Mageia 3

[viking60]

I tried to update my Mageia 2 to Mageia 3 in my VM but there was not enough space so I downloaded the net install.
And fired it up

When I chose to keep the existing partitions it failed so I had to restart. This could have been due to the repos in the university of Erlangen too.
So on the next effort I chose to partition from scratch and use the entire disk. And I picked another repo.

This went painlessly so I clicked my way through chose repos to add language etc. no problem. I could finally log in to a nice KDE

I had picked nonfree and tainted repos so everything worked out of the box.
I installed nano and put myself in the sudoers like this:

Code: Select all

EDITOR=nano visudo

Then I installed systemd-tools and checked out the boot.
[viking@localhost ~]$ systemd-analyze blame

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  5370ms shorewall.service
  2868ms preload.service
  2296ms systemd-udev-settle.service
  2204ms network-up.service
  1985ms sensord.service
  1942ms network.service
  1711ms mandriva-everytime.service
  1708ms upower.service
  1695ms systemd-logind.service
  1689ms avahi-daemon.service
  1664ms resolvconf.service
  1372ms vboxadd-timesync.service
  1294ms microcode_ctl.service
  1124ms fedora-loadmodules.service
  1043ms fedora-readonly.service
   734ms polkit.service
   607ms udisks2.service
   566ms partmon.service
   556ms numlock.service
   510ms systemd-vconsole-setup.service
   506ms systemd-remount-fs.service
   458ms sys-kernel-debug.mount
   445ms dev-mqueue.mount
   434ms mandriva-kmsg-loglevel.service
   432ms dev-hugepages.mount
   393ms iptables.service
   386ms hddtemp.service
   366ms ip6tables.service
   348ms systemd-udev-trigger.service
   340ms systemd-udevd.service
   237ms acpid.service
   217ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service
   199ms systemd-sysctl.service
   198ms mandriva-boot-links.service
   172ms systemd-modules-load.service
   112ms msec.service
    81ms rtkit-daemon.service
    72ms mandriva-save-dmesg.service
    42ms mandi.service
    23ms systemd-user-sessions.service
     9ms fedora-wait-storage.service
     3ms tmp.mount

Shorewall is the biggest sinner here too but 5 sec is acceptable. So far it has been a pretty painless experience worthy of a newbie.
Now I will set up openbox again.....
Nitrogen is not there so I have to use feh - that is ok.
openbox-menu is not there so the menu does not reflect what is on my system.
Cairo-dock is one big bug and cairo-dock -c does only fire up the control panel - no dock (strangely the exact same bug is in Mandirva).
Going for docky...
And that went just fine So there is no need for cairo-dock.
I get the same problem as with cairo-dock - that it also autostarts in KDE and that is anoying so i have to remove if from autostart here

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rm ~/.config/autostart/docky.desktop

That takes care of the KDE side of things To make it autostart in the pure openbox environment we simply add
docky % at the botom of ~/.config/openbox/autostart

[viking60]

Time to make that menu work like it should then so I had to download
ftp://ftp.mirrorservice.org/sites/carro ... x86_64.rpm
(I have requested it to be implemented in the repos some time ago but they do seem to have litle capasity - so nothing has happened. But you can simply install the one above - it works.)

And install openbox-menu with dependencies.
Then I replaced my ~/.config/openbox/menu.xml with this:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<openbox_menu xmlns="http://openbox.org/3.4/menu">
<menu id="desktop-app-menu" label="Applications" execute="openbox-menu"/>
<menu id="root-menu" label="Openbox 3">
<separator label="Menu"/>
<menu id="desktop-app-menu"/>
<separator label="Favorites"/>
<item label="Firefox">
<action name="Execute">
<command>firefox http://bjoernvold.com/forum</command>
</action>
</item>
<item label="Konsole">
<action name="Execute">
<command>konsole</command>
</action>
</item>
<item label="Control panel">
<action name="Execute">
<command>mcc</command>
</action>
</item>
<separator label="Openbox"/>
<item label="Configuration">
<action name="Execute">
<command>obconf</command>
</action>
</item>
<item label="Configure panel">
<action name="Execute">
<command>tint2conf</command>
</action>
</item>
<item label="Reconfigure openbox">
<action name="Reconfigure"/>
</item>
<separator label="Session"/>
<item label="Exit">
<action name="Execute">
<command>openbox --exit</command>
</action>
</item>
</menu>
</openbox_menu>

Ah and it worked like a charm - now we have a fully functional menu again.
Thats it - See how easy it is?

