Welcome

Site news

Latest site additions:

Updated January 13rd 2008:
My LIRC page: The Linux Audio Server Project - Revisited

Added January 3rd 2008:
My (K/X/)Ubuntu review: Ubuntu - beyond the hype

Added December 2nd 2007:
My Mandriva 2008.0 review

Added November 20th 2007:
The configuration page of Mandriva Linux 2008.0

Added November 18th 2007:
The Installation walkthrough of Mandriva Linux 2008.0

Added November 17th 2007:
The review of openSUSE 10.3

Added July 8th 2007:
The Configuration page of Mandriva Linux 2007.1 Spring

Added July 1st 2007:
The Installation walkthrough of Mandriva Linux 2007.1 Spring

Added December 18th 2005:
The third and final part of my Mandriva Linux 2006 review

Added November 14th 2005:
The second part of my Mandriva Linux 2006 review

Added November 6th 2005:
The first part of my Mandriva Linux 2006 review

For older additions please see the articles page.

Feature links

For all those who don't know how easy software installation can be, Mandriva is your new best friend since it sports urpmi which will make life easier for you than you can imagine. To set things up properly and to find out how to use it, read and use the urpmi HowTo that Zeb has written and uploaded. Thanks for the effort Zeb, great work.

Past articles

Added Feb 24th 2004:
The Linux Laptop Challenge!
Updated: Oct 25th.

Added Jan 30th 2004:
My new article, about my audio server project, combining LIRC, XMMS, GRIP, VNC and some BASH scripting.

Added Jan 10th 2004:
Surprising or not, some people really need someone to show certain things, and in this new page I use flash to demonstrate the proper way to copy-paste for instance the commands found on this website: Copy-Paste the Quick and Easy Way (warning: size > 640KB)

Added Jan 9th 2004:
My first review: Mandrake 9.2 download edition. Yes, I know this is a bit late; it was part of the MadPenguin Peer review, which was also not too early, but anyhow, it is here now.
Learning to use GNU/Linux, about how to learn to use your new Linux system, replacing old habits with new reflexes and being part of the OSS community.
The successful-switching article on how to avoid wasting your time with an unsuccessful attempt to move to Linux.
I got creative and wrote another story, this time it's a modern parable; give it a read here.

This site gives information for new and potential Linux users. If you are curious to know what Linux could mean to you and how you can use it, keep on reading. Some things are specific to Mandrake Linux, but many to Linux in general. Since I use KDE, some comments may not apply if you use some other desktop/windowmanager.
Please take your time to read the information that is presented here, and give those hints and tips a try that may be of use to you. If you find anything to be incorrect, I would appreciate to hear that. I am not a guru, just an enthusiast user. I hope that you will find the information here useful. If you do, please make a link to it on your site and / or refer others to this site.
If you have a similar site (not necessarily Mandriva Linux oriented!), and want me to link to your site, drop me a line.
Enjoy!

Rob Teng a.k.a. aRTee

Motivation for this site

"I wrote this song for all my friends..." -- little Stevie Vai

On the about page you can read why I created this site.

Contents

You can get to the to the various sections of this site by clicking the links at the top of each page, and to some less important pages through the links at the right hand column.

Furthermore, there is a google search field at the top of each page, and on the left hand side you will find quicklinks that take you to subsections within each page. Don't forget that within a single page you can use the search function of your browser (activated by pressing control-f) if you know what term/word you are looking for.

Site log

Date: January 13th 2008
I have finally found the time to update my LIRC page: The Linux Audio Server Project - Revisited. It now has all the info to create a speaking audio server. Shame on me, I actually had the speaking part working almost four years ago, just a few months after posting the original article.. I just never found the time to update the article with the added ideas and information. Well, now it's there, so enjoy!

Date: January 3rd 2008
My (K/X/)Ubuntu review titled: Ubuntu - beyond the hype is done. Enjoy the read, and a Happy 2008!

Date: December 2nd 2007
I have just finished my rather lengthy Mandriva 2008.0 review. Enjoy the read!

Date: November 20th 2007
I completed the configuration page of Mandriva Linux 2008.0 which is largely the same as the one for 2007.1, except that this time around I used the Powerpack instead of the Free edition, so there was less to configure.

