Getting REALLY Pissed Off

[ND4SPDR]

I finally upgraded my ancient P3 to an Athlon64 3200+. I then upgraded my mostly working Mandrake 10.1 Official release to the beta 64-bit edition. Sure enough, everything got sufficiently screwed up to make my life miserable. First of all, the "hardware clock cannot be accessed by any known methods," and opening the clock in KDE does nothing but anger me. Second, I can't open the Mandrakelinux Control Center. Third, if I try opening a Karamba theme, the program crashes. Same problem with Kaffeine.

So, I tried reinstalling, but to no avail. The original upgrade from 10.1O to 64-bit went without a hitch, and the md5sums matched. Just now I tried downgrading to 10.1O. Everything works, it installs in 5 minutes (how I love my processor) and then, after it finished installing CD3, it goes "Idconfig failed" and then refuses to do anything else.

<rant> (skip this if you're not into reading the rantings of newbs)
I'm honestly getting to the point where Linux no longer makes sense. I initially installed it because it ran wayyyyyyyy faster than XP Pro on my old machine. I grew to love it, but I've been frustrated by its inability to play new WMV files and the general shodiness of programs like Gaim, Kaffeine, and Konqueror.

Don't get me wong, I love Linux, and want to keep using it, but this kind of bs (as listed above) keeps happening. In Windoze, at least I can play America's Army for a few hours and then watch streaming video in WMV9 format.
</rant>

[ND4SPDR]

Anyone?

[Dapper Dan]

You're just gonna run into more problems the farther out on the edge of the envelope of Linux advancement you place yourself. In my opinion, it is always best to stay one version behind if you want greater stability, and never go with beta of anything unless you enjoy experimenting.

The very latest beta of most distros is likely going to cause a lot of frustration until its bugs are worked out, and I have found this to be especially true of Mandrake.

If it were me, I'd do a nuke and pave, and re-install 10.1 the way you had it. I wouldn't upgrade to 10.2 until 10.3 comes out as final.

[ND4SPDR]

Thanks.

Is there any way to avoid formatting the partition and instead install 9.1 or 10.0 as an "upgrade," preserving my files?

[Dapper Dan]

Well, I actually was going to suggest dropping back to 9. something. I think 9.2 is pretty stabel now with all the updates. Did you put your /home directory on a seperate partition? How did you set your partition(s) up?

[ND4SPDR]

Windoze on my primary drive, Linux on the second drive which is partitioned as a Linux/Windoze storage drive.

[rjcarr]

I got to second his rant. I have been screwing around with Red Hat and SuSE trying to get this wireless card to work, and I am ready to go back to Windows.

It just isn't worth the hassle. Two days down the tube and I still don't have anything to show for it.

Windows would have been up and running in an hour.

[jeremy1701]

rjcarr,
do you think if you'd *never* used windows you have the same results?

Also, as far as wireless cards go, I think MDK has the best hardware support.

Jeremy

[rjcarr]

Hi Jeremy,

That's a fair comment. But the installation of the two is almost the same. Put the CD in, answer a few questions, and away you go.

The rubber meets the road when devices aren't detected properly. That wireless card comes right up in Windows. It is a little overwelming in Linux.

I'll look at MDK and see if it helps. Thanks for the feedback.

[jeremy1701]

What's the make and model of you card? For example, I have a netgear wg511. If you let us know, we can be of more assistance.

Jeremy