From contact at kikinovak.net Wed Mar 8 06:45:46 2006 From: contact at kikinovak.net (Niki Kovacs) Date: Wed Mar 8 06:42:40 2006 Subject: [Frugalware-users] Few questions about Frugalware Message-ID: <200603080645.46228.contact@kikinovak.net> Hi, I'm an Austrian writer living in Montpezat (South France), and a 100% GNU/Linux user since 2001. (I reckon this is a hungarian distro... if you wonder about my last name: my family lives in Szentendre - Hungary:oD). I started out with Slackware 7.1 on an old 486, moved on to faster PCs and to other distros (Mandrake, Debian, Red Hat, Aurox, Gentoo, Libranet, ...) and then I came back to Slackware, which I found to be the most simple and without any problems. I am going to be sort of the sysadmin for the computers in my little 800-souls village: town hall, school, public computer room. So I am busy putting together a "perfect" office and multimedia system, with bells & whistles, and overall: rock solid. Currently, I use Slackware 10.2 with a 2.6.14 kernel on my five machines here at home (mostly Pentium IV). The only *real* problem that I have with Slackware, and it's getting worse, is the lack of many vital packages. After a base install of Slackware, I have to manually add something like 150-200 packages, and this is slowly getting over my head: d-bus, hal, pmount, kdebase recompiled with hal support, gnome libs (40 packages or so!), codecs, missing Perl modules... Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! So I checked around a bit. I tried the Slackware derivatives (Vector, Zenwalk), which didn't suit me. I took a look at Archlinux, but the main problem here is: we don't have fast internet connection in our remote place. Arch is more or less a "moving target" without such things as a stable release. But someone on the list suggested I take a look at Frugalware Linux, so here I am. I read the docs I could find on the site, and I must say that this really looks interesting. Now I have a few questions, in no particular order. 1) How well is dbus/hal/pmount/ivman implemented? For example, does it work out of the box with KDE 3.5.1? On my Slack box, this sort of works, but I remember I had a hell of a time to make it work. 2) Is it possible to install a minimal set of GNOME libs to run a few apps like Evince or GnomeMeeting without installing the whole GNOME desktop? 3) Is there some sort of "stable" repository for every release? 4) How about older needed packages? For example, one of my PCs has an older NVidia video card, which only works with Nvidia drivers up to 7167 and 7664. More recent drivers will freeze X. Is it possible to install older drivers? In that case, manually? 5) My old HP Pavilion laptop (Pentium III 933) crashes on X.org 6.8.2, but works OK with X.org 6.8.1. On my Slack, I just removed X.org with removepkg and added an older version from Slack 10.1. Are such things possible with Frugalware? 6) Since I don't have a fast connection... How easy is it to download bigger packages somewhere where there is a fast connection, make a CD, bring it home and install it from there? So much for now. Cheers and see ya soon, Niki From voroskoi at gmail.com Wed Mar 8 11:36:32 2006 From: voroskoi at gmail.com (VOROSKOI Andras) Date: Wed Mar 8 11:37:33 2006 Subject: [Frugalware-users] Few questions about Frugalware In-Reply-To: <200603080645.46228.contact@kikinovak.net> References: <200603080645.46228.contact@kikinovak.net> Message-ID: <20060308103631.GA6130@kavics.meseorszag.hu> On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 06:45:46AM +0100, Niki Kovacs wrote: > 1) How well is dbus/hal/pmount/ivman implemented? For example, does it work > out of the box with KDE 3.5.1? On my Slack box, this sort of works, but I > remember I had a hell of a time to make it work. It works fully out of the box. Just insert your CD/pendrive whatever and it'll pup up a window if you want to mount it or whatever. For kde/gnome you don't need ivman. Ivman is for concole/*box/xfce. > 2) Is it possible to install a minimal set of GNOME libs to run a few apps > like Evince or GnomeMeeting without installing the whole GNOME desktop? pacman -S evince gnomemeeting. It'll install all the dependencies for you too, but not more. But we haven't got gnomemeeting package yet if i'm right. You can ask for it on bugs.frugalware.org. Anyway instead of evince there is kpdf, and kopete is also a good alternative for gnomemeeting. But it's totally up to you. > 3) Is there some sort of "stable" repository for every release? Yes, there is -stable repo. On 30th of March we'll release 0.4. We also maintain the latest -stable version. No the elder ones because the lack of energy :) > 4) How about older needed packages? For example, one of my PCs has an older > NVidia video card, which only works with Nvidia drivers up to 7167 and 7664. > More recent drivers will freeze X. Is it possible to install older drivers? > In that case, manually? We always provide the latest stable packages. It's true for nvidia too. You can try installing the driver from old releases but no guarantee. You can also install it manually. > 5) My old HP Pavilion laptop (Pentium III 933) crashes on X.org 6.8.2, but > works OK with X.org 6.8.1. On my Slack, I just removed X.org with removepkg > and added an older version from Slack 10.1. Are such things possible with > Frugalware? Well. In -current we use xorg7 and that'll be in 0.4 too. Xorg7 in modularized as you probably know. So you can download xorg package from 0.3 repo an install it, but it'll mess up all the dependencies. You you should try xorg7 if it works. I case you got no lucky you can try to hack xorg6.x to 0.4 or use 0.3. > 6) Since I don't have a fast connection... How easy is it to download bigger > packages somewhere where there is a fast connection, make a CD, bring it home > and install it from there? Just copy the necessary packages to /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ and then pacman -S packagename. > So much for now. Cheers and see ya soon, That's all i wanted to say. If i've missed something then le me know! Have a nice day! -- voroskoi From desco at frugalware.org Wed Mar 8 11:54:45 2006 From: desco at frugalware.org (Miklos Nemeth) Date: Wed Mar 8 11:55:01 2006 Subject: [Frugalware-users] Few questions about Frugalware In-Reply-To: <20060308103631.GA6130@kavics.meseorszag.hu> References: <200603080645.46228.contact@kikinovak.net> <20060308103631.GA6130@kavics.meseorszag.hu> Message-ID: <440EB7F5.1030807@frugalware.org> > pacman -S evince gnomemeeting. It'll install all the dependencies for > you too, but not more. But we haven't got gnomemeeting package yet if > i'm right. You can ask for it on bugs.frugalware.org. i've thought to maintain gnomemeeting in the near past. I'l will pack it as soon as possible regards desco From iron at ironiq.hu Wed Mar 8 12:33:25 2006 From: iron at ironiq.hu (Krisztian VASAS) Date: Wed Mar 8 12:36:12 2006 Subject: [Frugalware-users] Few questions about Frugalware In-Reply-To: <20060308103631.GA6130@kavics.meseorszag.hu> References: <200603080645.46228.contact@kikinovak.net> <20060308103631.GA6130@kavics.meseorszag.hu> Message-ID: <440EC105.2000308@ironiq.hu> VOROSKOI Andras wrote: > On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 06:45:46AM +0100, Niki Kovacs wrote: >> 6) Since I don't have a fast connection... How easy is it to download bigger >> packages somewhere where there is a fast connection, make a CD, bring it home >> and install it from there? > > Just copy the necessary packages to /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ and then > pacman -S packagename. Or a quiet good method to upgrade your system with low-bandwidth net: at home: pacman -Sy pacman -Su --print-uris > file at high-bandwidth net: wget -i file at home: copy the files to /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ dir pacman -Su With this method you can upgrade your system (i used a quiet same method for upgrading debian) IroNiQ From contact at kikinovak.net Thu Mar 9 11:19:12 2006 From: contact at kikinovak.net (Niki Kovacs) Date: Thu Mar 9 11:16:03 2006 Subject: [Frugalware-users] Few questions about Frugalware In-Reply-To: <20060308103631.GA6130@kavics.meseorszag.hu> References: <200603080645.46228.contact@kikinovak.net> <20060308103631.GA6130@kavics.meseorszag.hu> Message-ID: <200603091119.13071.contact@kikinovak.net> Le Mercredi 8 Mars 2006 11:36, VOROSKOI Andras a ?crit?: > That's all i wanted to say. If i've missed something then le me know! > Have a nice day! Thanks everybody for all the detailed answers. I'll stick to the forums, since everything seems to happen there. (Just posted two questions there). Details: I work as a journalist for a french Linux magazine, Linux pratique (30,000 copies every two months). Six months ago, I started a series about how to configure a complete desktop system with Slackware. I've tried out many other distros, but except for Slackware, I was always dissatisfied. Now it looks like Frugalware is a serious candidate for replacing my Slack (so I don't have to write hundreds of SlackBuilds:oD). I am currently busy working out the idiosyncrasies of Frugalware. See you in the forums, people. And keep the good work going: what I've seen until now, I like very much! Niki Kovacs From sunfish69 at gmail.com Thu Mar 9 12:48:23 2006 From: sunfish69 at gmail.com (LOCSEI, Gabor) Date: Thu Mar 9 12:49:26 2006 Subject: [Frugalware-users] Few questions about Frugalware In-Reply-To: <200603091119.13071.contact@kikinovak.net> References: <200603080645.46228.contact@kikinovak.net> <20060308103631.GA6130@kavics.meseorszag.hu> <200603091119.13071.contact@kikinovak.net> Message-ID: <79c835980603090348m5b156068j@mail.gmail.com> 2006/3/9, Niki Kovacs : > Le Mercredi 8 Mars 2006 11:36, VOROSKOI Andras a ?crit: > > That's all i wanted to say. If i've missed something then le me know! > > Have a nice day! > > Thanks everybody for all the detailed answers. I'll stick to the forums, since > everything seems to happen there. (Just posted two questions there). In fact, everything happens on the IRC channels ;-) There is a CGI:IRC web interface at http://frugalware.org/irc.php You can even look into the logs there if you want an impression of what's going on there... salut, Gabor