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I want to learn a modern OO language. I have bought a few of the highly-rated java books, but recently I have read that python may be a better choice to learn on. (there may have been a thread regarding this - several months ago...) I am used to working with permanant data files - usually indexed, or ISAM they were called. You would add new records to the file, or update existing records, or whatever you wanted. To create the file, you would define the record length, and all the fields and their types and lengths. And define the key field. I'm confused when looking at python samples that read or write to files. It might read the first "200" bytes, or it might read "one" line... Does the "one line" mean like an entire record? And are records now "variable length"? I think they used to be fixed-length. Haven't written a cobol program since the early 90s. To learn a new language, I may want to do a project - such as something useful to me - like say to write some program that keeps track of something - in a permanant file - like a record collection (record albums). Or something like that. I've been spending all my time learning linux, but now that I have a nice new machine and FC2 up and going on it, I'd like to get going on an OO language.

definately much faster !! thanks pmpatrick

Despite the minor complaints, I still think its a great distro and I enjoy coming home every day from work and plopping down in my computer chair and using it. A few days ago, when I moved my winblows machine out of the way, so that I could connect my new FC2 machine to my better peripherals (19" monitor, wireless optical mouse, wireless kb), I was thinking... I hope this wireless stuff works on my new machine... well, it works great. Under winblows, you have to install the logitech software to use the kb & mouse. Then you have it running in your systray all the time, and popping up boxes to see if you want to Check the Internet For Updates... I know you can turn that stuff off, but still, its intrusive. Nice that it just works under linux, and leaves you alone.

I know, but it's still irritating in general. If I had a win95 or 98 program - say Quicken 98 - it would work on either win, and also on win2k. Now I'm not saying winblows is better - I hate it and don't use it anymore. It's just nice if you have a program you like, such as a 3rd-party game, to be able to use it beyond the next distro. A couple months ago, I bought an inexpensive book on some basic linux admin stuff - and the book uses FC1 as the teaching tool. I went thru almost the entire book during the short time I had FC1 - and I learned lots of stuff about installing tars and all that. Now, with FC2 installed, lots of examples in the FC1 book no longer even work. And when the FC2 books start coming out, FC3 will be coming out... Not that I'm complaining.... B)

Another thing I'm slightly disappointed in is the fact that during the brief time I used FC1, I installed several things - such as small games & whatever. This was just "practice" for me to learn how to install tar.gz files and whatnot. Anyway, one game I installed (xmahjongg) - was a tar.gz - and it installed perfectly on my FC1 box. Now, with FC2, the exact same tar.gz wont install - I can't get thru the make without errors. And I don't know enough about it to know what's wrong. I forget the error message that I get. No big deal - its just irritating. The point is, when you have some progs on your FC1 machine, and you want to install them on your new FC2 machine, nope - sorry doesn't work sometimes.

Great article. The guy seems like a good guy to have on our side. And I learned a bunch of things, especially about the nautilus "spatial" browser... which I'm still getting used to.

duh... I forgot the 2nd half of the link... :woops: drum roll please... it works !!

To install the java plugin into firefox, the above mentioned instructions http://www.fedorafaq.org/custom_java.html say to do this:

2.6.6-1.427

how do I tell what kernel I'm using? what's the command? I have a FC2 install - whatever kernel comes with FC2. I have also read some things about "my firefox seems very slow..." - I think on my LUG mailing list some guy was complaining about it. hmmm... I just realized I called my thread "Firefox" just like Ix's earlier thread. Sorry Ix, I'll change the thread title.

I really, really, love firefox - however, there is one thing... Since I have been exclusively using my new FC2 box, I have noticed that web pages just take forever to load (well, at least alot of them do). For example, I go to nba.com sometimes and it takes FOREVER to load completely. It says at the bottom "transferring data from ad.doubleclick.net" or something like that. The main part of the page is loaded quickly (the parts I care about) and I know it is the banners at the top, or the ads over on the right side of the screen that are taking forever to load. It is just irritating to have my mouse pointer being an hourglass for 5 minutes on every page I go to. I have gotten in the habit, even though a page hasn't finished loading the ads, to just click the Stop Loading button at the top.. Now, when I used to use my win2k machine (I also used firefox on that machine), the exact same pages loaded much quicker. Very quick in fact. I have broadband. Is there something to do to alleviate this situation ? [moved from Software by spinynorman]

yay !!!! I was looking at my /etc/profile.d/java.sh file and I noticed that my first line had xport... instead of export (I was looking at the file cuz the terminal was tellling me xport command not found... - even when I was doing other things) Anyway, I edited the file to correct the typo, and ran the javac -help as pmpatrick suggested, and I got the normal help info. yay ! what else can I do to test if everything is in place and working ? Heres my java.sh file in /etc/profile.d/ (as the instructions said to make it): export JDK_HOME="$JAVA_HOME" export JAVA_HOME="/usr/java/j2sdk1.4.2_04" export JAVA_PATH="$JAVA_HOME" export PATH="$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin"

thanks, as usual, cybr .... but - you are a little behind in this thread... :D your above link to the sdk install instructions is the SAME link and instructions that we have been discussing... :wacko: See the very first post in this thread... The problem is that I have done all that exactly as that site says to. but there is still something else to do apparently. I'm gonna try MrWhisp's suggestion when I get home later.

the above link is help on installing the jre, not the sdk. When I get home later, I'll try to do what MrWhisp said 3 posts above. I'm not sure what the ~/.bashrc file is. Would the <path to java home> be /usr/java/j2sdk1.4.2_04 ? Sorry for the noobish questions.

