Persisted with Glinux but V1 needs more work to be reliable

Hi I have tried Granular on 3 different PC. Always had distro problems with broken packages. Managed to avoid or fix these problems as time went on. I really liked the visuals of Granular so persisted. However, after some problems kept the last two installs on Virtualbox on the other 2 PC and did a full install on my daughter IBM R31 notebook.
Problem 1 - broken install.
2,,Inability to work with trackpoint - goes crazy had to revert to external mouse.
3,,Asus USB wireless would not work using ndiswrapper until I used install disk. PCLinuxos worked straight out of the box.
4..Finally, for some reason unbeknown, its started to have flakey boots - sometimes goes, others stops after a few lines on intialize code after Grub.

Sadly, I will have to put Granular aside. Look forward to version 2 whenever that may come about.

See mine and others threads on this forum. I am not trying to knock the distro, Im trying to get the message across its a brilliant distro except for some serious problems. Bring on V2.
Cheers,
Al.

Alistair,

Thank you for pointing out these issues, I'll check out as soon as can
I wount be able to check the trackpoint, simply because i dont have one right now.
But I'll try to find one.

As for the V2, we are hard on it. But the development on Unity Linux is still heavily active,
on which V2 will be based.

Yatin

Re the bootup problem previously mentioned. The Thinkpad is grub boot Granular, Granular Safe, Winxp. Error message which happens 80% of time (otherwise boot is fine) is:
[Linux-initrd @ 0x1f572000,0x24dd52 bytes]

Dont expect the hex code to be of use, but assume that its a problem reading init.cfg?
Have scanned the full disk for errors.

Googles mentions acpi errors. So I thought sometimes bios settings go a bit flakey. Oddly, bios can look the same in settings screen but there can be bits that are contrary. I have proved this before with several PC simply by resetting bios can cure some problems; even a reset of a previously reset can work!
So tried this (press BIOS settings key on boot, and reset all to default) and since have been able to boot success 3 x.
If thats not the case will report here again. But now if I could only get the trackpoint on the R31 to work properly, as the mouse works flakey as well!
Cheers,
Alistair.

Hi,
I have had the broken package problem, but for me, it was one single package that had an upgrade that didn't want to install. I forget which package it is (perhaps I'll do an install in VirtualBox to find out which), but I fixed it by installing it's upgrade manually on the command line using apt-get , so no biggie here. Otherwise, everything is fine (except that, as you can see, I'm using the latest Firefox package from PCLOS because it's newer than the Granular Linux one). Looking forward to Granular Linux V2!!!

 The moment I feel I have a comfortable system going, I will try to put out a "PREVIEW" GranularV2 .iso, (if Anurag is still tied up) just to give everyone a small glimps of what's to come, but mostly so our community can have something more up-to-date to play with
 But, I'm going to wait until after Unity puts out the first publicly usable .iso of it's own

That preview is nice to know about. The 'fix' that I did on the IBM bios settings has stuck, and there are no more boot problems so far fingers 'X'd.
There is still a crazy mouse to deal with but thats irregular, but have noticed that when going to mouse settings that anything other than default do not stick.

Main thing is everyone is happy using the machine now, and its the only Linux machine which is working wifi without problems currently :-)

The moment I feel I have a comfortable system going, I will try to put out a "PREVIEW" GranularV2 .iso, (if Anurag is still tied up) just to give everyone a small glimps of what's to come, but mostly so our community can have something more up-to-date to play with
 But, I'm going to wait until after Unity puts out the first publicly usable .iso of it's own

I have been meaning to do a review of Granular for a while but with the problems previously mentioned did not think it fair as it might have been my hardware (which has proven true), and the package concern which is ongoing.
Also I've been sidetracked by other projects.

Suggestion
Cairo dock is used by several who use Granular including self, and would humbly suggest that its included as a default in the upcoming version. Perhaps a vote on this would be of use? Why I suggest is that Cairo adds icing on the cake of your amazing distro. Ive viewed around 20 Linux distros over the last months and Granular leads in most features and so easy to install. Its a clever combination of good software choices, general stability, and ease of use. For a first time user, to see Cairo dock on the desktop would blow them away. If you decide, please make sure that the Cairo System option 'emulate transparency' is checked ;-) by default.
Kind regards,
Alistair.  www.alistairgeorge.com

Hi just swung by to see how the preview or development work on V2 was going - if anything?

 Design work has been going on in the background.
 Packaging / Development is back on track very shortly...
 Stay tuned 

Design work has been going on in the background.
 Packaging / Development is back on track very shortly...
 Stay tuned 

Fantastic. BTW I have it running on an old IBM notebook which is my 12 year old daughters. I asked her yesterday 'would you like me to reset it to Windows (XP)' she said 'no way, this is heaps better'.
Running V1 with Cairo dock. Rock stable, great Linux distro.

Gotta love kids... my kids love Linux too.

Hi just swung by to see how the preview or development work on V2 was going - if anything?

Before going to attend my office training, about 2 months ago, I released the first alpha of Granular 2.0 within the team itself (Granular and Unity). As I get back on development soon, I'll start working on the first public beta. A lot of packaging to be done till then.

Which reminds me, I'd be willing to contribute if you help me find a way to do so. I have limited knowledge of making RPMs, so updating what is already there and doing simple packages should be no problem. Also, I've been watching the forums to see if there is something I can try and help with, though I do not consider myself an expert in any way (though I am a quick study on the computers). Another thing is, I spend a lot of time on IRC, so if you want, I can help setup an IRC channel on Freenode. However, I'm probably going to have less time on the computer soon as I am trying to get a new job.

Which reminds me, I'd be willing to contribute if you help me find a way to do so. I have limited knowledge of making RPMs, so updating what is already there and doing simple packages should be no problem. Also, I've been watching the forums to see if there is something I can try and help with, though I do not consider myself an expert in any way (though I am a quick study on the computers). Another thing is, I spend a lot of time on IRC, so if you want, I can help setup an IRC channel on Freenode. However, I'm probably going to have less time on the computer soon as I am trying to get a new job.

In that case Piki, we would love to have you join our team. In fact, we have several small and easy packages in our repo waiting to be updated to their newer versions.

To get started with development, check out: http://wiki.granularlinux.com/en/StartPoint_Developers
To learn the basics of packaging (an easy tutorial by our ex team member): http://wiki.granularlinux.com/en/RPM_packaging_for_beginners

For information about our IRC channel, check my message in your Personal Messages.