After a quick install from last week we revisit trying to get X going on Mandriva. We try different approaches, reconfiguring our Xorg.conf file, some google dancing, and another reinistall. Still no joy. We run out of time before we run out of will, so we shall try again next week. Oh, we also spend some time thinking about the world of Linux podcasts and offer ideas about what might be missing in the podcast soup. (And we get a clue about bitrates so the file size shrinks magically).

With one distribution under our belt, we move on to Mandriva. Things go pretty smoothly in what is a very quick 21 minute install - from reboot to reboot. Unfortunately, we learn that lilo is not grub and that Xorg has gone awol. Well, it looks like we have plenty to do in the next three shows on this distribution - stay tuned!

Our fourth show brings us to our summary evaluation of OpenSuse. Before we say goodby to our first distro, we do a source install of Vim 7.0, just because we can. Along the way we set up a few aliases  for good measure. We talk a bit about the history of Suse, the community and how our Windows relatives found our test machine to work. We close with our first summary score of a distribution (sorry you have to listen to learn how many stars Suse got) as well as a brief discussion of the show’s philosophy and plans for the future.

Our third week with Suse finds us exploring the Yast2 package manager in search of the latest version of the one true editor Vim. Alas, we run into rpm hell and our first real speedbump with Suse. We also discuss the revamping of thelip Lab hardware, and a side project attempting to install Debian on a Power Mac G5.