iphitus

Excel compatible often doesnt mean VBA compatible. AFAIK, only excel can do vba.

If you want to mimic the mac menubar (have application menus in it..):

http://www.gnomefiles.org/app.php/Mac_Menu..._GNOME_and_Xfce

And: Are they the real icons taken straight from leopard? If so, I'd suggest you remove them before you get the apple' legal team onto you and have the whole project shut down.

They've done it before: http://www.smh.com.au/news/mobiles--handhe...8709656280.html

James

With the sound one... the reason you get it intermittently is that the priority of sound cards is based on the order the drivers register them...

If you can, blacklist the module for the one you don't want to use. Thus, the other one will be the only one loading, and will become the default card.

As for the mouse.... imwheel shouldnt be needed if it's worked in the past, and I'd be surprised if it did much at all now it's so old. Do any other mice buttons exhibit the behaviour you want AussieJohn (eg wheel click, wheel left/right, other side buttons?)? You could swap them around with xmodmap if so.

I'm guessing based on the limited information for both, so I could easily be entirely wrong.

James

that printer one is odd. Unless your printer is networked, it should use loopback (127.0.0.1) and not your local IP to deal with cups.

File the bugs... might get fixed by 2010.

James

I know the student version of matlab only is licensed for the platform you buy it for.

There's no need to run any of them on wine, matlab has a linux version (not exactly free though), and the other apps mentioned were native.

Well, I managed to get my system close to its limits some weeks ago. Sharing some ten bittorrents at the same time while doing heavy graphical editing (200MB big mulit-layer files), having the webbroswer, email and instant messanger open and listening to music, my system started to choke a bit.

200mb files count's as very heavy usage :)

That said: I don't think that the swap=2xRAM rule is out of place. But maybe I am just an old paranoid guy...

I can't see how it makes much sense at all now.

128mb ram, 256mb swap

256mb ram, 512mb swap

512mb ram, 1gb swap

1gb ram, 2gb swap

2gb ram, 4gb swap.

4gb ram, 8gb swap

The 256/512 and 512/1gb are only ones that really work out well, but that's because they work out to a common sense size of 512-1gb. Either side of that, it becomes trash for the average system. Over 1gb ram and most peole could just go without swap altogether.

2* is an arbitrary function from another era, and has no technical merit now.

James

SWAP!

Too much? Doesnt hurt, but just unneccesarily wastes hdd space.

How much is suitable? The 2* rule is complete nonsense nowadays.

Swap is used

a- When memory hasnt been accessed for long periods of time so data can be evicted and memory used for other things

b- When memory usage is high.

But mostly for B. Swap usage is tunable, which means at what point a system will swap will may vary somewhat distro to distro.

So think of what applies to your usage.

For basic usage, web browsing, email, media playback, editing, etc, "b" isnt going to occur often, and "a" will depend on usage habits. So not much is needed. Unless you have >1gb ram, about 512mb is good as a fallback, but you could safely go with less.

For *frequent* heavy usage such as compiling, encoding, heavy multitasking, video/audio editing 3D games, heavy processing, it's best to have some swap, as both "a" and "b" will come into play, particularly "b". Here I'd suggest 1gb as a fairly good all round value.

Keep in mind, Low ram systems and 'extremely heavy' usage systems may need more. If you plan to use suspend, make swap equal to your ram. Though things scale here, higher load systems should and probably will have more ram, and much lower ram systems (<=256mb) should be running older or lighter or less software.

If you don't want to think about it, 1gb is a good easy default. On many systems and usage patterns it may be overkill but the hdd usage is generally insignificant.

James

me: I run both my laptop and desktop without swap happily, i don't do heavy stuff often, and my ram suffices when I do. Laptop currently has swap for suspend.

That is a good question. I think that I read somewhere that one may patent a code, but not a result. After all, there is more than one way to code a result, isn't there? (At least I hope there is!)

Lookin at it purely mathematically, there'll be a "best way" to perform a task. A single way that will be more optimised than any other routine that does the same thing on the same hardware.

http://www.archlinux.org/news/352/

http://www.archlinux.org/download/

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide

New installer release, first with our new repo layout as part of our ongoing cleanup, more wireless drivers at install time, and some more bugs fixed.

