MEPIS Community Forum

I'm on Simply MEPIS 8.5.03 64 bit, running on an Intel E5200 dual core at standard 2.5 GHz clock, 2 GB RAM; MEPIS is installed in a 20 GB partition on a drive of its own along with a 4 GB swap partition and 60+ GB /home partition, with Windows XP (Home, SP3) on a separate drive. I chose this version of MEPIS because I only have a CD-RW drive, not a DVD burner or reader, the only USB drive I have is my cell phone (which I'm a little wary of possibly damaging) -- and the newer versions won't fit on a CD. I'm looking at Linux distros because I can't afford the gate price to upgrade to Windows 7 (for which I'd have to learn a completely new interface anyway, compared to XP), while upcoming Windows 8 looks like it's planned around the obsolescence of desktop computers.

Background: I'm not a computer noob; I got my first DOS machine in 1987, once ran Windows 3.0 on a 10 MHz 8088 with 4.5 MB RAM, 256k VGA, and dual 40 MB hard disks. and bought my last complete system for myself around 1989 (a Laser 286 which has been continuously upgraded from 286-12 MHz, 1.5 MB RAM, DOS 5.0 to the current system listed above). I was once a DOS guru, capable of low-level formatting an MFM or RLL hard disk from memory, and used a remote command-line UNIX system in the 1986-1987 time frame (though I've forgotten everything I knew then beyond basics like cd, rmdir, makdir, and so forth). MEPIS is my second Linux attempt; I fought with Mint 11 64 bit for two weeks, trying to get current versions of my preferred browser, getting dumped out to the login prompt or even to a hard start while trying to do ordinary things, etc.

Since the first day I installed MEPIS, I've had auto-detected working sound, but the first time I play a sound from a particular app (including the login sound), I get a message that "The audio playback device PulseAudio does not work" and (ALSA?) is falling back to HDA nVidia (ALC888 Analog) -- this is a "6 stack" on-motherboard sound system. This works okay, but it's single-track sound hardware, so I can't (for instance) hear Yahoo! Games sounds while on a Skype call (which combination I use three or four times a week). I've tried everything I can think of and every online solution I can find that appears applicable to MEPIS or Debian, without any change. I can (of course) get rid fo the message by moving PulseAudio down the list below direct hardware, but the inability to mix sound in software is annoying (this has worked in Windows since at least Win95). The inability to get a standard package item to work is significantly more so; it was this kind of bugginess in a "just works" distro that led me to wipe Mint 11 64 bit in favor of Simply MEPIS (though I admit, after trying both, I like the look of KDE better than Gnome). Given I also can't seem to find a Flash Player package that will install (this one appears insoluble due to 64 vs 32 bit library conflicts -- so no YouTube etc.), I'm wondering if I should reinstall with 32 bit MEPIS, try 32-bit Mint, or look for another distro entirely.

To avoid all that, how the heck can I get PulseAudio to work correctly in this distro? I'll ask in another subforum about Flash Player.

This is OLD from Mepis 7 but it shows some libs etc you might check for in Synaptic package manager to see if you have all the dependencies needed. > http://www.mepis.org/docs/en/index.php? ... PulseAudio Jerry
PS: also... Danum or someone on this forum posted a how-to upgrade from 8.5 to 11.0 sometime ago so maybe they will post. I searched for it but it was unable to find it.

Given I've used Synaptics to completely uninstall and reinstall PulseAudio at least twice, I'm pretty sure I'm okay on dependencies. What I suspect is that one of the libraries has a version mismatch, and I have no idea how to tell if Synaptics doesn't catch it.

FWIW, after posting above that I'd given up on Flash Player, it's started partially working -- I can open YouTube video pages in Firefox and view the videos either in a window or full screen (including at least the lower HD options, haven't tried higher resolutions), but only if I open them in a new tab, and I can't close those tabs without instantly crashing Firefox (3.5.6, plug-in shows as Shockwave Flash 11.0r1). Still doesn't work at all in SeaMonkey 2.4.1 (YouTube gives a message saying to upgrade to Flash 10), though I don't think I'm completely legit running SeaMonkey from the folder I extracted the tarball into (haven't moved it because I don't know where would be better, or why it works at all this way).

