Gowator

Nanda I strongly recommend the above.... If you have to compile your own kernel then you will have to do the same with drivers etc. and it gets to be a pain. I used to think mandriva "hid" the configs and patches deliberatly (to stop people copying their optimisations) but it seems so random I think its just poor organisation. Using your own customised kernel is a big step... not the kernel compile and stuff that's easy but IMHO you then end up with having to add your own modules ... etc. and then when you try a new kernel in the future you have lots more headaches (perhaps) so its fun ;) if you like playing but since your installing vmware Im guessing your not playing and just want the damned thing to work.... Im of the same opinion with package management... I try and always use native package management because if you don't sooner or later you end up messing something about ...

This is the point .. you can add sudo, you can add a root password etc but you can't remove the hacks they did and the sudo policy is inherent to the packages.... Just adding a root password doesn't help because the modifications are so deep....because its integrated into the -Ubuntu packages.... You can't remove it... basically you can bypass it and that still leaves you with a root kit on your PC... you can do lots to secure it but your basically just hacking it back to Debian.... at some point some poackage modified my sudoers to ALL:ALL..... this is not surprising ... the devs in Ubuntu just don't acknowledge security ... Ubuntu contributed a package back to Debian last week and people are already upset... no-one wants Ubuntu stuff finding its way into Debian because its insecure by nature. I think this has confused many ubuntuers.... Shuttleworth gave a whole speech on the importance of Debian ... Im sure he means it .. but this is just unacceptable... (translate my sig) in the same way that say if parents chose not to let thier children eat candy and drink carbonated soda its unacceptable to give the kids them... Parents who do allow their kids candy just don't get it... its a kind of self denial that they are not hurting their kids... by giving candy... medical evidence is strongly in favor of it does hurt and diabetes is the number one rising killer .. you can stick your head in the sand or you can say your not denying your kids pleasure... but the problem is not acknowledging it does damage. So no-one is right or wrong about if kids should have candy.... that's a choice for each parent at least IMHO there is no right and no wrong... but to say "candy doesn't hurt kids" is wrong... its scientifically proven ... The bottom line is linux is not designed to run as a single user system. ... Ubuntu copied apple and Linspire in thinking the most intimidating part of Linux /BSD is having a root account... Linspire did it one way, Apple another and Ubuntu a third.... but the bottom line is niether linspire or ubuntu can ever be secure because of the attitude of the dev team that the single most important thing about the distro is NOT having a root password to type... This is the single non negotiable item .. its more important than security so everytime they have to choose between insecure and not having to type a password insecure wins by default....but in the end it comes down to if you don't acknowledge the problem then it can't be addressed...

I've even tried upgrading my kernel as someone on the irc channel advised me, but that just caused to break my system... Th prob is the source is not the source used for the kernel.... This is something weird in mandriva and I don't wanna start ranting about it... basically there must be some patches compiled into the kernel which are not applied to kernel-source but if you get past this you then probably find the kernel hooks and symbols are different.... Two basic options 1/ Compile the source yourself and install it then it HAS to be right 2/ try and use the vmware-any hack... 3rd option try different kernels until you find one with the source=compiled kernel If you do 1/ your missing some optimsations ??? if you do 2 it might not work....

better still create a new user.... get this working and then you can start copying stuff incrementally.... I doubt you need a new install at all... when you say you can't log in that almost impossible ... if you boot to RL 1 you don't even need a password but perhaps your keymaps are messed up? (its typing different in your password) if you want to use a GUI to do the rest then I'd install something like ICEWM (very small) but I think its just your user can't log into the gui.... can you log in as root on tty1? how about the user ?

Agreed but I think this is also the point.... Its divide and conquer... Suse will be a pariah and it has a lot of impressionable users (like the Ubuntu base) who only know Microshaft and Suse Like SCO they will be shunned, made fun of and called MS fanboys etc. and I think this is what MS is paying for... Novell will go the way of citrix, stacker et al.. used and cast off IP stolen from them. They also get to split SAMBA... since many SAMBA devs work for Suse... so the idea will be to make sure samba only works with MS and Suse... and split the community.

