steppenwolf1984

Its like, ya know, like just sooooooo powerful, like, ya know?....totally

Writer, editor and desktop publishing among other things. Not really a typsetter or layout artist but some of the books Im editing might as well be written on Notepad, and freelance clients are usually thankful and impressed if you give them a ms. back with impovements in fonts and layout. Makes it easier to work on sometimes as well. Speaking of which, is a macro the best solution for running a consistent (new) format for scripts (screenplay or stage)? Havent gotten to the point of being disgusted enough to stop simply using TAB key or preset indents. Or does someone know of a program that provides script specific templates? As far as word processing in general, I think its a matter of preference. Some apps are more WYSIWYG, and then there are many people more comfortable (ack!) writing on TEX , LATEX environments. I tend to work visually rather than by any sense of coding , so I need the most intuitive, visual WYSIWYG I can find. With the most options for on the fly troubleshooting and formatting. To me, Abi Word is not as full featured as , say, Writer, but I admit I haven't used it for that much in order to test its limits or lack thereof...

Excellent link! One more question....Knowing that the Drake (ubuntu) is on its way, would it make sense to set up an ubuntu system with Kubuntu Hedgehog as the base and (if it would work) packages from Ubuntu (which Im afraid might be Warthog)?!? Or wait till the latest release and get a Kubuntu version of the newest? Would an upgrade to the latest be painless or is it better to just install the new one clean?

Have you recently added or changed hardware? My first Mandrake install was ultra sensitive to things like loose connections, cards not installed as securely as possible. It was a good thing too, because it led me to figure out my heatsink was loose. Windows just carried on with an occasional inexplicable crash or freeze. Mandrake gave warnings about temp etc that led me to the problem. Any loose connection can play havoc with your system....

As someone who kind of relies on word processors to make a living, Ive always thought - as some have already said - of Abi Word as a deluxe Notepad. I know its got a bit more but if you need to Word Process with a capital WP, and give it to others using M$...its Open Office all the way. Which, btw, Im beginning to prefer over M$Office, for its stability and not-as-trigger-happy mouse response that was driving me crazy in Word. Just highlight these two words her------hey, hEY! WAIT! STOP!!! NO, dont Highlight the whole THIRTY PAGES!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhh! ....sums up MS Word, imo......

Three, definitely. "Don't you dare threaten my fuzzy touchy feelies about a distro I can actually install! and use! " is the word of the day among some mods there. As to ambiguities in licensing, alot of it happened so long ago it makes you wonder why the touchiness persists. It was enough to make me go home and configure a dual boot with Fedora because at least Fedoras established and full of knowledgeable users world wide who aint afraid to bash deficiencies in the distro. User boards, imho, are part of what makes Linux work, and what helps users getting their systems workable. LOL, this is the first time ive ever been censored for asking about the GPL on a linux board...and Ive been censored plenty of times in a number of countries about a variety of things.... Last word on those boards? Mepis Lovers is a wank site for self congratulatory stroke sessions....Mepis.org Forums are at least somewhat willing to engage and have lots of backlogs of old discussions and posts...but Jeez, they do know they're getting all wet over an OPERATION SYSTEM, dont they? Sheesh Some people need to be strapped to a chair, with their eyelids pinned open and forced to watch Fight Club on endless loop for a weekend or so.... "We are the all-singing, all dancing crap of the world..." I am Jacks distro, I make Jack intolerant and loopy.

Will give it a try....I normally run KDE on FC, so does gnome volume control still apply? Just (re)installed FC again on the laptop (WOOT!) as a dual boot with Mepis...and pretty much went along with the Workstation Default, except for a few packages that I didnt want to install later - like KDE - so I dont think my install choices are blocking the sound...will let y'all know if it works.

Those penguins are going faster. Im not imagining things, they are...they re going faster...!

I also experimented with trying to load ubuntu packages from the ubuntu install cd onto my kubuntu....no luck. Is Ubuntu one of those distros that are absolute heaven when youre on line and useless when you surf the net only sporadically? I'd like the option to upgrade online or add on from cds, even if its not the latest of the latest. Leave heat seeking to missiles, imho.....

Checked the switches and for the life of me, I cant find alsaconf, even by reinstalling every alsa package I can get my hands on....alsa libs, alsa utils, you name it...where would I get alsaconf on CL if it says no such file or directory exists at present? Does anyone think maybe Im loading conflicting packages when I custom choose during install? Would a straightforward Workstation for example make a difference? I get sound on the desktop but not the laptop....grrrrr.