If I decide to upgrade to 11, I can work around lack of a DVD drive -- my girlfriend has a DVD burner, I can transfer the ISO through my network, burn a DVD on her machine, and then temporarily install a currently out of service DVD drive via one of my USB external IDE enclosures (they're made for 3.5" HDDs, but they'll run a DVD drive with the housing open). Worst case, I can open the case and temporarily connect the DVD reader in place of my CD-RW drive. It'd be a weekend project to install 11, though, and then I'd have to start over configuring everything and working around a whole new set of bugs.

Have you had a look at the 8.5 manual available from the tab at the top of this forum and the wiki?. There is some good info in both covering your audio and video dilemmas. Upgrading to 11.0 is probably a better choice in the long run though as most of the packagers are using it and they have to think backwards for 8.5 fixes. Jerry

Yes, I went there before coming here. The problem isn't that I have no sound (which is covered adequately); it's that my sound is bypassing pulseaudio and going direct to hardware because the installed pulseaudio doesn't work. In fact, I've been researching this for several days before posting here.

I'll look around at whether there's a method of upgrading to 11 without a DVD drive; otherwise, it's literally going to be ten to twelve hours of hardware surgery and trying to get a Vista machine to read drives shared from XP to get MEPIS 11 onto this machine (or else make a full backup of my phone's micro-SD card and find a way put the MEPIS 11 download on that). And am I correct in thinking that "upgrading" from 8.5 to 11 really means starting over fresh with the new system in the same location?

Sure is, you can use a USB thumb drive--that's how I installed on my netbook. Check the User's Manual for details.

And yes, you are recommended to backup and install fresh. Saving /home and using a different username is a good way to not have to do a backup since all of your data is saved. You then transfer the data from the old User to the new one.

But backup anyway. It's just a really good idea.

Okay, so if I install 11, will I finally be able to get Flash Player (10 or 11) to work right? Will pulseaudio work right? Or will I be spending yet another week, two weeks, or longer trying to get the latest and greatest to actually work, and still wind up with a system that doesn't work the way it should?

BTW, Jerry3904, as I mentioned up the thread a bit (it was buried in some dense text, probably easy to miss) the only "USB key" I have is the micro-SD card from my cell phone, either with the phone cabled to the computer or with the card extracted and loaded in a micro-SD reader that looks and acts like a USB key. This is possible, and probably less of a pain than temp-installing a DVD reader and getting Vista to burn a DVD (which would also require I get some DVD blanks), but I'd like to have some assurance that 11 will work better than 8.5 has so far before I go to the trouble. As things stand, I was better off with Mint; the biggest bugs I had there were Grub2 miscounting its autoconfigured menu entries and what I now suspect was an out of date Firefox crashing a lot (and I think I now know how to get SeaMonkey 2.4.1 on that system -- same way I did for MEPIS 8.5, just extract the tarball and drop the resulting folder in a convenient location, then make a desktop link/icon to the start script). Mint's packaged Flash Player installed and worked fine, instead of being blocked by Firefox as out of date and unsecure.

Of course, using an up-to-date Flash Player would be a lot easier if Adobe would package it as a .deb instead of only tarball, .rpm, or YUM encoded .rpm. Meanwhile, my Flash Player is gone again (quit working when I upgraded Firefox to get it to quit crashing any time I close a page with a Flash video on it), and I'm back to finding nothing works in terms of installing Flash 10 or 11. I found a "flash replacer" add-on, but while it will let me browse YouTube, it's pretty clunky to use.

Okay, I'll admit it -- much of the trouble I'm having is probably directly attributable to twenty years running Windows, starting with 3.0 (on an 8088 machine, at first), and getting too used to the vendor throwing literally billions of dollars at making it work smoothly (and still failing from time to time). I remember having some "fun" like this trying to get Windows 3.1 to behave, trying to get my first Internet dialers and Winsocks to work, etc. It's just disappointing that Linux seems to be running 15 years behind Windows, when the original Unix/X-Windows system (NeXT) dates back to before Windows 3.

I don't consider it 15 years behind Windows but rather 15 years ahead. As far as M-11 goes, if you do an install and enable the regular community repos you should have little to no trouble getting everything you want working to work. I don't have pulse audio installed as I don't really have need of it but all my multimedia stuff works and works superb. I watch videos of any flavor from any site and use download helper if I wish to save any. I use VLC media player but others work well also. In reference to getting M-11 you also have the option of purchasing a copy from the Mepis store for a small fee. Jerry
PS: By the way.... when was the last time you had to wait for your Linux machine to do security or other updates before you were allowed to use it ?.

Found a link that you might find useful >>> https://www.linux.com/news/hardware/dri ... t-doing-it