Its a mixed bag....IMHO Install is a doddle (but you did LFS so that is hardly important for U) Overall I liked it except the sudo thing.... and you really should look into it before you install... The forums tell you its OK you can activate the root pw (if you want) but its a bit more deeply embedded than that. I started with a reasonably early kubuntu and it got progressively worse i this respect ... its just embedded so deep you can't just switch it off because the packages are modified for it...the n the deps of those packages etc. (even though they might not have used it).... Think about it like removing YaST from Suse... This was my biggest gripe.... (along with the fact that discussion on this issue is kinda not exactly banned but if someone insults you for wanting a root password the mods won't help) basically they can call you ignorant, stupid etc., if you question the sudo policy and everyone will jump in... The other thing is it did weird stuff.... my resolv.conf was never updated properly and kept resetting... I ended up changing permissions to 200 so root could no longer overwrite it! I prefer my distro's to do what I say and not decide I meant something else when I edit the config file by hand .... If ur OK with all this then its actually pretty cool.... It was really the one sticking point for me... basically every prob I had revolved around root or sudo ... and its just frustrating for me in the end....

for any command you can find the path with which which firefox will give you the path to the first executable found (the one which would be run if you just type firefox)

First off I'm pretty much set on a dual core for reasons of using Xen... Now what is REALLY important after that is multi monitors in a serious way... Im basically looking at a AMD 4600 dual core with 4GB RAM... but the connectivity is important... Basically I need 4 monitors .. my present mobo is an old AGP and PCI I can do two monitors easily but the third is the problem... I don't have any old PCI cards capable of the resolution needed ... I got an old 1MB mystique and I can get it working at 640x480 .... My set up is 2x montors for basic working... 1x projector and 1x a nxclient onto a server .. this cuts down significantly on keyboards and mice/KVM switches etc., and space is the prob... I ca find mobo's with 1 PCIE 16, 1 PCIE 4 2 PCI 1 and 3PCI.... eg ASUS M2N-E and Im happy with PCI-e 4x (or 1x) on the graphics ... the problem is where to find a PCIe 4x card...?? I don't know if I should look for a dual 16x or look for 4x graphics cards???

yeah true. but it's possible that the site was professionally built, or that someone was simply using what they felt comfortable with. I'm against closed software. I dislike it, I think we'd be better off without it. However I have nothing against people who use it. To disallow people using it, is restricting their own freedom to choose. In the end, computers exist to perform tasks, and people should be free to use what they like to complete that task most efficiently. Whoever made that logo may dislike the GIMP, and a lot of people do -- so long as they have a fair reason, go for it, use fireworks or photoshop. (although they could use Krita, but so little know about that wonderful app, which is just as good as gimp) Iphitus... I agree totally .. my main point is ... well the name of the website and the logo.... www.opensource matter's is a Joomla site, indeed OpenSource Matters is the umbrella charity for Joomla. anyway, Ill get to that later... Exactly my point.... Although many of the templates cannot be.. GIMP just isn't up to the job... when you see the actual images in the templates you can see why... because they are seamlessly split to fit into the page and look like 1 graphic. now here's something to think about: why should krita/the gimp support all the layout systems of closed source applications? Instead start from the start using krita/the gimp to develop your layout? THAT is supporting open source, not using a closed implementation in an open app. Export to png from gimp, and then use some basic image magick commands to cut it up. otoh, you're site is fundamentally flawed if you're relying on images to that extent, and it'd probably have some pretty nasty issues. less and less, a majority of the used themes now aren't pixmap/vector. We're tending back to pure engine based themes, which means they use a basic theme description text file, and the engine, written in C for GTK, C++ for QT does all the rendering - no image files. anything i've seen done in a pixmap/vector theme, could be done in krita/the gimp/inkscape. (choose your own sentences!) If they've been done in a closed source app, it's simply been because of the personal preference and comfort of the designer... which relates back to above :) James if you do a Joomla install it comes with two pre-defined templates.. /var/www/linuxmigrations/templates/rhuk_solarflare_ii/images$ ls -l 20 All of these images are made with Fireworks... and the included templates are from a COMPETITION (hence the name of the thread) Now its just my book but when you are a charity called OpenSource matters and name your product (fullname) Joomla OpenSource CMS then .... everything you just said .... I mean come on.... at least one of the included templates should have been made with OpenSource tools???? However I don't agree that any of the graphics can be done with Gimp or Krita ... I thought I could but you don't get quite the same in terms of 3D textures as Photoshop or fireworks.... and it takes 10x longer to achieve nearly the same but not quite... However what I want to challenge is that nearly.... I want to see how far opensource apps can go... :D I am certain that some templates could be made using only opensource tools from scratch that would look just as effective by using different techniques... I have nothing against including 2 categories... one using opensource tools and one without... hence my idea here.... Lets compare the BEST of the BEST... a KDE/Gnome theme in Photoshop vs one in OpenSource tools :D for instance... note: edited by tyme to fix quotes edits: Thanks... I came back to fix it and you already did it ...

