first 5 min impression... Updated 25 sept

[mathomas3]

ok..

first off... feels fast... this is good... it's not kde... or gnome... and didnt have the option to use one of them... that's ok... i then looked around... and noticed that wireless might be a problem as when i do a ifconfig... i have no wireless... with other Distros it atleast is found... also i dont have bluetooth... hmmm also my SD card is not being found... errr... also im working on a laptop and the drivers for power management were not installed? i selected them to be installed... dvd playback was not working... was told it should work... i have an ATI graphics card... needs to be installed... hmmmm...

i know linux is a system that needs to be dialed in... and im willing to do the work... but... it's a tall list... i did a quick search for ATI VIDEO and came up broke... will try harder soon... but just didnt have the time in this sitting...

i will continue to work on it for the next day... and i would like to see.....

DVD playback...-------Loaded JUST released Drivers!!
wireless ----will start working on in the morning...
SD card working ---- any suggestions....
ATI drivers installed and working on startup ---- WORKING... but only as root... openGL only working as root... how to get working under other users???
and power management...
External HD ----- when i plugged it in it didnt regester it... is there a hack for that... 
i will be on IRC in a few... Please Help!!!

[wcs]

Let's start with the DVD playback. I guess the other problems might be more difficult.

What happens when you put a dvd in your drive, open xine, and click the "DVD" button? (Start xine from the command line and post relevant error messages here).

[mathomas3]

ok... mark that... guess i was using the wrong player

but DVD playback worked... just the frame rate was not acceptable to xine...

hmm....

maybe the ati drivers needed to be installed...

[lagagnon]

maybe the ati drivers needed to be installed...

Yes, probably.

[lagagnon]

this is good... it's not kde... or gnome... and didnt have the option to use one of them

Well no, because you installed VL 5.8 Standard which uses xfce. That information is on our website.

i have no wireless

shouldn't be too much trouble to get that working. Please read the Wireless HOWTO in our HOWTO Forum first.

i have an ATI graphics card... needs to be installed

Just follow the instructions at the ATI website for the appropriate Linux drivers for that card. You need to have the kernel sources installed. Did you select kernel sources from the list when you did the VL install?

SD card working

Try unplugging the SD card from its socket and then plugging it in again. Doesn't an icon for the card appear on your desktop?

[mathomas3]

well thanks for trying to help... but as this is my only machine in iraq... and i need something that works... i have removed VL off my machine...

but a few notes that i would like to share as to why it failed for me...

1. ATI drivers... i searched for a how to or something that would help didnt find anything of use...
2. SD card...  was never found
3. Wireless... never tried to get working...
4. WM Annoying...
5. Package managment... i tried to install some apps... called for LIBS that i couldnt find... or called for libs that according to the package manager said i had but still didnt have?
6. DHCP... everytime i restarted my maching i would have to run dhcpcd eth0 to connect... why that's not automated i dont know...
7. on install i asked for the power management to be installed... but vasm didnt find it... and i couldnt find it...
8. sleep or hibernation not supported...
9. why offer 5 different web browsers and only ABIword... if you are going to offer choices carry that into all apps and not just browsers... confusing...

and on a final note... im sad that it didnt work out... i was excited to come back to VL... but with such a Large number of problems i feel moy joy in trying something different... i would ask that Vec7 move back to keeping the distro small...

thanks to those that tried to help me out...

[wcs]

For the ATI drivers, as lagagnon mentioned, you needed to follow the instructions on the ATI website.
As for the package management, I guess you needed to enable the "extra" repository.
The WM being "annoying" is something that can be easily changed. Not only you can play around with the XFCE settings, but you can install other window managers through slapt-get (e.g., fluxbox, jwm, kde, gnome)
As for DHCP not working automatically, I don't know how to solve it, but (so far as I know) that's not a problem that is very common.

Of course, if it didn't work out for you as a whole, not much that can be done... 

[newt]

It's too bad that VL58 didn't work for you, but (to be honest) it doesn't sound like you gave it much of a chance.  It seems you started off on the wrong note with VL58 - i.e. complaining that it's too big and that vec should go back to a 50meg distro.  I've found that with ANY OS/distro there is some tweak time - this includes windows and osx.  Whether it's finding drivers for special/legacy hardware or it's configuring the look-and-feel to your personal taste, it all takes a little bit of time investment (certainly more than 5 minutes).

I have a couple different ATI cards working great on two different VL systems (radeon and ati drivers) - easy.
I have linksys and usrobotics wireless 54g cards w/ WPA working great on my two systems.
I have xfce, e17, wmaker working great on my systems.
With all repos excluding 'unstable', I've never had a problem installing a package via gslapt.
Your DHCP: Simply add your command to the end of /etc/rc.d/rc.local and no more fuss.
Sleep and hibernation have been enabled in the CK patched kernel, available from repo
Never played with SD cards but CF and USB flash drives work fine with vl-hot; I'm sure SD could work also.
Power management works fine on my laptop system.
Browsers: There are many popular choices of browsers so all are included.  There is only 1 Abiword and it's included, as is the option to install OOo.  Then there are numerous plaint text editors available as well (tea, nano, mcedit).

If you have more than 5 minutes to test a distro you may want to come back and check out v60 when it's released; the changes should be significant.  Oh, but you should wait for SOHO since it will contain the KDE that you like.

Cheers!

[mathomas3]

ok... taken a step back... calmed down and tried again...

DVD playback...---- when using mplayer it kills xorg... ideas??? and xine only plays Some videos... not others... errr....
wireless ----will start working on in the morning...
SD card working ---- any suggestions....
and power management...  ---- suggestions?
External HD ----- when i plugged it in it didnt regester it... is there a hack for that...
OpenGL-------------- only works for root and not other users???

[lagagnon]

DVD playback...---- when using mplayer it kills xorg...

Run mplayer from the command line and post any error messages that you get.

and xine only plays Some videos... not others

Depending on the type of video you might need to install extra codecs. But it is more likely that you simply have not set up xine properly (right clikc, Settings, Setup or http://www.xinehq.de/index.php/faq ).

SD card working ---- any suggestions....

Do you mean not working? If so, do you not get an icon on the desktop when you put an SD card in the slot?

and power management...  ---- suggestions?

You have not told us yet the make and model of the laptop. What I would do is find out that info and then visit this site:
http://www.linux-laptop.net/
THere you might well find a lot of great info on how to get all the hardware of your laptop working.

External HD ----- when i plugged it in it didnt regester it... is there a hack for that...

Unplug the external HD. Open up a terminal and type "tail -f /var/log/messages". Plug in the HD. Watch for the info on where in /dev the system mounts the hard drive. Tell us about it and we will show you how to mount it.

OpenGL-------------- only works for root and not other users???

Did you correctly load the ATI drivers yet? It should work for all users. You can tell if is has or not by running "glxinfo | grep rendering". The output should say "Yes".

[stoichyu]

For, the openGL problem, did you install a driver from the ATI site? Or are you using it out of the box? I'm not sure if it will help you but you can try adding this to /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "DRI"
  Group 0
  Mode 0666
EndSection

That should allow other users to use openGL, I think this is for the built in drivers only though.

I strongly suggest however, that if you haven't, go to the ATI site, download and install a driver.