Subject: Hot complaints about YDL 2.1
From: Jake Feasel (anjf2@uaa.alaska.edu)
Date: Sun Oct 28 2001 - 13:35:45 MST
I just purchased 2.1. Much to my excitement, it arrived recently. I
had been using 2.0, and I was fairly happy with it. However, I expected
Terra soft would have spent more time in refining their 2.1. Amazingly,
2.0 worked better for me than 2.1 did. I'm working with a new TiBook G4
400.
As others have reported, with their TiBook, the text mode installer
comes up rather than the GUI. Not that big of a deal, I'm a pretty UNIX
hardened person. I can handle a text installer. However, also as
others reported, the "can't mount CD" error comes soon. Not a good
sigh. I couldn't even find a way to drop to a shell to investigate
further.
Out of frustration (desparation?) I went with the install-gui-kernel22
option on bootup. Now the GUI came up, and the CD mounted fine.
Installation progressed ok, until I got to the partitioning section of
the install. For some reason, after I hit "Save", the system rebooted.
WTF? Anyway, went back to the install-gui-kernel22, went through the
same procedure, worked this time all of the way through. Did the
Developer Workstation install.
It didn't prompt for installing Tasting Treats, though. I would have
liked to have done that during the general installation procedure, not
after. Oh well. It just would have been nice.
At least the install part worked. However, it didn't try to save me
when I made an incorrect choice for my X configuration (color depth 32
instead of 24 - a no no on a TiBook) - scary when the GUI login trys to
come up, crashing over and over, basically inoperable. I managed
(barely) to edit the X conf file, changing the depth to 24. This fixed
that. I have to ask, though - what the hell would an end user do at
this point? (Wet his / her pants?)
Ok, now I have a nice looking X login (not quite as nice looking as
Mandrake, fairly plain actually, but 24 color depth) . I go to log in.
No sound. WTF? There was sound in YDL 2.0 w/ Kernel 2.2 out of the box.
Not with 2.1. Anybody have suggestions about this one? I haven't fixed
that yet.
Also, you'd think that, since the instructions about setting up your
airport card are available online, that they would make setting it up
part of the installation procedure. I don't know, it just seems like
that would have been nice, and expected.
So now my sound card and airport don't work. Have they improved the
power management for my TiBook, in that it goes to "sleep" when I close
the screen? Nope. It does do something, though - it goes into a "coma".
It's still on, but seeming unable to bring it back up to where it was
before I closed the screen. The only thing I can do is hold down power,
the turn it back on, waiting through fscks. Joy. Why even bother?
This sucks. But hey - maybe it works in kernel 2.4. Maybe my sound
card does too. Maybe journalled fs's would be an option in the install
too. I sure would have liked to try that all out.
What about the configuration / apps? It comes with a *really* old
version of AbiWord (0.7 - current is like 0.9.4). It doesn't come with
BlueFish, Quanta Plus, Nautilas (WTF!?!). At least they have KDE
anti-aliased fonts working. The whole thing feels / looks like an
out-of-the box KDE installation - they didn't take any care to tighten
it up, make it distinct and nice. They could have had a menu for Mac -
on - linux, YUP, etc... But no - the user is left to search on the
system for any of these command (commands I would think are important to
an end-user).
I have to say - I just installed Mandrake 8.1 on my Intel box - it is so
much nicer, it is unbelievable. I wish their 8.1 PPC distro was ready.
I wouldn't expect them to have a lot of PPC optimizations - their
focused on Intel. I did expect more from YDL though - this is their
niche.
Jake Feasel
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Sun Oct 28 2001 - 16:45:56 MST