A couple of years ago, frustrated with plasma 5, I ditched Mageia and
tried several other distros, finally settling on Mint.

After mastering the learning curve, I warmed to cinnamon. It was easy to
use. The only drawback being the inability of moving desktop icons to the right and maintaining them there in order whenever their are enhancements.
I could live with that.

All went well until now. I sometimes run more than one video app at the
same time. For example: mythtv frontend, zoom and sometimes a video clip grabbed from firefox. FF will sometimes use vlc but recently, celluloid.

The problem is that I have to get into pavcontrol to configure the sound before I dare turn on both sound and vision in a zoom session every time
I use it.

I wondered, by now, was Mageia any better? After all I preferred mcc to synaptic. The trouble with the latter is that you can search for an item
but what comes up is a list of every file that contains the key word, so
you still have to search through a hefty list.

So today, I ran up the DVD I had burned yesterday containing Mageia 7.1.
When I rebooted, I could not get beyond grub. Why?

I had made the mistake of entering a password at the "Set up a boot
system" screen. That meant booting on the install disk, opening a
terminal, entering su (sudo doesn't work at that stage), creating a mount directory, mounting the boot partition and deleting /boot/grib2/user.cfg.

Just the sort of thing any new user can do without losing a heartbeat.

Once in on the reboot, I installed all the reegular applications I could recall needing, going into the mcc and setting up as much as I could
recall needing to do (forgot to set a static address though) and rebooted.

I could not get into the login screen. It froze after I pressed 'login'.
I have given up. Shame. Even Mandrake with kernel 2.6 was easier to run
up. Very disappointed.







--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

I forgot to add that Mageia 7.1 did not identify my second screen.



--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 12:43:28 -0400, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote:

I could not get into the login screen. It froze after I pressed 'login'.
I have given up. Shame. Even Mandrake with kernel 2.6 was easier to run
up. Very disappointed.

While I understand the frustration and desire to vent, it accomplishes nothing.
There are a lot of people using Mageia, including people new to linux. Without a willingness to experiment and provide info to assist with debugging problems that only seem to occur on that install, there is not point to further discussion.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

--
Change dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org to davidwhodgins@teksavvy.com for
email replies.

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 14:51:19 -0400, David W. Hodgins wrote:

On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 12:43:28 -0400, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote:

I could not get into the login screen. It froze after I pressed 'login'.
I have given up. Shame. Even Mandrake with kernel 2.6 was easier to run
up. Very disappointed.

While I understand the frustration and desire to vent, it accomplishes

nothing.

I'll second and third that.

In my stupid opinion, pinnerite should have installed a basic generic
video driver, install all updates, then go for the video driver MCC wants
to install.

He should also have installed a second DE like xfce to verify the problem
is not whatever DE he wants as default.


--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 15:17:30 -0500, Bit Twister wrote:

On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 14:51:19 -0400, David W. Hodgins wrote:

On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 12:43:28 -0400, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com>
wrote:

I could not get into the login screen. It froze after I pressed
'login'.
I have given up. Shame. Even Mandrake with kernel 2.6 was easier to
run up. Very disappointed.

While I understand the frustration and desire to vent, it accomplishes
nothing.

I'll second and third that.

In my stupid opinion, pinnerite should have installed a basic generic
video driver, install all updates, then go for the video driver MCC
wants to install.

He should also have installed a second DE like xfce to verify the
problem is not whatever DE he wants as default.

Apart from selecting the default plasma IDE Pinneerite did exactly what
you suggested. My complaint is that in some ways Mageia has moved
backward to its detriment.

I'm just an average user with some hardware that is not well supported out-of-the box but the extra work applies to all distros not just Mageia.

Mandrake was the second distro that I attempted way back when and I
employed it exclusively until the leap to plasma 5 that caused so much
trouble that I withdrew but I always intended to return. I assumed that
it would eventually return to its usr-friendly roots. It is clear from
the remarks here that that is no longer considered important.

I just think its a shame.


--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On 2020-08-25, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 15:17:30 -0500, Bit Twister wrote:

On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 14:51:19 -0400, David W. Hodgins wrote:

On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 12:43:28 -0400, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com>
wrote:

I could not get into the login screen. It froze after I pressed
'login'.
I have given up. Shame. Even Mandrake with kernel 2.6 was easier to
run up. Very disappointed.

