I've just installed the beta of Fedora 2 on my dual athlon, and am used to living within the Linux console, so I wonder if anyone could advise me of the GUI way of doing some things. I tried Gnome, but decided I prefer KDE. This is a dual boot machine with winXP.

First, my SBLive is detected OK, but loading the usual module fails for some reason. Why might this be? What can I do about it? I'm a bit annoyed about this because Knoppix 3.2 manages just fine.

Second, although my USB printer is listed in the hardware list as detected, it hasnt automatically installed it, and I cant seem to find a way how. I have a Canon i850, which is a very common (and not new) printer, but I couldnt find it in the printer list. Likewise, my webcam is detected in USB - how do I use it?

Third, how can I do the equivalent of "Browsing the network" in the KDE GUI? I'm assuming this can be done with Konquerer somehow. Please dont tell me to type smb://servername into the bar, because I dont know the servernames until I've browsed the network... Having done this, is there a way to permanantly "Map" the drives I find via the GUI, or do I need to put smb entries into /etc/fstab and automount them on login?

Finally, I was surprised that NTFS support is still not included by default, even in readonly mode. Again, Knoppix 3.2 does this just fine. So I went to the kde kernel config tool, with the intent of compiling the module, and it told me it couldnt start a config because "No architecture specified". Looking in the kernel code configs dir, I was surprised that there were no 'athlon' kernels. It appears that i686 has installed by default. Indeed, I couldnt see any athlon kernels in the install CDS either. What is going on there?

Finally a note of annoyance about the install. Although I told the install not to touch any partitions, and to install grub into /dev/hda3, the install still fiddled with the partition table, and thereby destroyed the bootability of winXP permanently on that disk. Now, admittedly, the partition table was already dodgy because I stupidly used windows to repartition it a while back, but nevertheless it worked. The install should not have taken it upon itself to make changes there, even if they were fixes to the MBR or boot sector. I had to create an XP boot floppy and then burn it to CD so that I can boot into XP from now on. (And no, dont give me any of that fixmbr/fixboot crap, I know all about that).

Other than that, I must admit that I'm not overly impressed with Fedora2. It has so far not managed as much as Knoppix, and doesnt look or feel a great deal different from RedHat 7.3, which was the last time I spent a while on a Linux machine with X installed.
Mark

Maybe you should just stick with Knoppix then?

Yes, very helpful. Not only do you quote my entire message - even though it is only one inch away on the screen - but you do it for the sake of 8 words of no value at all. You do know that Knoppix is a CD based distribution, that you cannot upgrade, change, customise, save... etc; and that it's performance is terrible because of that?
Mark

that was pretty lame stingx

fig_wright, i have had similar problems with test 1. i did an upgrade from core 1 and have seen all kinds of weird stuff with my usb and nic, also nautilus is a joke now. almost feel like i wasted 4 cd's.
see my rant here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=145981

there were other things about it too, i have not tried kde, it wasnt installed on core 1 so it really didnt get installed on the upgrade, although i have seen that test 1 installs 3.1.95 and not 3.2 which i have downloaded, might give that a try tonight.

also thinking of doing a clean install to see how that goes. other than that i will probably go back to core 1 and just wait until april. i would love participate and submit bugs and whot not, but i dont have a test machine, this is my home machine and need it to work

you are right though, some of those things should be there and working.

good luck

Maybe people should wait until the non-testing version of Fedora comes out before you start bashing it. They are only on Test 1 of FC2.... Did you not expect some problems. Also, it is using a different kernel than Knoppix. Knoppix uses the 2.4.x series while FC2 is using the 2.6 series. They are still working things out. Hence, "FC2 Test 1"

The NTFS thing: Well, Anything redhat comeout with now does not have any NTFS support. There are ways around it. You just need to research some. Of course, I doubt these ways will work with a test release.

About booting into XP.... Is grub comming up as the boot loader? Why don't you set it up where XP is one of the choices? THere is plenty of help with that on these forums.

