Slashdot Mirror

...then another couple months finding reliable mirrors.

If there are still any Mandrake users that haven't found this, go here.

I'll echo the Hauppage recommendation. Good cards and the encoding in hardware will make this an even sweeter project.

I'd also add that you might consider using a Zalman heatsink/fan. If your keeping the system in the same room your using it, the sound of a small hover-device can be distracting (*especially* to your non-computer fanatic girlfriend/wife/friends).

Oh! Oh! (:)) And if you use two card you can set it up to do picture-in-picture (or with two haupagge encoders, record two of your favorite show that air simulateously).

Lastly, if you have trouble getting MythTV to install (I don't know how new or not you are) try using Mandrake Community 10. After you set up urpmi to to use the PLF Repository installing it can be as simple as running 'urpmi mythtv-suite' from your root prompt (the perl dependencies can be a bitch otherwise).

> I love this quote

It could have been better exploited had they mentioned more software, to get the message that they sell a complete solution in a single package. That's a compelling argument for most people I encounter : I tell them everything they need is probably already installed, and if not, they have it at their fingertips in an unified interface (for best results, use EasyURPMI to setup the contrib source). Voilà ! No more hunt-the-missing-software on the Net ! Save your precious time with Linux :-)

> Totem?

Yes, Totem. Although I feel it isn't such a good software. Personally, I use different players for music and videos, because they've different needs that are best solved by specific applications (for instance, I use jukeboxes like JuK and RhytmBox to sort my music).

> Good idea really.

I agree. Another interesting thing is the partnership with Carrefour. They're a big supermarket chain (a bit like Wal-Mart in the US), and certainly a good way to sell more products. What's disappointing, though, is they won't sell it directly in their supermarkets but only through their web site. Oh well, at least it's mentioned on their front page...

urpmi.addmedia thacs.rpms http://rpm.nyvalls.se/10.0/RPMS with hdlist.cz

to add PLF and some other useful ones:

urpmi.org/easyurpmi/

Personally, on x86 I had far more problems with setting up gentoo (I have to compile a kernel during the installation? how fucked up is that?) than I ever had with using packages under mandrake (particularly when using easy urpmi.

I mean, different stroke for different folks, certainly. But gentoo's strenth is its' ability to squeeze 0.0008 percent more processing power out of your 2.4ghz computer; not ease of use or installation. That arena is where (imho) mandrake really shines.

RPM is good. I love RPM. I can't imagine where I'd be without that lovely self contained, self extracting package that Just Works(TM). Of course sometimes it dosen't Just Work, like when it was built for a different distro, which is very annoying.

The more common reason for rpms to not Just Work is that there is a dependancy problem (at least, in my experience). Most rpm repositories (ex. rpm.pbone.net) allow you to filter by distribution and version, so finding rpms that were built for your system isn't too much of a big deal. Dependency problems are far more difficult, and this is what urpmi is meant to resolve (no pun intended). You configure it to use one or more repositories as a source of rpms. It uses the hdlist file on the remote repository to figure out what packages depend on what, and gives you messages like "To install this package you also need to install blah and remove blah. Continue?". You then hit yes, and it just does it all. It all hinges on finding a good repository of packages, though. This isn't too tough thanks to Easy Urpmi.

This does not, however, solve the problem of cross-distro rpms. If there are now FC2 urpmi repos, you still could not configure urpmi in Mandrake to use it and still expect it to work.

It really makes a huge difference if you can fit more RAM into your machine. KDE and friends occupy a lot of it, and when you're running a few apps, then your CPU cycles are consumed paging memory to/from swap

If you can't get more memory, try using Firefox on IceWM, or Xfce (xfce.org). Both these window managers have a smaller footprint, which translates into _really_ noticable performance improvements.

Are you new to Mandrake? Have you found the PLF? If not, trot on over to Easy Urpmi, and update your urpmi sources to include the PLF. You'll find lots of useful things that Mandrake can't include in their official distribution. I use Mandrake 9.2, which doesn't even include mplayer! After updating your sources, you can type:

urpmi mplayer

and it'll be installed (or use the mandrake control centre bizzo).

For more urpmi goodness, check out Urpmi.org and the Easy Urpmi tool.

For more urpmi goodness, check out Urpmi.org and the Easy Urpmi tool.

Mandrake 10 Community - which is a pain to update

I'm typing this on 10.0 Official (at least that's what it says when I boot), and I updated from Community simply by getting new urpmi sources for Official from Easy Urpmi and running urpmi --auto-select

Now, I can't tell if I've installed just the right packages so they don't conflict or what, but so far I've had no problems with this setup. Actually, it's even better now - when running /etc/init.d/network (re)start it used fail on bringing up eth0 (it still worked though just fine). I've read some other people have had the same problem with MDK as well, and they remedied it by turning off network hotplugging; but this never worked for me. Now it just works.

they're for mdk 10.0, not 9.2. Probably that wouldn't work.

You didn't say you wanted 9.2. The 9.2 ISOs have *just* been removed to make place for the 10.0 ISOs, but a number of mirrors will probably still have the 9.2 ISOs that have been publicy available for 5 months.

(same thing applies for your two other points)

Yes, all freely-licensed software in the distribution is available publicy.

where do I get a free, stable, mdk-modified kernel for 9.2 ?

ftp://mandrake.contactel.cz/Mandrake/9.2/i586/Mand rake/RPMS/kernel-2.4.22.10mdk-1-1mdk.i586.rpm
(or on any of the other Mandrake mirrors - where they have been for over 5 months). And, it's trivial to set the distro up to install packages from the network, unlike many other "commercial" distros (I'm fighting with this on a Redhat box inside a heavily firewall network ... with things that are trivial on Mandrake).