While I understand the frustration and desire to vent, it accomplishes
nothing.

I'll second and third that.

In my stupid opinion, pinnerite should have installed a basic generic
video driver, install all updates, then go for the video driver MCC
wants to install.

He should also have installed a second DE like xfce to verify the
problem is not whatever DE he wants as default.

Apart from selecting the default plasma IDE Pinneerite did exactly what
you suggested. My complaint is that in some ways Mageia has moved
backward to its detriment.

I'm just an average user with some hardware that is not well supported out-of-the box but the extra work applies to all distros not just Mageia.

Mandrake was the second distro that I attempted way back when and I
employed it exclusively until the leap to plasma 5 that caused so much trouble that I withdrew but I always intended to return. I assumed that
it would eventually return to its usr-friendly roots. It is clear from
the remarks here that that is no longer considered important.

I just think its a shame.

What is also a shame is that, instead of telling us what problems you
were having and asking for help, you decided that it was more profitable
for you to just dump your frustration onto the net. There is nothing
that anyone can do about that. It may be that Mageia simply does not
support your hardware, whatever it is, or that could have been some
weirdness that you introduced whan you installed it. Or there could be a
bug in Mageia. There is nothing that can be done by others about the
first two. The third everyone would love to hear about and fix.


--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 16:53:18 -0400, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote:

Mandrake was the second distro that I attempted way back when and I
employed it exclusively until the leap to plasma 5 that caused so much trouble that I withdrew but I always intended to return. I assumed that
it would eventually return to its usr-friendly roots. It is clear from
the remarks here that that is no longer considered important.

The oldest system I'm currently using Mageia on is from 2008 with 3GB ram. Plasma
is too resource demanding for an old system like that. Use one of the less demanding
desktop environments such as xfce4. Mageia 7 has live xfce4 iso images for both
x86_64 and i586 environments, as well as supporting xfce4 installs from the classical
iso images. I am running konversation and other kde applications on that system
under xfce4.

Software evolves to take advantage of new hardware, but that often means poor support for older hardware.

Either stay with very old software developed when that hardware was current, with
all of it's security bugs, or adapt to using software that is suitable for that
aging hardware.

Mageia doesn't write the code used in plasma. It takes the code provided by https://www.kde.org, and packages it for Mageia users, as do all distributions that choose to include plasma.

I am being critical in my responses here. That's because the initial article contained no request for help, no info that would help to id the problem, and was just written to vent a complaint to a usenet group. While I am the leader of the qa team for Mageia, most of the people subscribed to this newsgroup are just fellow Mageia users.

Mageia is an entirely volunteer run organization with no paid personnel. It's produced by people who volunteer their time.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

--
Change dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org to davidwhodgins@teksavvy.com for
email replies.

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 20:53:18 -0000 (UTC), pinnerite wrote:

Apart from selecting the default plasma IDE Pinneerite did exactly what
you suggested.

In that case, it suggests you had video, after reboot, then again after
kernel video driver updates, then failed after the customized video driver install.

No idea if problem is with user or DM.

With an additional DM/DE like xfce, installed you can use MCC to change
DM from ssdm to lightdm, use a second account, to boot into xfce to
see if the problem still exists.

I abandoned Plasma back on mga6 when I found I could configure xfce with
the look and feel and speed of kde4. Desktop stability went way up.

As a benchmark, my neighbor asked for help this afternoon. He was following
the instructions for doing a hot backup. After going over there and
watching what happened, I could only surmise the problem was the firmware
was no longer compatible with the old kernel and maga6 complained it was
unable to start the DM for login. The hot backup procedure is to boot
a previous release and rsync the "Production" / into a /hotbu partition.

Rather than doing a cold start to load mga6 firmware, I went ahead and
set mga6 to boot runlevel 3, and changed his backup instructions just
to log straight into root and run bkup_mga7 then reboot mga7.

Currently running with
$ ls -1 Desktop/* | wc -l
52
desktop shortcuts, with shortcuts placed all around the top/bottom/sides.

I do have to confess that because I have set the task bar to Hide, I
have to jump through a hoop, to make the icon/shortcuts remain in place.


