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Old 08-24-2008, 10:47 AM   #31
nooby
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Registered: Oct 2007
Location: Stockholm Sweden
Distribution: Snow Puppy and Fluppy and Lupu frugal install
Posts: 279

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I've downloaded the PCLinuxOS 2007 version and tried for some two hours to get the ethernet
connection going. Windows, Puppy, Vector, Zenwalk, Nimblex, Goblinx, SliTaz, Austrumi, Alixe,
and many many more could get it going but PCLinuxOS, Knoppix, Kanotix, DSL, all of them fail
to use it.

Why is that? I get so disappointed. Marwell Yukon, PCLinuxOS knows it is that one and PCLinuxOS knows the IP address and says it connected but I fail to get internet using it.

What is going on? Is this a known bug?
 
Old 08-25-2008, 07:02 AM   #32
paulsiu
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Well, that's what you get when you don't have a pre-load linux. On a typical windows machine, the manufacturer pre-load Linux with all of the correct drivers. Linux laptop have the same advantage. Whenever I attempt to load Windows from scratch, I find it an extremely tedious experience. A lot of time is spend trying to find the drivers for your device. The vendors directories aren't typically all that organized, so I have to figure out if RA252.exe is better than R252.exe. Next, every driver install require a reboot. Linux at the very least work most of the time when you install by autodetecting everything (this is also useful when your computer died and you just want to transfer your entire disk to another machine)

Thousands of Linux developers have worked on detection scripts, but in the end, nothing is perfect. You cannot have 100% detection. This is especially true on laptops where Linux support is still thin because laptop tend to have the most cutting edge devices.

So, try different distro until you find one that works. Submit bugs to distro so developers can fix it. Be mindful that most of the developers are volunteers and so you can't really make demands. Alternatively talked to one of the paid distros where you may be able to demand fixes as part of your support.

Paul
 
Old 08-25-2008, 07:26 AM   #33
bbneo
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Registered: Jun 2008
Location: Northeast Ohio
Distribution: fedora 10, Debian, Ubuntu
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What type of system are you using?

What type of machine are you working with? "Aopen MZ915"
Is this a notebook or desktop?
What type of internet access do you have? broadband or dialup?
Are you trying to connect to the internet via a wireless connection from your machine?

When you indicate that you are interested in Live distributions, that suggests to me that you either: don't have a DVD drive and/or don't have broadband... and that is OK. The Live distributions and "net installs" (like Debian) are supposed to put emphasis on having drivers on the disk. For internet connections, you will do much better out of the box with a 10/10 (?) connections instead of a wireless.

Have you tried fedora? I have it dual booting on a Dell notebook, and it is working with my WPA WiFi network, seems pretty straightforward about installing media plugins.

I also like Debian, but that is harder to get the media plugins on, I think. I'm planning to setup my kids computer in the basement to dual-boot Ubuntu soon. We do have broadband, though, which help a lot in downloading DVD iso... and then, of course, you need a DVD burner.
 
Old 08-25-2008, 07:39 AM   #34
bbneo
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Dialup support can be spotty as well...

As I understand it. I haven't used dialup for so long, that I forget to think about it, but if you are trying to connect to the internet with a dialup/modem connection, you should find some place in the forums to post a question *specifically* about that issue, since modem support is one of the harder things to get in Linux distributions.
 
Old 08-25-2008, 08:11 AM   #35
nooby
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Registered: Oct 2007
Location: Stockholm Sweden
Distribution: Snow Puppy and Fluppy and Lupu frugal install
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Yes I should have described my gear and situation better.

Computer is a barebone and I have forgotten what cpu it is
but most likely 1.5 to 1.9 GHz. Most likely dual core not sure.
1.5GB DDRII 533 mhz. 160Pata which use sata cable but is an ide
which sometimes is seen as sda1 and sometimes as hda1 depending
on distro.
Barebone but with a chipset that is typical for a laptop.
Intel 910/915 chipset. intel 910 was chosen by Packard Bell
in my Laptop too. So it is rather common but some two years old.

I've tested maybe 15 to 20 Slackware distros.
They have no trouble at all to get internet connection
out of the box. The Ethernet card is a Marwell Yukon
and most OS recognized it correctly but DSL, Knoppix, Pclinuxos
Kanotix, and some more fail to actually connect despite them
saying they already done so.

The only slackware inspired distro that didn't get me internet
out of the box was Puppy but it worked after a few seconds up
to at most 1 minute of clicking on ethernet conenction eth0

Router, Modem and so on. Have none of these.

The Ethernet card is directly connected through a Switch to ISP
and that is so for every user connected to that ISP.

Sure one could buy an router to get nat but it screw up the
multicasting video that is free and gratis BBC Prime and BBC World
and National Geografic. I don't have them on Cable TV so they are
good. And suppose me had had a router. I would have an added thing
that could get me frustrated not knowing how to set up.

I have a router in a drawer but the power supply is broken I guess.
It died 2005 and have not looked at it since then.

So most distros do work but not those that people recommend.

Pclinuxos one of them that failed.

I'm looking for a linux that has mplayer plug in out of the box.

Our national free news TV stations use these mplayer plugin so
that would be good to have. And Flash for Youtube. Have I forgotten
some info? Most likely

Last edited by nooby; 08-25-2008 at 08:15 AM.
 
Old 08-27-2008, 03:14 AM   #36
nooby
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Location: Stockholm Sweden
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To give you a perspective

And to show how unpredictable this is.

