Nothing To Lose

Recently I installed Mandriva 2009.1 Spring Edition Free Download (32bit) version on my Compaq Presario 3225AU.

Configuration of this Laptop is:

• AMD Athlon 64
• Nvidia 6150 GO display
• 1.5 GB RAM (increased from 512MB)
• 80 GB SATA HDD

I had tried different distros on this laptop in last 2 years but the only one worked well was OpenSuse 10.2, till date I have had no problems with that, and have been using that one.

So here is what I did.

Booted with the Mandriva DVD, selected almost 4GB of packages to be installed.

Flawless installation. Took around 35 to 40 minutes, includes the time i spent on selecting packages, partitioning, setups etc. the packages got installed in around 30 Minutes.

By default the X was working with the default nvidia drivers, the graphics looked good. Installed glxgears separately to check the FPS, was getting around 400 to 500.

Sound card was also working, even the head-phones jack was working.. cool.. could never make it work on OpenSuse 10.2.  Sound support was enabled for mp3, ogg is available by default.

Next thing was video, but before this I wanted to get the actual nvidia driver from nvidia site, downloaded the Nvidia binary package, tried running, It complained the some stuff was missing etc. So dumped the idea of doing the same.

I decided to install the propitiatory driver through the XFdrake, it can fetch the drives from the non free reposotories and install them for you. So when I selected my card as — vendor - nvidia 6100 series or above — it asked me if you would like to download the same from the net.

On saying yes to it, download started, for around 30 minutes it kept download some stuff asked me for the original dvd, and suddenly… kaput… installation failed.

Tried it twice.. failed twice.. so decided to get the rpms manually and get them installed manually. from the following discussion at mandriva forum — got and idea what RPM to download. I downloaded the follwing RPM from rpmfind.net

• dkms-nvidia-current-180.51-1mdv2009.1.i586.rpm (1.7M)
• nvidia-current-doc-html-180.51-1mdv2009.1.i586.rpm (112K)
• nvidia-current-kernel-2.6.29.1-desktop586-4mnb-180.51-1mdv2009.1.i586.rpm (2.5M)
• nvidia-current-kernel-desktop586-latest-180.51-1.20090422.1mdv2009.1.i586.rpm (2.2K)
• x11-driver-video-nvidia-current-180.51-1mdv2009.1.i586.rpm (6.9M)

Manually installing these using just rpm does not works because there are some rpms that are to be installed from the main DVD.

as root gave the following command:

# urpmi (followed by names of all the above packages)

The installer told  that some more packages will also be installed from the main DVD, so inserted the main DVD.

Got loads of messagges about preparing and installing those packages, got some messages saying some new kernel was install etc.

Finally the system tell you to boot into new kernel. Rebooted the system and had a new entry for Mandriva.

Booted into that, and the new nvidia-driver was up and running.

running glxgears now gave a FPS of around 2200.

Over all the stuff looks cool enough.

Sound is working fine, even the special key’s are working fine. DivX format worked fine, had to install xine, which is available on the DVD.

Over all looks like a cool Distro. What i am missing in this is Quanta Plus

Getting a high speed download

I have been using the Reliance Net Connect data card (USB Huawei EC321) for almost 2 years now. Seem that the service has improved a lot. Yesterday was downloading a file which was around 20 Mega Bytes, and got a good download speed continuously of 15 Kilo Bytes per second. Not bad.

Interesting the file i downloaded was not the correct version.

Have been talking to others about the new High Speed data card which gives upto 3.1 Mbps, people have found it to be good.
Planning to shift to that in some time.

Utility show in the image is Gkrellm.

Blog Camp 2 - Pune

BlogCampPune is a FREE unconference focusing exclusively on blogging, organized by bloggers for bloggers. It‘s built upon the principles of the famous BarCamp (ad-hoc unconference) focussed on sharing, learning and new ideas. This is going to be an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction between attendees. Any blogger who wants to contribute is welcome and invited to join. In the spirit of BarCamp, if you attend, be prepared to present something (even if it’s just 10 minutes).

(Click on the Image on left to reach the blog camp site)

Lets hope for the best.

It has always been said the setting the date through the command line is tough.  Well I found it very very simple.

By default date command displays the current system date and time.

To set the system date and time you can use the - -set option  with the date string.  Of course to do that you will need root access.

( - - set ( hyphen hyphen set) without spaces. some browsers combine the two hyphens)

ie.  date  - -set=’dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss’

or

date  - -set=’27/04/2009 20:10:05′

that should set your date

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