--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 22:26:14 -0500, Bit Twister wrote:

On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 20:53:18 -0000 (UTC), pinnerite wrote:

Apart from selecting the default plasma IDE Pinneerite did exactly what
you suggested.

In that case, it suggests you had video, after reboot, then again after kernel video driver updates, then failed after the customized video
driver install.

No idea if problem is with user or DM.

With an additional DM/DE like xfce, installed you can use MCC to change
DM from ssdm to lightdm, use a second account, to boot into xfce to see
if the problem still exists.

I abandoned Plasma back on mga6 when I found I could configure xfce with
the look and feel and speed of kde4. Desktop stability went way up.

As a benchmark, my neighbor asked for help this afternoon. He was
following the instructions for doing a hot backup. After going over
there and watching what happened, I could only surmise the problem was
the firmware was no longer compatible with the old kernel and maga6 complained it was unable to start the DM for login. The hot backup
procedure is to boot a previous release and rsync the "Production" /
into a /hotbu partition.

Rather than doing a cold start to load mga6 firmware, I went ahead and
set mga6 to boot runlevel 3, and changed his backup instructions just to
log straight into root and run bkup_mga7 then reboot mga7.

Currently running with
$ ls -1 Desktop/* | wc -l 52
desktop shortcuts, with shortcuts placed all around the
top/bottom/sides.

I do have to confess that because I have set the task bar to Hide, I
have to jump through a hoop, to make the icon/shortcuts remain in place.

You are akll absolutely right. I simoly desdcribed my experience in
effect, like a newcomer. You who maintain familiarity will approach the exercise with the benefit of recent experience.

I thought that I had explained the sequence. I really liked kde4 and
would probably not gone wandering had it been retained.

I am not too keen on the lightweight desktops which is why I was
delighted to find the halfway house of cinnamon.

Indeed I tried installing cinnamon on Mageia 6 but gave up, having work
piling up and tried Mint.

I always find it asonishing that live CD/DVDs such as knoppix or Parted
Magic can boot up and have no trouble with my hardware but then I do not
run up printers or scanners under them, nor use multiple screens or more
than one sound source at a time.

I will probably have another shot at Mageia when I get the time but I
guess a report of my experiences will not be welcome.

Thank you all for your help in years past (from about 2003 from memory).

Alan

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On Wed, 26 Aug 2020 05:54:55 -0400, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote:

I will probably have another shot at Mageia when I get the time but I
guess a report of my experiences will not be welcome.

Such a report will be welcome, provided it is not just ranting, but actually gives
some details of what went wrong, with a willingness to try suggestions to fix or
workaround any problems encountered.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

--
Change dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org to davidwhodgins@teksavvy.com for
email replies.

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On 2020-08-26, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote:

I will probably have another shot at Mageia when I get the time but I
guess a report of my experiences will not be welcome.

No, it may be very welcome. The problem was not the report of your experience, but the report of
your emotions during the experience. You had problems. Your post had essentially zero information about what the problems were, which left
many frustrated as we want to help if we can, but have no way of doing
so since there is so little information about your computer (rather than
your emotions) in your post.

Anything which helps people make a better Mageia is welcome.



--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On 27/8/20 3:42 am, William Unruh wrote:

On 2020-08-26, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote:

I will probably have another shot at Mageia when I get the time but I
guess a report of my experiences will not be welcome.

No, it may be very welcome. The problem was not the report of your

experience, but the report of

your emotions during the experience. You had problems. Your post had essentially zero information about what the problems were, which left
many frustrated as we want to help if we can, but have no way of doing
so since there is so little information about your computer (rather than
your emotions) in your post.

Anything which helps people make a better Mageia is welcome.

I would second that. Pinnerite seems to expect everything just to
happen, as with Windows. At times, I have been inclined to agree.
Without more info, I can't understand why the installation failed after
the password error was found. It would be quite natural not to have a
second screen if the installation failed.

Even Mandrake with kernel 2.6 was easier to run up.

Yes, those were the days, when the kernel would fit on a floppy. Could
you have two screens back then? [There was a story back in the '60's
about a person who built a TV set in the days before transistors.
Everything was point-to-point soldering. When he had finished, the
picture was back to front, and he thought that the problem was in the IF system, not the deflection circuits, so he pulled the whole set to
pieces and rebuilt it, with the same outcome. That is what Pinnerite
did, on a much larger scale.]

