Yellow Dog Linux

hi there,

here is short review of an YDL 4.1 installation on PB G4 Alu:

It seems to be a really good release. no trouble at all while installation or booting and a user-friendly installation process. In comparison to the 4.0 release there are some major improvements:

- backlight support
- USB devices are still alive after the sleep mode
- sound works out of the box

Good work Terrasoft! It comes to my mind an article of germans Linux User magazine, I think published jan. 2006, about installing Debian on an PB G4 - kernel compiling and no end, only to run a basic system. trouble at almost every stage....

For me, it remains only 2 big topics to resolve:

1. the keyboard isn't really good usable - above all I can't access the ALTernative characters. pressing the ALT key with another has no effect. I'm using 105-key generic layout (german) - tried several possiblities in KDE Controlcenter..
It's really annoying when programming (brackets,pipe,the curly braces...
does anyone have solutions for this?

2. sometimes the Funcitons Keys (brightness,volume,backlight control) are not longer working
/etc/init.d/pbbuttonsd status reports that is has still an PID but the service is not longer running.

but, generally spoken, it was worth waiting for the 4.1 release
best regards, harald[/list]

well running "/etc/init.d/pbbuttonsd restart" (or stop then start) should fix that problem when it fails.. Im not to sure on helping w/ the keyboard mapping

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=162622&highlight=keyboard

here is a little diskussion an the gentoo forum, also a user having questions how to make the german keyboard settings usable.

maybe you get some ideas.
(though being german I use the US layout, but I guess I have to figure this out too for my GF to use the iBook, but she's already used to stuff not working 100% )

thanks for the answers,

1. restarting the pbbuttonsd daemon will bring back the functionality - but the info - visualization on the background (volume control,backlight...) are gone forever

btw: I saw that actually on YDL (I assume on Fedora Systems) instead of

Code: Select all

/etc/init.d/pbbuttonsd restart

the command

Code: Select all

service pbbuttonsd restart

is preferred. Is there any difference, or is it only a convinient command?

2. Ok, now I understand. on the US keyboard the brackets and curly braces have their one key on the right side, while at the german keyboard it's only the alternative on keys 6 until 9.

but I found on good trick, at least for german keyboard map.
1. pressing the fn key and hold it
2. press the alt key hold it and release the fn key

now you have access to all ALT-GR keys as you know it from the PC world. hope it's useful for someone (at least for me it is )

harald

the visual stuff is called gtkbuttons