Thanks to everyone for their advice and suggestions about RAM usage! I'm currently following atolboo's tip about KInfoCenter and am keeping an eye on how much RAM is being used in different situations.

I think I'm worrying about something I don't need to -- especially since the computer is responsive / quick enough for my taste. I will keep Michiel's suggestion about XFCE in mind for the future, if necessary. (I've used XFCE a tiny bit, but don't know my way around it very well).

My Pardus 2009 is still working well for me, and continues to impress me. I allowed the Package Manager to perform a large auto-update (approx. 250 MB) yesterday and it went fine. It even included a kernel update. I was slightly surprised that after the update completed, the system did not prompt me to reboot the computer. I did it anyway, and the GRUB menu list showed an entry for the new kernel (which had been added automatically). I booted into the new kernel without any problems.

If there are kernel updates, does PiSi usually prompt you in some way that you must reboot?

I'm starting to feel a bit more comfortable with KDE 4, but still have lots to learn. Pardus is making the experience more pleasant. 

Hi, James,

Thanks for the heads-up. I installed a bundle of TeX Live [TL] packages last night; I opted for more rather than less, so it was a big download: approx. 540 MB. It took a while to download and install, but everything seems to be OK. (IIRC, installing the complete TeX Live setup takes up ca. 1 GB of hard disk space).

It's nice that Pardus's TL is so current: 2008. I also installed Kile 2.1 (which has made some changes to its toolbar and menus) and Texmaker. I didn't have much time to experiment with them but I'll test them more thoroughly in the next few days.

It looks like KBibTeX and pybliographic are not in the 2009 repos, so I was glad to see JabRef and installed it. I've never used it before, so that's something else new to learn ...

Thanks again,
=david

Hi, trixon and atolboo,

Thanks to both of you for the tip about the first update. I've just done that and it went fine (or so it appears). But I am going to wait before I install a bunch of new applications until I can read some more and get more comfortable with KDE 4's layout.

I successfully installed Pardus 2009 last night and wrote a brief post about my experience:

http://worldforum.pardus-linux.nl/index.php?topic=3076.0

Hi, Lisa,

Thanks to you, too. The cat in your avatar looks a lot like our cat Eeyore. She was a good cat who, unfortunately, died unexpectedly on Aug. 1 (probably from a heart attack or massive stroke). It was a shock and we still miss her very much. We adopted her from a shelter, so we don't know her exact age -- she was likely around 6 or 6.5 years old. She was probably about 1 year old when she came home with us.

We got her as a birthday present for our son when he turned 5. He was going through a Winnie the Pooh phase, and had already decided that her name would be Eeyore -- even though she was called "Taffy" at the animal shelter (because of her color). We tried to reason with him by explaining that Eeyore is a boy's name, and she was a girl cat and that name wouldn't fit ... but he was determined to stick with "Eeyore." So she became Eeyore.    

I'm impressed with Pardus so far. One area of concern I have now is with RAM use; I have 1 GB of RAM (the maximum this old mobo allows) and according to the Sysinfo panel, only 27 MB of RAM are free. (And only Firefox is running). I have disabled Desktop Effects, so I'm not sure if this amount of RAM usage is typical for KDE 4 ... Have others noticed that KDE 4 is more RAM-hungry than 3.5.x?

I have not seen jerkiness with the video or extremely slow scrolling; I'd say that so far, the system is not snappy, but has been fairly responsive.

Thanks,
=david

Hi, everyone,

Yippee! I'm posting this message from my fresh Pardus install.

Tonight I was able to successfully install Pardus 2009 in some empty space on my /sdb. (I deleted Fedora 9 Sulphur, which reached its End of Life [EOL] in July or August, in order to make room). The installation process took about 40 minutes on this hardware; the YALI installer is very user-friendly and made it a pleasant experience. I chose to manually partition and basically followed the installation instructions given in the Wiki.

I followed the installer's recommendation and put GRUB on the MBR of /sda. Pardus auto-detected my Ubuntu setup on /sda (and I've just verified that I can boot into it OK), but for some reason it did not detect my PCLinuxOS installation on /sdb, so it does not appear in GRUB's menu list at bootup. (I will work on trying to fix that tomorrow).

< Edit: My bad.  Pardus did correctly auto-detect my PCLinuxOS installation, and I can boot into it. The entry was in the menu list all along; due to the way the list was displayed, the entries appeared to stop with my Ubuntu setup (with entries for the 3 most recent kernels and their recovery mode). It was late and I didn't realize that pressing the [Down Arrow] key would take me to the PCLOS entries further down the screen.

So atolboo was correct when he said that Pardus would detect the other installed systems. Again, my apologies for not realizing this. >

I had to do some very minor configuration in order to activate my wired Ethernet connection. Other than that, I think almost everything else was automatically set up. (Tomorrow I will test out more peripherals, such as printer, flatbed scanner, etc.).  

The "Kaptan" Welcome Wizard at first login is a nice feature, and I give it five stars. Right now, I'm at the stage of "Wow, I can't believe it was that easy to install" and also "Wow, why did the KDE 4 developers move everything to a different place? Lots of stuff is not where I expect it to be*!#!" I will hope that the learning curve is not too steep ...

I obviously need more time to reach a conclusion, but I think Pardus deserves wider attention and more praise. Congratulations again to Pardus's developers and everyone else who has helped with it! I am impressed with how polished it seems to be. Thanks to everyone on the forum who has helped me thus far,

=david
 

Hi, bubbel and csaenemy,

Thank you both for your words of welcome; I appreciate it. Last night I finished the housecleaning and backing up of my hard drive; tonight or Saturday I'll do the necessary partitioning and try to install Pardus.