Ah.. yes and no.... ;) indeed this is what Im doing... except Im using Quanta instead of cos its cool and has nice tools like DIFF with graphics (really cool way to view diffs), CVS control etc ... However NVU doesn't handle php very well... nor does it really visualize DIV's so you end up using crappy tables..instead. My first templates I prototyped in NVU .. however it crashes all the time using php/div's,,, like if you select print or page setup from file by error.... and if you want a clean template without tables its actually useless, your better off using ANYTHING else (such as bluefish/scream,quanta,vi) all of which actually recognise the php... NVU also makes loads of white space corruption by which I mean it will screw all your tabs for indenting but worse it will split say php across a DIV so you end up with <?php lalalala DIV.lalala morephp </DIV> function { <SPAN> <NL>phpcode <DIV> } </SPAN> </DIV> now in most cases the code actually runs... its just not human readable So if you want to do a clean Joomla template (according to the docs :D) then you use the DreamWeaver plugin... However back to the point :D I really can't see why it was necassary to use Fireworks to produce THAT logo whereas I can see its diffcult in GIMP to produce The irony is ... the name of the logo... Opensource matters.... and the SW used to make the logo seems to be a mockery ... not only is it using a closed source app but its producing a corrupt JPEG as well with extended non standard attributes. (So it can be reedited in Fireworks as a native Fireworks jpg) Exactly my point.... Although many of the templates cannot be.. GIMP just isn't up to the job... when you see the actual images in the templates you can see why... because they are seamlessly split to fit into the page and look like 1 graphic. However what I'm interested in is just how far we can go in OS tools... This also got me thinking about KDE themes and Gnome themes... how many of these are photoshop/fireworks etc?

Dee I think the simplest and tried and tested method :D which has been used in your situation is just to have the homes mounted on nfs... Using NIS etc is a good way to do the authentification/logon process, essentially it just replaces parts of your local /etc with a standard one. (i.e. networking, mounts, user etc.) its old but its well tested and there are literally hundreds of documentations for it but you don't need it or could implement it later... The easiest? way is probably just that you replace the /etc/fstab for home.... So traditionally it might be /dev/hda3 /home ext3 defaults 0 0 and it becomes server:/home /home nfs defaults 0 0 This way you don't need to download everything at every login and its independant of where the user logs in. On a 100Mbit switched network you will notice very little perfomance hit... (if any) If you copy the home (at beginning and end of session) you will because everyone will do it at once... You could minimalise this using rsynch to do only changed files but its an extra error prone step... and things like .Mail can be tricky... this way a file is only using bandwidth while its opened or saved, while a executable is being run its copied to /tmp anyway... there are many good reasons for this way... like simple backup (you just backup homes on the server) and the inverse when a user screws something up... The other way you end up copying files to each PC... e.g. process or creating a new user... On the server you just add a user and the /etc/skel with create that user with the standard desktop and scripts if not then you end up creating that user on each machine and copying the files across ..to each machine.. so that user can log-in to each machine... yes you can do this as needed but then you are messing with scripts on login/logoff etc. Now the scripts are important... once your up and running you will see why... but it just makes all your system admin easier. You might want to read the whole doc but start here http://www.tldp.org/LDP/nag2/x-087-2-nis.clients.html

At last! Honestly I have never had the same stability since using closed source drivers (like in terms of months of uptime)

Simplest way is adding an argument "uid=1000" (for a single user) or "gid=100" (for a specific usergroup) at the corresponding fstab line. Of course, replace 1000 and 100 with the actual user or group id... True but for a single op the kdesu konqueror or running krusador and doing the actual copy as root are probably one of the rare times its worth doing it this way? (presuming after this they want to delete the windows partition) but your way is better...overall.

kmc Im pretty sure it needs a plug-in for the exchange part... least wise under Debian there are a few packages.

