I have just created a site about configuring Mandrake Linux, especially just after its installation. It explains how to setup sources for urpmi and installing/removing software.It gives pratical examples on how to install stuff that cannot be distributed with the distribution, like the packages needed to play DVD. Thanks to urpmi, this can be done in a couple of minutes after installing Mandrake. Moreover, there are some troubleshooting tips concerning common post-installation problems (sound, 3D acceleration, ADSL connection).
The site is not polished, and some pages are not translated yet, but I will expand it very soon. If some people wants to help me for translations, they are very welcome 😉
It is located at http://www.zebulon.org.uk.
Can someone explain why its so hard with linux? With windows xp I am ready for a full multimedia experience right out of the box, the dvd playing and media player is all installed… no need to download crappy third-party software, microsoft provides everything, esp. if I buy MS office too.
Linux is not hard. Adaptation here is the word right!!!!!!
And with Windows XP you *can’t* play DVDs out of the box. You have to install a third party decoder software.
>> why its so hard with linux?
>> With windows xp I am ready
If you think Windows is easy and intuitive for newbies, do yourself a favour and get a tech support job. That should cure your ignorance,and show you just utterly stupid a lot people are on windows machines.
I no a few people that are lost with Windows OS’s, try throwing one of the “desktop” distros their way and see what happens… The positive thing is that they’ll never figure out how to get online and won’t be asking me questions via email. 🙂
Did those people who are lost install Windows themselves? No? Exactly.
Why is is so hard with XP? Out of the box I can’t ssh into my school’s machines. I can’t ssh into my home machine from an external computer. I can’t run remote client X applications out of the box…. I don’t even get an aol instant messaging client out of the box….
I’m also sure there are licensing issues with viewing DVD’s XP, out of the box….
Really, there’s no reason for trolling like this when somebody decides to start a useful informational site for Mandrake users.
I really like most things in Redhat 9; one of the things I DON’T like is their new graphical Package Manager. I really like to be able to get ALL the package info just like the older kpackage and gnorpm use to give.
I really like Mandrake’s RPMdrake and their URPM tools.
Does anyone know of equivalent tools for Redhat, both graphical and command-line?
Thanks in advance.
@Bannor99
I use Synaptic, give it a try. Don’t know if it gives you the information you need, however, it is very easy to use and I can upgrade everypackage in my system in a few clicks.
Erik
There’s a version of apt-get for Red Hat at
http://www.freshrpms.net
I haven’t used it, so I can’t tell you how well it works. I assume it’s command-line only. There’s another one at
http://apt4rpm.sourceforge.net
I haven’t used that either.
Hope those help.
Apt-rpm works great on all my Red Hat systems. In fact, it readily replaces up2date using apt-get update/upgrade with cron.
There is the same gui for apt-get that Debian comes with. After installing apt-rpm, just run “apt-get install synaptic”, and there you go!
-fp
I have switched from RH 8/9 to Mdk 9.1. Even if redhat is the most well finished distro, the lacking of a lot of packages was boring. Yes I was using freshrpms, apt-get, synaptic with a lot of source, but sometimes apt-get crash, synaptic froze, some packages make the system unstable.
I have get mdk for only one thing: urpmi. It’s far more integrated than apt-get, stable, better. With the plf additionnal sources, I can
urpmi nvidia
urpmi realplayer
…(tons of pkgs not avaible with apt-get)
and it works *very* well. So a good point for mandrake that will interess ‘medium’ linux users.
I used this when I had a RH system, yes it is good but the number of packages available is very limited and thus itis nothing compared to apt-get in debian unfortunately.
The reason it’s so hard is that when you buy your computer, you get with it a licensed DVD player. On Linux, the codecs for decoding the DVDs are not licensed, and generally can’t legally be distributed with a commercial distribution.
The stumbling block here is not a technical one. It isn’t too hard to actually get it set up once you have these codecs. It’s a legal issue. The same goes for most other proprietary codecs, such as the Sorensen which is the usual one for Quicktime, and some of those used for Windows Media files.
