a bit of research, seems we are missing kxrdb.

[Masta]

Annoyances
=======
- the KDM login screen username font is not very professional looking. I think we should have a nicer font there....
- firefox does not know what to do with PDF's. This should be set because a newbie would not know where to hunt for the correct application

 I am curious to the font deal here. The font can be changed to anything available. The only problem that I see with changing the font for the user entry, is that it will also affect the user list. These two properties share the font via the configuration's design. I kept the font that KDM themes were using (sans).

I was thinking to change to one of the Liberation font styles (Liberation Sans), after reading this, but I am open to suggestions on other fonts before this gets to its final.
************************************************************************************
Also wanted to note, that other than what I see here or on the bug tracker, I have pretty much began most concentration on the DLX's theme content, leaving this version almost as it is. If there are things that the community see that need attention, please let us know. This is the time... thanks.

[Joe1962]

I was thinking to change to one of the Liberation font styles (Liberation Sans)...

That's the first thing I do after a new install... change everything to Liberation equivalents, login manager and the whole desktop environment. I would vote for this.

[Joe1962]

A couple of issues that merit double-posting... ;

- The "What's This" help contents seem to be missing for the whole of the KDE4 desktop and applications.
- The KDevelop4 help is missing.

Might be more help issues in there, but this is what I have seen so far.

[Joe1962]

- Slackware 13 has a very nice keyboard layout configuration applet in System Settings, but it is missing in VL6 SOHO.

Did a bit of research, seems we are missing kxrdb.

Sorry, make that kxkb...

[TLM]

KDE 4.3.3 is out!! Any plans to use it in VL6 SOHO? KDE4 seems to be getting better with each release.