Up front I'd like to say that this message will come off rather negative. That's only because I've been using RedHat so long and I hold it to a slightly higher standard than other distros. That being said...
I'm having problems installing Severn on a Dell Inspiron 8100. Standard setup: 800 MHz Intel, Cisco Wireless, 128 RAM, etc. I saw in the archives that someone named Rob had already gotten his working but he never ran into the problems I did, so here I am.
Downloaded the CDs, popped them into the drive and booted into the installer. I've been here before (many times), so no surprises. Jump through the hoops and opt to install all packages, just to see what Severn has to offer and to insure that I would run into fewer problems as I tried to install more stuff later. Reboot, go through the "first boot" deal and then...nothing. Well, not quite nothing. White on black terminal comes up with login prompt instead of graphical login. Catch is, my keyboard doesn't respond. So even if I wanted to login or change to other virtual terminals (Ctrl+Alt+F2, etc) I'm out of luck. Tried rebooting again, just to see if it had something to do w/ the "first boot" going wrong, but no dice. Tried reinstalling using the default "desktop" set of packages thinking that I may have installed "too much" and some unnecessary service was making my laptop hang. Eventually I have the same problems, hangs after graphical boot and goes to a unusable text-based login.
Judging from other messages, one problem might be that my video card is an NVidia, which aparently looks to be giving more than just me problems. However, if I can't even get to a working login prompt (graphical or otherwise), how am I suppose to go about updating drivers? Rescue boot?
Anyone have ideas on what's going wrong? Anyone else experience this? Anyone else have a Dell Inspiron 8100 that they got working? Even the slightest help would be greatly appreciated.
OK, now w/ that, let me go into a few complaints that I have w/ Severn and a few of the past releases in general:
1) Severn's graphical boot - seems like I'm not the only that didn't like this. Actually, I dig the idea. Don't think it's much of a Windoze copy as it is a Mac copy. How about this to satisfy everyone: offer a way to toggle silent/verbose mode. I'm envisioning something similar to XCDRoast where you can go from Minimal, Normal and Extended views. You could have "Press F1 for Minimal, F2 for Normal and F3 for Extended views". Is it not possible to take keyboard input during that phase?
2) Before and after my Severn troubles, I've been running Mandrake 9.1 on this laptop (use RH 9.0 on my workstation/server, love it). Only thing keeping from 9.0 on the laptop was wireless problems. Mandrake allows me to fully configure my wireless setup (specifically my SSID for our private network) during the install process. When using 9.0, I had to wait until after my first full boot before I could have it set up properly and even then I had issues. A neighboring, public wireless network kept "stealing" my connection from my private network and it seemed there was no way to stop it. When using Mandrake, I was able to configure for my private network during install and never had my connection "stolen" from that pesky not-as-good public network. What I'm getting at is...a) why can't I do all my network configuration during install? b) what was causing my troubles in 9.0? c) did Severn address these issues? (I'd much rather use RH over Mandrake)
3) Maybe I missed a "meeting" or something, but when did support for other window managers than Gnome and KDE drop off? I've personally never liked the Blue Curve Gnome and only used it log enough to get WindowMaker, BlackBox or Enlightenment running (which often had to involve some hacking around). I'm not against having Gnome in by default (gives those newbies a familiar territory and keeps them using Linux long enough to enjoy it) but what does it hurt to at least offer them for the few of us who prefer the less bulky, stripped-down window managers. Not enough room on disc 3?
Those are the issues off the top of my head I've been having. Just trying to put my $0.02 in. Again, any help on my install problems and opposing/supporting comments on these other thoughts is welcomed.
Thanks, Chris Elston celston@corky.sapien.net