Date: November 18th 2007
I found the time to mess around with Mandriva 2008 and write an Installation Walkthrough of it, and with any bit of luck, there will soon also be a configuration page about it. The installation was very much alike the one of 2007.1 Spring, so that's why I managed to put this page up so shortly after finishing my review of openSUSE 10.3. The same should go for the configuration page, but don't hold your breath...

Date: November 17th 2007

I just uploaded my review of openSUSE 10.3. It's not very positive I'm afraid, but then I did have substancial problems...

Date: July 11th 2007
Long time Linux user SÅ‚awomir Skrzyniarz was kind enough to inform me about the method he used to get the multimedia keys of his machine working. I've included this information in the Laptop related stuff section.

Date: July 8th 2007
Most likely I'm on a roll here, since I actually managed to finish the Configuration page of Mandriva Linux 2007.1 Spring!

Date: July 1st 2007
It's been a really long while (no updates throughout 2006!!!?!), I missed giving any updates for the Mandriva 2007.0 (autumn 2006) release, which I used without big problems; I became a father and consequently, some other activities got a lower priority. In Linux terms, a higher 'nice' value. This website is one of those things...
But I did find the time to mess around with Mandriva 2007.1 Spring and write an installation walkthrough of it, and with any bit of luck, there will soon also be a configuration page about it, as well as (with lots more luck though) a true review...
Just don't hold your breath for that review. Or that config page. Things are almost so easy, no one should need this site / my info and hints anymore. Or should they?...

Date: December 18th 2005
Finally, the third and final part of my Mandriva Linux 2006 review is available online! It took me a long time since I was very busy at work...
I fixed the DMA problems on system Neuchatel and added the new benchmark figures to the first page of the review. Oh and I'd like to thank Free.fr for their hosting - I noticed that the second article generated 50GB in one single day...!
Thanks for everybody linking to it!

Date: November 14th 2005
Finally, the second part of my Mandriva Linux 2006 review is ready!

Date: November 6th 2005
Finally, the first part of my Mandriva Linux 2006 review is ready!

Date: October 30th 2005
I have been playing with Bluetooth stuff again, so I added the info to the configuration page. Had some trouble to get proper AAC encoding working so that the phone can play the file, things have changed a bit, but I figured it out in the end. I'm sill working on the review, hopefully I'll finish shortly. Or go mad, whichever comes first.

Date: October 25th 2005
Silly me, I actually forgot to upload the changes from the 15th... And I spotted that the logpage had lots of entries for the year 2004 that were actually from 2003, so I fixed those dates. Aside that, I'm very busy working on the review for Mandriva Linux 2006, it should be up shortly; I wanted it up last weekend, but things have gotten a bit out of hand. Let's say that I'm doing some parts a bit more thorough than I had initially planned...

Date: October 15th 2005
Thanks for linking to the Mandriva Linux 2006 installation walkthrough page and the configuration page go to OSNews.com, PCLinuxOnline, linux today and DistroWatch.com/!
Meanwhile, I have figured out the simplest possible way to fix the pwc webcam resolution issue: one urpmi command is enough - read it on the configuration page.

Date: October 13th 2005
Just finished the configuration page of Mandriva Linux 2006. I will likely update that page in the near future with the info on bluetooth, but for now I found it good enough to upload.

Date: October 12th 2005
Just created the Mandriva Linux 2006 installation walkthrough page. Enjoy!

Date: August 21st 2005
Added a link to Tim Pattinson's site that gives insider hints from a 'true' beginner. Tim's site is a good reference for the uninitiated who want to glance ahead and see how a former uninitiated person gets into Linux. (Here you go Tim, finally got time to add it..)
Added a link to www.brunolinux.com since the link on my linkpage was (well, _is_ since I kept the forum link) to a forum; the author kindly contacted me to tell me about his site. The site has a straightforward layout and should work find with all kinds of browsers including Links/Lynx.

Date: June 23rd 2005
I have written the configuration page for Mandriva 2005 LE. Hope you like it. I have also updated some other pages, such as the sysspec page.

Date: June 6th 2005
Soo many things have happened, and I have been neglecting this website,... I have just added the Installation walkthrough of Mandriva 2005 Limited Edition, and hopefully this week I'll also add the configuration page.

Date: February 10th 2005
I got hold of a wireless LAN usb dongle, so I just had to figure out how to set it up and I'm now typing this on my desktop machine's Quanta, displaying on my laptop... X.org network transparency is really great.

