tyme

gstreamer-plugins-ugly, IIRC, contains several of the windows codecs.

cairo-dock needs compiz to do the transparency, so that black bar is to be expected. as far as the source of the bar across your window borders, that sounds like a bug - not a configuration issue. there may not be much you can do except wait for an update :unsure:

 

do you know what's drawing the window borders? is it emerald? you should use gnome-window-decorator while in GNOME.

This is a really old machine that is on the verge to collapse, but until then we have to cope with what is on it.....

o i c :)

 

the only thing that you may want to check is ports, and also, IIRC, there is an option to not allow X to receive connections from other machines - you need XDMCP set up. Unfortunately it's been years since I've done something like this (haven't had a need), so I can't be positive what to check. Anyone else know?

try a different window border theme. there may be a problem with that theme. also, do you have the 3d desktop enabled?

Ok, I just misunderstood your question I guess :)

I forgot to add that ssh is not an option

That's odd. Telnet is an option, but SSH isn't? SSH is the better option, and you can make it run on the Telnet port if the port assignment is an issue.

Getting a login box popup whenever I view this post.

That's SoulSe's fault. One of the images in my sig is on his site, apparently he's changed something. I'll remove the image and let him know.

This would help replying to annoying popups

Do you really want your information to be auto-filled into an "annoying popup"? Chances are they're trying to harvest your information to sell it to third parties (I know people who work for companies that do this - I was offered a job at one).

I could not get the driver installed.

Could you describe the issue with the installation of the driver a bit better? What have you tried?

instead of telneting, set up ssh on the remote machine and connect with:

ssh -X

this should allow you to tunnel X through ssh (a more secure method, and easier to set up IMHO).

it sounds like (note: this is a guess), for some reason, some necessary configuration files got axed. since it can't read the config properly, it just didn't work.

 

yossarian: try uninstalling and re-installing splashy.

make sure you have ntfs-3g installed

 

(mandriva control center -> software -> install software, IIRC)

is it saying that the rpm database is locked/in use? if so:

# rm -f /var/lib/urpmi/.LOCK
# rm -f /var/lib/urpmi/.RPMLOCK

be sure neither rpm nor urpmi are running:

ls -aux | grep rpm

Hello Tyme. It is white text on black Background.

That means whatever Mandriva is using (I guess splashy?) to do the boot splash screen isn't working/loading (which is why splash=silent doesn't work, there's no splash to be silent! ;) ). Check to see if it's installed as adam suggests, and also make sure this file exists:

/boot/initrd-2.6.27-desktop-0.rc8.2mnb.img

It should, if you can boot - I think boot should fail if it can't find the initrd.

is it still showing the background image during bootup, or is it just white text on a black screen?

 

what's the grub entry (in /boot/grub/menu.lst, i believe) for Mandriva look like? does it point to an initrd image? is the initrd image in the referenced place?

tyme: the Errata is almost entirely written by...me. :P

Then I hope you didn't take offense :unsure: :D

It's kind of a mixture, to be honest.

Ah, sounds about right :)

The KDE 4 bit could also be billed as 'Things Adam Noticed Within 2 Minutes Of Starting KDE 4 In The Release ISO'.

it would explain why going over budget is so common. :P

I could probably write an entire paper on that alone. Going over budget is the most common problem with IT projects (often a result of scope creep), and I think the source of the issue is managers (or who ever guesses the budget) not having a thorough understanding of the development process. Or perhaps the problem is the development process itself.

 

how did we end up here? :P

I should also mention that the 24" monitor is wide screen 1920x1200 which is not the same ratio as all the above. I wonder if that has anything to do with it ???.

I don't think graphical boot programs support widescreen resolutions right now, but I could be wrong. Anyone know for sure?

gtk2 is both slow and ugly, period.

I started using GTK2 because QT3 was slow and ugly. QT4 is STILL ugly (and may be slow, I haven't tested that). I have yet to find a QT theme (QT3 or 4) that doesn't look like it was made out of cheap plastic.

if a company wanted to create from scratch a competitor to Linux, using proprietary techniques and staff and all that, how much would it cost them to get to an equivalent state?

Such a number would only be useful as a very, very loose approximation. The software development world simply isn't reliable enough that an estimate like that would be any good to a business, and in fact would probably hurt them since, chances are, it's an underestimate.

I don't think the basic idea is pointless. A group of "volunteers" makes something for no charge, and gives it away. How much is it worth?

That's not what they're asking - they're asking how much would it cost to make it, not how much is it worth. The two things may not necessarily be mutually exclusive, but they are certainly two different questions.

 

I think the problem has become that we equate value/worth with monetary measurements. It's possible for something to have value, but no monetary value. In fact, we'd probably be better off if we didn't put monetary value to everything - but that's a whole other discussion.

never written fortran, but google turned up an eclipse plugin:

http://www.eclipse.org/photran/

 

as well as this:

http://pagesperso-orange.fr/yapakit.fortran/

I think the point was to put an economic value on the on the service provided gratis/at cost by the community to the linux project as a whole, comparing the services provided for free with comparable services provided at market rates.

I know what their point was, but you may have missed mine...(that is, sarcasm, to point out the pointlessness of this exercise).

 

Money is just an intermediary function that minimises transaction costs, it's absence does not necessarily prevent the transfer of economic wealth.

Were you a finance major? :D

If you had to start from scratch, what would it cost to create a Linux distribution?

Nothing. Linux WAS started from scratch (with inspiration, but not code, from minix), and Linus didn't pay anyone to develop it (although, people get paid now, but not as direct "Linux employees").

I'm using screenlets, and you can install this from the Mandriva repos.

I second that suggestion, as well as gnome-look.org. You could also have a look at art.gnome.org, but gnome-look has more stuff.

It has worked so far but will it create problems in this situation as well?

It all has to do with data packets getting lost or corrupted. This can happen in any environment, though it's less common in simpler networks or when not reaching across the web.

The rpm's in question are inhouse rpm's and only about ten different packages so I'm not sure what I will gain by using urpmi.

If you don't have to worry about dependencies, then you probably wouldn't have too much to gain.

I'll see how much work it will be to use wget before installing. Thanks

wget http://server/rpm/somepackage.rpm
rpm -Uvh somepackage.rpm