sitor

Hello, I remember a thread, but could not find it back, where someone had the same problem as me at the time that it seemed not possible to get MDL 10.0 running within VMWare. Just to let anyone interested know that now it is possible. It seemed to have to do with the 2.6 kernel that was not supported. In the latest version of VMWare it is (I'm posting this from MDL 10.0 OE running in VMWare 4.5 on Win2000). The good news is that if you have a license key that works for 4.4, you can download 4.5 for free and the 4.4 license key will work also for 4.5. So no money required! Just when uninstalling 4.4 indicate that you DO NOT want the license key to be removed. Ciao, Sitor

My opinion on CLI vs. GUI: I do not like CLI. If I can avoid it, I will. I found out myself a lot of stuff to be done with computers, and I do think I know much more then the average user. However if I take a home movie via Firewire and edit the video in Kino, it does not allow me to create a DVD structure to burn the movie to DVD (yet). I know you can create that structure with command line commands. But I don't take the time to learn how to do it (which commands with what parameters, what is the required structure that will work on my DVD player,...). So sorry, but for that task I boot into Windoze (untill the ability is added to Kino or K3B whichever will be the first). Bottomline, I don't think CLI is scary (however a lot of newbies will probably think it is), and there are some things for which I prefer to use CLI (adding urpmi sources for instance), but I strongly prefer GUI because it is just way faster to find out how to do it. aRTee does have a point that explaining the CLI way is way easier then the GUI way though. On the other hand if the response is immediately the CLI way without even a mention that a GUI way will exist as well, you might put of the people in doubt. That might mean another user not converted to "the scary" Linux and sticking to the well known Windoze. So if you use CLI as a solution, in my opinion you should add that it is possible with GUI as well but that that would take you much more time to explain, so that you ask him to use CLI first and if that scares him, he can still ask for the GUI way. That's my view. Ciao, Sitor

If you have PLF added to your sources, you should have quite some to choose from. Apollon (not sure about the spelling) is good. It is a GUI for GIFT. No need for compiling or other difficult stuff if you install from PLF source. Ciao, Sitor

As long as you download only correct RPMs probably not. But you might DL corrupted ones, or (in a very rare case) an rpm created by a cracker and in some way posted on the site. In the latest case this would probably soon be noticed and the bad rpm will be removed. But if not, who knows what the cracker might have put in the rpm. That would be like installing SW on M$! You might install Trojans, spyware, ... All in all I think there is little chance, but it is for sure less secure. Sorry, but I can't help you with that problem.

I just updated my signature (see below) with links to the sites that have helped me a lot to get everything running (or that I found out about too late). That might help as well. Maybe not very sexy as a signature, but I hope efficient for the newbies. Ciao, Sitor

Darkelve, Read in a review that SUSE 9.1 was not too well equiped regarding Multimedia software. But it seemed to me that the reviewer used Linux for the first time, and did not even try to install anything that was not yet on the CDs. Could you let us know if multimedia is indeed a problem or that you can add it as easily as with Mandrake? Ciao, Sitor

Adam, First of all it depends on what you want to do. Mandrake has a whole load of servers included: webserver (Apache), FTP server (ProFTP), File Sharing (Samba server), etc. If you can tell what you want to do with the server, we can tell which server to install / run and how to do that. Ciao, Sitor

At the office I'm running Mandrake 9.2 in VMWare when I need to do stuff that does not require Winbloze. As I of course don't get support, I don't use it for mail and other critical stuff though. Used it once to create a demo where I used one Mandrake as webserver and another as client (needed to be able to show the SSL connection, Server side Signing and stuff). Should use it more often, but running Linux on VMWare is not really that stable. Well one of our IT guys is rather pro open source. He is pushing (and I with him of course) to support Linux (at least as an alternative for those who want to). If he can convince management, I will certainly be the first to volunteer. Ciao, Sitor

Had the problem as well just after installing ML 10.0 CE. Vanished after some update (don't remember which one) already long ago. I thought that that was long before the kernel update though. Basically, try to update your system completely. Let us know if that solves your problem. Ciao, Sitor

Hi guys, Just wanted to share that I by accident came onto some pages on desktoplinux.com that give a sum up of a whole bunch of devices that use embedded Linux. Probably a lot of you have already seen them, for for those who didn't: PDAs All kinds of stuff Didn't know there were so many already. M$ seems to be loosing the fight in the embedded market. Or would there already be as much or even more devices run some kind of Windoze? Ciao, Sitor

Well if the US supreme court judges against the validity of the GPL, then only the US will need to keep paying loads of money for software. Not too good for the US economy. The better for the rest of the world. In any case if the German ruling counts as a precedent, Open Source cannot juridically be beaten world-wide, only in some local areas. This will make politicians and judges watch out: which one would want to condemn his country to IT middle ages while the rest of the world continues with progress. Ciao, Sitor

From aRTee's site, I found this very good explanation on the topic. Can't get much better. Ciao, Sitor

Anon, Probably I'm jus stupid, but I was unable to add this a an update source, because neither myself nor the Mandrake Update tool could find an hdlist. Can you indicate me what the relative path to it is located? Thanks in advance, Sitor

