ALT Linux | Few useful commands

ALT Linux documentation are rare and difficult to find . I have collected few commands which I use in routine managing my ALT Linux KDE4 Sisyphus installation .

•  For kernel update

# apt-get install update-kernel

Then as root ( su - ) run this command

# update-kernel -t std-def

After kernel update reboot with new kernel .It is wise to keep older kernel in case the new kernel does not work you can boot back to older working kernel .

After kernel update you may update/resetup (especially for NVIDIA videocards)  video driver by running this command as root 

# x11setupdrv

• Video drivers 

  For Installing Nvidia driver run this command as root

# apt-get install kernel-modules-nvidia-$flavour 

LDR | Not just yet another Arch Linux Fork ?

Release of  new linux distributions based upon existing major and well known distributions is a common day happening in the linux world today . Ubuntu is known for having countless forks . Recently Arch Linux has gathered lot of spotlight and some distributions based upon Arch Linux have come forwards . LDR  is one  of those Arch Linux based distributions which was added to the "Distributions on the Waiting List" of  DistroWatch.com on 2011-04-11.

As described by its developer Tom Medhurst
 
" LDR stands for Linux Done Right. It is an Arch Linux derrived GNU/Linux distro which has many software components pre-configured so you can just install and get on with it! "

Here is the LDR`s official website with the initial details about this distribution . 

LDR has its own repository with custom made packages not available in Arch`s repositories. I had a chance to test two of the released isos of LDR i.e ldr-1.0 and ldr-1.06 both as live cd and in vmware . Although I had no good luck with the live cd due to issue with Nvidia driver but on vmware LDR was quite impressive.

As LDR is in the early stages of development I am not expecting lot from it . I will closely follow this distribution with hope that it will improve with time and will stand on its own feet rather than disappearing into obscurity like many other forks .

Best of luck to LDR . 

Mandriva Cooker is alive and shining !

We all know that Mandriva project,the Paris based Linux company, recently faced lot of troubles due to financial turmoil with rumours of the expected demise . But the things are not as bad as they were predicted and the project is actively working towards the expected new releases as announced on Mandriva mailing lists recently.

Mandriva has lived for years on my home computer but mostly with the stable release. With recent unfortunate events the upgrades I was getting on my Mandriva were quite slow so I decided to switch to "cooker". The decision was a bit risky because cooker is not meant for production machines but I took the risk and I am not regretting it.

I am running cooker on daily basis and as expected I am getting loads of updates daily with occasional glitches which are normal with cooker but which get fixed easily . All the packages are latest e.g Firefox 4.0b7 and I am enjoying every bit of using Mandriva with cooker.

I am expecting that next stable release will be good enough to make us forget the bad days we faced with Mandriva in past many months.