On the login stuff, basically, on the server each user has a few gigs of space that is their homespace. I want to load that for each different username on login. Other than that, I want them to use the regular machine for all the normal data saving and just throw their saved files onto the server afterward. I also want to have custom icons load up on their desktops each time. That's really as far as I want them to go. I am locking them out of every other part of the system in the hopes that this will make it work faster and better. I've used partimage before on my home machines to back up everything before I tried something risky, but I never got it to save the data much and I never got a boot disk or cd made for it that would install correctly (network errors). It seemed really great, though with what worked. The apps the students will be running are: sketchup (windows only) (seeing if it will run in wine or something. It requires 100% OGL compliance which linux uses but I'm not sure how the wine emulation goes for that), SoftImage, several CAD apps, Lightwave (works wonderfully in wine/cedega, Blender with verse integration, Gimp with GAP and verse integration, photoshop (wine/cedega), openoffice, and a few other 3d/2d apps that I can't remember. I'll look up nxserver and tarantella to see more about them, too. Thanks for that! From memory lightwave is java is it not? (The linux version is also FREE as in beer) so no wine needed? The OpenGL will be a problem for thin clients... Tarantella were working on it last time I looked a few years ago but ThinAnywhere (Mercury) did a much better OpenGL job (but this was for HUGE datasets (TB each) If you can get everything working OK under Wine (that would be my first effort) then I'd simply run a file server ... 100 people logging in at once on a netboot is probably stressing the NW... too far... unless its a real minimalist boot.... but what I would do is simply put their homes on the server... For the install I'd make the absolute minimal boot disk and do an NFS install... The simple way is you just use the -o loop to mount the ISO... and kick off a pre configured install.... on the clients from CD/floppy... using network boot There are lots of tools for this basically its just a script... that the install takes and most distro's let you save this as a file and reuse it... in effect its just the install the most basic setup part and then a series of (for mandriva) rpm's to be installed ... i.e urpmi < /mnt/server/rpms/default/*.rpm then you edit the server /etc/skel which is the basis for user accounts and create what you want... then every new account it uses your pre defined stuff.... you can go mad and do GIMP and .gimp and .wine .. this way they base is all pre-installed in the users directory as you create the user. This part can also be scripted... so basically you run through the script with adduser <userlist and it creates ALL the directories and everyone is installed the same... Check out the LDP for guides on this :D and ask here :D but the concept is classic, its what Sun called Jumpstart years ago... No need to setup any users..on the clients. just configure it to use NIS (or even LDAP) for user authentification... and then you configure that on the server..

Ill try You can just rsynch to a mirror ... but better still see if your communal ISP has one... Partimage works well the real questions as iamw asks how many computers and are they all the same? If they are all different then it might actually be easier using a live distro... Im not so familiar with the Mandriva based ones... but other here are... but I know for kanotix it installs in about 12-15 mins with 2GB of apps ... the nice part is the HW config is already done by the liveCd part... but I should expect mandriva live or other derivatives would work the same.... Depends what you call a lot ... what's a small town? If its less than 5000 or so it shouldn't be any noticable load for the authentification... but the actual file access will depend on the NW and ability of the file server to serve the files... Hmm I think you might want to firm up exactly what you want.... There is commercial SW like nxserver or tarantella which do the whole thing for you.... either of them might treat you as a charity case... (advertising) I run the free version on my server with a decent connection its literally like being local ... All the user needs is the client... for NX its binary and works on Win/Lin/Mac/*NIX/ etc... Tarantella also has a web client so you just need a browser... VNC also works... its just treacle slow compared to the commerical algorithms and depending on users the commerical stuff allows load balancing etc., If I were doing this (and I have done it for thousands of users in my old company from worldwide offices) I would think of using a thin client... With this you specificy a session .... that session is whatever you want... it can be an xterm, a XDMPC (login session on xdm/kdm/gdm) or start up say kde with their user parameters.... I even run a session that simply starts X with no WM and a fullscreen vmplayer with Windows which shares my home as "my Documents" in windows when it starts! but what you need to do is think what they will be running.. is it graphics or CPU intensive etc. do you want them physically restricted to the linux lab or logging in from home.... ?? Give us some numbers and locations etc. what apps and stuff and Ill get back :D

krusador is also very good for file managment and has a user/root switch mode you just press alt+K This is really nice because you don't need to browse everything as root which cuts down on the chance of human error.. and its dual pane by default... It also does stuff like creating links ... again useful as root if you want to link /usr/local/share/myapp/myapp to say /usr/bin/myapp as root :D it also has mount manager and disk usage etc. also useful... being a CLI junkie I don't use it half as much as it deserves :D

