XUbuntu on Jetway j7f2

[pab10]

Greetings!

I'm using Xubuntu 6.10 on Jetway J7F2 (been installed for a few days now, installed fine first time apart from no via CN700 graphics drivers)

First I'd say I like it, seems a good distro, especially choosing a lightweight desktop manager xfce which I was using on fedora, but... (apart from the question of subverting/usurping debian which would be a bad thing)

1. Xubuntu when the volume control is touched using any mixer application sound packs up shortly afterwards (on via 8237R AC97)

was also getting bad interference on audio until I set XFCE to manage the desktop which is what I think cleard it up, now all RF type noise has gone.

ALSA works fine until the mixer/volume (even using the volume control on xmms) is adjusted when sound just stops working shortly (about a minute which is v.weird...???) afterwards (I have tested this repeatedly).

Is this fixed in XUbuntu Fiesty? I noticed an article that said sound was broke in fiesty KUbuntu

2. why does Xubuntu do a DNS lookup for google.com after boot/reboot before you even log on or start any apps? Just does a DNS lookup nothing else (I could see...)

(well its one way to pad google's DNS stats..)

Ubuntu seems to occaisionally do DNS lookups on google even if firefox (or any net applications) has not been loaded, about every 30 minutes

also noticed a secure connection to google being made after starting firefox for first time, yet my browser is set to load blank page, I certainly did not ask for it to connect to google, is that firefox or ubuntu's version doing that?

3. is it possible to incorporate a package for the via graphics drivers its a pain to build it each time a kernel is upgraded (via packages) or whatever

VIA have released some XOrg driver source on their website (via arena) that at last supports CN700 and compiles OK can that be included?, it seems to work quite well, but GLXgears while working a lot better complains that 3d driver claims it does not support visual 0x58 and a load of others (not sure what that means exactly)

Or... would it be better to package the openchrome drivers?

I was impressed to see GXINE was only using 20% CPU on a C7 processor with CN700 graphics (Via's drivers) while playing mpeg4 (much better than on FC6 with previous version of drivers from via) but then it started locking up the whole machine for some reason, I dont know what I did but it started working again (after installing mplayer I think or maybe something else like recompiling the drivers again??) but mplayer complains it was not compiled with mp3lib (I see its from an extra repository...) while trying to play some avi files.