Mageia forum

I'm a multi-booter. I have 5 linux installed to my desktop pc. the ubuntu one died on last update. And if I've gotta do a fresh install and configure all my user prefs from scratch anyway, well I think I'd rather give Mageia a try instead...

I'm kind of insistent on booting to console and then running startx when/if I'm ready to fire up a gui.
Does Mageia recognise a boot time kernel argument that prevents any display monitor from starting at boot?

But most of the time startx is my first user command. And most of the time my ~/.xinitrc will start up an e17 session... Though I have at times done something stupid and crashed my copy of e17, so I like to have a backup desktop configured. And about the only thing besides enlightenment that I can stand to use is xfce. But I don't know if there is an e17 based mageia iso. Nor for that matter am I sure that there is an xfce one.

But if there is both, which would you recommend I install with?

Where should I download it from?

I'm located in northeastern USA...

And my pc is a 2005 era hp pavilion with a single amd64 athlon processor and a built in nvidia that doesn't play well with nouveau and works best with the 173 nvidia driver...

I will be installing mageia to a single partition... I would normally tell it to install it's bootloader to
the superblock of that partition, and chainloading... But I think I read something about mageia
using a diferent process for that... suggestions on that are welcome.

Any installation/package manager suggestions to wind up with the nvidia 173 driver with the least pain would be appreciated... Thanks!

Use the 'classic' DVD installer.

It contains the nvidia drivers you need. You will be asked during install if you want to make use of the 'non free' software.

At the desktop selection page select 'custom' and tick the box to select individual packages. You will find e17 and task-xfce. under 'other desktops'.

The boot loader is grub 1 with an option to select grub2. By default it will install the boot loader in the MBR, but you can choose for it to go into a selected partition.

Have fun

djennings wrote:Use the 'classic' DVD installer.

It contains the nvidia drivers you need. You will be asked during install if you want to make use of the 'non free' software.

That is good. But will I be able to specify to use the 304 nvidia driver rather than the 319 which I know for a fact doesn't work with my built-in NVidia GeForce 6150 LE?

At the desktop selection page select 'custom' and tick the box to select individual packages. You will find e17 and task-xfce. under 'other desktops'.

Yeah, after I asked this, I did read somewhere that at least xfce was under 'other desktops' with the "classic DVD installer" And it said that E17 was in {did it call it "core" or "main"} repo. And so already decided to try the Mageia-3-x86_64-DVD.iso... But this sounds like I'll be able to install both during the initial install... GREAT! :>

The boot loader is grub 1

Good!

with an option to select grub2.

Eyulch

By default it will install the boot loader in the MBR, but you can choose for it to go into a selected partition.

Then I'd be good to go already if only my DVD drive haddn't kicked the bucket about halfway through burning a copy of the Mageia-3-x86_64-DVD.iso :sigh:

Have fun

Will, just as soon as I can get a replacement dvd burner... But even at the current low cost, that won't be this week... :BIGsigh:

Thanks for the tips...

By the way, some distros provide a kernel argument to boot to what a debian sytem running SysV calls runlevel 3, and what systemD would accomplish by setting a default.target symlink to multi-user.target rather than graphical.target. That is to say to boot to console without starting a display manager... Does Mageia offer such a convenience? or will I have to completely sabotage the display manager to make that happen? (I very much like to start X, on an optional basis, on the command line after login with startx... Though admittedly 99% of the time it's my first user command.)

jtwdyp wrote:Will, just as soon as I can get a replacement dvd burner... But even at the current low cost, that won't be this week... :BIGsigh:

Why not use an usb flash drive?

doktor5000 wrote:

jtwdyp wrote:Will, just as soon as I can get a replacement dvd burner... But even at the current low cost, that won't be this week... :BIGsigh:

Why not use an usb flash drive?

Turns out that was a good suggestion. This very idea caused me to search the web until I tripped over something about unetbootin Which I was able to apt-get into my antiX install, and next thing you know I've installed Mageia3 with it... Now I just need to figure out how to use the urpmi (and related) cli package management tools. I do wish the authors/maintainers of most man documents would include actual examples... But eventually I'll figure it out... Thanks

Turns out that was a good suggestion. This very idea caused me to search the web until I tripped over something about unetbootin Which I was able to apt-get into my antiX install, and next thing you know I've installed Mageia3 with it...

You know. This is the first time I have ever heard of anyone successfully installing Mageia with unetbootin!
If you had looked in the wiki you would have found found instructions to boot from a USB which tell you not to use unetbootin

https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installation_Media#Dump_Mageia_ISO_on_a_USB_flash_stick.3F

Still. Glad it worked for you

As for urpmi. It is not hard.
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/URPMI

djennings wrote:You know. This is the first time I have ever heard of anyone successfully installing Mageia with unetbootin!
If you had looked in the wiki you would have found found instructions to boot from a USB which tell you not to use unetbootin

https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installation_Media#Dump_Mageia_ISO_on_a_USB_flash_stick.3F

Still. Glad it worked for you

I've already heard from quite some people that it has worked for them, maybe it can detect hybrid images already?

djennings wrote:You know. This is the first time I have ever heard of anyone successfully installing Mageia with unetbootin!
If you had looked in the wiki you would have found found instructions to boot from a USB which tell you not to use unetbootin

https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installation_Media#Dump_Mageia_ISO_on_a_USB_flash_stick.3F

Well I gotta confess I'm having a hard time learning my way around the Mageia wiki... Is there an index of wiki pages someplace?

Still. Glad it worked for you


As for urpmi. It is not hard.
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/URPMI

If THAT page is a good representative sample of the quality of Mageia wiki pages... Then I REALLY want that index... Whoever wrote it deserves a nice warm fuzzy.

doktor5000 wrote:I've already heard from quite some people that it has worked for them, maybe it can detect hybrid images already?

All I know was I found out unetbootin existed cause I wanted to test if my pc could even boot from a usb device. the first thing I did with it was to select the Elive image from unetbootin's built in list. The Elive got far enough into the boot process to prove it was possible before it locked up...

I had the downloaded mageia3 iso just stitting on my hard drive so I thought I'd give it a go.
When I first booted it I had to guess my way through some terse choices in what looked like a text installer interface. I must have guessed correctly because after a few minutes, I was looking at a gui installer. Which worked for me.

I'm glad I installed unetbootin on one of my Linux, But I don't think I'd like it for making a live usb system from an iso. I've figured out it's not likely to let me install a couple console packages missing from most the live cd's I ever booted, and then let me configure my user environment (things like keyboard shortcuts) And then save the changes... :sigh:

But I've taken a strong "liking" to this new Mageia install... But that will have tobe another thread another day... Thanks for the help.