_________
So Mageia 3 is working well and is pretty easy to install. It works and will probably be the natural home of every Mandriva user if the OpenMandriva attempt should fail.

[rolf]

Thanks for another good howto. I am starting to get frustrated with so many things to personalize in the KDE settings and how going through the infinite combinations to try to get something workable wastes so much time. For one thing, somebody ought to sit down before any release and get a generic default configuration that just works.
Impossible, you say? Probably. For another thing, before too long, I might be following one of these howtos to see if I can reduce my annoyance level.

The thing is, there has always been something I am used to in KDE (a 13-year-long habit) that I can't make happen in another window manager. We'll see, someday.

[viking60]

Yes KDE is OK and getting better - unlike Gnome. But it can be somewhat of an overkill - depending on your needs. You can easily "dualboot" Openbox with KDE so you can have both.
You can use Dolphin and ksnapshot and all the other KDE stuff that you are used to.
Openbox is extremely lightweight and I like to use it as a "DE" for servers. But I have actually found it to be a good replacement for Gnome too. I am tired of that "babysitting" attitude.
Openbox is a very efficient work environment for my needs.

[dedanna1029]

I tried the urpmi method at the wiki the other night to upgrade 2 to 3. It took two days, and didn't work, so I just downloaded the dvd of 3, formatted / with it, and updated afterwards.

I'm loving it so far in KDE; 4.10.2 runs so much better than 4.8 did.

Gnome I haven't played with yet, and probably won't except to get Gnome Classic back to where it was looks- and functionality-wise when I was on 2. I don't care for straight Gnome 3 with gnome-shell. It can go bye-bye, as I always think about it.

So far though, 3 is running a lot better than 2. I do miss kernel-netbook that 2 had; so I installed the last update of it from MGA2. lol. Now, I have netbook kernel and desktop both for my netbook.

Beautiful, for netbook sound and video both (important for this kid). Some complain about the art work. I don't care about it, as I always go find my own anyway.

Insofar as openbox goes, I'm not going there. I don't think I should have to have an overlay like it to do what Gnome and KDE should do anyway. It's not a DM or WM of its own; it's a something that falls back on Gnome/KDE/XFCE components. It takes pieces of things from each and puts them how you want them. I got no time for that. I'm gonna make the WM of choice do what I want it to directly, or abandon it altogether (sorry Boss). I've abandoned razorqt for the same reason.

Have fun with MGA3!

[viking60]

Openbox is a WM of it's own It can be used as standalone or as a WM in Gnome KDE or in other DE's.
What I like about it is that I - me - yours truly - is in control and sets it up. Once that part is done it keeps working....exactly as I like. In any case it is good to have an alternative on your box in case your usual DE goes down the drain.
Openbox will not take that much space so it it is perfect for that.

And it is great for implementing totally useless stuff like amor - so I have a little kitten jumping on top off all my windows now

[viking60]

I have updated the Mageia Openbox wiki. Including the workaround for the dynamic menu.
You should be able to get a fully functional and fairly good looking openbox install from it now

[rolf]

So, you can sweeten the pot, for me, maybe, if you have some experience with making something like I have in KDE over in the Openbox world.

For example

I have buttons for kcontrol and konsole, which looks not too hard to do. Pager/virtual desktop chooser is very important to my usage habit.

and, on the right half

To the far right is a "Hardware Temperature Monitor" plasmoid that shows cpu temp (C) and gpu temp (G) for my GTX 470, which tends to run hot. Every new installation I try to install something like this and many of the available plasmoids are terrible. I really like this one: compact and easy to read, attractive. I like Y(et)A(nother)W(eather)P(lasmoid), kmix volume control, dropbox button, klipper, keyboard locale switcher...

[viking60]

Docky in panel mode has almost all of that. Now lemme see if I can make it look exactly like yours...
Workspace checker - check!
Konsole - check!
Cpu/mem usage - check! Green ball = all is good Yellow=working red=heavy duty load
Fantastic weather feature with with geomaps = check!

In fact you can simply start anything you want. It will then be visible on the docky panel at which point you can right-click it and pick "attach to dock" - piece of pannekake.
Shut down hibernate log-out -check!

The only helper I could not find was that temperature thing. I could write it I suppose but I am sure there is a workaround to be found...


I would attach Gimp to the dock like this (Is Norwegian and means attach to dock)

[rolf]

OK! This moves Openbox way up on my to-do list. Thanks.

[viking60]

Some docky choices:

[R_Head]

Installed on one of my Dell D600 laptop. Destroyed the hard drive. Now all it does is clicks, rattles and the mother board cannot find a bootable media.