This is just how it is with Linux, and you can accept it, work around it illegally, fight for its future legality, or simply use Windows.
Note that there are very good codecs available for free; they just aren’t generally found in the wild. Those made by the fellows at xiph.org spring to mind.
I tend to disagree.
You get the RedHat updates in the Synaptic update list and do not have to worry about the RHN being too busy.
That alone is worth the price of admission.
You also get the list of freshrpms packages. They tend to emphasize on common applications from other distros that Redhat leaves out and updates to smaller apps like the new gaim which rocks.
The biggest thing about the freshrpms rpms are the multimedia stuff. All the multimedia apps based on all the same backbone multimedia libs blah..blah..blah
They are equiped and compiled against the libdvd stuff they include and will work with the quicktime qtx dll codecs if installed on your box.
Wait a sec, that ain’t enough for you?
There are the codefactory repostitories. That adds even more apps.
Wait a second, you want the bleeding edge gnome stuff there is Nyquist’s repository and the Rawhide repositories.
No…No… No.. you say that you like KDE?
There is a KDE repository with just that stuff. Honestly if Synaptic came with a single install package front end (sometime a user will download something and it will require something that apt can provide), I would dump the RedHat package manager all together and just go ahead and change all the desktop launchers to point to Synaptic.
…but the formatting makes it a pain to read. On my browser (mozilla 1.3, windowsME) with 1280×1024 desktop resolution, the page is laid out such that I have to scroll horizontally to read a whole line of text. The problem gets worse when I enlarge the text (the default text size is a bit small for easy reading).
Compare the site in the article to this one: http://www.trylinuxsd.com ;Which would you like?
> no need to download crappy third-party software [with windows xp]
Oh really, the 7cds of SuSE or debian doesn’t satisfy your software needs. Oh such a shame
excuse the sarchasm
Thanks for the encouragement. I installed it about an hour ago, and it works wonderfully. Much better than I expected it to be.
Did you buy your machine with XP? That probably has a lot to do with it. If you installed the OS yourself, you would find that you have to also install DVD software. If you bought XP after you got your computer, or you put it together (like I did and I’m sure many others here have) then you would have to buy that DVD software, unless it came with your graphics card. The fact that it seems so effortless with XP is because their (weakening) monopoly on pre-installations on desktop sales and the RIAA’s use of the DMCA to prevent unauthorized decryption of DVDs you own so you can watch them in any way you want. You should direct your indignation at this stuff, and not GNU/Linux. Once Linux is a common option for preinstalled desktop sales, you bet that it will seem as easy as XP.
” Why is is so hard with XP? Out of the box I can’t ssh into my school’s machines. I can’t ssh into my home machine from an external computer. I can’t run remote client X applications out of the box…. I don’t even get an aol instant messaging client out of the box…. ”
Not everyone needs to SSH into other machines, if fact SSH is pretty much dead, the command line is dead Linux is great and I use it for everything I do but unless we overcome some obstacles, Desktop standard, Good Multimedia Applications, Games, easy to use Applications, and an easy to use and intuitive package manager, linux is destined for failure. 99.9% of what average computer users use is run in a graphical mode and did you know 95% of the computing Market doesnt even touch the command line. Recently SuSE 8.2 pretty much eliminated unwanted use of the command line, in fact it hid verbose booting. Other distros will follow suit, and you will always have your high tech distros such as Debian, Gentoo and Slackware. But people, when someone writes in about using the Linux desktop, dont come back with a ” I cant telnet or SSH with Windows” because over 90% of the computing public cannot and will not relate to you. When somebody brings up Multimedia concerns, XMMS, MPlayer and Xine and MPlayer will play DVDs out of box on SuSE 8.2 as long as you have the DVD player configured properly, which is pretty much set up out of box as well. XMMS and Grip make ripping and playing MP3 and Ogg files easy. Main Actor handles all of my digital video needs, all I need now are the abundance of games on Linux that I have with Windows and my desktop needs are met. As for this site, its okay, Im not a Mandrake user and I have never seen Mandrake in use so I really cant judge it.
hahahaha. Command line is soooo usefull.
