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viking777

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Everything posted by viking777

  1. Thanks for those replies. Ian, cgmail is just a mail checker, nothing else, Gnome has shed loads of those, in fact I have 'Mail Notifier' running at the momet. It is fine, but not capable of deleting anything from the server. Yves. Thanks for that, but it looks so complicated I'd be bound to screw it up!!
  2. Up to date I have never had any bother with email security thanks to that wonderful program 'kshowmail'. Unfortunately it looks like all that is going to change pretty soon. I have said enough about KDE4, I just don't want to use it and even if I did the present version of it refuses to update unless it removes kshowmail. For me that means that KDE4 is going to be removed, not kshowmail. But there comes the next problem. I have tried XFCE, I like it, but I can't make it do what I want to do. I have tried Gnome, I don't like it, but I can make it do what I want to do (with enough effort). So it is going to be Gnome for me in future like it or not. This finally leads me on to the point of this post. Astonishingly Gnome does not have an equivalent to kshowmail. It has a bucketful of mail checkers, but nothing that will allow you to read and delete mail from the server as kshowmail does. Also I have failed in my attempts to get kshowmail to work on Gnome - I can get it to install and run but not to connect to a mail server. Since I do not want to change email servers (they do have a google mail applet that performs the function that I want but as I say I don't want to switch) I now will have to rely on filters in Thunderbird to sort junk mail unless somebody out there knows of a kshowmail like program that does run under Gnome? Assuming such a program does not exist (and I have tried hard to find one) how do you set up filters (or otherwise deal with) the kind of spam that spoofs the 'From' address so that it is your own address that appears to be sending it? Blacklisting your own email address does not seem like a good idea, and trying to blacklist on 'Subject' is a guessing game that could go on for eternity. So what do you do? Lastly a word to any Gnome devs out there. Please, pretty please, start working on 'gshowmail' - such a program is an absolute necessity in this day and age.
  3. Hey my friend, if you have found a version of Gnome that doesn't automount, I'll tell you what to do. Take a patent out on it - I'd buy it. On my Gnome desktop if you stuck a finger in the usb socket it would automount it, and taking the analogy a bit further, if you pulled your finger out it would rip your finger nail off, and metaphorically speaking that is exactly what it does to usb devices that you forget to unmount, and that is why automounting of usb devices is such a dramatically bad idea.
  4. I have been down that route too, I reported what I consider to be a major bug and although I wasn't flamed I was told - 'That is the way it is supposed to work'. Which says it all really. It has been designed to work so badly that things that I consider to be bugs are actually designed in!! Crazy.
  5. Until very recently I would have said Mandriva, but a couple of days ago I installed a testing version of Linux Mint. If there is anything easier to install and use than that is then I have yet to find it. One word of warning though, if you suffer from a weak stomach then their default colour schemes may well induce nausea :lol2:
  6. You might be interested to know that KDE 4.1.8 (which is what I am using on Mandriva 2009.1 alpha 1) is also called - in brackets - KDE4.2 - Beta 1 so maybe KDE are saying that everything to do with KDE4.1 to date is a Beta - that is what I have said all along (in fact I think calling it beta is flattering it). Oh and if you think 4.1.2 is unstable then have a look at 4.1.8. I must admit it is amusing trying to guess what quirky little error it is going to generate every time you boot it because they change every time. It would make a nice party game trying to guess the errors at each boot, for example you could play 'guess how many panels my desktop is going to be divided into' or 'guess what colours they will be' or 'guess where the start menu will open' or 'guess what size the start menu will be' or 'guess where the so called 'cashew' will be'. The answers for todays boot are in order: 4 panels (3 arranged horizontally 1 vertically), 2 blue and 2 green, bottom right hand corner of the screen, dont know as I can only see the top half inch of it the rest is hidden and lastly about a quarter up from the bottom of the screen. I guarantee at least some of that will have changed next time I boot it. Now before you get your knives out let me say quite clearly that this is in no way a criticism of Mandriva - they have the good sense to call this release alpha1 and I have no quarrel with its eccentricities I have found it all very amusing.
  7. I would like to echo the sentiments expressed by all those above. Adam has been exceptional value for money in anybody's terms. So now we have not only KDE hell bent on self destruction but Mandriva following suit by the looks of it (not only this incident, if you were running 2009.1 alpha 1 KDE4 you would know what I mean). Good luck Adam and let us know where you end up.
