VectorLinux SOHO Beta3 bug reports and suggestions

[caieng]

I'm running beta 3 on my 1.3 GHz Celeron Tualatin with an ATI Radeon 9200 video card with 128 megs of video RAM.

Gosh, I am so envious!  None of my three Tualatins will boot up...

TRY BOOTING USING THE 'TUI' OPTION FROM THE BOOT MENU.

Thanks Moe, how does one invoke this option?
I tried:  gui tui
then I tried  tui
then I tried tui noapic
then linux tui
none of them work.  When you mention "BOOT MENU", I assume you are writing metaphorically, for I, at least, observe no such menu of choices....

CAI ENG

[Masta]

GrannyGeek,
                      You've got it where I was trying to get you to go for the workaround. Sorry about the messup on my behalf and making it more confusing. I edited that thing a few times and still noticed I made errors. Anyway, you got it as I was trying to say  .

What I meant by slecting (or rather skiping the selection) during installation:
  During installation there is options to reset user settings. In this there is a dropdown, and you can check off what you want reset. One of those in that dropdown list is the ".kde" (along with desktop settings, and so on). This only shows up if you are importing an existing user from a previous install. IN this situation users do not want to check off the .kde selection .. skip that one.

However this doesn't seem to be the case in your situation. you changed UID and that lead to the same type of problem for the kstartupconfig4 error, which has the same workaround.
 Which brings us back the the UID issues ...back to the board

[GrannyGeek]

What I've done for the last couple of beta's is skip creating a user. Once the installation is finished, start in TUI mode, log in as root and use Vasm to create your user. That will do the job properly and use UID 1000. Not nice, but at least it gets round the problem.

It occurred to me to try that the next time I install SOHO, but I wondered if it would work. Thanks for letting me know it does.
--GrannyGeek

[GrannyGeek]

What I meant by slecting (or rather skiping the selection) during installation:
  During installation there is options to reset user settings. In this there is a dropdown, and you can check off what you want reset. One of those in that dropdown list is the ".kde" (along with desktop settings, and so on). This only shows up if you are importing an existing user from a previous install. IN this situation users do not want to check off the .kde selection .. skip that one.

That explains why I didn't see a reset dropdown. I'm not importing a user. I don't have a separate partition for /home on any of my systems.

Well, I'm in business now and toothandnail gave a good workaround for the next time if the first user account is still numbered 1001. I'm hoping I have time for more KDE testing tomorrow.
--GrannyGeek

[TLM]

Just installed Beta 3. Seems a little snappier in response time overall. A few persistent issues:

When going to System Settings and choosing Appearance, and then Fonts, and from there choosing to change the font for the desktop icons, there are a great many useless entries appearing in the font selection drop down menu. They all end with the file extension .pcf. I will point out that there are some valid font entries, and they apply ok, but what are all of the .pcf files? Also I am not seeing a lot of the common fonts. Arial, for instance.

Text installer still kernel panics and does not work. Graphical installer works ok. My concern is that I am constantly modifying and rewriting my lilo.config file as I add and delete partitions and experiment with new distros. I can do it by hand with a text editor, or use the repair LILO option from my VL6 Gold of Classic cds, however I like the way that the SOHO graphical installer does it. Could there be an option added within the graphical installer just for repairing/reinstalling LILO?

Gparted does not execute correctly when installed from the repos via Gslapt. (043 version from the xapps directory) After installing it, the menu launcher entry (under System) does absolutely nothing, even after a reboot. Clicking on the gparted.desktop entry in usr/share/applications results in the following error: KdeInit could not launch 'gksu'..Could not find 'gksu' executable.

This can be fixed by editing the menu and the gparted.desktop to point to usr/sbin/gpartedbin
HOWEVER, the default commands are pointing to gksu /usr/sbin/gparted %f. That command gets you the above mentioned error. Also, ntfsprogs should be installed to give gparted support for ntfs formatted partitions. I know it can be gotten from the repos, but why not install it in the first place so that it is compiled in the VL6 iso? Also need to get gparted 045 in the repos. (might be under testing; didn't check)

Adobe flash is rather old. 10.0 r32 is what is installed in SOHO Beta 3. There have been at least 3 upgrades since. Just a matter of time before certain apps will not work with an older version of flash. As it now stands, one has to obtain the libflashplayer.so file from the newer version and manually plant it in the usr/lib/mozilla/plugins directory. Not something a newcomer to Linux is going to figure out anytime soon.

Firefox still asks what to do with PDF files. You have to manually tell it to use Okular. Not sure how Firefox is compiled in VL, but in Puppy derivatives, you can specify Application preferences, and the preferences will persist when you do a remaster. Something like this needs to be done in VL as well.

Overall no installation problems, just the above mentioned issues that require inside know how to resolve. Not something Window$ converts are going to be able to do.

[GrannyGeek]

I worked with beta 3 all day, installed some programs not in the repo, and updated Flash to the latest version. The new Flash does not work with Opera 10.10. I googled but didn't find anything relevant. Tomorrow I'll see what's in the Opera forums. The new Flash works fine with SeaMonkey and Firefox. I updated Firefox to 3.6 with the package in testing. Haven't had problems with the new Firefox. Tomorrow I'll install Opera 10.10 from the Slackware package on Opera's Web site. I doubt it will make a difference, but I may as well try.

If anyone else has installed the latest Firefox from Adobe.com and has it working under Opera 10.10, please post a message.

The other problem I had was Midnight Commander locking up (or Konsole locking up, under which I was running MC). Keyboard and mouse unresponsive to open a terminal so I could end the processes, so I opened a new console with Alt+Control+F2 but couldn't end all the necessary processes (not knowing what all of them were). I finally rebooted from the F2 console.