Date: January 27th 2005
I have updated my configuration page, both to the new look and with new information. Other than that, I'm very busy setting up a Linux support web portal - different from anything in existance, and hopefully something that makes sense and is useful. So updates to my site will be few in the upcoming months.

Date: January 11th 2005
Well, my SUSE 9.2 Professional review was quite well received. Nobody found my comments unfair towards either SUSE or Mandrakelinux, so it seems I managed to stay objective enough. I have added some comments/additions/corrections to the review (at the bottom). Distrowatch, PCLinuxOnline, Linux Today and OSNews
mentioned the review. Thanks for linking!

Date: January 9th 2005
I have just uploaded my SUSE 9.2 Professional review. Enjoy!

Date: November 28th 2004
I've created a new page for inclusion within the links at the top of each page, the articles page. It substitutes the older links I had at the top for howtos and console. I moved the site log page and the links page to the new format, and I improved the latter. I'll be migrating more pages to the new format, but some only as I add information - meaning I will not update old review/install/configuration pages.
I have also fiddled quite a bit with the css, but in the end I didn't change much. I'll probably leave things like they are, I know that IE is the only browser not showing my site as it should be - that is, IE 5 does fine, IE 6 doesn't. Since all text and links are visible, it's not too bad. If someone knows how to alter the css without breaking it for other browsers, I'm all ears.

Date: November 24th 2004
I'm counting this as a Nov 24th update, although it's past midnight... I've fine tuned the CSS code and changed some things, like add the related links on the review of Mandrakelinux 10.1 OE page at the top-right, instead of having them at the end.

Date: November 23rd 2004
With some help I managed to fix the css code to display nicely on Mozilla / Firefox. Thanks go to Adrianovaroli for the solution, and to all others who tried to assist with this problem.
MandrakeSoft's newsletter contains a link to my review of Mandrakelinux 10.1 Official Edition. I think this is a nice moment to celebrate the 400.000th site visitor with the site's new look! ;-)

Date: November 22nd 2004
As you can see I have worked hard to change the look of this site; I have spent day and night to make it better. The revamped pages not only look better, but they have been enhanced with links at the left side that take you to the respective sub sections. For a CSS newbie like myself it really was quite a struggle to get the look I wanted. I really hope you like it, and that it gets you faster to the information you are looking for.
Apart from the site look I've also enhanced/rewritten the scripts that I use to create these pages (stick in the standard header and footer, the date of each page, etc), which was an interesting trip for me - getting to use a bit more of bash scripting, sed and awk...
Also, if you're using IE and things don't look as cool as they should, I'm sorry, but I have no way to fix that broken browser. I am using standard CSS features that have been around for years now, and if IE doesn't implement those correctly, tough luck. Since I have no system to try what these pages look like on IE (lack of an MSwindows system at my residence), and so have no way to debug any workarounds to make things look half decent in IO, I'm going to take my chances. If these pages look rubbish on IE, don't contact me, just get Firefox, Mozilla, Opera or so. See the links at the bottom of this and each other page of this site.
Lastly, I couldn't actually get the site to look the way I really wanted in Mozilla/Firefox, so I altered the CSS - in most browsers you can choose the css stylesheet, if you pick 'Orig' and are using Konqueror, you'll see what I really wanted, and if you move to Firefox/Mozilla, you'll see why I couldn't have that... :-(
I'd be happy if some guru could tell me how to fix "Orig" to work properly on FF/Moz...

Date: November 11th 2004
Mandrakelinux' website and Linux Today also made mention of my review.

Date: November 10th 2004
My extensive review about Mandrakelinux 10.1 Official Edition was received quite positively; it was linked by Distrowatch, OSnews and last (for now) but not least PCLinuxOnline.
On a side note, James Wright carefully read my xorg6.8 instructions and spotted an error, which I now corrected. Thanks James!
Other that that I have installed the new NVidia drivers on my machine, and found that a slight addition is necessary for use with the cool X.Org 6.8 extensions. It's all on the configuration page.

Date: November 9th 2004
For the reading please of all I have written an extensive review about Mandrakelinux 10.1 Official Edition. And to join in in the celebrations of the release of Firefox 1.0 I have added an icon link at the bottom of all pages.