  8. Interesting you should say that RV, I am presently coming at you from Linux Mint 6 rc1 with a Gnome - yes that is right - Gnome desktop. It makes you feel kind of ashamed to admit you are a Gnome user, and why people become so attached to it is beyond me, it is supposed to be easy to use, well all I can say to that is that if somebody thinks that using gconf just to create a keyboard shortcut for a program is easy, that doesn't fit into my definition. However it is better than KDE4 no doubt. Also it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good - after years of searching I have finally found a distro that handles my Mobile Broadband modems properly. I have to jump through several hoops to get them working properly on both Mandriva and Suse - not so with MInt, just plug them in wait for them to be recognised and click 'connect'. I can't tell you how wonderful that is after all this time! Other advantages are - fast boot up (compared to Mandriva and Suse), I can get Krusader to run on it (although Nautilus has improved a lot since I last looked at it - but by God it needed to!), Synaptic (what a complete joy that is compared to yast, it is so much better than everything else out there), and to my mind, Mint is the only distro I have tried that has grasped how a 'kickoff' menu should work, but the modem thing alone is enough to sell it to me (probably nobody else I agree). The disadvantages are - well it is Gnome, so bland and uninspiring it is enough to make you weep. I know you can get skins for anything these days but I just cant be bothered with that. The skins included with it are dire! The biggest drawback to me though is that Kshowmail doesn't work and astonishingly it doesn't seem to have a Gnome equivalent either. I consider that program to be absolutely essential on any desktop. Mandriva 2009.0 with KDE 3.5.10 is still my default distro when I am at home (and not using the Mobile Broadband Modems) but I do intend to use Mint when I am away from now on. I do know that Mint has a KDE version, but unfortunately it is a bit of an afterthought just as it is for Ubuntu and consequently doesn't receive such good support, and of course it too is probably being tainted by the KDE4 virus. I might also have a look at PCLinux, but I thought I would wait until they have released their 2009 version. Do you think the KDE team aware of the damage they are doing to their own reputation?
  9. I agree with Orts, KDE3.5.10 on Mandriva 2009 has been my default system since it came out. It is rock solid, stylish and functional, everything KDE4 isn't.
  10. I appreciate that it is the KDE team that are driving this but not everyone is being led. Here is a quote from the PCLinuxOS release announcement for their latest Beta: That is the correct decision, Mandriva's is not.
  11. Well said Aussie John. If enough people keep plugging away maybe someone will listen (I doubt it but there you go). Interesting that you mentioned PCLinux are still maintaining KDE3 as default Scarecrow. It used to be my main distro before I changed to Mandriva and I liked it a lot, maybe it is time to take another look at it.
  12. Adam, FWIW I think that is a big mistake, I don't see why I or anyone else should be railroaded into using a fourth rate DE just because the KDE team say it is ready for use when it patently isn't. Still I am sure there will be a way around it, install from source?, use another distro? use an older version of Mandriva? Whatever it is I won't be using 4 until it matches the functionality of 3 if it ever does. Thanks Chris, I wan't even aware that there was a difference let alone what it was. And now back to today and a word of warning for Nvidia users. I just received an update to dkms-nvidia-current which completely stuffed my graphics. I had to remove it via a console login and then reinstall my nvidia drivers manually to get back to a working situation. The reason I think that it doesn't work is that it has the version number 180.08 ( which I presume must match the number of the driver you are installing - at least that was the gist of the warning message I got when it couldn't start the graphics system). Unfortunately this version hasn't been released yet, not even as a beta (180.06 is the latest). If you use Nvidia and you are offered this update my advice would be to decline for the time being unless you happen to have found the Nvidia driver to match it.
  13. Chris H. Yes it does work, I said that later on in the post. Edit. I think I may have misunderstood you here Chris, I see from a post on the other forum that there now seems to be some difference between kdesu su and su - . This is news to me. Anyway to cut a long story short su - does absolutely nothing. You have to start a root terminal and then launch the program that you want a root instance of in order for anything to work. PS I do hope the people at Mandriva are not going to cripple it with this nonsense, that is why I stopped using Ubuntu with their insistence on that sudo crap. Spinynorman Thanks for that, I will have a read of that later. Scarecrow If you renamed KDE4.1 to KDE 4alpha1 you would be flattering it. I don't really mind this because I love new stuff (why else would I be