But I don't want to *subscribe* to anything because it diminishes my freedom to switch to another distro whenever I want to - hence it diminishes the level of concurrence between the various distros.

No one is forcing you to subscribe. They are just making it attractive, so that they can pay their rent.

Even in the case of patched (hence nonstandard) sources, only standard patches should be used, ie patches available for any distro.

All patches are visible in the SRPM and in Mandrake packaging CVS.

If you want to have broken software (ie some software doesn't compile with gcc-3.2 out-the-box, some perl packages were broken by perl-5.8.2), insist on this. If you want software that actually works out-the-box for everyone, patches are essential. We don't patch software for fun. We patch software to add features or bugfixes that we feel are necessary.

it prevents you from truly learning gnulinux

Has Mandrake has installed a patch which prevents vi from editing a config file? Or, maybe removed the man pages? Or maybe removed documentation?

Get real.

Any linux distro can be used to learn about Linux. It's the user who has to make the choice.

On distros like Slackware you don't have a choice, and that's why it is unproductive to do other things (besides learning the distro) on them.

For example, I much prefer documenting the setup of features that are much more difficult on other distros than spending hours getting basic configuration done.

As I said, you have some misconceptions.

Mandrake tries to keep the content of it's "download edition" to be all Open Source licensed software. If you want decss, or even pine, you have to get it from another source... like by adding a plf urpmi source.

That's usually

urpmi --auto-select --auto

And after a visit to Easy Urpmi, preferably.

1) I use Mandrake and unless your using Debian or Gentoo I'd suggest using it simply because MythTV rpm's and ALL their dependencies have be set up by our good friends at Thacs and PLF.

2) Use MythTV ABSOLUTELY. I was lucky enough to start with it, but it has been one of those rare bits of software the continues to surprise me with *both* its design and implementation.

3) Make sure you have enough horse power, I'm using an AMD 1800 and its enough to get the job done. I'm sure some have done it with less, but I've found a couple of occasions its been a little tight.

4) Use the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 250. Its supported under MythTV (thanks to their hard work) and will give you Mpeg1/2 recording in hardware.

5) Buy 2 Hauppauge cards. MythTV supports PIP and I think the coolest thing is to be able to let the kids watch one program while the other records in the background.

6) Use a VGA to NTSC video converter. Preferably one that uses its own hardware to convert the signal (I'm using one that is more or less a pass-through and had to set up some pretty weird modelines). You will not regret this.

7) Don't get stingy with the hard drive space! They are pretty cheap now and even having two 120 gig drives THINGS GET TIGHT. All day marathons of your favorite programs can unexpectedly create 100's of gigs of unwatched TV shows (add to that ripped DVD's and your entire Mp3 collection..).

8) Just a reminder: Use Mandrake. Its OSS, its friendly enough for your wife/kids/visiting friends and will install MythTV (or a MythTV update!) in a single shot. Just make sure to configure Urpmi (which will apply to Rpmdrake simultaneously) with the PLF and Thac resources (you'll find how to configure them in the links I provided). Aside from have the MythTV packages they have a lot of really good (and really useful) multimedia software and after all the funniest part of having a homebuilt PVR that does more then most commercial packages is that its really a complete computer, so you might as well use it.

Go to Easy Urpmi and add a Cooker contribs source if you don't have one already. Then type urpmi gimp1_3 and you're done.

RPM hell? When was the last time you used mandrake? You do know that you have to configure urpmi so that it can download latest software from mirrors, which by the way can easily be found on this site:
Easy Urpmi
Subscription service is a value added service for club members. There you can get the latest test software and then club members test them before they are released to rest of the public. So get a clue before starting to flame.

Or use URPMI...

If you get dependency problems when running Mandrake Linux, you're probably not doing it right :-)

Seriously, the urpmi command will download an RPM for you, together with everything it needs that you don't already have, and install everything. Automatically.

See plf and the main urpmi web page for more info; Mandrake comes with urpmi, and it's also used by the GUI package manager (rpmdrake).

The trick to keeping Mandrake Linux running heppily is to avoid rpmfind. Always start by looking for packages in Mandrake's main and contrib (you can add them as sources for urpmi, and then it's automatic, just, urpmi package).

If you can't find a package, try searching with rpmdrake (you can search based on filenames too), or use urpmq -y some-substring such as, urpmq -y apache to see all packages that provide things containing that string.

if you use urpmi for package management, you should find that dependency and version problems becomre very rare. I won't say they'll go away (any more than they go away entirely with apt-get) but they will become very rare.

If you do get problems with urpmi, look in /var/cache/urpmi/rpms for the downloaded RPM files.

There is urpmi from mandrake as 'reimplementation' of apt-get.

urpmi

Read the Urpmi howto
and check out the huge MandrakeClub rpms repository

Yes, you can use urpmi --auto-select after adding a suitable source. Seee www.urpmi.org or aso plf.zarb.org for more info on setting up urpmi.

At the very least you'll want to add sources for security updates (Mandrake Update will do this automatically) and for contributed software.

Urpmi howto
the urpmi sources
The MandrakeClub rpms repository

Mind you, Windows does install stuff without even asking. I guess - for a while - that's easier than typing a one-liner or clicking on items in a long list. (-:

And before you go on about lock-in to a single supplier (compared with Microsoft? Ahuk, ahuk...), you can add as many alternate package sources as you wish (GUI here, complete URPMI insructions here), some people have begun to notice how easy it is and even the putative lockers-in endorse it.