Our strong community is diverse and helpful, and we pride ourselves on the range of skillsets and uses for Arch that stem from it. Please check out our forums and mailing lists.

In the [testing] repository: Gnome 2.20, Xorg 7.3 and Kernel 2.6.23 should be there within 24 hours.

In the [extra] (stable repository): OpenOffice 2.3, KDE 3.5.7

http://share.iphitus.org/images/091007.png

http://share.iphitus.org/images/091007b.png

pekwm, xfce4-panel, opera, urxvt.

wallpaper is Discovery on the pad

Just shell access is fine. I'll grab the Arch CD now.

 

BTW iph: doesn't the Arch Live CD have HFS+ in the kernel? If anyone knows that answer to that, it should be you :P

It's kinda outta date. The new release of the live CD has been "soon" for a long time. I stopped working on it ages ago. It hasn't ceased... but it's been moving slowly.

The stock kernel has hfsplus, and im 95% sure that the install CD just uses the stock kernel, despite that, the ftp version is pretty small anyway.

James

Tried all the major live distros? Knoppix, Ubuntu, etc. They should compile it as a module at least.

What do you need it for? If it's just basic shell access, the Arch install CD has hfs+, and will boot straight to a command prompt. Small in size too if you get the ftp installer.

James

Windows .lnk's arent even filesystem level. They're just files scarecrow.

Mind if i ask, why do you need .lnk's so badly?

James

If you want scripts... i wrote some for arch, but I could probably port them with minimal fuss. Just some nice easy profile based scripts, with some limited detection support.

James

Well whaddaya know, I just had a look on the Mandriva download page and see the files:

Mandriva-Linux-2005-Limited-Edition-XBOX-Mini.xbox.iso [431 MB]

Mandriva-Linux-2005-Limited-Edition-XBOX-boot.xbox.iso [9 MB]

in for example the directory at http://www.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu/pub/mandrak.../iso/10.2/i586/

 

I've no idea what they are or how likely they are to work, but they're there for download and apparently explicitly mention the Xbox

They'll probably just boot and install like any other distro. Mandriva probably has install documentation

The only concern is that the 431 MB one says "mini" which implies it might have to download extra stuff when you install it.

XBoxes are x86 machines, so they'll probably be able to install regular packages after the install.

"APC", maybe you can get help from there?

APC is an australian computer magazine. Probably had an xbox distro on it's cover disc at some stage.

Looks cool. Is it completely pre-rendered though? otherwise its a waste of power.

USB gamepads/joysticks are generally as plug and play. The crash is probably an issue with the game, rather than how your joystick/gamepad is setup. Complain to where you got the game from.

James

There's probably a gnome devel lib needed too, try libgnome-devel. GTK is NOT gnome specific, so the gnome headers are in a seperate package, as they're entirely separate.

James

Take a closer look:

NAME
   touch - change file timestamps

SYNOPSIS
   touch [OPTION]... FILE...

DESCRIPTION
   Update  the  access  and modification times of each FILE to the current
   time.

It doesnt need an argument, just "touch somefile" to do what you want.

James

Sydney probably has a fairly active Linux User Group. Enquire with them, they'll have had experience with installfests, and will have a great many members willing to help. I think you'll have more success though if you offer a range of distros.

James

wonderful, is a such a great game.

I'm not sure on this, but I think some of the UI's already installed, will work with rar if you install the cli apps, rar/unrar. Best install them from rpms in the mandriva repos.

James

Arch has all the software you want available in it's package repositories and would run a treat on that hardware - though it'd be a learning experience if you've only used Mandriva.

Other than that, there's lots of suggestions in the other thread.

Play around, i'm sure you'll find a distro you like.

James

Disclaimer: I'm an Arch developer, so I've got an inherent bias.

Seriously, developers don't want you holding back on bugs. They want information.

One bug may affect another, you not reporting, may cause further regression, or make yours more difficult to solve.

In some cases, it's common sense, if it's a widely reported issue, then you may be ok, but even then -- you might have a subtle variation that needs special handling -- or an entirely different bug with the same symptoms.

James