Lets face it, OCR is crap in Linux... its really about the only thing it seriously lacks... sure Gimp isn't photoshop... but its acceptable at a home level... so I needed to OCR a whole load of contracts and legal docs... Fine I BUY Omnipage.... ouch ... then I try it under wine... well it won't work ... OK... fair enough... so having a valid 2k license I try and intall it under vmware... (I don't know anything about windows security so non of my windows virtual machines have internet access) BUT .. it won't install! Why .. because Caerre used the MS dev studio and the installer *needs* IEx.x.x - I don't have access to IEx.x.x not to the windows installer V x.x.x nor can i without connecting my quaranteened virtual machine to the internet and agreeing to a MS EULA simply to install a 3rd party product. or going through a completely unreasonable process of proving my copy which I was forced to buy in the first place is genuine...and agreeing to wholy prohibitive and unreasonable terms in the EULA. Are Caerre even aware of this? I doubt it they just used Visual Dev studio which requires IE as a dependancy for no other reason than to force users to give information to MS.... It is NOT USED in any way.... I hacked the registry and started the install ... it goes past detecting the IE version... I replace the registry with the one with IE removed... and it all works....hence IE was not needed in any way shape or form... To paraphrase... closed source is a cancer that spreads... it infects everything it touches... like Frontpage or .net its sole aim is to lock you in ... MS have been prevented bundling IE so they pass this to 3rd parties, probably without their knowledge... and even if they have that through blackmail and coercion. Seriously who would have thought that buying a comercial product to run on my legal version of Windows would require me to accept installing IE and accepting the EULA's...Huh This is just one example of why I won't go down that route.... If you run Windows everyday its probably not noticable .... that you are incrementally getting deeper and deeper into codependant software and this is on several levels... Adobe are nowhere near as bad.... they tend to do everything independantly but Macromedia were not the same ...I hear you need specific versions of the installer etc. for macromedia products although I didn't try this.... In the same way I have a client who runs a quarantinded Windows laptop ....we recently discussed and antivirus for it... So his Linux (internet facing machine is running CLamAV) .. cool... and OS... but the Windows version (itself OS) requires a specific version of the Windows installer.... this version OF THE INSTALLER requires dotnetfx.exe ... this itself requires something else (I gave up at this point) .. you might wonder why use CLamAV not Norton etc. ... simple Norton is cripped so that you can't install virus updates without connecting to the internet.... wheras ClamAV lets you just copy the updates Luckily the source code is available so I could compile ClamAV.... The point is just to install using the Windows installer forces internet connections which my client doesn't want to do... and agreement to many EULA's.... This is just a lock-in which is written in MS dev studio.... In the old days I had Win98 and tons of "cracked" progs I wasn't happy about this but....sometimes you just need a prog to open a file to save as.... Since moving to an OpenSource OS I have zero cracked progs, Im 100% legal and happy with it. The only cracking I have to do is to get round the occasional Windows prog I use but not to illegally install it but to install it without for instance having IE installed or a specifi version of the installer which requires visiting the MS downloads etc. and agreeing to EULA's... In effiect Im happy with the Caerre EULA.... (fine) but why should installing some SW I buy require me agreeing to 3rd parties EULAs (i.e. Microsoft) this is totally unreasonable.... Who is to blame? Well Caerre are partly to blame but I doubt they even realise... the problem is they use the Vis dev studio...and the deps are pre written in so that MS can claim you don't need IE or MediaPlayer installed but iof you don't you can't install 3rd party SW....