Maybe you should revert to FC1 or try out Mandrake. It has default NTFS read access and it uses KDE by default. You may like it better....

Fedora core 1 works fine on my Athlon and Athlon XP PC's.

Personally I wont install a beta release until I have more Linux experience.

Why don't you just install Knoppix to hard disk, then you can just apt-get for updates?? I've done it several times without problems.

<sigh>

I am not bashing Fed 2. I am just disappointed at how much isnt working. If I was bashing it I would be saying how crap it all is and that I was giving up and going to Mandrake/Slack/whatever. Instead I'm wanting help fixing it, although this doesnt appear to be very fruitful at the moment.

I am well aware this is a test version. The 2.6 kernel is fine - I was running 2.6 on RedHat 7.3 before I reinstalled Fed2.

Perhaps someone who uses Fed 1 can answer some of my questions that are nothing to do with the state of the test release; like how to browse the Samba network and how to install a USB printer? Why dont there seem to be any athlon kernels, and why doesnt RedHat like NTFS, even in readonly mode?

What could I try for the SBLive? Is there a sounds config tool like the old sndconfig?

As for the bootloader, like I said it isnt solveable without re-partitioning. It's a nasty flavour of the dreaded "NTLDR is missing", so it doesnt matter where I install grub, or what I try to chainload from where. My only solution would be for M$ to write a decent bootloader. LOL...
Mark

I can answer a few of those better, but not all of them.

For your sound you may want to browse on down to http://www.alsa-project.org/ . They have help on setting up specific soundcards. I mentioned the kernel difference, because the sound is related to the kernel. Also, if at the commandline you type "redhat-config" and hit tab a couple times you will get some choices on some different things you can type in. Look to see if there is a sound card wizard included in there.

RH does not use NTFS for reasons similar to their not using mpg standards. They can potentially get hurt in licensing. If Microsoft suddenly starts attacking everybody that sells something that can take advantage of NTFS without their permission, then RH is clean.

I believe Athlon's utilize the x86 architecture. Therefore an i386 kernel will work fine on it.

benji, i realize it is a test build and i did expect problems, just not the ones i experienced. yes i did rant about it, but i expected certain things and when they werent there, i got turned off. im sure i can fix them or find out why they are like that, but thats the point of using test builds. to put it through its paces and tell the developers about it. they wont put things in the build unless we ask for them and they wont fix things if we dont complain about them or tell them about it.

oh well, off to try a clean install, see what that brings...wish me luck

I understand that. I wasn't neccessarily pointing you out as as a "fc2 basher". Really I don't think bash is quite the word I was looking for... I have read some FC2 reviews that were just plain bashes of it. I guess I was really wondering what was going on with their train of thought and just voiced it in this thread.

jsmarshall85,

I installed FC2-T1 last night - clean build on a brnad new 80Gb HDD. I too am having similar problems. My soundcard won't work and the network won't work. What we have in common (from the info I have seen) is the fact that we both have a ES1371 sound card and a MR814 router (appears like it's a problem with NAT since I can ping my local network, but not outside)

I haven't had much time to look into the issue with the network (will look into this tonight), however, the issue with the sound is simply that they are trying to load a module that doesn't exist! - For some reason FC2-T1, on my machine, is trying to load sn-es1371 when it really should load snd-es1371. I have no idea where this name is registered, however, I plan on looking into this tonight. In the mean time, to get your soundcard working, temporarly you can insert the line modprobe snd-es1371 into your rc.local file.

As for the nautilus issue, I haven't seen this as yet since I haven't got around to playing with the UI much (spent a lot of time in the shell last night), but I should imagine the configuration option in one of the nautilus menus should resolve this, unless this changed since FC1. Also to browse the network you can simply type smb:// - This will browse the network. Create a shortcut to this on your desktop and you should be all set.