I downloaded another live distro.
gnewsense-livecd-deltah-2.1.iso

It had no problem connecting me to the internet at all.
Out of the box. I had not to do anything.

So pclinuxos is different. It lacks the script that
gnewsense-livecd-deltah-2.1.iso has for how to get out.

Could one borrow from a working distro to the pclinuxos distro.
Maybe not I could but could not the developers of pclinux do it?
Would they only get angry if I told them about it? Pride or something?
 
Old 08-27-2008, 03:50 AM   #37
jomen
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Location: Leipzig/Germany
Distribution: Arch
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I could imagine that they would be interested that something works in another distribution out of the box which does not work in theirs.
You should be politely telling them about it - after making sure that there is no easy way of making things work in pclinuxos.
Maybe they explained how to do it and you just did not notice that.
Include as much info on your problematic hardware as you can when you tell them.
 
Old 08-27-2008, 04:53 AM   #38
nooby
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Registered: Oct 2007
Location: Stockholm Sweden
Distribution: Snow Puppy and Fluppy and Lupu frugal install
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I hope they read here. Why shouldn't they?
One shouldn't need to join every forum for
every distro. I have done that to most of them.
 
Old 08-27-2008, 06:02 AM   #39
jomen
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Quote:
I hope they read here. Why shouldn't they?
Why should they? - That is what feedback and bug-reports are for.
"They" most certainly don't scan this - or any other - forum for comments on their distribution.
You know yourself how time consuming it can be to find relevant info.
If you got a suggestion for an improvement, because you like the distro but miss a feature - you should tell them.
If you don't tell them what bothers you - how are they going to know?
 
Old 08-28-2008, 05:16 AM   #40
nooby
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Location: Stockholm Sweden
Distribution: Snow Puppy and Fluppy and Lupu frugal install
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SimplyMepis was a good Live distro. It recognized everything out of the box.
Had Flash for youtube and managed to work on one of our free national news TV
streaming videos station. playrapport.se was among the most stable in sound
mplayer had .rm plugins. most distros has jagging or flutter in sound but
SM was crystal clear.

It did set the volume right on sound and did well on graphic too.

pclinuxos is number five on the DW list of popularity while Mepis
is down to 18 which is surprising considering how good it worked
on my computer compared to pclinuxos. Maybe Mepis is not so good
at advertising how good they are?

DW says about it
Quote:
MEPIS Linux is a Debian-based desktop Linux distribution designed for both personal and business purposes. It includes cutting-edge features such as a live, installation and recovery CD, automatic hardware configuration, NTFS partition resizing, ACPI power management, WiFi support, anti-aliased TrueType fonts, a personal firewall, KDE, and much more.
Pclinuxos failed to get me out on the internet despite me using more than two hours
trying to tell it to use my dchp while Mepis just worked from first second it had
booted. What makes pclinuxos so high on the list?
 
Old 08-28-2008, 05:50 AM   #41
jomen
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Because it's more popular than the ones rated lower?
What is DW?

Last edited by jomen; 08-28-2008 at 06:06 AM. Reason: fixed typo
 
Old 08-28-2008, 05:55 AM   #42
XavierP
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Location: Kent, England
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DistroWatch does not measure the popularity of a distro - it has been long recognised that this is something which cannot be tracked (people running virtual machines, multiple downloads for testing, one download installed on multiple machines, etc etc). All the DW stats track is the popularity of a distro on DW - basically the number of searches and/or clicks on that distro's page on DW.
 
Old 08-28-2008, 07:36 AM   #43
ErV
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nooby View Post
Are they equal? Or does some cope better with flash and ads and
what settings could help?
Any distribution with mozilla firefox (and flash plugin for firefox) should be able to display youtube videos. End of story.
 
Old 08-28-2008, 08:46 AM   #44
nooby
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Registered: Oct 2007
Location: Stockholm Sweden
Distribution: Snow Puppy and Fluppy and Lupu frugal install
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How many have you actually tested?

They all behave very differently. Some distros survive only two or three
clips and then lock up and you have to kill the browser and start anew.

some survive ten clips and them lock up and some survive so long that
you want to eat or sleep or do something else.

So I get very curious on your assertive tone there. How many clips did
you do with each and did you take from both left list and right list?
Did you go backwards and replay some clips.

another thing distros are very different is the mplayer plugins.

som have a very jagged sound with jumps and glitches in the sound
amplitude and others like simply Mepis sounded without any sign of
such at all. One of the best I've heard. Nimblex is also good at it.

so your "End of story." Needs more information. Which distros have you
actually tested and what did you do. Listen to just one or did you listen to at least ten to twenty clips?
 
Old 08-28-2008, 09:09 AM   #45
jomen
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The flash-plugin is the same on all distros - it will be the version you installed (which is the probably the latest current version).
The exception are those distributions which come with flash pre-installed - you then have a version which is not neccesarily the newest/best.

Distributions hardware support varies (sometimes greatly) - so _there_ would be the place to look when something does not really work o.k. - defaults are different - sound drivers may be of different versions with the older not being equally good as the newer, different browser versions, etc. ...

For examples: I never had problems with Gentoo, Ubuntu and derivates, DSL, Puppy, Knoppix
That are the ones I used (mainly Gentoo) Problems like "lock up's" occur usually when software is old and when hardware is not well supported.
Pick one of those reasons - and use what works for you.

Last edited by jomen; 08-28-2008 at 09:11 AM.
 
  


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