Like TLM, I'm not thrilled with all those useless fonts that clutter up font-choice dropdowns and will look into getting rid of them. Those are bitmapped fonts at certain point sizes. Do we really need them? I'd like to get rid of ALL of those bitmapped fonts, but I'm afraid some application may want them.

Will do more testing tomorrow.
--GrannyGeek

[Pita]

If anyone else has installed the latest Firefox from Adobe.com and has it working under Opera 10.10, please post a message.


--GrannyGeek

I installed the latest flashplayer 10,0,42,34 and opera-10.10 works well with it, that is in my box VL-6-LIGHT.

[sdboyd]

I installed Beta3 over the weekend after three attempts on my Acer Aspire 5517 laptop. I used the graphical installer.

Install attempt #1 - I got as far as entering a password for root, and then the installer froze. I was still able to move the mouse pointer, but keyboard wasn't working, so I had to press the power switch.

Install attempt #2 - I got as far as entering the password for the one user (me), then the installer froze. Once again, I was still able to move the mouse pointer, but keyboard wasn't working, so I had to press the power switch. After re-booting, I was able to boot to kdm, but when trying to login as root or normal user, KDE would not start. I could go to a console login and login as root, and as the normal user (once I set the password for that user.) I tried vxconf several times - each time with a different resolution - but to no avail.

Install attempt #3 - Install got almost all the way through. I did the network config, then accidently skipped over the next config step. (I clicked twice on "Next".) I was then forced to reboot - I couldn't go back. I got a "File not found" error msg. when the boot loader tried to find the kernel. I then booted into VL6.0-Lite on another partition, and manually setup a link for "/boot/vmlinuz" on the Beta3 partition. I re-booted again and got this error message: "Error 15: File not found".

Scott

[toothandnail]

Finally got beta 3 installed. Imported my user from the last beta (which may have been a mistake, since I canablalised the last beta and installed Xfce to it).

Install was fine and it booted without any problems. Even though I selected a login picture when I imported the user, nothing is showing next to my user name when logging in.

I've not yet had time to do much with it, but I notice that it is still not possible to enter adminstrator mode to use the Samba setup in System Settings > Advanced. Network Settings still comes up with a 'your platform is not supported' message.

More later.....

Paul.

[GrannyGeek]

[I installed the latest flashplayer 10,0,42,34 and opera-10.10 works well with it, that is in my box VL-6-LIGHT.

It works here, too. I should have been more specific: the latest Flash under Opera 10.10 in VL6 SOHO Beta 3. That's the one that doesn't work here. Opera 10.10 and the latest Flash do work in VL6 Light and VL6 Standard.
--GrannyGeek

[prince]

Well, let's see:

1) No speaker icon on desktop, only in root.

2) There is a bug-a-boo when selecting and pasting (by highlighting your selection then pasting by aiming your desired mark and pushing in the mouse scroll wheel/button). It just will redirect itself to an entirely different website. This takes place in Yahoo email using Opera.

3) There don't seem to be an option during install to slipstream sound drivers, video seems to be the only concern. 

4)No Vxcam, Chestnut Dialer, Deluge, Nicotine,Cabos,Banshee,Boxee, or  even Compiz by default.

5) This sample of the Soho is much quicker than before, however, boot-up time still has ways to go. For example on the Gateway MT3707 it takes Windows 7 Ultimate 39 sec. On the Vl 6 Soho 1 minute and 51 sec.!

Despite the above, you guys are very talented.  I think the time has come for you to start a database of these issues and make it mandatory (or list as helpful) that these users include the system (specs) that they are running the Vector Linux on. This would help you recommend to users the supported system that works best with Vector Linux. I would really hate to see all your talents derailed. Trying to be a one-size-fits-all ain't easy. Even with Microsoft (and all the kings horses, riches and men) must of sent out recommended specs or instruction sets in order to work harmoniously with their operating environment/system . You see Apple/Mac don't have much of those issues. There seems to be better results and less issues running Linux with AMD. I think a rated recommended hardware list would help.  Trying to be all things to all people can be a time consuming and expensive proposition. While Fedora is getting very sophisticated, it would pay justice for Vector Linux to rate hardware, too.

A quick boot speed would obviate the need for boot-splash, hibernate, and other software that can potentially compromise security or the operating system.

[Daniel]

4)No Vxcam, Chestnut Dialer, Deluge, Nicotine,Cabos,Banshee,Boxee, or  even Compiz by default.

I believe the philosophy that VL is taking is to stay on one cd (obviously with a couple exceptions) and for the user to install the base system plus some goodies at install. They can then customize their system throught Gslapt. VL is also designed to run well on older computers. Compiz will definitely not run well on older computers (as an example).

5) This sample of the Soho is much quicker than before, however, boot-up time still has ways to go. For example on the Gateway MT3707 it takes Windows 7 Ultimate 39 sec. On the Vl 6 Soho 1 minute and 51 sec.!

May I point out that once the Windoze desktop comes up, you still have to wait a minute for the rest of the system to finish coming up before you can really do much.

[TLM]

May I point out that once the Windoze desktop comes up, you still have to wait a minute for the rest of the system to finish coming up before you can really do much.

Absolutely right! All one has to do is watch your hard drive LED even after the Windos 7 desktop is up. It will keep blinking like crazy for quite some time while it is finishing loading all of those background services. You can also open task manger while this is going on and observe what is happening.

Once the VL desktop is up, its up and finished.

[M0E-lnx]

I just saw this first hand. A friend brought his shiny new Lenevo R500.
Even with his Core2duo @ 2.20ghz, his hard disk and CPU LED's stay on for a while after his desktop shows up.

[Daniel]

Not to mention that the *penalty* for trying to start something (outlook for example) before windoze is finished coming up is that it takes 2 or 3 times as long to load and you pretty much can't do anything else during that time.