Richmond Open Source Community - Mandriva

Fixing sound in Firefox Flash Plugin on Mandriva Linux 2007

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:45:27 -0400

Sound was generally working fine on my Mandriva 2007 workstation, but sound in the Flash plugin was not. Here's how I debugged the problem and fixed it.

First, running Firefox from a terminal provided a great clue. To launch Firefox this way it may work to use Alt-F2 to have the run box appear, and then type "mozilla-firefox" and make sure "Run in terminal" is selected".

This should lots of ALSA-related errors, including "device not found".

By launching the Mandriva Control Center (Alt-F2 then 'mcc'), I was able to review the sound drivers in use. I navigated to "Hardware : Look and Configure Hardware" and then selected my soundcard below the "Soundcard" option. My soundcard was listed as "82801EB AC'97 Audio". From there, I could select "Run Config Tool", which provided a list of driver options. Only one of them was listed as "ALSA", so I switched the driver to that.

Improvements Contributed to Mandriva, Ubuntu laptop sound

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 22:52:52 -0500

As part of my switch from Mandriva to Ubuntu, I had the opportunity today to contribute some improvements back to both operating systems.

Having just used Mandriva on this laptop, I knew it was possible for the sound to keep working after a suspend/resume cycle, but it quit working after the Ubuntu switch.

Since Mandriva's solution was made available under an open source license, I was able to review it adapt to work with Ubuntu, and Ubuntu can easily and legally accept this solution, if they choose.

Laptop switched from Mandriva to Ubuntu

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:44:06 -0500

After several years of being a satisfied user of the Mandriva Linux distribution, I've switched my laptop over to Ubuntu Linux.

The tipping point came when I couldn't get a VPN client to work on Mandriva, but Ubuntu just worked.

I had previously compared Mandriva and Ubuntu. Ubuntu looked as-good-as or better than Mandriva in every aspect except a couple of things: wireless and the laptop suspend/resume feature.

VPN setup on Mandriva and Ubuntu compared

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 19:06:32 -0500

I recently developed a need to connect to a Virtual Private Network (VPN) from Linux at home. Here's the result of my experience, using both Mandriva 2007 and Ubuntu Edgy.

Fixing Firefox opening PDFs as blank windows on Mandriva Linux

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 21:48:22 -0500

My retired dad runs Linux exclusively on his Thinkpad laptop. I'm front line tech support for him.

He lives a few hours away, so I don't always know exactly what he's experiencing with his laptop, or how a particular problem arose, of which there have been few.

Here's the solution I found for a recently reported problem opening PDFs on Mandriva Linux with Firefox.

Mandriva 2007 vs. Ubuntu Edgy

Fri, 24 Nov 2006 11:27:36 -0500

I've been a satisfied Mandriva User since 9.2 was released some years ago. Currently, Mandriva 2006 works rather well on my ThinkPad T20 laptop. Recently I became interested in Ubuntu as well, evaluated both Mandriva 2007 and Ubuntu Edgy as possible upgrade paths.

I installed them both on test machines and have following observations about how they compared.

Going wireless with Windows vs. Linux, a comparison

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 09:06:53 -0500

Kurt had just purchased two wireless PCI cards, one for a Linux desktop and one for a Windows desktop. Sitting side-by-side, we started at the same time to try to get the new hardware to work with each OS. Kurt was working on Windows while I was working on Linux. If I got Linux working first, Kurt would give me a bowl of ice cream.

The process with Mandriva Linux 2005 could have hardly been easier. I went to the the Mandriva Control Center and followed the wizard to set up a new network connection. There was option to select a Windows driver. From there, I pop-ed in the CD from D-Link and navigated to the driver to select it. For the rest of the wizard I could mostly accept the default options.

Sound on my thin client: Success!

Sun, 08 Jan 2006 23:02:35 -0500

Getting sound to work on thin clients can be a little tricky. Without some extra care taken the sound will often come out of the speakers on the server instead of the client.