Yes but the servers need to be running as utf8 ... otherwise you8 play the switch encoding style everytime you follow a link... you can change the order of detection and this can help a lot but mostly it depends how they declare their pages encoding in the HTML header... (least ways as I understand it)

Well, the point is that I can duel boot linux and Windows so I maintain one while learning to use the other. I don't wanna keep pulling my machine apart when this bootloader is supposed to do it. It' s just for testing purpose, once you have one drive set up, you can move on to more. Setting up a bootloader isn't as straightforward as one would imagine :sad: not in Linux nor Windows I second that and not just for you.... Its really easy to mess up a disk during install.... it could be user error (selecting the wrong one) or it could be the partitioning prog. As there are some issues with SATA drives or more specifically the controllers I wouldn't trust the installer to be safe... working on the principle if it screws up they obviously didn't test your controller thoroughly... Im suprised with Suse though (I don't like Suse for 101 other reasons but it usually works ) Mandriva doesn't surprise me.... hardware support is always a bit ?on/off? Ionce trahed my data drive during a mandriva install simply because I left it plugged in and also a compact flash which since the CF emulates SCSI and the data drive was scsi... caused some confusion and the end product I lost 36GB of data... Honestly... If you have anything on other drives during install UNPLUG THEM..... Its not a big risk but its a catostrophy if it goes wrong... Having data on different partitions is usually OK.... except for user error but I wouldn't leave anything half exotic (SCSI, SATA etc) plugged in if its not needed for the install.. adding them back after install and adding Windows to the boot loader is easy...

You've lost me. If I download the file osm_header.png, all I see is this: $ file Desktop/osm_header.png Desktop/osm_header.png: PNG image data, 362 x 68, 8-bit colormap, non-interlaced $ Are you saying there's a way to tell which application generated this png, and that in this case it's a non open-source application? Yes, but obviously not file :D (it works on avi's though) If you right click in konqueror, properties and metadata it shows up so its obviously possible from a simple command... Anyway, in this case it says MacroMedia Fireworks which seems somewhat ironic ... given the text of the graphic :D

Its their dev cycle.... They do it like a noobie steering a oil tanker.... X stops working so they competely go mad fixing it and end up breaking Y.... so each release seems to go between 3 groups ... usually roughly the same size... those it works for in both... those it worked for last but not this and those it didn't work for last but the new one does... They over correct everything and by the time it kicks on its too late to realise they have massively over corrected...so its like watching a drunk on a bike.... 10.0 was really crap for me... all the 9.x worked with my hardware... then 10.1 broke then 10.2 worked again... I remember some people being really happy with 10.1 because 10.0 hadn't worked ... I had to install 10.1 over the network since it hung my machine.... and then found I was missing nothing exciting and some hardware took a lot of fixing.... Honestly this is a big reason I use Debian now.... the dev cycle might be slower but it doesn't keep going 3 steps forwards and 1 step back

