SimplyMEPIS 3.4-3rc4 - ??Enough...or not..?...that is the question...

LiveCD 3.4-3.RC4:

My (parallel-connected) HP Laserjet 4M can be setup now and prints. Solved the deformed uri that popped up if in RC3.
Floppy still does not mount.

Still have to check after hd-installation wether it properly boots (grub in root partition). RC3 did not.

Regards, Ko

Ko Bros

I just booted to the 3.4.3 rc4 live CD and my wireless card isn't working. It is a Cisco 340 wireless card and it has been working with Mepis out of the box since 3.3.1 through 3.4.3 rc3

Similar problem for me with an Atheros Ar5212 card, although it works perfectly in 3.3.1 with WEP, it cannot connect with any of the 3.4 release candidates.

Hi,

Well, my opinion on RC4 is

first the positive finding:

HP Laserjet 4M could be setup in the Livecd and printed again. However, the floppy problem still persists.

and now the bad news:

the grub-gfxboot that is used in these 3,4-beta/rcs is not compatible with a regular debian grub (v. 0.95) that is installed into the mbr. (I have used that 0.95 version in the last 6 months without ANY problem - Mepis is not my 'default' distro). I can get RC4 installed allright on HD (although I have to write grub (from the livecd) to the bootsector of the rootpartition after hd-installation (since it always fails during hd-installation), but RC4 does not boot properly and hangs.
In the end I thought, ok, try it anyway and install the RC4 grub(=grub-gfxboot) into the mbr of /dev/hda, edit the menu.lst and reboot. No dice. The bootsequence hangs completely on the kernel line in menu.lst (or waits forever for the next initrd line in menu.lst - I am not sure which one applies, but I suspect the latter.).

I have no idea why the incompatible bootloader grub-gfxboot is used instead of the regular grub + splashimage routine (grub-gfxboot is NOT supported by the grub-developers and documentation is very meager) and why the 'normal' initrd.splash file is left out from from /boot/grub. That way I cannot use initrd.splash with the splashimage routine from [debian] grub that I have used sofar.

My very bad experiences in the last Mepis 3.4-betas/rcs with grub-gfxboot not writing reliably and properly to either root partition or mbr have considerably cooled down my enthusiasm for Mepis. I am thinking about 'shopping elsewhere'.

Regards, Ko

Since I cannot get wirelss WEP to work with 3.4.3-rc4 with my laptop I tried to install on my desktop directly connected to a router. Internet connection worked fine, but I am having the same issue as Ko. MBR grub refuses to boot and hangs.

Rich

Please send bug-reports to . I am pushing hard to make them resolve this issue (and more) before making this "betas" GOLD. They are far from GOLD. Releasing this will force a lot of people start looking for alternative solutions. No good for Mepis and no good for us that really like Mepis.

When the former release (3.3.1 and 3.3.2) works better than the actual for most people, something is definitively wrong. I have asked them to take one step back and reconsider if the latest changes have been correct.

I suggest that we should change the way the forum is working.

We do now have a lot of problems with the latest development and I do not see any clear short term solution.

New people who visit the forum by clicking "Recent Post" will be bombarded with comments describing problems, problems and more problems of all kind of types.

Mostly this problems do not exist in the actual release 3.3.1.

I think all this problems will scare a lot of people from trying Mepis.

I think that all issues regarding Release Candidates should be handled in a completely separated forum.

On the web site it should be clearly stated which version is the stable one, and new users should be recommended to use the stable release. When they go to the forum they should find solutions for theirs problems; Not descriptions and solution for problems regarding the Release Candidates.

I agree. Folks need to realize that an RC, in any form, is an RC, and some folks who might be new to Linux won't realize this, coming from the Windows world where everything is released "working", lol. I probably would have been scared away as well. The forum should be divided between current stable releases and testing versions. Even better, "Recent Posts" should like directly to the stable versions, and there should be a link on that page, with a disclaimer, that leads to the betas and RCs. I wouldn't want to suggest that we hide the RC area, just that we make it clear what it is, and perhaps offer an explanation of the way things work in Linux, how distros (and even Linus Torvalds with the kernel) release frequent testing versions for interested souls to investigate.

Just my thoughts.

Somebody tell us all again why are we being herded into udev
instead of hotplug ?

Seems that's the culprit here with all the wierdness....

That is a good question.

Well, I did get my wireless card working. I tried it again and entered the ESSID again and the card started working. When I installed rc4 to my hard drive, the wireless card (Cisco 340) worked fine. I don't have any sound now though. Its worked in previous Mepis releases. The card is detected in alsaconf but..no sound.

I have installed it on this computer and everything seems to be working fine. I say make it final.

Dual booting PCLinuxOS .92 and Mepis 3-4-3 rc4
on an AMD64 3000/Chaintech VNF-4

Biostar M7VIG PRO VIA KM266/VT8235 Socket A - (M7VIGP-A05) with Athlon 1800+ XP

KPOJ still doesn't play out of the box like it does on Kanotix 2005-4 It's alegedly missing a plugin.

Still no scanning with HP PSC 1210. Can't find a scan device. Scanning works on Kubuntu 5.10.

Able to mount CD and a play MP3's directly. Umount is a bit problematic. All apps have to be closed or you get a false error message that you cannot umount it because you are not "root" even though the mouse over shows demo and users are the owners.

If you close Kaffine then you can umount the drive and eject it.
If Kaffine is open and the song is completely stopped you still get the error message.

Formatted my onthego drive with MepisLite, but SimplyMepis RC4 doesn't give me permission to write to it. No folders seen by onthego or root. I will try to reformat it and see what happens.
I reformatted the onthego drive with RC4 but still have no permissions to the USB drive. I had put some of the pngs I sent on the drive after I formatted it from the demo desktop.

Can't open the pngs I sent to you documenting the issues with RC4

Also no FIrefox on the onthege desktop. Only konqueror

By the way, I did do an md5sum check on the download and verified my writing the iso to disk with K3b.

Have used previous versions of Mepis very successfully for over two years. My wife uses it too on her own hard drive.

I"am not having any problems with this rc go ahead and call it done.

ed

Is 3.4-3 final yet or are we to expect another RC?

On my IBM 390E laptop, I get no connection to my USB Optical mouse (Logitech) or my usb pen drive. I see a uhci module fail as the first or second item after the grub screen.

My Atheros chip based Netgear card (WG511T) works finally agian automatically.

On about the second boot after installing the RC4 I got a fuzzy, jacked up screen when I should have got kdm login screen. May have been my fault, I was trying to flip to a virtual terminal during boot to look at the dmessages. Anyway, I killed kdm and X processes, and restarted them by calling kdm, but it didn't help. I looked at the xorg.conf and it looked OK. I rebooted and still had same problem. I hadn't really changed anything that should have affected it. So I booted to the LiveCD and reinstalled the x config. Pulled the CD out and rebooted and it was back to normal.

I really miss having mount icons on the desktop for all the drives.

I've been toying with the idea of getting a newer laptop with more memory so maybe I don't have these problems. Instead, I'll have a whole new set of problems.

I have Mepis running on my main desktop with nvidia and SB Audigy 2 platinum sound with no issues. I also have it on an Inspiron Laptop with the dreaded i810 video, also working well. I guess I've been one of the lucky ones as rc4 seems to be pretty stable. I was easily able to apt-get some additional apps with no troubles.