so how about trying mandriva 10.1?

for reasons that are utterly insane i think i'll try mandiva 10.1 and see how it goes

if all goes wrong,, i'll just go back to Breezy Preview (and not run apt-get upgrade because it will kill my x)

and besides, since i always flame mandrake, its time to check it out again so i have some hard facts on whihc to base my flames (or not)

np....


and i'd like to make a correction. its not 10.1 but "2005" which is like "10.2". there is a 2006 (10.3) RC2 out right now but lets not get ahead of ourselves here and try the stable version before the RC versions

let the hell begin.

so the install was smooth to say the least. i installed everything, and both gnome and kde (set gnome to be default) so that i can get the full flavor of the program. the stock set of apps is pretty standard, granted there are more of them than in ubuntu/kubuntu simply because there are 3 cds, not 1.

the basic hardware was configured correctly more or less. however, the touchpad worked but my usb mouse didn't, no worries though, i ran the config wizard again (you run it once at the end of the install) and changed my default mouse driver from Synaptic to USB-Wheel and now both the touchpad, and the mouse work. sound worked out of the box, and the resolution of 1280x800 was easy to configure.

stuff that is to be done:
1 - wifi
2 - fglrx
3 - any other ideas?


the wifi:
--------
there is no out of the box support for atheros cards, there, i said it. so i figured i'd give it a try and install madwifi so at least support is native...good thinking, poor execution. i could not find any mandrake rpm packages (for 2.6.11) after about 15-20 minutes of google, so i figured it was time to install from CVS. ugh...didn't quite think that one through to the end. long story short i installed ndiswrapper from the install cd and downloaded the drivers from giga-byte.com (gn-wpeag). anyway, tried to configure it that way, got close...i know i am close, but i am doing something wrong and can't get it to work for the life of me. this is very crucial on the to-do list.

the ati drivers:
--------------
well, not much to say, for some reason i couldn't access the stupid ati linux driver page tonight from mandarke. i guess i better than d/l in windows, drop to flash drive and try to install. now for basic use video lag under gnome is minimal (almost non-existant) however for mroe hard core tasks, fglrx would be a nice thing


my 2 cents for now:
-------------------
i will not format to get back my ubuntu breezy just yet....i wanna try my luck with this thing. however, i must say i already miss the awesome power of apt-get and the fab ubuntuguide.org.


anyway....any ideas or suggestions will be accepted at this time to get my wireless or my fglrx going.

so how about them apples. i got the graphical ati installer, ran it and it seemed to work fine. then i edited xorg.conf for the Driver from "radeon" to "fglrx" and restarted x....ran glxgears and there was no gain (still only 200....should be in the 2000-3000 range)

i didn't give up on ubuntu...i like ubuntu, if anything i can just stick with hoary

i just felt like trying a few new things