Why does Mandrake/Mandriva automatically install smp kernels ? They cause my machines to freeze and render the install useless. At least on RC1 they installed both smp and non-smp kernels (with smp made bootable). I was able to make the non-smp kernel bootable by manually editing grub in RC1. I wanted to install 10.1 on another machine and it installs just the smp kernel and freezes with the screen full of what looks like a bunch of hexidecimal numbers. I've wasted many hours reintalling and I have checked the checksums and the disks are fine.

RC1 is release candidate 1, its not a full release but its been put out for testing to find bugs. You should file this as a bug at qa.mandriva.com and post it to the cooker mailing list.

Sorry. At the end of my rant, I forgot to add what I really wanted to ask. Is there a switch that you can use at the beginning of the install process to select the kernel you wish to use? Many distros have this feature and I was wondering if Mandriva did.

This problem also happens on 10.1 so it is not unique to RC editions. Could it be that using an AMD64 chip (single core) confuses the installer?

On the bootup menu once you've installed it doesn't it have options for the non-smp kernel?