Date: November 6th 2004
One reader of this site (Ken cantwell) was not sleeping on his keyboard and he noticed a wrong link on this page to the installation walkthrough - it was actually pointing to my review of 10.0. Thanks Ken for letting me know, and shame on all others who didn't inform me, or worse, who didn't even spot this error! ;-)

Date: November 5th 2004
Upon popular request I have included info on the configuration page on how to use the X.org 6.8 that is included on the dvd iso. Let me know if it works for you.

Date: November 2nd 2004
Completely forgot to upload the changes I made to the configuration page which I updated for 10.1 Official Edition, including building the LIRC and PWC modules. Yes indeed, again the standard Mandrakelinux kernel lacks the LIRC drivers...

Date: October 27th 2004
Mandrakelinux 10.1 Official Edition has just been released to Clubmembers via bittorrent!
And I have decided to take the logs of the first year of this site's existance off the frontpage and onto a separate page.

Date: October 25th 2004
My Linux Laptop Challenge page needed updating again, since ERREX now offers Mandrakelinux preinstalled preconfigured laptops. I decided to do them a favour and put a link at the top of each page, for the time being.

Date: October 20th 2004
Finally I took the time to fix my webcam - before it would only do stamp size images, now it does VGA (640x480) resolution, just as before I installed Mandrakelinux 10.1 CE. But this time around, no proprietary driver is necessary. The info is on the configuration page.

Date: October 14th 2004
I finally updated my Linux Laptop Challenge page and mentioned, among other things, the HP SUSE laptop offer. Oh, and I got confirmation that my lirc_serial_home module also works, but there is a problem with the initscripts in lirc-0.6.6-7mdk... I haven't looked into this, if you need the patch let me know, I'll put it up.

Date: September 28th 2004
Just corrected some stuff on the 10.1 configuration page. Didn't get much feedback sofar, hope it doesn't go unnoticed and most of all, that it is appreciated...
Anyway, I should have my review up sometime this or next week. Ah the suspense..

Date: September 26th 2004
I have just finished my configuration page for Mandrakelinux 10.1 Community Edition, which has gone public last week.
Dovix has been so nice to translate my installation walkthrough for Mandrakelinux 10.1 CE into Hebrew.

Date: September 19th 2004
Just finished the installation walkthrough for Mandrakelinux 10.1 Community Edition. Enjoy!

Date: September 17th 2004
Allright, it's been a long time since my last update. I have purchased a few things in the meantime, so I will have to update my system specs page. Newly obtained: a digital camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ10, for the SD-cards an Apacer MegaSteno 8 in 1 cardreader, a secondhand colour laserprinter Lexmark Optra SC1275 to replace the B/W laserprinter, a NEC ND 3500 dvd+/-rw dual layer dual standard burner and a secondhand Compaq Armada M700 laptop. Note to self, have to update the Laptop Challenge page - HP (formerly Compaq and HP) made a Linux Laptop available.
Other things: I have just upgrade my main system and my laptop to Mandrake 10.1 Community Edition. So now I'm working on updating installation walkthrough and the review pages...
Almost forgot, on Friday September 3rd the hit-counter for this site passed the 300.000 mark. That means the site has been contacted from 300.000 different IP-addresses. Go ahead, have a virtual drink with me! ;-)

Almost forgot to mention: my terminal server project at work stalled (had some problems and no more time), but I still work with my Linux machine - at home and at work on Linux, go ahead: envy me! ;-)
I have done a presentation at work about Linux too, it seems that at some point in the future we will no longer have any HP-UX servers, just AMD64 Opterons. There will be a few Linux desktops/workstations, 2GB 3GHz Xeon machines, of which I will get one to test.

Date: May 30th 2004
Since Mandrake have released the iso's of 10.0 Official Edition, I have added the related info on the acquisition page (including the edonkey links). Other than that, nothing new on this site.
Lots of news on Linux at my work: I will likely do a presentation for my peers to show what benefits Linux can bring them, what the issues are etc. The fat clients are working nicely, thanks go to Stew Benedict for the DrakTermServ tools (you can urpmi that) and for the pointers he gave me. You can find more info here: http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/TerminalServer. I may write an article about it, if I ever find the time..
Another thing that I just noticed I didn't write clearly enough in the entry below: I have upgraded machines from Mandrake 9.1 to 10.0 Official Edition without a hitch - I must say that upgrading takes a lot more time than just installing, and due to changes in KDE you have to deinstall it if you want to use KMail - which on those machines wasn't used, so no problem there.