I have just been trying to install a new printer (see my separate post)
and finished up with a bootloader put there by Mint, that refused to
load "nokmsboot." I fixed that using Mageia's Rescue program. When you
hit a problem, you can't just go about twiddling settings until it
works. I know enough about Linux to ask myself, "What would make this happen?" to start looking in the right place. Knowing what to do about
it is a different story.

Doug.

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: Aioe.org NNTP Server (2:250/1@fidonet)

I am astonished! On re-reading the exchanges, I think the responses are
more like rants than my statements. Yes, I was disappointed but not
really seeking help, just explaining the sequence of events that led to a complete impasse.

I have never mastered the repair facility of the install DVDs. I usually
have to use one of the live distros that I mentioned.

I only recently got pan to work on Mint. There apparently was a known bug
and so my signature lines were missing. They describe my setup.
I am just hoping that they display properly with this message.

--
/home/alan/Documents/Signature_Files/pan_mint_signature_file.txt

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On 2020-08-27, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote:

I am astonished! On re-reading the exchanges, I think the responses are
more like rants than my statements. Yes, I was disappointed but not
really seeking help, just explaining the sequence of events that led to a complete impasse.

Well, we can start with the Topic you assigned this thread.
Then rereading your post, you can tell us what the details were of your installation-- How you installed, where you installed etc.

I have never mastered the repair facility of the install DVDs. I usually have to use one of the live distros that I mentioned.

Does that mean that you are uncomfortable with the cli (command line
interface) and need the gui (graphical user interface)?

I only recently got pan to work on Mint. There apparently was a known bug and so my signature lines were missing. They describe my setup.

That would of course be helpful but I assume they would have described
your Mint installation, not your Mageia installation.

I am just hoping that they display properly with this message.

I do not think what is below is what you wanted to appear.

--
/home/alan/Documents/Signature_Files/pan_mint_signature_file.txt

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On Thu, 27 Aug 2020 18:45:15 -0000 (UTC), pinnerite wrote:

There apparently was a known bug
and so my signature lines were missing. They describe my setup.
I am just hoping that they display properly with this message.

Nope, just shows the file name. Not the contents.

Feel free to use any of the 300+ test groups to test Pan/0.147
to get it right.


--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On 8/25/20 12:43 PM, pinnerite wrote:

A couple of years ago, frustrated with plasma 5, I ditched Mageia and
tried several other distros, finally settling on Mint.

After mastering the learning curve, I warmed to cinnamon. It was easy to
use. The only drawback being the inability of moving desktop icons to the right and maintaining them there in order whenever their are enhancements.
I could live with that.

All went well until now. I sometimes run more than one video app at the
same time. For example: mythtv frontend, zoom and sometimes a video clip grabbed from firefox. FF will sometimes use vlc but recently, celluloid.

The problem is that I have to get into pavcontrol to configure the sound before I dare turn on both sound and vision in a zoom session every time
I use it.

I wondered, by now, was Mageia any better? After all I preferred mcc to synaptic. The trouble with the latter is that you can search for an item
but what comes up is a list of every file that contains the key word, so
you still have to search through a hefty list.

So today, I ran up the DVD I had burned yesterday containing Mageia 7.1.
When I rebooted, I could not get beyond grub. Why?

I had made the mistake of entering a password at the "Set up a boot
system" screen. That meant booting on the install disk, opening a
terminal, entering su (sudo doesn't work at that stage), creating a mount directory, mounting the boot partition and deleting /boot/grib2/user.cfg.

Just the sort of thing any new user can do without losing a heartbeat.

Once in on the reboot, I installed all the reegular applications I could recall needing, going into the mcc and setting up as much as I could
recall needing to do (forgot to set a static address though) and rebooted.

I could not get into the login screen. It froze after I pressed 'login'.
I have given up. Shame. Even Mandrake with kernel 2.6 was easier to run
up. Very disappointed.

Assuming you have finally corrected the password login issue, Cinnamon
is available from Mageia if you want it. Simply install task-cinnamon or task-cinnamon-minimal from the repos.

I believe it's also available from the Classic DVDs at install time, so
you don't have to install Plasma at all if that DE is giving you trouble
on your hardware. But, I haven't tried that so I can't confirm it from personal experience.