using Cooker?) but the major problem with KDE4 is that it is being utilised by every distro manager as the default KDE desktop. This is not acceptable because not everyone has the patience/desire/ability/back up strategy to cope with its failings. I already read a post on this forum recently where somebody said they are going back to Vista because of problems with (amongst other things) KDE4. This type of complaint is, I am sure, not unique. Just how much are distro managers willing to compromise their products with this unacceptable DE? I am not saying that you have to get rid of it altogether, but surely at this stage in its development it should be an option not a default? I didn't really want to get into the Gnome/KDE debate, it is too controversial , but it is obvious that you dislike Gnome almost as much as I do. For me Gnome is a bit like self-flagellation, some people like that kind of thing but it isn't for me (although I must admit I have tried it recently(Gnome that is not self-flagellation :D ) as KDE4 is so bad). The problem for me with Gnome is that it is always the opposite of what I want. Everything that I think should be simple to configure is difficult, everything that I think is irrelevant to configure is easy. Everything it does by default I don't want it to do, and everything it doesn't do by default is just what I want. I have spent some serious time with it and I must admit that if I had to choose between it and KDE4 then I would choose Gnome, but luckily at the moment at least there are alternatives. I am really glad that you have discovered 'sanctuary' in XFCE. Needless to say I have tried it and it is certainly better than Gnome and KDE4, but for me it doesn't give me what I want whereas KDE3 does. In the name of sanity, I care for Linux and want it to go from strength to strength, but it will never do so if it throws Alpha products at new users. It may be very necessary for KDE to try out such software as plasma, phonon, nepomuk and solid, but for Gods sake do it in development releases and let people like me try it out. Don't ever inflict it on new users and destroy the reputation of Linux in the process.
  14. It has been pretty quiet in the cooker forum just recently so I thought I would liven things up a bit by providing you with my thoughts on my recently installed copy of 2009.1. I cloned my 2009 partition then switched repos to cooker and proceeded with the update (about 550Mb I think). This all went very well and most things worked first time, the only exceptions are those I will report below. 1) KDE4 doesn't work. All you get is a white screen and two warnings, one saying that phonon doesn't work (when did it ever?), the other saying that plasma has crashed (hence the lack of desktop). Now most people would find this a problem, but I don't, because having KDE4 not working at all is markedly superior to having it working the way it normally does. And no, I haven't filed a bug because KDE4 is a bug. Enough said. Booting into KDE3 everything is running pretty well, the only problems I have come across are these: 2) I still have the same critical problem with Krusader root mode as reported here: https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=44721 . For me this is a real show stopper since I would rather stop using Mandriva than stop using Krusader (it works perfectly well in OpenSuse Factory). However I will stick with it as I am sure it will get sorted out in the end. In the meantime it gives me an opportunity to try out Dolphin. I have heard quite a few criticisms of Dolphin up to now, but I must say I quite like it, certainly preferable to Konqueror although nowhere near as good as Krusader when it works properly. Trying out Dolphin led me to discover my next problem. 3) I expect all distributions to have access to a root mode file manager, so the first thing I tried to do with Dolphin was launch a root instance. I normally do this with Alt/F2 followed by 'kdesu dolphin'. This doesn't work. My next attempt is to launch the KDE menu editor and edit the dolphin entry by ticking the 'run as different user' box and run it as root. This doesn't work either. In both cases the kdesu dialog box pops up but after password entry it does not launch the program. I also tried this with konsole and it wont launch in this fashion either. I then tried it with konqueror and got this: The red highlighted line is exactly the same error message I get when I try to launch Krusader root mode. If you can't live without a root file manager (and I can't) then the only way to launch one is open a terminal, su to root and then run 'dolphin' or 'krusader' from there, this will work although for some reason when you launch a program that way you get appalling font rendering, no idea why. 4) Sounds. I hate system sounds. All the little beeps and buzzes do my head in, so I just turn them all off from within kcontrol (Sound & Multimedia/System Notifications/Quick Controls/Apply to all applications/Turn off all - Sounds). This normally works, but in cooker it doesn't. 5) On another KDE related matter the login manager (kcontrol/System Administration/Login Manager/Convenience tab). I don't wish to enable auto login , as with a laptop - which can be easily stolen - it is too much of a security risk. However I do like to have the user preselected and the password focused. This function does not work in cooker but then it hasn't worked in any other Mandriva distribution either (from 2008.0 onwards). 