Whatever you do, stay away from the Mepis Lovers site! Er, unless you're into touchy feely, self congratulatory, "Mepis is cool!" ad nauseum... Its not for newbs, its for lobotomy patients.... Excuse me for a moment, I have an extreme urge to go off and burn a life size effigy of Harry Potter.... (Leaves)

FYI and BTW....within a couple of hours after opening up the discussion of GPL status and Mepis, both Mepis Lovers and Mepis. org locked the discussion, with Mepis Lovers going so far as to say a forum wasnt the place to ask questions about "Warren" and the GPL. Am I losing it or is that "community" known for loopy and blind devotion?!?! For a hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil fanaticism that belongs to a locked ward or a seminary? Reeks of Bad Craziness to me.....

Guess that pretty much exhausts that topic, eh? What other trouble can we get into?

I got the impression in the Stallman biography (Free as in Freedom, I think is the title) that Trolltech has two Qt libraries...one open source (such as the one used by KDE) and one that is not 'open source.' The Installer and the Mepis OS utility are not open, and I would assume that means they are based on a proprietary Qt lib available from Trolltech under a QPL license. It seems a couple of people got my point on the Mepis boards amid the general panic and defensiveness, that "Hey, I want to know what "license" or EULA Im agreeing to here..." I aint that much of a purist to turn down all 'non-free' packages. When I grow up, though, Im gonna install a pure Debian system , so I know I'll never get left in the lurch by a distros lack of transparency, or using a system that could fork into pure proprietary mode. :P Fortunately, the trend seems to be going in the opposite direction nowadays. As a KDE user, I admire Trolltechs work, and have to admit that Mepis IS a good looking and efficient distro. Just too bad when the FUD seems to come from within the community because they wanna protect some sacred cow or other. I thought it was an operating system! Not like the way of life that Mandriva is of course.....

Im starting to feel like Karen Silkwood asking "Why do I glow in the dark?"...LOL. There seems to be a link to Trolltech and their non-GPL Qt license where they have two libraries avialable, a GPL compliant one and a nonGPL compliant, "closed source" one, for developers who wish to use it. An excellent point though, about the installer not being part of the distro once its installed. As for copyrights, the kernel is copyrighted by Linus, but he didnt PATENT it so as to prevent others from utilizing it freely in devlopement. A copyright allows him to claim intellectual ownership and to protect the name. Its not only common, its smart. Strange thing is, Mepis Lovers user board got downright frigid when I posted a request for info on source code. A "this is NOT the place for such things" attitude that struck me as a bit over the top and cultish. Actually got some discussion from Mepis.org however. Top Debian figures like Bruce Perens freely mention Mepis as a distro from the Debian fold, and many "complaints" are based on misunderstanding of open source, free and the GPL conditions. Don't people at Mepis Lovers know that such stonewalling, "Problem?What Problem? Theres no problem" tactics actual create more FUD than asking a simple question, like : Is source code available for the installer, or Is the distro still using a GPL license? Makes me glad theres a user board like this one where we can discuss just about anything....well, ANYTHING actually.... and occaisonally argue if it helps to illustrate different sides of an issue. Its got a funky ' Mandriva users....its not just for Mandriva users anymore....' feel. Keep on rocking in the free world

Integrated chip that reads as via 87(?)xxx or AC97, I keep forgetting the name cause im at work and the box is home. Its a Fujitsu notebook Amilo Pro v7010. Ive been wondering if this has anything to do with my choosing packages rather than allowing a default install. Ive certainly botched many a Mandriva install by selecting pkgs..... but there are so many posts on FC sites about sound that Im pretty sure its not just a rare card (its not) or my own screwup. FC3 worked on my desktop, which also had an integrated card....

Just did some further checking and it seems to stem from a KDE developer being obnoxious in his request for code from Mepis' Warren....who subsequently went off on the manners of some open source folk and that the GPL produces this kind of behavior. Cept that was in 2003 and there are still no links for the code...although GPL gives the code owner SIX MONTHS to supply it. As I thought, the GPL covers a lot of ground best translated by a lawyer. Its not so much whether the installer is closed or open but of making the status clear... before people think theyre dealing with the "usual" conditions usually applied when discussing Linux and the GPL, and come up with a brick wall when they need the code for the installer or other vital component of an OS.... Wondering what , if anything , is more recent regarding open source status.

Not sure exactly what this means, but heres a link to the source code, given in an official Mepis Users PDF.... ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/ No sign of Mepis there. Personally I dont mind things like Adobe 7 on a distro or the nvidia drivers and stuff that pop up from "proprietors" but I worry when something like the system installer (which is really a great advance, rivalled only by an MDK installer) is removed from the open source community, and answers are either not forthcoming or evasive... Either I'm misunderstanding the GPL or something fishy is really going on....