Most of the want I learned in the process of setting up my own thin client I contributed to the LTSP wiki documentation about sound, so I won't repeat those technical details here.

In summary, I was able to get sound working to my satisfaction on the thin client for applications that seemed key: the Flash browser plugin and the Amarok music player.

A switch to Edubuntu and back to Mandriva

Sun, 08 Jan 2006 21:19:30 -0500

I mentioned earlier that Kurt was trying Edubuntu 5.10 as alternative to the Mandriva Linux 2006 distribution. The latest report is that Kurt will most likely return to using Mandriva. However, during the days of using Edubuntu , we both found a number of things we preferred about it.

I thought it would be of interest to some folks to see the details of what seemed better in Edubuntu, and what factors went into a switching back.

First thin client performance tests: Flying Colors

Sun, 08 Jan 2006 15:00:03 -0500

Over the weekend I continued my exploration of Linux thin clients.

Now that I had a proof-on-concept system working, I spent my computer time using the thin client, to see if there was anything to observe from "real life" use.

The performance was perfect. I could not perceive any lag time compared to sitting directly at my server computer.

The memory usage was also impressively low. I ran a second KDE desktop on the server, and the system reported "42% memory free", and I have only 256 Megs of memory!

Evaluating LTSP on Mandriva Linux as a Terminal Server

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 13:56:12 -0500

I'm continuing to research a preferred thin client solution for Linux. After not being completely satisfied with Edubuntu and drakTermServ, I tried installing LTSP on Mandriva.

LTSP does not currently have a package that is made specifically for Mandriva, but it was simple enough to follow the Mandriva-specific steps outlined on the LTSP site.

Part of the package includes a tool called ltspadmin, which eased the necessary configuration. It runs in a text console rather than graphically, but I found it to be a more useful tool than the graphical drakTermServ tool available from Mandriva.

Evaluating drakTermServ, Mandriva's Terminal Server

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 11:04:00 -0500

In my continuing quest to learn more about Linux terminal servers, I tried out drakTermServ, a solution provided by Mandriva, a favorite desktop Linux distribution vendor.

drakTermServ seems promising. It uses a nice graphical wizard to set up a computer as a terminal server. Distinctive features include generating kernels and boot files for the clients based on the server, and using clusternfs as a novel way for clients to make customizations.

All that promise sucked me in for several hours before I concluded that drakTermServ really fails to deliver the basics (I never got it working), and is likely a dead-end project.

Connecting to AOL with Linux

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 12:59:55 -0500

You can connect reliably to AOL with Mandriva Linux using the free 'penggy'
software, downloadable from here. Once
downloaded, you should be able to double-click the resulting icon to install
it.

It lacks a graphical interface, but is easy to setup and use none-the-less.
I set it up in just a few minutes and it connnected on the first try.

Here are some steps to follow once you have it installed:

Make sure your modem installed and working. That task is beyond the scope
of this article. You can proceed and hope this is already working.

Hopi's low-hassle, low-cost Linux laptop

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 12:04:13 -0500

Challenges

Hopi wanted to trade in her desktop computer for a laptop to better match her lifestyle. She had a budget of $400 for the new system, plus any money earned from the sale of the old system, an expected value of $300. She was interested in Linux, but really liked the Microsoft Money program, and was concerned about finding a solution that would meet her needs at least a well.

Rehabing and old computer as Martha's low-cost Linux desktop

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 10:21:27 -0500

Challenges

Martha's Mac Performa was dead. The monitor worked, but she needed a complete hardware and software solution otherwise. She could not really afford a new computer, and needed to spend an absolute minimum.

She lives three hours away and does not plan to connect her computer to the internet, so it would be difficult for me to help remotely. She needed a solution that required no training. She needed to be able to take care of her own system administration nearly all of the time.

However, her software needs were simple: She wanted to use a word processor and spreadsheet, and have Windows compatibility.