6) Last but not least - DVD's. When I put a movie DVD into my tray it is detected and shows up in the storage media tray applet. However the only functional option on the menu is to open it with Dolphin (or eject it). There is not much point in opening a DVD with Dolphin, the idea is to play it (normally the menu includes the option - 'Play DVD with Kaffeine'). To investigate this further I opened Kaffeine manually and tried to play it from within the program itself. It replied 'Folder found when file expected' and just opens the DVD in Dolphin. The next trial was to open it with Mplayer. Needless to say it worked perfectly (because almost everything does in Mplayer). Well that is it to date (although I have only had it for a couple of days so I might well discover other things later on). If you disregard KDE4 (which is what everyone should do) it is working pretty well, although I find it pretty difficult to distinguish it from 2009. The Krusader error is a major problem for me but that (and KDE4) aside it is going pretty well. One last question. Are there any release notes for 2009.1? I have searched all over for them and I can't find them. I would just like to know what has changed from 2009.0, as to me it doesn't appear to be very much.
  15. I am using 2009 right now and it is really not difficult to switch off auto login. Just go to MCC/Boot/Setup auto login/ and select what you want - ie do not login automatically.
  16. The problem with putting icons in the tray is that they are so ridiculously large that once you have two or three icons in there you will not have a system tray left. The only real answer is to boycott KDE4 until the developers relearn what is and isn't important in a desktop environment.
  17. Well said I don't know if you are using 3.5.10 on 2009, but if you aren't then do give it a try, I can't recommend it highly enough. You move from a KDE4 system where everything you want to work doesn't (whilst everything you don't want to work does) to a KDE3 system where everything works full stop. During the whole development cycle of 2009 I have used KDE4, this has led me to so much frustration that I ended up hardly using 2009 at all, I preferred to use 2008.1 or Opensuse (both of which have 3.5.9 on). From the day I installed task-kde3, 2009 has gone back to being my default boot choice once again. KDE4.0 was alpha software. KDE4.1 is beta. They have not released a working version yet in my opinion and they shouldn't foist their unfinished products on the public. Even that simple statement leaves out the argument that the whole background philosophy behind 4 is flawed which I think is the point that you are making.
  18. I have been using 2009 KDE4 since it was an alpha - it has been a complete pain in the arse. Entirely, I'll say that again, entirely due to KDE4. Whilst I was prepared to put up with it in a testing distro (in the vain hope that it might improve) I am in no way prepared to put up with it on my default distro. Therefore as 2009 is now mainstream I have finally managed to put KDE3.5.10 on it (lack of bandwidth has prevented me from doing it before) and I have to say it is first class. Both 2009 and KDE 3.5.10. As for KDE 4 I just hope it either improves markedly or dies the death it deserves. I am amazed that any distro provider can afford to taint their product in such a marked way by using KDE4 as a default desktop environment, it is like producing a Rolls Royce motor car and installing the dashboard from a Trabant - madness!
  19. A bit complicated this so bear with me or look away now! At the moment I am using 2 gprs/3g modems to connect to the internet. I need to hot swap these two in order to find the one that has the best connection. I have managed to do this with the help of a udev rule that I found on the internet. It works well, but it has a side effect that it removes access to my external usb hard drive. It does this because it invokes the command rmmod usb_storage This is acceptable to me because at the moment, the ability to hot swap the modems is more important than the ability to hot plug my hard drive. If I want to use the hard drive I have to rename the udev rule and then run udevadm control reload_rules . However I have noticed that on 2009 the situation is a little different. I am running the same udev rule but it is not affecting my hard drive in the same way (which is a big bonus for me). The hard drive has two partitions, one is ext3 the other is ntfs. In 2009 the ext3 partition seems to be recognised and mounted automatically and I am able to mount the other partition with the 'pmount' command. The other noticeable difference is that whilst on 2008.1 the two partitions are shown as '/dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb5' on 2009 they are called '/dev/uba1 and /dev/uba5'. I can only conclude from these differences that 2009 is handling usb devices differently from 2008.1. Am I correct in this assumption? If so is there some explanation around as to what the differences are? Hopefully one that my feeble brain can comprehend
  20. viking777