TJ

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On Thu, 27 Aug 2020 20:20:03 +0000, William Unruh wrote:

On 2020-08-27, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote:

I am astonished! On re-reading the exchanges, I think the responses are
more like rants than my statements. Yes, I was disappointed but not
really seeking help, just explaining the sequence of events that led to
a complete impasse.

Well, we can start with the Topic you assigned this thread.
Then rereading your post, you can tell us what the details were of your installation-- How you installed, where you installed etc.

I have never mastered the repair facility of the install DVDs. I
usually have to use one of the live distros that I mentioned.

Does that mean that you are uncomfortable with the cli (command line interface) and need the gui (graphical user interface)?

I only recently got pan to work on Mint. There apparently was a known
bug and so my signature lines were missing. They describe my setup.

That would of course be helpful but I assume they would have described
your Mint installation, not your Mageia installation.

I am just hoping that they display properly with this message.

I do not think what is below is what you wanted to appear.

--
/home/alan/Documents/Signature_Files/pan_mint_signature_file.txt

Thanks for the advice.

I have now had a chance to try and address this issue slowly and
carefully.

I made a clean reinstall from the Live DVD that i created from the iso a couple of weeks ago.

When I got to the grub boot-loader section, it invites a password for security. I assumed this should be the root password, I entered it.

When I got around to rebooting the system, I could not login, nor could I change the login parameters (user name, password desktop manager).

I could boot into the recovery mode and get to the root prompt. I could
even execute startx an get a desktop but I could not remedy the sign-on dilemma.

In the end I reinstalled again. This time I entered no password at tge
grub boot-loader stage. It made no difference, When I rebooted I could
not get beyond the Welcome to localhost stage.

So I am writing this from Mint.

--
Mint 20.0, kernel 5.4.0-45-generic, Cinnamon 4.6.7
running on an AMD Phenom II X4 Black edition processor with 8GB of DRAM.

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On 26/8/20 7:54 pm, pinnerite wrote:

On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 22:26:14 -0500, Bit Twister wrote:

On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 20:53:18 -0000 (UTC), pinnerite wrote:

Apart from selecting the default plasma IDE Pinneerite did exactly what
you suggested.

For what it may be worth.
I have been fuming for some time with my second sacrificial box running Windows and a security camera app

Depending which USB socket was selected, Windows would not recognize it
or "find problem and reboot" inconstantly!!

This morning I reset the bios, with absolutely no expectations.

But it fixed the problem

Who'd have thought??



--
faeychild
Running plasmashell 5.15.4 on 5.7.19-desktop-1.mga7 kernel.
Mageia release 7 (Official) for x86_64 installed via Mageia-7-x86_64-DVD.iso


--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On Sat, 5 Sep 2020 21:09:59 -0000 (UTC), pinnerite wrote:

I made a clean reinstall from the Live DVD that i created from the iso a couple of weeks ago.

When I got to the grub boot-loader section, it invites a password for security. I assumed this should be the root password, I entered it.

I suggest it should not be root's password.

What that setting is for, is a password to allow booting.
It does not have anything to do with system administrator's (root) password.

When I got around to rebooting the system, I could not login, nor could I change the login parameters (user name, password desktop manager).

I could boot into the recovery mode and get to the root prompt. I could
even execute startx an get a desktop but I could not remedy the sign-on dilemma.

In the end I reinstalled again. This time I entered no password at tge
grub boot-loader stage. It made no difference, When I rebooted I could
not get beyond the Welcome to localhost stage.

Still unclear to me about what password was created where.

As a rule, anytime you are at a root prompt, you should be able to run
passwd root
new_pw_here
new_pw_here

and get conformation that the password, for root, was/is changed
to the new password.

The above "root prompt", is not where the prompt is login:

The "root prompt" is where you should be able to do a
ls /
and see the normal files/directories in /

Trust me, there have been a few times, where I did clean installs,
entered root's password, confirmed it, and could not login.

Re did the install, and very carefully entered the password and confirmed
it and was able to login. It is the same password I have been using for decades.

Murphy seems to be behind me 24/7. :(

As a matter of fact, I tried to get the document page showing install
screen for root password and can not connect.

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)