I'll check out those links when I get home this evening. After my initial excitment about the ease of installing & setting-up FC2, there are a couple of things so far that I am disappointed in: 1. correctly installing & using an HP print driver does not exactly seem as easy as it should be. I basically followed the instructions at linuxprinting.org for the hpijs driver & PPD file (a couple of screens worth of instructions...). I still don't get any print options when printing (print quality choices, 2-sided printing, etc). It does print excellent quality, though. I just like to print most stuff in "Draft" quality. Note: I have another thread about this in Other Linux Distributions (unless someone moved it to Hardware) 2. correctly installing java sdk also does not seem as easy as it should be. I have another thread about this in the Programming forum. I realize these so-called problems (for me at least) may be the same in several distros, not just FC2. maybe I should have crossed my fingers and tried yum install java... yeah right, in a perfect world

instead of just double-clicking links like normal, right-click them and select Open in New Tab. when you get used to it, you really love it. I love it.

Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I did everything as instructed here: http://www.fedorafaq.org/custom_java.html I've done down to step 12 where it says to do the chmod +x /etc/profile.d/java.sh and I also have the (4) required export statements in /usr/java If I re-do all that again, it still won't work, cuz I followed the instructions exactly the first time. So I guess I need to check if stuff is installed correctly in the correct places. And is there any links or such that you are supposed to do? edit: wait - maybe I did step 11 wrong. I think I entered those export statements like shown. But maybe they are for the jre, and I installed the sdk. Maybe they need to be redone. this statement was in the instructions: export JAVA_HOME="/usr/java/j2re1.4.2_02" but I changed it to: export JAVA_HOME="/usr/java/j2sdk1.4.2_04" since that is what directory was created when I installed the sdk

thanks, it says command not found

I can't remember if I installed the java sdk a few days ago. How do I know if I have it installed correctly? I wanted the sdk cuz I may take a java course soon as an elective. Also, I want to install the trial version of MoneyDance personal finance manager, which requires JRE. You can download MoneyDance with the jre in it, or if you already have java installed you can d/l MoneyDance by itself with no jre included. anyway, how can I tell if the java sdk is installed correctly? (this is on a Fedora Core 2 machine) edit: I THINK I followed these instructions, but I don't remember doing step 12 http://www.fedorafaq.org/custom_java.html I'd like to test if I've done this correctly or not.

Recently I asked the guys at my local LUG about the same question as the original post here. They basically told me any dvd burner works fine under linux. I'm not saying thats true, its just what they said. From what I've read around the web, I'd probably buy a lite-on 811S. I have the Sony dual-format DRU-510 dvd burner in my win2k machine. I'm gonna put that in my FC2 machine and see what I can figure out to do with it. I'll probably buy one of the new dual-layer burners, such as the Sony DRU-700, for my win2k machine. All I use my win2k box for anymore is just backing up my dvd movies. Linux for everything else. DOlson, keep us posted on what you get and what your experience with it is. I'm super-interested in burning DVDs under linux. I've done it tons of times under windoze, and its the only reason I still have a win2k box in my house.

I also downloaded all 4 CDs. And I picked damn near everything during my Workstation Install (I kept all the default selections, and I added a bunch of other selections (like KDE desktop, grip, and lots of others) BUT it still only need the first 2 CDs during install.

good article. straight & to the point. I hope it will be a continuing series.

I figured out a little of it. I went into System Settings, then Printing and then it had an option to import PPD, so I did that. Now when I print, at least it has a couple of Properties to select. However, compared to my winblows driver, it ... well sucks. I also downloaded the tar.gz hpijs driver and installed it, as per the instructions at linuxprinting.org. Where is 2-sided printing, where are the quality choices ? Maybe it doesn't offer quality choices, because it auto senses the paper? but that's stupid. I can be using regular paper, and maybe I want to print cheaply "Fast Draft quality" or a little better "Everyday quality". There must be another step to do. Linuxprinting.org has a lot of info, however it is kind of confusing (or I'm dumb). You click on various links and end up totally lost. I think I also went thru the Set Up CUPS. Is there something else to do?

My experience with linux over the past year or so has just been on a machine that had no speakers, and no printer. So I am not too knowledgeble about sound under linux and printing under linux. Now that I have my new machine (FC2) hooked up to a nice 3-pc speaker system (sounds good !) and to my H-P Deskjet 5550 printer, I want to start printing stuff. I have printed a couple of things from the web (worked fine). However, I was dissapointed in the options presented to me (ie the printer driver) before printing. Under winblows, when I select Print... it would allow me to choose whatever quality I wanted. Generally, for crap off the web, I chose "Fast Draft" - its fast printing, and uses less ink. Also, I could select various features, such as 2-sided printing. There is none of that offerred when I print on my linux box. So I went to linuxprinting.org and saw that there was a H-P driver for linux, so I downloaded it. Guess its sitting in my home folder now. What do I do with it, or where do I move it to? Does some kind of install need to be done, or does it just have to be moved somewhere? It is a .ppd file. thanks [moved from Everything Linux by spinynorman]

Darkelve has a review of suse 9.1 in the Everything Linux forum, if you want to read all of his comments on the installation & usage of suse 9.1. I have a recent install of Fedora Core 2 and so far I really love it. As cybrjackle says, everything you could possibly want will be available somewhere thru apt-get or yum. I have been using yum to get everything so far, and its been pretty great so far. Since I had to cough up some money for a new system, home-built, about $400 for the mobo, processor, RAM, and video card, I couldn't pay for an $89 suse pro box. So I downloaded FC2.