Christoff, There are others here on the board with a lot more of expertise than I have (I'm still a newbie myself). But in any case, when Mandrake boots and you get the progress bar, if you hit the escape button, it will tell you where it is in the boot process (it goes in verbose mode). I guess that for the real experts it might be helpfull if you can tell them what comes up there and where the boot process fails. Ciao, Sitor

Frankly, As long as you obey certain rules, there should be not too much harm for regular home users (of course if you have on there the strategic plans of the next war you want to start that is different). Most "finders" would just eraise the HD and not even bother trying to read the data on your disk. Even if they do, that does not have to be a disaster. In my case, they would a lot of stuff they cannot use: family photo's and video, gags, they might even know how much is on my bank accounts and how much I earn. OK, I would prefer that this does not becomes public knowledge, but if it does, there is no disaster there. What I would do in case of theft though, is to have all certificates revoked that might be stored on there, change my password to all my applications (ADSL connection, e-mail, and so on but certainly E-BANKING stuff). Once that is done, they should not be able to do much harm anymore. More then physical theft I would fear crackers, trojans, home-dialing apps, etc. They can steal your data without you knowing it. So the might possess your PWs without your knowledge, so without you changing them! They might even have copied private keys of certificates and sniffed the PIN codes whithout you knowing and revoking them! Scary ain't it. And even encrypting your filesystem want help a thing. Ciao, Sitor

I have a good anecdote on that. In the office most people are using MS Office. Stubborn me is using 90% of the time OOo, and (when formatting is really important and complicated) when compatibility is not 100% I use the preïnstalled M$ Office. At a certain point in time a colleague of mine was not able to open a document from another colleague. He asked me if I could, and whaddoyeknow, no probs (with OOo because that is my machines default). I tried with my version of M$ Office: no can do. I opened it again in OOo saved from there again in M$ Office format, and neither myself nor my colleague had any problems with it anymore. I just informed with him. He installed OOo since, and needed to use it already several times to help him to be able to open docs. He's needed it already for Word, Excell and PPT. For me the compatibility from OOo with Excell is 99,9%, with Word 98% and with PPT only 90%. Of course OOo has the big advantage that it is multi-platform, and that it is easy to ask others to just download it and install it as well in case they have a problem with compatibility. Say that you use M$ Office, it is way more difficult to request an OOo user to BUY M$ Office and install it. Good argument for governments to start using OOo. But of course these reflections are not of any practical help in this case. Ciao, Sitor

Very good idea Darkelve, Ill be happy to contribute to that. Ciao, Sitor

What about trying to type P and enter? Don't know if this works for the installer, but a lot of GUI accept first letter of the button label as well. Ciao, Sitor

Hoax or not, in any case it is for the moment certainly nothing more then vapor. According to the development plan, they only just started with the architecture. So when a real product will ever see the daylight?? Ciao, Sitor

!nkubus, I'm having the same problem. And installing a different source does not help. I think there is something that has gone wrong during a previous update of urpmidrake or something. IMHO it must be something like the problem in this thread. Gonna check that from the moment I find the time. Ciao, Sitor

Edoardo, I'm having the same problem. Do you mean that by handcreating /var/cache/urpmi/rpms the problem is solved? Any special stuff to do regarding permissions or something? Probably you need to create the folder as root? Thanks, Sitor

YEAH! Anything that helps to make governments make the switch is improving the Linux market situation. Always a very strong reference, and quite convincing for all those companies that are dealing with governments. If it becomes a real added value to offer FLOSS when responding to an RFP, companies will have to build up the expertise to do so. And once it exists, they will certainly market it to other customers. Ciao, Sitor

Probably when they get a whole bunch of money from an investor or some other company that buys them, and they have the money for marketing stuff. I guess that seen their financial situation they simply don't have the money to pay resources for anything that goes further then the basic sustaining of their product. So marketing stuff, customer service, ... All very needed, but not as much as just having a product. Vaporware will not get them anywhere in the FLOSS world! I think we should be very glad with what we got so far, and HOPE, HOOOPE, that they will stay in business and that Mandrake Linux will continue to exist. BTW, just in case someone would wonder, I'm not related to Mandrakesoft, don't have any shares, ... I'm just a positivo. Ciao, Sitor

What does the 2.6.5 kernel offer more then the kernel that is installed by default by 10.0 CE? Does it make sense to install the newest kernel? Ciao, Sitor

I agree that the Mandrake statement is not really very clear (again), but I understood it the same way as Godflesh did (although I did not relate it to the Debian system as I did not know it yet :P ). I have some reflections with anon's remarks though: It is correct that they did not mention up front that 10 CE would remain in existance, but they do what they said. There was only CE for some time, now OE has followed, just as they said it would. ON TOP OF THAT there will still be CE evolving. Not that I want to pick on you in particular anon, but I get a little bit bored of people here on the board always turning anything that MDKsoft does into something negative. Try to look at it from the positive side. Being a big fan of Monty Python: Always look on the bright side of life! Ciao, Sitor