Nah, I don't think so. Kanotix is a last stand, not a first one. You have first to toy with a lot of other distros to understand why Kanotix is a special one- as most nice things about it are under the skin, and it's not really a Mepis-style "hey-I'm-dumb-but-I-can-run-Linux" distro... PCLInuxOS is indeed a very good start for newbies, for sure- but not Kanotix... factly if Arch Linux didn't exist I'd be using right now either Kanotix or Zenwalk. Honestly it depends on your level..... Ive given kanotix to several computer illiterates .. you stick in the CD, install and the whole process takes 15 mins... set up the printer etc. and then remove half the stuff from the menu's (or I just stick it in more...) and after installing M-Media stuff they are running linux. Pretty much EVERYTHING works from the install... if what you want is to use linux... you have OO, mail clients etc. The next step is the big one.... which is where mandriva is good... Kanotix is great for setting up the essentials, ndiswrapper etc if needed and if you have a common machine (nvidia or ati) its all pretty much done ... if you want to go further that's when the learning curve kicks in. Mandriva does far more hand holding over the next stage.... but at a cost. Largely if you use the wizards then mostly you won't learn much but you do expand functionality whereas for Kanotix if you want to go further your basically in Debian...and steep learning curve... At this point I'd say ... hey install mandriva and do the next step... then after a while the wizards start messing stuff up and its time to look for a distro that doesn't hide so much or become a fanboy and make the next big step in mandriva... All these are valid.... there is a point at which each is more suitable depending on person. Many n00bs sucessfully install gentoo.... Im sure they learn far more and far quicker than someone installing Mandriva... Its like languages... the fastest way is total immersion.... so long as you have the time/inclination/energy Well here's the funny thing.... Certainly under UK law region encoding is illegal as is cracking it.... If this wasn't technology there is no way that region encoded DVD's could be sold in the UK... If you tried to introduce a car that only ran on GM "special" fuel and needed GM special oil etc. you would be in front of the monopolies commision in short time. If you actually stopped the car working until you replaced the fuel with one with say a signature that unlocks the car the company would be commiting criminal damage. They can recommend a fuel all they want and possibly they can make the petrol cap only take GM keyed pumps... but they can't stop you changing the pump and they can't bind you to a contract that says you can't... (if the car is leased thats another story) France passed a law banning iTunes until apple provide a mechanism to use downloaded content on the player of your choice for instance. The matter of legality is somewhat perverted when the "crack" is to bypass something that is illegal in the first place ... so whereby technically its illegal to crack the codes the use of the codes in the forst place is illegal. These are just examples really... it depends on location and I can name at least 50 countires where copyright is illegal in itself. If you consider DVD playing its a complete mess. In France it is impossible to SELL your IP.... IP is personal and you can't sign a valid contract that transfers your IP to someone else... so for example a musician cannot be forced to sign a 5 record contract giving the record company their IP.... A record company taking royalties on this IP is OK but you can't have the UK/US type contract where the record company owns everything you think, write etc. until they say so.... Again this is a bit dated ... just like the DVD stuff in the US/UK.... because laws designed for other things are being used wholy inapplicably. The French law discourages commercial software since the software house cannot own the code lock stock and barrel. Im sure Duval will be exploiting this.. Non of these is perfect... the problem is non of them actually fit together and the bottom line is big money talks so it always comes down on the side of the corporations. So technically in many places actually implementing region codes and css are actually illegal and equally cracking them is illegal... so technically its illegal to sell a region encoded DVD player in many places.. and by extension illegal to use one... but its equally illegal to unlock it??? Unfortunately .... its blame soneone else time.... the DVD player makers say its the DVD's whch are encrypted - the DVD disk sellers say its the player that's crippled. The fact its the same people selling both seems to be largely academic :D That pretty much sums up what I feel.... A long while ago I bought the powerpack.... it said on the box "plays all your DVD's" ... It doesn't.... simple as that. Yes it can.... with plf or just downloading the code yourself and its not deliberatly crippled like Suse so that Xine is hard coded not to accept the libdvdcss.... but its a lie. In particular for the reasons above....the same goes for the download editions "reason" they can't include nvidia or ati drivers ... Its basically dishonest.... I have no problem them saying "we only include them in the powerpack to encourage you to buy it...." I do have problems pretending its for legal reasons.... back on iPod's ... a long time ago I got my archos MM player.... very cool except.... they refuse to replace the proprietry battery... after my battery died I tried getting a new one... they started off saying it was illegal to post through the mail which was total BS.... they actually sell batteries for other models on their site. I then went through 20 or so emails just asking if I could buy a battery... I offfered to collect it by hand.... so they changed the reason... only possible to be changed by experienced technicians... again total BS.... its two screws and it slides out....?? The bottom line I guess.. they want you to buy the news model.... so they don't sell batteries... and those they have are only replaced under warranty.... Why not just say this????

I agree with everyone so far.... Don't sweat it... IMHO frankly your not missing much ... and 2007 has far more security issues than an up to date (at last check) 10.1 ...though I might think of upgrading to 10.2 (at least the packages) if you worry about security. Better an old stable version where the issues arte already addressed than a new buggy one. Particualrly with mandriva I don't see the development as incremental... anyway. In other words what was fixed in 9.x wasn't in 10.x and so on... they introduce new issues each release and then iron them out over the release hence why getting the 10.2 packages might be worth it...

I installed with this script. # wine --version Wine 0.9.20 What should I do? That's the same version I have.. If you have cabextract then you just run the file as shown on the site.... However ... I seriously would consider the security issues of running IE under wine... i.e. take the security implications of using it in the native form ... which are pretty huge and then give your bank etc. some credit and figure they probably thought of the worse/most common ones... Then go back and think how integrated into the OS IE is..... how many of the patches, security stuff is actually dependant on the OS ??? In other words what does IE6SP2 actually change over IE6 ?? (............ I don't know) but Im guessing its not just iexplorer.exe and that many of the patches in IE6SP2 are OS patches... So lets say your bank has done some clever stuff for security (stuff they are not likely to tell anyone or it would be self defeating) ... will that clever stuff apply with IE on Wine ??? Like I say .. I dunno.... but I can bet if you ask (Email me: slopes at gmail) then he'll refer you back to