Salix 13.0 Beta - Great Start!

[laprjns]

Hey All,
Congratulations, great start on your new distro. I've installed it both on VirtualBox and on my AMD Duron box as a dual boot with ZW. Installation on VirtualBox when without problems. Needed to compile the VB Guest Additions kernel modules to be able to get it to a resolution that was usable, but this is the same for most guest OS. Does require that the kernel-source package be installed for building the VB modules, so I would expect that it will also be needed to build the NVIDIA proprietary drivers. Once I got the guest additions installed, I started up various programs without problems, networking came up using dhcp, firefox looked good and slapt-get worked (once i found where you moved the repository to. ). So, with this behind me,I decided to move to a real hardware platform; my backup desktop that I used to build all my ZW packages (let me list them: VirtualBox ). It's a 1.6Ghz AMD Duron with a ATI graphics card and 1G of ram. Salix was installed on sdb, with zw already on sda. I used the manual partitioning mode, creating sdb1 as swap (~720MB) and the rest of the disk (~30GB) as sdb2 for /. I selected the full installation option and had no problems through the installations of the packages, lilo and post install configurations.
Once everything was installed, I booted up Salix, log in and started almost every application in the menus, Everything started and worked, including networking, mounting network shares through gigolo, both java and flash in firefox.
During testing I came across two small problems;
1) Lilo did not pick up my ZW installation on sda1, the lilo menu only has Salix. I believe that I have seen this before where lilo does not pick up a Linux distribution partition but is able to configure a windows partitions, so it may not be a Salix problem. I will try installing Salix on my main desktop triple booting with ZW and Xp some time this weekend to see how lilo does with that,
2) Second problem is with Exaile. When I click on a mp3 file, Exaile starts, but throws an error message saying that a decoder or plug-in is not installed. I have never seen this problem on other distros before, mp3 file just played when I clicked on them.

Anyway, great start, it looks good.
Regards
Rich

btw: I really didn't want to put this in Problems, but wasn't really sure where you would have wanted it

[gapan]

Hi Rich and welcome

1. The problem is not specific to salix. I think that is intended behaviour actually. If you want to multiboot linux distros, you'll have to configure lilo.conf manually.
2. Salix does not ship with patent encumbered codecs by default. Other distros that do it are actually illegal in some countries. But we have a nice "Install multimedia codecs" menu entry in the multimedia menu that should make things simple. Did you find it?

[laprjns]

I just installed Salix on my main desktop to triple boot with XP and ZW. Lilo did pick up Xp , but as you said it does not pick up the other Linux distro. I'm editing lilo.conf now to add ZW, but my disks and partitions configuration is kind of complex so I having some problems. I figure this on out on my own.
I completely missed the "Install multimedia codec" entry in the Multimedia menu. I'll consider using it once I rigorously investigate the legality of installing and using codecs in my country. It is nice how it removes itself after using it though.
Another minor issue. During both my installs on real hardware, I selected to have the numlock turned on at boot, but in both cases, it doesn't.
Regards
Rich

[gapan]

But... how do you know it removes itself if you haven't used it already?

[JRD]

I installed it into real hardware yesterday evening.
I didn't want to burn a CD (and I don't have one at the moment of the install) so I choose to use a "install from HD" type of installation.
I did :
- extract the kernel from the ISO, and put it in /boot of my Zenwalk distro.
- extract the initrd from the ISO, and put it in /boot of my Zenwalk distro.
- extract isolinux.cfg from the ISO and use it to fill options in /etc/lilo.conf (yes I still use lilo on my ZW snapshot)
- extract the salix directory from the ISO and put it in /
- reboot

All went ok, I get into the setup and choose to do a full install. I choose to use install from a partition (I filled /dev/sda3 where resides the salix directory). I noticed that in this screen, a reference to alcoholix is still made
Installation was ok, no problem.

I didn't install lilo. On the reboot, I boot on my Zenwalk, and added an entry for Salix in my lilo.conf, reinstall lilo and reboot...this time on Salix.

For now, it's a "no fault".
Here's what's wrong :
- I needed to edit repo locations in glapt to point to 13.0 instead of current. I then installed the multimedia codecs (I'm in France, Europe, software patents are not (yet) recognized)
- GPG Assistant crashed when creating a private key...I don't know why.
- I didn't test Exaile sorry, I forgot.
- I also choose to have numlock turned on...and it's not.
- The kernel seems not be compiled with framebuffer as I can only boot in 80x25. It also seems there is no bootsplash ?
- gslapt seems disoriented : after a refresh, it tells me that wicd is not installed for example...but it's just running in the xfce4 panel...There are others apps that it thinks are not installed.

