Hi Friends,

As I had mentioned in my last mail, I was facing problems with Mandriva
installation on my laptop which was already happily running Mandriva LE 2005. I
simply tried upgrading 2005 to 2006 edition and the X window system failed to
work. I tried changing a lot of things, played around with different parameters
but the X server would simply crash upon booting.

What surprised my the most was the wrongly configured pointing device which was
the culprit in my case. I was selecting the default selected device, which in
this edition to my surprise was not the synaptic touch pad, but "any universal
PS/2 MOUSE". When I tested the configuration initially, the X-server would
behave properly, but later would not start when I tried booting it. Taking leads
from Brad's experience with faulty mouse behavious, I tried changing the Mouse
parameters. Nothing worked initially. Finally exhausted, I thought of trying the
"PS/2 Standard mouse" drivers for my touch pad (I selected PS/2 Standard Mouse
as the pointing device) and BINGO !!! ..........problem solved. I am amazed by
this though. This was the first time that I ever had a trouble with Mandriva (or
Mandrake).

Here are a few initila observations about Mandriva 2006:
* KDE 3.4 is indeed very nice and smooth. However I miss the lack of
icon-zooming feature on the panel
* The 2-pane file explorer is back (in the home folder). It was always there
upto Mandrake 9. But then it disappeared and has appeared again. That's lovely
and very comfortable.
* Integration of KAT is a very pleasent surprise and I welcome this move. For
those who are unaware, KAT is the KDE desktop search tool similar to Google
Desktop search. I have yet to test how good it is.

On the down side Mandriva 2006 still lacks Openoffice 2.0. This is one thing I
don't really understand. The version included is still OOo 1.1.5. Mandriva
people could have at least included OOo 2.0 Beta even if 2.0 was not out at that
time. But well, not including is Beta release is very well justified.

Otherwise it is a superb distribution, much more polished now. Working with it
delightful. Once again I would say it is my number one distro.

-Tarun

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tarun Kant, M.Sc., Ph.D. -o)
Scientist C /\\
Biotechnology Laboratory _\_V
Forest Genetics & Tree Breeding Division
Arid Forest Research Institute
New Pali Road
Jodhpur 342005 India
Phone: +91-291-2722269 ext. 162
Home Page: http://www.geocities.com/bobkant/
I'm Registered Linux User # 284692
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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