    DNS Problem

    I have found a nice simple answer to this one, just two steps required. 1) Edit /etc/resolv.conf to show the nameservers you want. 2) Execute this command: chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf Job done. man chattr If you want to know more about it or want to undo it.
  21. Hey Ian, thanks for that post, in writing that you have inadvertantly answered my post here: https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtop...st&p=505574 And it seems to work too. I had no idea you could just disable resolvconf and let resolv.conf do all the work. Sadly as I suspected it doesn't do much for my connection speeds, but I am glad I found an answer to it anyway. EDIT Wrong again, it survived my changing modems but when I rebooted it went back to the default nameserver. Not to worry, as I said it makes very little difference to my connection anyway.
  22. I am away from home at the moment and using gprs/3g modems to connect to the internet. I have two of these with two different providers but I have noticed recently that every time I try to update anything using the '3' network I get a shed load of signature verification errors. If I switch to the Vodafone network I do not get any errors at all. Sadly most places I go the Vodafone network is generally too slow to update anything, whereas with '3' you might just about manage it if it weren't for the errors. I am not exactly looking for a solution to this because it will go away of its own accord when I get home, but I just wonder why it might happen? Does anyone know? Incidentally, I run two versions of Mandriva and one of Opensuse and the effect is noticeable on all three, so this is not a Mandriva specific fault.
  23. viking777

    DNS Problem

    Thank you once again for trying David. Sadly I have to report another failure. Firstly the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ppp0 does not contain the lines RESOLV_MODS=yes DNS1=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx DNS2=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx So I can't delete them and secondly when I remove 'resolvconf' from startup in MCC all I get is a nameserver of 10.11.12.13. This is obviously even more useless than my ISP's own offering. But to save you wracking your brains again let me say this. As I posted earlier, I have already solved this problem using OpenSuse. The trouble is though that it doesn't make any difference. Before I switched Suse to Opendns, my browser used to stall for ages 'looking up xxxxxxxxxx". It no longer does this but goes straight to 'waiting for xxxxxxxxxx' and stalls for just as long. In other words it doesn't really matter if the Dns server is quick because the connection isn't and that is that, end of story. I guess I will just have to live with these slow connections until I get somewhere where there is a sensible connection or I go home an start using adsl again. But thank you for trying anyway, much appreciated.
  24. viking777

    DNS Problem

    Thanks David, I tried that solution, but as soon as I commented out the lines in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-ppp. I stopped getting a connection altogether. Also the changes to /etc/ppp/ip-up didn't actually result in my getting the nameserver I wanted in resolv.conf. They just reverted to the default ones. It really shouldn't be this complicated!
  25. viking777

    DNS Problem

    I have a similar type of problem at the moment to that discussed here, but not quite the same so it hasn't been answered. I want to manually set the DNS server in Mandriva and I can't find how to do it. I am not using a router so I can't set it through that (I am away from home and using my hsdpa modems). Neither is there any way to configure it through the drakconnect wizard (when you set up a gprs modem it only asks for a apn, password and username). I can modify /etc/resolv.conf, but that is overwritten every time you connect and is thus useless. Unfortunately the default nameserver for my mobile isp is pretty rough and it works much better if I use opendns. I have managed to do this in Suse (or I wouldn't be posting this question) but the procedure for that distro is not the same on Mandriva (it involves editing /etc/sysconfig/network/config - but that doesn't exist in Mandriva). So how do I do it?
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