DragonMage

Intuitive is a relative terms. I have been computing since before MS-DOS become industry standard. Each time I approach a new computer / OS / whatever, I have to relearn everything. Examples.

1. From BBC Computer to Dos

BBC: turn on computer, put disk (or cassette tape), type chain"" and load the sucker.

DOS:hmmm... let's see.. where are the .exe or .com or .bat files?

2. From Dos to Windows 3.x

Win 3.x: type win then look for applications folder at the bottom and find the MS word icons.

3. From Win 3.x to macintosh.

Mac: ah.. the word icon is directly in the desktop.. cool.. but how do I eject my floppy? Drag the floppy icon to the trash? You sure?

4. From win 3.x to win9x

Win9x: Where are the applications folder? Hmm.. what's this start menu? How come the file manager looks totally different? How to make it show two directory at once?

5. From win9x to win2k

Win2k: Hmm.. much more stable, but how come it's so slow? Where is the system configuration screen in the control panel? Where is the winipcfg? How can I setup my networking?

And so on and so forth..

Like any OS, it has its quirks and way to do stuffs.. windows only become intuitive because 90% of the people already use it, and it is pretty much ingrained in people's memory. And most people once they learn to do one thing.. they don't care to learn another even though it can save them time or money in the end. They just want thing to just work, even though they don't know the complexity behind the "just work" philosophy. And if they cannot get it to just work, they either junk it or pay someone else to do it. Why do you think people still cannot program a VCR timer (even with on-screen help?) Because they think it's unintuitive? No, because they are lazy bums :)

Yes, for some people, linux is still not ready for their desktop, but then again, some people are still stuck in macintosh mode and cannot use windows if their lives depended on them. It's just a preference really. For me, linux is pretty much ready for desktop as long as it is preconfigured correctly. If my friends (who can be the most ignorant people I know) can learn to use linux as long as you set up the desktop for them and tell them a few hints and such, I think that most people can.

Anyway, that's it for now..

Thanks, I will try it.. anything to make my computer faster without sacrificing stability.

This just come out in my Austin Linux Mailing List. It seems that ATI just released a new driver for Linux. It supposedly have 3d acceleration enabled. Anyway, if you have Radeon 8500 and above, just go to ATI webpage and download the drivers at

http://mirror.ati.com/support/driver.html

Well, as long as most of everything or configurations are done right out of the box, it should be no problem. Maybe add a big icon in the desktop linking to the manuals with addition of a paper readme. The user part is going to be a bit of a problem (since most of the preconfigured windows usually don't have user/password feature on).

I mean $350 bux for a 1ghz computer with 17 inch monitor is a good deal.. usually it's the monitor that kinda jack up the price. (1/3 of the total price usually).

What are the comments regarding the new kernel, does it solve the supermount problem? Any additional quirks? Improvement over the regular 9.0 kernel?

Nope, you don't have to download the whole cvs thing.. lemme check over there..

Ok, go to http://dri.sourceforge.net/snapshots/

and download

http://dri.sourceforge.net/snapshots/radeo...ux.i386.tar.bz2

uncompress it by typing

bzip2 -d radeon-20021022-linux.i386.tar.bz2

then

tar xvf radeon-20021022-linux.i386.tar

go to the resulting directory ( dripkg ) then su to root then type

./install.sh

it should install the driver then. You may need to reboot after the installation is complete.

BTW, johnnyv, can you tell us the link to where you find the dosemu rpms? I suddenly have a hunkering for a game of Ultima (the classics, not UO)

Well, if you are dual booting, you can always download the updates to a directory in your windows partition and just reboot to mandrake and install the updates.. Almost all of the updates (with exception of kernel). you can pretty much do with this command as root

rpm -Fvh *.rpm

Anyway, depending on the version of the modemblaster, it might have linux support in it, check

file:///usr/share/doc/HTML/index.html

for the database whether your modem is supported or not.

Do not let mandrake test the display since Radeons are not supported out of the box by the stock XFree 4.2.1 (which mandrake download edition has). You may have to go the console mode for a bit until you can get the driver from

http://dri.sourceforge.net/

and install it. After that it should work ok with X. I actually have similar experience (installing mandrake 9.0 RC1 in a friend's computer with radeon 7500) and after about an hour of struggling, manage to get it running. Last time i checked, he is using linux more than windows now... in IceWM (even though he used to be a gnome fan). :)

Doubtful if that happens, especially with Walmart announce that it will release the 200 dollar computer with lycoris desktop instead of lindows.

Personally I prefer lycoris to lindows anyway.. but what happened to mandrake in walmart computer.. I guess people just don't want server software mostly.

