[yopered]

I'm thinking Yoper is not ready for prime time or maybe I'm not ready for Yoper.

Just loaded Yoper 3.0.1 on my test box which already had Kubuntu and Debian loaded. I gave Yoper its own partition, but it promptly destroyed my MBR, and I can't boot my other systems any more.

Here are some other thorns in my side.

(1) During the install, I noticed that Yoper fdisk seems to be confused about partition types. The types displayed are +1 from the current type.

(2) It loads this nagware called KlamAV and I just can't find a GUI that makes it go away. You would think that they would be kind enough to ask if I wanted some stinkin' virus software. Yes, I tried to get rid of it with KPackage, and it just won't go away.

(3) I try this: Settings>Internet & Network>Network Settings and get this:

Your Platform Is Not Supported

With a long list of system types. Of course Yoper 3.0.1 is not in the list. But Yoper 2.2 is. WTF?

(4) I open the System>Smart Package Manager, and I get the cute message

(-) Configuration is in readonly mode.

I'm logged in as root, WTF? The error message graphics are nice, though. They remind me of the old apple Mac... the one that had what sounded like a knife sharpener. The Macs would do a similar thing, albeit in black & white. They would throw up the same kind of message with the picture of a round black bomb with a lit fuse. Very nice.

(5) KInfo tells me it can't read the SAMBA configuration file (smb.conf), but I can see my shared Windows network locations.

But I'll say this about Yoper, it's fast. You get your MBR blown away and the bomb in no time at all! The desktop is very responsive. Sure would be nice if it were a more functional implementation. There's something missing here with the KDE integration.

So I registered on the yoper.com forum. It's been hours, and no verification email. I'm guessing they're running the board with Yoper, and the board registration isn't exactly integrated with the email system just yet. What's it take, a sendmail()? So I'm hoping someone here will read this and possibly help.

If I spent more than a half hour with Yoper, I got this feeling I would find lots more problems. But I've had enough. Here's my question. How do I get my Debian and Kubuntu boots back? I sure hope my old systems are still there.

Thanks in advance.

[void_false]

I'm guessing they're running the board with Yoper, and the board registration isn't exactly integrated with the email system just yet.

LOL. Very funny. Tried YOPER few year ago. It was 2.0 or somethn. Nevermind what i did but the network didnt work.

How do I get my Debian and Kubuntu boots back? I sure hope my old systems are still there.

Boot from your kubuntu LiveCD and do grub-install

Furthermore pls describe your HD layout, ie which distro sits on which partition. Output from `fdisk -l` would be helpful too.

[yopered]

Thanks for your reply. I tried the grub-install from Kubuntu live. It's a command line thing that has too many options for my feeble mind. The purpose of my Linux installation exercise is to find out if there really is a Linux desktop system that is truly GUI manageable. So far I'm striking out. In fact, I don't get very far in the configuration effort before I have to do sudo this or sudo that. And I'm not trying to do anything all that complex. I'd like to put Linux up on a Windows network with shares to and from. VNC would be nice too. And I would like all my hardware to work too.

I've still got Debian in the first partition. I got that to boot OK by using the Debian rescuegui boot and writing grub to hda. When I tried to write the grub with a boot menu for the other partitions, I got the dreaded Error 18. So I wiped Yoper and since I couldn't get Kubuntu to boot again, it's gone too. Too bad, because it looked promising with the exception of not being able to manage grub with a gui. I'm trying Mint next, but I might try Kubuntu again. It will probably be easier to reinstall it than it was to get it to boot again. Eventually, I won't need multiple boots, but while I'm picking the best of the GUI Linux desktops, it sure would be nice.

The reason I want an easy-to-use and manage Linux is because I'm thinking of trying one out on my 7-year-old. She's got an XP Media center right now, but I think Linux might be getting close to replace that. All the audio/video/flash/scanner and camera stuff has to work though.

Thanks again, and if you have a good suggestion for an easy-to-use and fully gui Linux, please let me know.

[void_false]

. So I wiped Yoper and since I couldn't get Kubuntu to boot again, it's gone too.

That's why I asked you to provide output of
fdisk -l

If your boot-loader's config file is messed it doesnt mean that your system is messed too!

Thanks again, and if you have a good suggestion for an easy-to-use and fully gui Linux, please let me know.

You should try yourself. From the personal experience I would recommend OpenSUSE, PCLINUXOS, Mandriva, Ubuntu. Didnt try Mint myself but they say it is well polished distro.

[yopered]

Thanks for your suggestions. I tried all of the above except OpenSUSE. I'll try that next. But just wanted to let you know that all but one had some sort of problems. For example, PCLinuxOs wouldn't boot from the hard drive after install. In addition to that, and when running from the live CD it wouldn't recognize my floppy nor give me access to my Windows network shared folders. Mandriva had the same floppy and network problems. It installed just fine, but I couldn't figure out how to get it to let me login as the administrator. So I would have to run a shell to edit conf files. There goes the gui concept. Kubuntu installed ok. I didn't really play with it very much. When I accessed the network, it gave me some odd LISA error and told me to see my system administrator.

But LinuxMint... now there's the real deal! It sniffed out all my hardware and my network. Not only that, it sifted through all the grub menu.lst files in all my linux partitions and appended them to its own menu.lst. So when I went to boot the machine, it gave me a menu of boot options with the LinuxMint entries at the top, followed by a list of the other bootable partitions and kernels below.

So the first thing I tried to do was double-click an MP3 file on a Windows music server on my local network. LinuxMint opened up a player and rocked! It had my floppy drive ready to go, and I could edit and write r/w files shares on my Windows network. Only found two problems:

(1) After install, I switched the display monitor. Mint worked fine until reboot, then it couldn't figure out what happened and defaulted to an 800x600 max resolution. I was able to fix that with a few GUI mouse clicks and didn't even have to mess with editing the xorg.conf.

(2) I haven't yet figured out how to share an unprotected r/w folder to my Windows network. I can configure the share ok and it appears on my Windows network, but Windows wants to log. Needless to say, no matter what I try, I can't log in. But I had a little trouble getting a Vista box to do the same thing on my network so I'm sure eventually I'll figure it out.

Anyway, this LinuxMint is as close to 100% ready to go out of the box as most Windows installs. I am very impressed with its interoperablility. Maybe the Yoper guys should use this as the starting point for an optimized Linux OS? Mint could use a slight performance boost on my old Dell box.

Consider giving LinuxMint a test drive. I've never seen a GNOME desktop this easy to use and fully GUI configurable. Let's raise a glass of Guinness to the LinuxMint developers! (They're Irish, you know.)