Re: [Vectorlinux-devel] New SOHO ISO's 1.40txz

[Newt <gen...@gm...>]

Hello All,

I've finally had a chance to try out the new 1.40txz ISO with updated installer,
and I must say this looks like a winner on my troublesome nvidia 5200 video card
system. X started normally without any unnecessary user configuration, and I
confirmed that the 'nv' driver was being used in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Overall, the
install was painless and without many issues (a few minor but nothing major).
Below are my notes:

Installer:
-initial installation media finding time was about 45+ seconds, with a many-second mouse freeze
-subsequent 'search again' button presses were only 5-10 seconds each
-the 'search again' button still kill the 2nd disc partitioning option ('use existing partitions')
-when choosing partitions to use for system my drives show in reverse order (hdd, hdb, hda).
 I would expect them to be in alpha-order (hda, hdb, hdd, etc).
-partition sizes show in Gparted differ from partition sizes show by Installer by enough to be
 noticeable.
                hda1      hda2      hda3      hda4      hda5      hda6
    Gparted     96.97g    3.23g     ----      6.98g     454.94m   502m
    Installer   104g      3.46g     ----      7.49g     0.48g     526m

 It's not totally unrealistic but they are significantly different. Probably a 1000_vs_1024 thing???
-Flash of black when scroller starts
-Grub detected my VL 6 STD install and added it to boot options (but problems - see below)

First Boot:
-Grub lists three options (soho, soho-recoverymode, 6Std) but upon choosing 6Std I get:
      Error: You need to load the kernel first
-I tried moving the kernel line up the boot option order but then just received:
      Booting a command list
      Error: File not found.

Login:
-VL graphic wobbles still - not as much as before but a bit still.

KDE:
-Opera/wpa_gui/vburn-iso/browser all missing icons in KDE menu
-VasmCC still needs updating in Filesystem, and Vpackager does not start

This last comment is just an observation: During the installation routine I notice
(in htop) that the scroller uses 5-6% CPU and 1% mem_usage throughout the entire
install. Also, each time the scroller cycles around the CPU usage jumps to ~40%
for several seconds. In the end, the scroller is the 2nd or 3rd most cpu time used
process running. How this affects overall install time/speed, I don't know but
thought I'd mention it. If the overall package installation time can be reduced
significantly by "adjusting" the scroller I think it would be worth it, but if the
overall improvements would be minor then no bother.

Back to the Grub/VL6STD issue: I installed lilo to my STD partition bootsector (as
a safeguard) and was able to use the grub commandline to chainload to lilo, and
lilo was able to boot STD fine.

In the end, none of this is a major issue or a show-stopper. This install was
certainly the best I've tried. The VL GRUB/KDM/LOGIN themes look the best they
ever have. There does not seem to be a KDE theme implemented yet, but I'm sure
it'll be nice when it's done.

Great job to all!!!

Cheers, newt