Is it possible to change the kdm login image? and if so how?

I noticed when looking through the repositories that mandriva uses a lot of gnome apps is it possible to delte kde and make mcnlive into a complete gnome distro. I use ubuntu on my laptop and have become very comfortable using gnome whereas I rarely ever use a distro that uses kde.

How do I get multimedia codecs, such as; mp3. mpeg...,and encrypted dvd support to work

If it is not possible to make mcnlive gnome, then would it be possible to remove all gnome files and apps and make mcn purely kde/

Is it possible to change "guest Login" into my own name and password.

will mcn work from a flash drive with 3 partitions, one partion containg th os, one containing the loob back and one empty so that I am able to save to it quickly and easily on any computer just by inserting my drive as usual.

theoreticaly, how hard and troublesome would it be to boot mcnlive from an external 40gig hard drive with only 400 or 500 megs being used for the os, an the rest of the drive used for a giant loop image. If this is possible it seems like it would be perfect for media. I could just go to a random computer plug in my hardrive and have several movies, and songs at my disposal.

thank you in advance for your help and insight.


Eric (texas)

Hi Eric,



KDE control center (run command: kcontrol) --> look & feel



All codecs and also video dvd support (libdvdcss) already included, should work. Not included RealPlayer Gold. Click up a browser, it is explained at the first or second site, where to get it.



That is a challenge. Basically the answer is yes. You can do it on-the-fly if you have enough RAM. At least 1 GB, I guess. You can use any computer to do this, the result will work also on every computer, it will stay a live system.

Steps.
- Logout from KDE. Login again, session: icewm
- Install gdm, the gnome login manager. In the MCC change the login manager to gdm
- now uninstall the kde apps.
- Make a remaster-on-the-fly
-From this remaster start again and install all gnome stuff you would like. Easiest way: su, urpmi task-gnome (or is it gnome-task?)
- Second remaster
Good luck, as I said, could be a challenge, maybe you would need more steps. :-D



MCC (Mandriva control Center) --> system ---> Manage user accounts



Yes. First partition must be a FAT partition to hold the base system (at least 400 MB), second partition a ext3 if you want to use a loop file
MS Windows can ONLY see the first partition on a flash drive, so you better make it bigger to use it also to exchange data. You can create dirs on the first FAT partition just as you like. Just don't delete the files needed for mcnlive.



That is exactly what I use here. An external USB drive with multiple partitions. (on a powered external hard drive MS Windows system have no problem to see multiple apartitions). First one a FAT32 with the mcnlive base system, second partition ext3 with a 2 GB loop file (the wizard is limited to create 2 GB files, and it is more than enough), and even more partitions ... Your normal documents are better stored on a normal partition, not in the loop file. You can access them very easy from within mcnlive.
You can even create virtualbox images which holds other Linux or Win OS ...

Unfortunately I don't have 1gig of ram only 512. I started the process and it seemed to work fine until I aborted it because i realized i was saving it all to the loop and thought that probly wasn't the best set up. is there any way to log into kde download all needed gnome files then log out of kde. log back into gnome and delete all kde apps. it seems like this option would work well if i can get around the ram requirement, but at the same time you know this distro a lot better than I do

I have that same problem. Is there someway a GNOME version could be released? or better documentation on how to switch?

I've managed to uninstall KDE, but GNOME isn't listed when I try to start a new session even though I selected it in the login manager

I am sorry, I have no idea why you can't start gnome. I have no experience with gnome -
one of the reasons that there is no gnome version. Second reason is that I just don't have enough time and would like to focus on stuff I know.

When you want to make a remaster, I would start without the cheatcode 'persist'.
Every change will be changed to RAM.

Here a trick when you are low with RAM.

Terminal:



(or replace the package name with something you want to install)

It will first only list all packages that it will install, and you would answer 'no'. Now you have the package names, in the terminal, you can scroll back if the list is long.

You can directly browse every official Mandriva mirror to fetch the packages one by one, in a folder you create on a HD partition, somewhere.
These are the main and contrib mirrors that are preconfigured in mcnlive:
ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Man...a/main/release/
ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Man...ontrib/release/

After you got all packages, in this special directory, navigate to this dir. Example, it is the dir 'texas' on the first partition on hda Terminal, and:




This will install all rpm's from the dir texas.

Just another note.

MCNLive uses KDE as a DE. Changing this to gnome (in LIVE mode) means a lot. A whole desktop environment.
On a normal to HD installed system this is no problem at all, when using mandriva. MDV comes with a pretty gnome version, as far as I know.

The problem really is the live system. And it is mainly a RAM problem.
For MCNLive we do have to make such a basic decision, which DE?

Releasing different versions of MCNLive would mean a lot of work!!. We just can't do this. At least I can't do this.