I believe I have a good burn; the md5sum was verified and I popped in the CD and did the Media Check step. The installer said it was OK. I've printed off installation instructions from the Wiki, so now it's a matter of keeping my fingers crossed ...

If it works, I expect that I'll need to have my hand held with KDE 4. I read someone's analogy that becoming familiar with KDE 4 is like learning to drive a car where they have changed the location of the gearshift, the headlight dimmer switch -- maybe even the accelerator pedal (?). Hopefully I will find out whether my old hardware is capable of running KDE 4.

Hi, rotistmeinname,

Thank you for correcting my mistake. Sorry, I must have misread that GRUB2 was the default bootloader. I'm not disappointed; I'm relieved that Pardus uses the older version of GRUB. It will be easier for me to fix if something goes wrong.

Danke f"ur Ihre Hilfe.

Hola, waf,

Gracias por la bienvenida y también por la información acerca de Texmaker. I have previously used Texmaker as my LaTeX editor in Ubuntu and Fedora. I think Kile has a few more features than Texmaker, but they are both good programs. (I've experimented some with AucTeX but since my Emacs skills are basic, I have to depend on an IDE that is more GUI-fied).

Saludos cordiales,
=david 

Hi, atolboo,

Thank you again! It's great that TeX Live is available. Typesetting with LaTeX is one of my hobbies and I rely on it for my important documents.

Hi, atolboo,

Thank you for your welcome and your encouragement. It sounds like there is a good chance of GRUB2 automatically detecting everything. I will definitely try to install Pardus.

I am not an expert on legacy GRUB or at disk partitioning, since I don't distro-hop regularly. So I rely on the distro's installer to correctly configure the initial setup. I know from firsthand experience that it's frustrating and scary when you can't boot your OS. The Super GRUB Disk has saved me several times.

Met vriendlijke groeten,
=david

Hello, everyone,

I hope to install Pardus 2009 very soon, and that it will run well on my older hardware. I've read that Pardus has the reputation of being user-friendly and having an excellent implementation of KDE 4. I saw some positive reviews of Pardus that got me interested in it -- especially the article by Caitlyn Martin posted at DistroWatch (10 Aug. 2009).  

Like some others here, I'm an older Linux user (about to turn 52) -- or to use a more politically correct initialism -- an MLU [Mature Linux User]. That sounds better than "over the hill" or "decrepit."   I'm not completely new to Linux; I've used it at home since 2007 and am currently running Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron, PCLinuxOS 2009 and Fedora 9 Sulphur. I switch back and forth between KDE and GNOME, and don't have a strong preference for one over another. I have minimal experience with the XFCE desktop environment. But I feel like I really need to take the plunge and become familiar with KDE 4, since this is where the future is headed. (And if my hardware allows it, I feel I should gradually make the transition to KDE 4 as my everyday work environment).  

Even if Pardus does not work out for me, I think that the Pardus developers should be congratulated for an admirable accomplishment -- as well as the Turkish government, for making a commitment to open source software. It's amazing that they have been able to create a distro from scratch, without basing it on Debian or Fedora or some other big Linux distribution.

I wish Pardus and its users continued success and happiness. I will keep my fingers crossed that I can get it to install and run. (If it works, you'll certainly see me asking questions in the forum).

=david

Hello, again,

I have taken a look at the Pardus Wiki (congratulations, it has lots of good information) and read the post below, but I am not sure whether Pardus 2009 includes TeX Live. (I did see Kile listed, so I am assuming that there is some sort of LaTeX distribution available).

Is TeX Live available in the repositories? Or are you still using teTeX?
(I don't want to sound critical; if teTeX is the only choice, that is completely OK with me).

http://worldforum.pardus-linux.nl/index.php?topic=2366.0
"Pardus 2009."

Thanks / Te,sekk"urler,
=david

Merhaba,

I hope this is the right section for this question ... I just registered today and this is my first post to this User Forum.

I have not yet installed Pardus 2009 International but I am almost ready. (I need to do some housekeeping first, such as backing everything up and repartitioning my second hard drive). I'm trying to do some research about Pardus and GRUB2 before I commit to the install.

If I understand correctly, the GRUB2 bootloader is used as the default in Pardus 2009. I have two hard drives and run three different distros on them (Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy on /hda, PCLinuxOS 2009 and Fedora 9 Sulphur on /hdb).

My question is this: Could users here comment on how successful / accurate GRUB2 is at detecting previously installed Linuxes? If I install Pardus's GRUB2 to the MBR, is there a good chance that it will auto-detect my other installs and boot them without problem? 

If necessary, I am willing to manually edit GRUB2's equivalent of the old menu.lst file, but it would be nice if the auto-detection allowed everything to "just work." (From my Web browsing, it seems they have redesigned GRUB2 from the ground up -- even to the point of changing legacy GRUB's partition numbering scheme [which already confused me enough]  ).

I have read the two threads below but would like some additional information, if possible:

http://worldforum.pardus-linux.nl/index.php?topic=2093.0
"[solved] Problems with Grub."

http://worldforum.pardus-linux.nl/index.php?topic=1844.msg8236#msg8236
"No chance to boot Pardus 2008."

Thanks for any advice you can offer. Te,sekk"ur ederim,
=david