Over all, it does look better, despite all these little problems. For a Alpha 1 release I'm pretty impressed. Most Alpha software that I've used has almost never worked.


-- Farzad

well i dont think i had a problem with my sound card, didnt notice anyway, but i have a via ac97 sound system on the mobo.

as far as the router, i havent found anything yet. i checked netgears site and the system requirements for the 814 include linux but they do not specify a kernel version

anyway, i have reinstalled core 1 for now and will use that. i guess i am more cut out to being a user and not a tester

System requirements on a router only (normally) refer to the way you can interface with it to change the router settings. As far as using an OS behind the router, it is platform independent. The only requirement is that the OS use TCP/IP (or whatever protocol you are using....) to get onto the net.

Thanks for your help there...

Well, after several evenings spent on this I've got some way into it.

Successes:

Turns out that to "Browse the network" (in Windows terms) you need something called LISA, which for some reason is turned off by default. I couldnt find a GUI way to enable this, so it was back to chkconfig to add it to init 3-5. Once this was done, most of the network computers were visible in Konquerer. Most, except the Samba Master for some reason. This one was still visible via smb://<mastername> though. Odd. Konquerer is quite neat, but not as intuitive as Windows Explorer. I dont know why they dont just copy it, or at least make it a mode - Windows Explorer is probably the best file manager ever invented, and is a large chunk of why Windows is so easy to learn. Konquerer reminds me a lot of the old win 3.1 file manager.

Evolution is a fine looking mailer - may even tempt me away from Mozilla mail.

I managed to download the Nvidia drivers for 2.6 kernels, and it installed quite easliy and compiled its own module! Not bad... I even managed to configure XF86config to for it to use my DVI connection [Option "ConnectedMonitor" "DFP"], and the image quality bumped right up, although nowhere near Windows quality on black text on white background. Hey, [ctl-alt] + and - work on screen resolution (although incorrectly!) for the first time ever! Wish I had some easy way to see the driver in serious action...

Failures:

Printers - still screwed. Seems Canon wont release a driver or the specs for the i850, so I'm screwed there. Great: another reason why I cant do without Window . I dont have the time or inclination to try to fiddle the driver via foomatic or CUPS or whatever. If it doesnt work out of the box I'll use windows. There is apparently a Japanese driver at http://cweb.canon.jp/drv-upd/bj/bjlinux220.html , but for me that is always "access denied".

Other gripes:

Cant get lm_sensors to work, when they worked on this machine on RH 7.3. Sensors-detect runs fine, and i2c modules seem to insert OK, but them sensors always moans about "Can't access procfs/sysfs file", or cant find sensors. And Redhat have taken to leaving hosts.deny blank. Very strange!

Havent had time to look at the sound module issue yet. The module snd_emu10k1 and many daughters are loaded OK. My modprobe.conf includes:
Another couple of nights and perhaps I'll have it?
Mark

Sounds errors I get (from message and dmesg):
Having installed Fed 2 test, should I run up2date, or will that screw up the test installation?
Mark

EDIT:
The nonexistance of 'athlon' kernels is explained by someone called 'arjanv' at RedHat:
"I no longer build athlon kernels because in theory the 2.6 kernel now has a
mechanism to automatically runtime patch in these optimisations during boot"
I tried to build one anyway - they wouldnt be included in the 2.6 options if they were no longer relevent, I figured...

KDE kernel configurator fails because it is sill looking for a 2.4 tree. Even fixing that doesnt solve the issue - the kernel tool has clearly not been touched from 2.4. Stupid. Still I compiled the old fashioned way, and in the end that failed too because the 'make' used over 1.5 GB of disk and filled up by drive with compiled code! WTF? I've never had that much space used by a compile before! I heard there is a way to compile just a single module in 2.6. How can I do this to make the NTFS module?

The KDE panel is terrible right now. It is constantly freezing menus and buttons, and all the windows with them. I found that hitting ctrl + alt usually unfreezes everything. Anyone know what is causing this?