You can always install the gpg-keys from texstar and PLF if you want that message to disappear you know. For PLF all you have to do is typing this command as root

lynx -source http://plf.zarb.org/plf.asc | gpg --import

Texstar requires you to download the key and manually import the key. I think the key is in

http://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distribut...pms/pubring.gpg

Anyway, ever since I installed those two keys, I rarely have any signature errors with those two mirrors.

How long does it take you to accumulate that kind of unit Paul? It makes me envious with me just about 50 right now :)

Are you sure it's k3b? The only K3b I know of is a CD-Burning GUI to cdrecord and cdrdao. Maybe you are thinking of Kpilot?

I have a feeling that you need to install all the various libraries (and the development version of those libraries) in texstar's place. I have to install his version of gtkhtml, gal, bonobo, aspell, etc, etc etc.. well you get the idea.

Anyway, I have texstar evolution 1.2 working fine and dandy here.. add with geramik theme and now my desktop is very unified (geramik seems to have a glitch in phoenix though).

Anyway, about the bad signature thingie.. I guess texstar forgot to sign that rpm with gpg-keys. It's nothing to worry about really, that signature is just to make sure that you trust the place you get the rpm from, since if you install a software that you don't trust the source, it could be a trojan or something.

If you can still eject the zip disk via the button at the front of the zip drive, I think I call that a non-problem. I guess you should've used the modified floppy icon instead of cdrom icon to create the zip icon. Zip is pretty much a big floppy drive :)

Hey, so do I, basically, NWN is the only game I have in my hard drive right now. (Emulators like ZSNES, and EPSXE doesn't count). The sad thing is that NWN as a standalone game is not that game, but with tons of good user made modules out there, it has the chance to beat BG2 as the longest game in my HD :)

You do have all 7 cd sources in your urpmi database right? Check the software sources manager in mandrake control center to find out. urpmi cannot find what it is not in the database.

Congrats DOlson. Now, you are semi-famous, what are you going to do next? :)

I got this in my old utexas email account (which I use to put all the various mailing list I joined when I was a college student in Austin). This one from Austin Linux Group.

http://www.linuxworld.com/site-stories/200.../1113.barr.html

Note no 6.

6) If Linux is so great, how come it has a higher TCO than Windows?

Torvalds: By the phrasing of that question, I can only assume that by TCO you mean the "Totally Cool Operation" value as opposed to it's more common technical meaning. And quite frankly, nobody knows why, but clearly it is so. Using Linux just makes you Totally Cool (admittedly mostly in a geeky kind of way, but hey, if it's cheerleaders you want, you would be in a rock band, right?)

Now you know why Linux has higher TCO than Windows :D

Hah.. no problem. Missing one obvious solution that stares at you in the face is one of the things that makes us human.. :)

The zoomable icons are basically icons of multiple sizes, they are usually only the kde icons that are themable, such as crystal, kde hicolor, aquafusion, etc. If you go to the directory such as /usr/share/icons/crystal or /usr/share/icons/hicolor you can see the directories where there are multiple sizes for each icons. When you enable zoomable icons, KDE basically loads the icons of bigger size when your cursor is above the icons. So just having an icon doesn't mean it is zoomable, especially if it is a non-KDE application whose icon is not located in one of the KDE icon themes.

As to fix it, I am not sure about this, but you may be able to create icons of multiple sizes and stick them into each size directory of the particular icon theme. Then change the icon of the application in the KDE desktop to point to the new icons. It is tedious and time and space consuming, but it could work.

Now you know one of the reason why KDE is such a resource hog :)

It may have identical addresss, but not the right syntax. Remember that Grip puts the command into two box, the DB server and the CGI path, while KSCD puts the command into one box, the freedb server.

I have the same problem as you, I solved it by pressing the update button under the freedb server in KSCD. A bunch of new servers will come out and I choose the one that says

freedb.freedb.org http 80 /~cddb/cddb.cgi

Which is basically the topmost. After that, all my CDs are detected.

Hope it helps.

Well, my motto is.. if you like it and you can afford it, buy it. I mean, you already play the "demo" version of tuxracer and you like it, the paid version should be more of the same, even better perhaps.

Me, I just cannot handle action games anymore.. I just cannot handle tuxracer that well.. all those years of touch typing is getting to me. :(

Try shutting down the eth0 (or whatever it is you are using). But it is a bit hard to do.. playing with ifconfig and all

Maybe service network stop would do the same thing?

Sorry.. I am sick this week, so my brain is not functioning correctly, but whatever it is, should be done easily using mandrake control center.

Just because an OS (any kind for that matter) detects the hardware and even identify it, doesn't mean that you can use it. You still need the driver for that modem. Can you tell us the exact name of that modem so we can research about the driver and how to make it work.