I like :
- the setup. Localized will be really better, but it's ok.
- the artworks (I didn't use salix.bmp on boot, but I like the gdm screen, wallpaper, icons choosen, mouse cursor)
- the choosen applications.
- The desktop and menu layout. However, I miss the xfce mixer plugin, places and clipman, so I added them.
- usefull links on the desktop.
- Google as the default page for firefox (I don't like distro who put their own page as default page).

The installation was very quick (if I don't count the trick about not burning the CD).

[gapan]

- I needed to edit repo locations in glapt to point to 13.0 instead of current.

Of course! The beta was released before slackware 13.0 was finalized, so repos numbered "13.0" weren't available at that time. The next iso will have 13.0 specified by default (if you upgrade your slapt-get and accept the slapt-getrc.new file you'll see that it does)

- GPG Assistant crashed when creating a private key...I don't know why.

Strange works fine here.

- I also choose to have numlock turned on...and it's not.

Get the new sysvinit-scripts package and accept the rc.M.new file with dotnew. Configure the numlock with keyboardsetup and reboot. Tell me if it works.

- The kernel seems not be compiled with framebuffer as I can only boot in 80x25. It also seems there is no bootsplash ?

I guess this has to do with you not doing a standard installation. You'll have to specify "quiet splash" in the lilo.conf append line

- gslapt seems disoriented : after a refresh, it tells me that wicd is not installed for example...but it's just running in the xfce4 panel...There are others apps that it thinks are not installed.

What I'm guessing is that gslapt is right! You had wicd 1.6.2 installed, but after the refresh, gslapt saw that 1.6.2.1 was available, which was in fact not installed! Same for the other apps, their upgraded versions were simply not installed. Gslapt creates different entries for the installed and available package if they are different. It also creates different entries for packages with the same name across different repositories. So, you'll see that there is a sysvinit-scripts package that comes from slackware repos that is not installed and also a sysvinit-scripts package that comes from the salix repo that is installed. That way you can choose exactly which version you want. Very helpful, especially in the case of the xf86-video-intel package, where some cards are probably better off with an older version of the driver, and versions 2.5.1, 2.6.3, 2.7.1 and 2.8.1 are currently all available through the package manager, so the user can use whichever one he wants!

[JRD]

- I needed to edit repo locations in glapt to point to 13.0 instead of current.

Of course! The beta was released before slackware 13.0 was finalized, so repos numbered "13.0" weren't available at that time. The next iso will have 13.0 specified by default (if you upgrade your slapt-get and accept the slapt-getrc.new file you'll see that it does)

I supposed. I just made a full report :p I'll try your suggestion...but maybe I need to reinstall cause tonight I will not be on the same PC

- GPG Assistant crashed when creating a private key...I don't know why.

Strange works fine here.

I will try again and launch it in console and see if there is some debug info.

- The kernel seems not be compiled with framebuffer as I can only boot in 80x25. It also seems there is no bootsplash ?

I guess this has to do with you not doing a standard installation. You'll have to specify "quiet splash" in the lilo.conf append line

You're right, I misread the setup/liloconf, I only added "quiet", I miss the "splash" option

- gslapt seems disoriented : after a refresh, it tells me that wicd is not installed for example...but it's just running in the xfce4 panel...There are others apps that it thinks are not installed.

What I'm guessing is that gslapt is right! You had wicd 1.6.2 installed, but after the refresh, gslapt saw that 1.6.2.1 was available, which was in fact not installed! Same for the other apps, their upgraded versions were simply not installed. Gslapt creates different entries for the installed and available package if they are different. It also creates different entries for packages with the same name across different repositories. So, you'll see that there is a sysvinit-scripts package that comes from slackware repos that is not installed and also a sysvinit-scripts package that comes from the salix repo that is installed. That way you can choose exactly which version you want. Very helpful, especially in the case of the xf86-video-intel package, where some cards are probably better off with an older version of the driver, and versions 2.5.1, 2.6.3, 2.7.1 and 2.8.1 are currently all available through the package manager, so the user can use whichever one he wants!

Thank you ! I didn't understand very well how glapt works. Now I think I understand.
I miss zendo :p :p :p

[laprjns]

Get the new sysvinit-scripts package and accept the rc.M.new file with dotnew. Configure the numlock with keyboardsetup and reboot. Tell me if it works.

It doesn't. Tried it on both of my machines. Got the new sysvinit, accepted the rc.M.new file and rebooted. The numlock led did flash on then off again just before /as the gdm screen came up.
Rich

[gapan]

Strange, because it seems to work here. Let's have another try...

Please also try upgrading gdm with this package: http://pnboy.pinguix.com/gapan/salix/gd ... 86-5gv.txz

and tell me if it works after a reboot...

[laprjns]

Yes, the new gdm package works. Can turn the numlocks on and off using the keyboard layout tool and it remains in the selected condition through reboots.


Rich