Hmn, reading over the GPL it seems that there is room for flexibility. What I understood from the accusations had to do with the Mepis Installer primarily... an excellent install tool in this case, that has had its source code withdrawn. Will check a bit further, but perhaps the accusations were either premature, or a misunderstanding of what the GPL actually says. The GPL is included in their manual so.... am curious now though about how much of the Mepis code is available, and why it was parts of it were withdrawn.

Sometime later.... Ive put FC up. Twice. Now my second box has Mepis. What can I say? I just want SOUND...IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK??!!? Scuse me. I got carried away. I agree with the ideals behind Fedora and will go without mp3 and maybe even DVDs on my laptop till I can set em up. But sound? After days and days of trying and only setting off an alarm sound, Im giving FC a rest. For now... Come to think of it, I have sound....it just sounds like an electric alarm clock and doesnt stop. Sigh.

Ok, ok, I may be a little slow on the uptake but I just found out that Mepis is questionable on Open Source lines. That some of the Mepis specific code is no longer open and only was open briefly. I can ignore the donations to the US Military from Mepis, and the Mepis grumbles about the GPL, but to actually have your Linux distro as a semi-closed-source may just cause me to ditch the best distro (at least during the early infatuation stage) ive installed in a while ; in terms of quick configuration and usability.... Am trying to keep politics out of my software, when possible, but any linux distro that doesnt release source is kinda heading towards disqualification as a linux distro, aint it? Meaning Linux as GNU?Linux, and Debian style linux; I know the Linux part is basically just the kernel.... Any feedback or info on this?!?! [moved to "Everything Linux" by arctic]

Belated follow up....as a total newb, especially to "apt-get" , my first updating and adding packages experience with Mepis (live and online! a first, thanks to laptops) was phenomenally smooth and easy. The non-us repositoires and the error messages were gotten rid of with a kdesu kdeedit on CLI....and removing broken packages is also a snap...

Sorry I havent gotten back, but you know when you have those posting frenzies and you lose track of how many threads youre on?! Ive heard that happens to some people but I wouldnt know about it personally.... :P Anyway, Puppy was interesting. Automatically creates a "home" file of 256mb, which defaults first to FAT 32 ?! Good Puppy...bite the Windows! but can be stored on ext2 or ext3 as well...at least theres no worries about saving changes etc. Its also, according to docs, based on Debian, as opposed to Knoppix Debian. In addition theres a Puppy Unleashed package to add onto it if you wanna install it, the usual pup-get, er, apt-get.... and even a bare bones puppy without mozilla and abiword in case space or download is a problem. The main complaint I have is the look...it chooses this retro Win95 ffvm desktop. If I were nostalgic for Windows I d use windows. DSL *looks* better but Pup seems more functional and option laden, including configuration of your mouse, etc. Definitely look into it, as I havent delved too deep. My ideal I guess would be a Puppy with the options of DSL and Slax. Let me know how plain Deb goes....Ive fallen in love/lust with Mepis but I think its a sign to explore Debian.....

That makes alot of sense, seeing how many distros went up, then down, on my lone desktop box, always to be replaced by Mandrake...again. Which is why Im not touching the MDK. Its home and its comfortable and its got more than what I need. I figured getting a laptop was the experiment box...but if Mepis is any indication at all of Debian life (which it may not be) I am very impressed and have always been drawn to Deb. If the enthusiasm cools, I may look into loading Sarge on the laptop and become bipackageable....RPM and DEB. Kinky eh? I'd like to know at least two very different systems in Linux and with Mandriva as a constant, I figure the other will be either Deb or Slack. Slax is a great little cd, so - even knowing that -with Slackware- it's tar packages out the wazoo- i figure if it doesnt kill me, ill chalk it up to experience. Mepis does make me wonder though....how a little one disk job can be so ready to go when nearly everything else out there has 'issues' whether its sound, or USB, or dvd or....hopefully, in its way, mepis proves to be an industry benchmark for the next wave and we'll see more out of the box readiness ?! Of course, instead of changing distros on ones puter, one could always just buy more puters.... :P

Better late than never...Just installed MEPIS on a new Fujitsu laptop and am blown away. After waffling between FC, SUSE, Ubuntu mostly...I can honestly say ive never seen this level of hardware detection and simplicity of install. And when I toted the box to a broadband connection to use synaptic?!?!? Pure magic. Im not loading it on my main box where the MDK resides, since I m using mandriva as my stable home system, but ...damn , its tempting. I dont know if I have ever gone this gonzo over a distro before.....