I never said it wasnt useful, but find me an average computer user, who doesnt code and who doesnt work in IT that actually uses the command line.
Hi, I am the author of the site.
I would like to answer some remarks.
Why is it necessary to have third-party software for playing encrypted DVD on Linux ? Simply because of legal issues, especially in the US, where there are patents on software and DMCA.
The PLF packages bring the dodgy stuff, which is perfectly legal in Europe, where patents on software do not exist yet, and where using libdvdcss would be considered as faire use.
Now for this reason, I doubt that any distribution, including Suse 8.2, will be able to play encrypted DVDs. See RedHat that has even removed mp3 player for similar reasons.
Insignia : I know that trylinuxsd.com looks a lot better. My site is not yet polished. What I wanted is to put most information first. Moreover, trylinuxsd tends to be a little outdated now. The examples do not work as shown without a little adjustment, despite it is a very good site. I wish I had time to do a better look. Moreover, my page shows how to use urpmi in general, not only for playing DVDs, but for installing any software, updating the system, etc… And it also gives some installations notes of the 9.1.
Also, it is command-line oriented. I think that once you know how urpm works, you know to use its GUI (rpmdrake) very easily.
For the formatting, I do not have the scrolling problem, neither on mozilla 1.3 or Konqueror, under Linux. Text is in a table, it should be reformatted by the browser. Maybe is it a problem sepcific to the Windows version ?
Thanks for these remarks, I will make improvements soon.
Roberto : me, I am neither IT or programmer. And a lot of my friends that begin to use Linux use the Command line as well.
Simply because, contrary to the Windows command line, it is a lot more convenient : automatic completion, use of the mouse for select and copy, etc… I use Linux for fun and multimedia (I do my own divx encodings).
Command line under Linux is complementary to the GUI. I think GUI and CL should not be opposed. They are complementary.
By the way…great site. I wish I’d had something like it when I first installed Linux. It would have made things a lot easier.
//excuse the sarchasm//
I’ve seen you post this several times.
First, it is spelled “sarcasm” .. get a dictionary.
Second, if we need to excuse it, then you shouldn’t try to use it in the first place.
Thanks for the compliment.
Actually, I am not a HTML expert, and it looks like ! However, I’ll try to clean up the interface, and add some other pages next.
If I were you, I’d spend more time adding information, less time making the site look better. It isn’t very pretty, but it isn’t difficult to navigate either. When I’m looking for documentation I really don’t care what a site looks like as long as I can find what I need without going to too much trouble. Your site seems fine as is in that respect.
After reading all the comments, I get the impression that people want Microsoft to include more stuff in Windows. Weren’t people calling them anti-competitive for doing just that with the browser?
There’s a big difference here. IE isn’t a third-party application that comes with the OS to provide functionality. Microsoft’s efforts to push IE ranged from trying to making sure Windows wouldn’t function properly if you tried to disable it, to promoting the idea that web pages should be viewable only by their browser. No one but Microsoft gains anything from that. There is real and noticeable harm done to the end user by using this kind of strategy. There are now important parts of my university’s web site that I cannot use because I don’t run Windows – I am unable to use their web-based email or access forums that would be very helpful to me, unless I go use a Windows machine in the on-campus computer labs. As I am a commuting student, this is a real pain. The issue here isn’t whether or not Windows should ship with more software, it’s a question of how it’s done.
I’d heard about it some time ago when reading about Conectiva
but had forgotten. I had some trouble getting it working but that was mainly due to RPM 4.2 hanging. This got resolved by rebuilding the RPM database and upgrading to 4.2.1 from
ftp://ftp.rpm.org/pub/rpm/test-4.2/ .
Synaptic does everything I’d come to like about kpackage, gno-rpm and urpm. As I said in my previous post, I don’t like the way Redhat dumbed down their new application installer.
I also would like to know why they don’t bundle apt-get, Synaptic or a similar tool with the OS.