Date: May 16th 2004
The visitor counter is still doing overtime (above 215.000 visiting ip addresses counted), and I have had some feedback about especially the configuration of Mandrake 10.0 which I finally incorporated into that page. (VGA resolution with my Philips webcam and some issues with the usb audio conflicting with pci audio cards.)
I have made a big step at work, I installed Mandrake 10.0 OE and have been using that for a couple of weeks now to full satisfaction. The only windows application that I really do need is LotusNotes, luckily that one was not too hard to get running with Wine. Well, thanks a lot to the Wine developers, you guys helped me move to linux at work - finally a decent windowmanager (kde really beats CDE by quite a bit, and the win2k wm too, imho..).
Another thing: I have installed Mandrake 10.0 OE on a number of machines, and I must say, for me it works great. Not that there were never any hiccups, but on the whole, it looks great, feels great and works great.
A last thing: I am currently working on fat clients, sort of diskless machines that do run all programs locally, but just won't have a local installation of Mandrake/Linux. I managed to get things to work in one network/system, soon the next will get tackled. Cross your fingers for me please... ;-)

Date: April 19th 2004
Mandrake has made this site website of the week, they put the link in their newsletter, which they send to all Clubmembers and people who have subscribed to it out of interest, and which they post on the Mandrakeclub site. 30.000 extra visitors in just about 10 days is really nice. And most of all, for me to be recognised and my work on this site to be appreciated. Thanks Mandrake!
I took down the anti-software-patents-in-Europe-frontpage, for those interested I still have it here - and for now I leave the banner on top of each individual page.
Lastly, I installed Mandrake 10.0 Official Edition on 3 machines over the weekend, on 1 machine there was an issue with the built-in Adaptec SCSI controller, AHA2940 type, which needs driver AIC7xxx - and which doesn't work with the 2.6 kernel that Mandrake included. The workaround was to boot with the alt1 kernel on install cd1. Once I figured that out, all was fine. The two other machines, an IBM Thinkpad and my wifes Duron 1GHz called neuchatel, installed like a breeze and all worked out of the box. Oh, I did a network install on my wifes machine, with my machine as an ftp server. Sweet, just followed the instructions on the html info file on installation cd1 to make a bootable cdrom, and followed instructions once I booted that one. So on 3 systems, Mandrake 10.0 Official Edition needed no further hardware configuration, all hardware was detected and configured (audio, video, network adapters, mice, etc) properly out of the box, minus the SCSI controller problem. Very good score if you ask me.
And I still have to adapt the config and review pages of Mandrake 10.0 with the info people sent me, and I also got around to setting up my webcam for VGA resolution, also related to some info that someone sent me. As soon as I find the time....

Date: April 8thth 2004
Just found out there is another internet action against Software Patents in Europe, so I decided to join in, since software patents are evil...
Got some feedback to my review and config pages, I haven't taken the time yet to update things, but for now, thanks for all the feedback.
Last but not least, thanks to PCLO, OSnews, Linux Today, Distrowatch, Mandrake (homepage and club-page), and all other sites that linked to my Mandrake 10.0 Community Edition review. The counter has gone past 150.000 visitors lately, whereas it was around 70.000 just over one month ago... I hope non-linux users who get here actually find what they need to get started on their Linux journey.

Date: March 10th 2004
Added my Review of Mandrake 10.0 Community edition,
and: my configuration page of Mandrake 10.0 Community edition.

Date: March 7th 2004
PCLinuxOnline linked my installation page of Mandrake 10.0 Community edition and I got almost 10.000 hits since Friday. Or the counter is broken.

Date: March 6th 2004
Just added the installation page of Mandrake 10.0 Community edition. More to follow soon!


Older log entries can be found on the log page.


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Page first created: Feb 2003. Page last updated: 2008-01-13 15:02

Pages tested with but not specifically made for: lynx, konqueror, galeon, Opera, Mozilla, Firefox using OpenOffice.org, Quanta + and the Gimp on Mandriva Linux by aRTee
All contents © copyright 2003 - 2007, unless mentioned otherwise, published under the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL) by aRTee. Artwork and CSS don't fall under the FDL, standard copyright applies. Tux image from Larry Ewing. You may use anything published under the FDL on this site freely, as long as you include this copyright notice and a reference to the main address of this site: www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr.