lawsonrc

I have a two laptops (Toshiba 5005-S507 and Toshiba 5205-S703) that require acpi so that not only the laptop functions work, but also for sound to work. Without acpi, I have no sound to use for playing any kind of audio (with RealPlayer, MPlayer, XMMS, etc.), nor is there sound for games (Frozen Bubble). When I have acpi=on, and have audio, then I open up anything multi-media (RealPlayer, etc. or Frozen Bubble), everything freezes up, even the cursor with the touchpad. Then I have to push the Power button off, then back on and edit GRUB with acpi=off, but of course then there is no sound or laptop functions. After paying for SUSE 9.0 Professional, I later find out through SUSE support that support does not include Nvidia card issues, nor acpi issues. Does anyone here have a solution with easy-to-follow,thorough, and nontechie steps of how to solve the acpi problem. In advance, thanks! Richard L.

Thanks, pmpatrick. I already know that no one active at the HLUG on Wed. evenings has personal experience with PE. Last Christmas I found Acronis OS Selector Ver. 5 on sale at Micro Center for just $5.00, so I bought three copies and gave two as gifts to two HLUG members that had helped me get started with Linux. One of them never used it, but the other did and liked it. It was all text based (not GUI) and too advanced for me. I then bought Ver. 8 in January when it came out because it had a GUI. Acronis OS Selector is never installed into any OS; you boot into it from its CD and do all the operations. Although it Ver. 8.0 is GUI, I'm still confused by it. I just may buy PE today before going to the HLUG and have it as a backup if no member can help me with diskdrake. I like supporting Acronis, since it supports Linux and is now used by SUSE, Xandros, and Mandrake to partition Windows' NTFS file system. I appreciate everyone's suggestion very much. Sincerely, Richard L.

Thanks, bvc. I just read this after PM'ing you. I'll try this at the HLUG tonight and try to get guidance from someone who has the time for me. I just don't want to screw up WinXPHome on the laptop. I don't know if this will help with the desktop because remember that I couldn't install MDK 9.0 on the desktop because it said that it couldn't recognize the CDRom drive. Thus I bought Xandros, and then RH8.0, which are still on the second harddrive. Talk to you soon! Richard L.

Thanks to both of you, pmpatrick and cannonfodder. Cannonfodder, since my laptop has GRUB, is there a quick and easy way to uninstall it? I'm using Libranet's version of GRUB. My desktop uses WinXP as the bootloader, and I just use floppies to boot either RH8 or Xandros. I don't have Mandrake on the desktop because when I tried to install 9.0, it didn't recognize my CDRom drive, thus it would not install. Since I already had RH8 and Xandros on primary partitions and all the primary partitions were used up, I didn't try MDK9.1. Yes, pmpatrick, I am familiar with each Linux distro wanting to install its own bootloader, and then editing the bootloader to include the other distro(s). I can get help from people here in Houston (also known as /root :wink: ) or at our local HLUG to help me do that. I appreciate the info that you have given me for Acronis Partition Expert and will look further into it. Acronis OS Selector is very Linux friendly and very powerful, both by command line and by GUI. BTW, SuSe, Xandros and, I believe, Mandrake now use a basic version of Acronis OS Selector to work with WindowsXP NTFS to partition their installs. They have a license with Acronis. I do realize the importance of learning to do things manually from the command line. Being a non-techie klutz that messes things up easily, I am a slow learner in this regard, although with well written instructions I was able to use Libranet's XAdminmenu to recompile a kernel with command lines. The thrill of success when I did that last June was one of ecstasy. I appreciate both of your input. Thanks again! Sincerely, Richard L.

Thanks, PMPatrick. Again, I don't mind wiping out my linux partitions and reinstalling totally from scratch. How can I do this in a simply way? Last January I bought a copy of Acronis OS Selector 8.0 which has the GUI, but it was still too technical for me to figure out. So....how to uninstall my linux distros to start all over again and to use logical partitions? I'm ready to start trying out new versions of Mandrake, Fedora-RH, Libranet, SuSe, and Xandros. Also, is Acronis Partition Expert more user-friendly than OS Selector 8.0? Is it as easy to figure out as PM 8.0? Thanks Richard L.

About a year ago I used Partition Magic and made primary partitions to learn linux distros as a newbie. My laptop (Toshiba 5005) has WinXPHome, Mandrake 9.1 (ReiserFS) and Libranet 2.8 (ReiserFS), using Libranet's GRUB as bootloader. My desktop has WinXPPro on the first hard drive. On the second harddrive I have RH8 and Xandros 1.0. RH8 is ext3 and Xandros is ReiserFS. I am booting into the Linux distros with a floppy, so I have no bootloader (neither Lilo nor Grub). On both machines I want to convert the Linux Primary Partitions and use Logical Partitions so that I can experiment with a lot more distros, rather than just having two. I guess that might mean that I have to uninstall Linux and delete the primary partitions and start all over. I'm prepared to do this, since I've backed up my files. Partition Magic 8.0 doesn't recognize ReiserFS, so it sees these as ext2. So I don't know if in PM by right-clicking on ext2 and clicking "delete" will actually delete the ReiserFS partition or not. I'm a total nontechie who needs easy, straightforward directions. I don't want to harm WinXP on either machine. Can anyone help, please? In advance, thanks! Richard L.

When you say "they" could it mean that KDE took the "Run" option away when right-clicking on the desktop, and not Mandrake? My KDE in Libranet allows me to right-click on the desktop and get the Run command, so I'm not exactly following your reasoning of associating this little problem with Libranet. Which version of Libranet do you have? Like you, I prefer right-clicking the desktop to get to the run command; however for the time being there are two other options: Right click on the Kicker panel,>Add>Applet>Application launcher--this will put the Run command right there on the panel. Or, the old-fashioned way--by clicking on the "K" applications menu. I hope you get your preferred way back! I haven't tried 9.2 yet, but will soon. Your comment though does make it sound that you are disappointed in Libranet (which I grant is not the eye-candy as MDK). I like both equally. Cheers, Richard L.

I'm glad that you have it almost all working for you in fluxbox, kilimanjaro. It would have been very helpful to all of us, and saved us a lot of time, if you had mentioned that you were trying to do this in fluxbox at the beginning of your thread. Each desktop environment and window manager works differently in linux. It is quite rare for a new linux user to be using fluxbox. Usually they start out with either KDE or Gnome, and so it was a natural assumption on my part that you could figure out what to do in the Konqueror file manager (using KDE). Enjoy! Sincerely, Richard L.

Hi, kilimanjaro... Almost a year ago I was a total newbie, very nontechie, and totally clueless. So I understand your curiosity and confusion. If you are using the menu or a shortcut that is in your original setup, it will point to the original version of OpenOffice, which is located in a different place and was not uninstalled. To open up the new version 1.1, you will have to make a shortcut on your desktop (or panel) that will point to it. Near the end of my previous post I give some very simple and specific directions of how to make a shortcut to the desktop for opening up OpenOffice like it does in Windows. Follow those directions and you'll have a nice and handy shortcut to open up all the programs that come in OpenOffice, as well as files, templates, etc. I wrote the steps very simply and clearly on how to add the shortcut. (Note: OpenOffice doesn't come with many templates, but you can download some from www.ooextras.org. However, I haven't done so and don't know how to put them in OpenOffice. Maybe someone else can help here with that.) Best of luck! Sincerely, Richard L.

Hi, null... I learned about tar in two places. The easiest place that doesn't cost any money is at the following forum: http://linuxiso.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=3 This is the Red Hat forum at www.linuxiso.org. On this forum page is a wonderful and fabulous Linux Easy Guide which explains everything about tars and apt-get (even using apt-get and synaptic in Red Hat 9), written by yowww from Ontario, Canada. He now even has developed his own forum at http://easylinuxguide.com/ or more specifically at : http://easylinuxguide.jsutnoni.com/index.php. This will help you TREMENDOUSLY! Believe me. Another source I use (which other will probably laugh at me, but which I found really helpful) is LINUX FOR DUMMIES (the 2003 edition with the Red Hat 8 discs in the back). It has several authors (it's NOT the one written by Mad Dog Hall or whatever his name is that wrote the prior edition)., It is also very well written and very practical for the non-technical newbie. Hope this helps.... Richard L. from Houston

Well, you definitely have it installed. And since you have a /home/don/OpenOffice1.1.0, that means that you have already done the ./setup. Try this: Go to /home/don/OpenOffice.org1.1.0/program Slowly scroll down and find "fromtemplate" and double-click on it. A window will appear titled "Templates and Documents - Templates". On the left side, click on "New Document", then in the window at the right, double-click on either "Text Document" (to open Writer), "Spreadsheet" (to open Calc), or "Presentation" (to open Impress). Did this work? If so, then follow my directions from the previous posted link for putting a shortcut on the desktop and on the panel for the "fromtemplate", as it acts just like the Quickstarter in Windows with OpenOffice. It would be too lengthy here for me to give steps on how to edit the menu in KDE to add it; and Gnome's menu is much harder to edit. However, why go to the menu when you have direct access from the destkop and the panel? I try to avoid opening the menu as much as possible because it's too slow and you have to waste a lot of time maneuvering the mouse around until you find the program you want to open. BTW, adding a shortcut to the desktop in Gnome is easier than in KDE and is very intuitive. Do the KDE shortcut first for practice before doing the Gnome one. Please reply back on how this is working out for you. Cheers :wink: , Richard L. p.s. (I'm too a newbie and non-techie with Linux, but I'm lucky to meet weekly at our Houston Linux Users Group Workshops every Wed. evening and have learned a lot. Now I'm less frustrated.) Have a great week, null!

I have a really long solution at the END of this thread, which worked in Mandrake 9.1: http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?t=8425 I also installed OpenOffice 1.1.0 in Red Hat 8.0. Follow this link, and read my second reply called "Got it solved!...": http://www.linuxiso.org/forums/viewtopic.p...e53f6c34a4f09a9 Reply back here to let us know if either of these was helpful. :wink: Sincerely, Richard L.

Instead of typing cd install, try typing cd OOol_1.1.0_LinuxIntel_install. BTW, I was able to do this in a semi-GUI-style in MDK 9.1 using KDE/Konqueror file manager. This gives me greater control of actually seeing what is happening with the files and folders. In Konqueror, I went to the Window menu and opened up "Show Terminal Emulator". The Terminal (Konsole) opens up at the bottom of the file manager. I then su'ed to root and typed my password. I clicked on the above folder to open it and scrolled down to find the install icon. Then I clicked back in the terminal emulator and typed ./install. [Note: I did not type ./install --prefix=/opt because I usually don't put things in the /opt directory.] By simply typing ./install, it put all the files in /home/richard/user/local. After the install finished, I scrolled down on the left side of the file manager (like you do in Windows explorer) and clicked on the + sign next to the /usr directory, then clicked on the + sign next to local, then clicked on the folder for OPenOffice.org.1.1.0. I then clicked in the Terminal Emulator on the next command line and typed "exit" (without the quotes) to leave root and return to being a user (with the $ sign). Here I typed ./setup. I did NOT choose the Workstation option, but the Local User open (or whatever it's called). It installed the program in /home/richard/OpenOffice.org1.1.0. Inside the Terminal Emulator at the bottom of Konqueror File Manager, I typed "exit" once again and it closed the Terminal Emulator at the bottom. I then minimized Konqueror File Manager to the Taskbar on the Panel. Then I made a shortcut on the desktop in KDE as follows: Right-click on the desktop and choose New>Link to Application. Click on the Execute tab then click on Browse. This opens up a new window which at the top shows (for me) "home/richard" (w/o the quotes) Under Name, scroll down to and click on the folder labeled OpenOffice1.1.0. After it opens, click on the folder labeled program. Scroll down to "fromtemplate" and click on the little shell icon on top of a document. Near the bottom of the window next to Location: you will see "from template". Now click OK. Next, click on the General tab and click on the cog wheel. Here we will choose an icon for your shortcut. Activate the radio button next to System icons if needed. Then on the right click on the down arrow to change Devices to Applications if Applications is not already showing. Scroll through the icons to ooo_gulls and click on it (there are two, choose either one). Now change the words "Link to Application" to OpenOffice1.1.0. Click OK. Click on your shortcut desktop icon and it will open up the Templates and Documents window just like the Quickstarter icon in Windows on the taskbar/system tray. Here you can click on New Document and choose which program to open: Text Document (Writer), Spreadsheet (Calc), Presentation (Impress), or whatever. Now if you want, you can simply drag to desktop icon to the panel and put it there and use it on the panel (in KDE). After you do that, if you like a clean desktop with only a few icons on it, you can right-click and delete the shortcut off the desktop. Please reply back and let us know if this tutorial was helpful to you. Sincerely, Richard L :wink:

1. Is it possible to upgrade OOo to version 1.1 by doing a simple command, like urpmi, or whatever? 2. If not, can OOo9.1 co-habit on MDK 9.1 along with the default version, which I think is 1.0.1 (I"m at work and not in Linux, so it may be 1.0.2). 3. If I install OOo1.1, will it be nicely anti-aliased like the version that came with MDK9.1? 4. I installed OOo1.1 in Windows, but the Stylist and Navigation Panels will no longer "roll up", or "shade" (i.e. collapse) in the Windows version as they did in OOo1.0.x. Also, I can't remember how to "stick" them to the side and open and close them that way as I did before, which is a second option to the windowshading. Any help is appreciated. Thanks! Richard L.

Well, I never got a reply, but got local help and here was the solution: I had to edit the /etc/fstab and on the cdrom line I had to add "exec" to allow me as the user to execute. I then had to install it as a User so that it would not go into the .root directory. This way, it created a directory for StarOffice6.0 under /home/richard. Inside the Program directory of the above, is a file called "fromtemplate". I right-clicked on the desktop >new > link to application and in the "execute" tab I made a path to /home/richard/staroffice6.0/program/fromtemplate (I'm at work right now so I'm writing this from memory and hope it is accurate -- or accurate enough.) I then chose the icon I wanted. When I click on this desktop "shortcut"/link it opens up a StarOffice window that allows you to choose among writer, calc, impress, etc. or to choose from a template. When I tried the "soffice" file, it would open up just Writer, so the name "soffice" is very misleading. Hope this helps others who have had trouble installing StarOffice6.0 in Mandrake. Cheers, Richard L.

Here's the solution: I'm in Houston, TX using a US keyboard, but I on my KDE panel, I have the Canadian Multilingual keyboard set as an alternative since I sometimes write in French and in German. Hit the key to the right of the letter "P", then hit the e. The key to the right of the letter "P" gives you the circumflex (circonflexe); then when hitting the letter e your result it: ê If I use the shift key with the key to the right of “P“, then a vowel, I get the UMLAUT over the vowel. shift +key to the right of P+ a = ä. If I keep the shift key down, I get Ä . For the German “scharfes S“ or “ess-tstett“, hold down the right ALT key and the letter “s“ to produce the ß. It only takes about a half-hour to play around with the Canadian multilingual keyboard to get the hang of it. It is my favorite for typing in German and in French. Richard L. It is not necessary to have a capital E with a circumflex, since it is not obligatory in French for capital accented letters to have the accents with them.

I have a StarOffice6.0 disk which I have used to install StarOffice6.0 in Windows and Red Hat8.0, but I can't get it to install in MDK9.1 I have su'ed to root in a terminal and gone to /mnt/cdrom/linux/office60 and then I've typed in ./setup but all I get is: bash: ./setup: Permission denied I want to install it for use for two users. I even went into the KDE Manager and added root as a user (with the stern warning and the red desktop), and tried to install it from there, but had the same problem. Again, I wish to install it for two separate users. All help is appreciated. Thanks! Richard L.

Last weekend I took a little break from Linux and went back to Windows XP. I did a Google search and found a fantastic dock from a Japanese guy known as y'z; http://www.designtechnika.com/main/modules...action=cat&id=2 I moved the Windows taskbar to the top and hid it and no longer use it. I have the dock at the bottom, but it can be positioned anywhere on any edge. On this dock, I am able to easily add "docklets" that come with it, but also I can drag and drop shortcut icons to it. I can set it to magnify the icons, resize it, make it transparent or use one of the three skins that come with it. This is a really very elegantly done utility and works *just like* the MacOSX dock. Is there any chance of finding an equivalent in Linux to use with either KDE or Gnome without a lot of painful configuration??? In advance, thanks! Sincerely, Richard L.

Thanks, JaseP, for your quick response. However, this is exactly what we did at the HLUG Wed. night that was not successfully. This is also found in the KDE Control Center > LookNFeel>Colors. KDE calls the "Window Background" where the menus and toolbars are, and the "Standard Background" the center of the window where text is typed or read. It is the "Standard Background" that Marianne wishes to change from stark, bright, garish white to a soft grayish-green that is easier on her eyes. We even made sure to have checked (ticked) "Apply colors to non-KDE applications." Here were our results: In Konqueror file manager, on the background on the right side where the directories/folders and files are shown changed to the chosen color (grayish-green), but not the left side where the "tree view" appears. In OO.o Writer, menubar and toolbars all changed to the grayish-green, but the background where text is typed remained white. In KWord, nothing changed and the standard background stayed white. So, it doesn't work like Windows as she had hoped. There just isn't any consistency. Do you or anyone else have any other suggestions? Thanks again. Sincerely, Richard L.

I'm trying to help a lady who has just installed MDK9.1, but she wants to have all windows background of all programs/apps, etc. NOT to be white. She says it's too bright on her eyes with her CRT monitor and that in Windows 98 she was able easily to change the background system-widefor all open windows to a pale gray-greenish color. We have looked at the Mandrake User Guide and also the KDE Control Panel and everything we have tried has not been completely successful. A guy at the HLUG said that in earlier versions of KDE it was simple to do, but that KDE keeps changing things around and he couldn't help us. I spent two hours with her using the KDE Control Panel and we never got a system-wide background change. She says she'll have to give up on Linux and go back to Windows if this can't be done. If not in KDE, then maybe in Gnome??? Any and all help is greatly appreciated! Thanks! Richard L.

The only place where a "Make Floppy Tool" might be is in the Hardware Browser located in the Red Hat Menu > System Tools > Hardware Browser. I also found it under /usr/bin/hwbrowser and /usr/share/hwbrowser. Trying to open in up the GUI way in the menu and the command line way does not work. It crashes each time it starts to open. What would be the steps to make a boot floppy with the newest kernel using command lines? Thanks.

The problem may be that I'm not booting from an MBR, but from a floppy disk. So how do I choose the new kernel from bootup? I decided to have WinXP-Pro on the first hard drive, the second with RH8 and Xandros. I boot into RH8 and Xandros, each with their own floppy. (Now on my laptop I'm booting with LiLo into MDK9.1, Libranet 2.8, and WinXP-Home.) I appreciate any and all advice and suggestions! Thanks, mdg! Regards, Richard

Thanks, faraujo, for your help with this issue. Here is another way which doesn't require a download and is quite simple by doing an edit (my example uses the "vi(m)" editor): 1.Open up your favorite Konsole/Terminal and su to root. 2. cd /etc/X11, then Enter. 3. vi XF86Config-4,then press Enter. Now hit the letter "i' key to Insert what you will see in Step 5 below. 4. Go to Section "Input Device" > Identifier "Keyboard1". Use the down arrow key to do this. 5. At the end of this section you will type the following line if it is not there: OPTION "XkbDisable" (with the quotes). If it is there with a #, then delete the # to uncomment it. 6. Now press the ESC key, then type :wq! (which appears at the bottom) and press Enter. 7. Next type exit to get out of root, then exit again to close the terminal/Konsole. 8. I think you may have to reboot to activate no more bouncing. This worked for me. I found it by going to Linux-on-laptops.org (or .com) and clicked on Toshiba, then on one of the 5005 choices. It led me to Nicolas Beaulieu's link: http://www.condorito.org/toshiba Hope this helps! Regards, Richard L. P.S. Faraujo, I tried your links but they did not work for me, so if people wish to do a simple edit, it should solve the bouncing key problem.

Last night I lucked out in getting into Up2Date... :D ... and there were tons of updates, especially the kernel from 2.4.18-blah-blah to 2.4.20 as well as updating everything + the "kitchen sink" in KDE to 3.0.4. So even on a cable modem connection it took quite a while. My question has to do with this: apparently the newer kernel version is there somewhere, but when I click on up2date it gives me an added tab with the message stating something to the effect (I'm at work and not at my computer at home, so bear with the paraphrase): "You are using the kernel 2.4.18-blah-blah but the newest kernel you have is 2.4.20. Please reboot to test the new kernel." Well, I rebooted several times but it seems that I am still using the older kernel version. What do I do to get RH8 to use the newest version that I just updated with? I witnessed Rh8's Up2Date do the automatic install of everything, including the kernel, but it seems that RH8 may not be using it yet. Any help is appreciated. Thanks, Richard L.

I use Lotus SmartSuite. Lotus WordPro is my favorite word processor. I got it free in 1999 with an IBM Aptiva desktop computer and after learning it out of curiousity, never went back to MS Office. Then it came free with Toshiba laptops (until this year). I've tried to like WordPerfect, Star, and Ooo and have them all installed on my computer, but Lotus Word Pro is by far the friendliest word processor there is. It's totally unique with a fast and quick "Infobox" which the others lack. It has WYSIWYG, meaning that when you need to change the formatting in any way, it happens right on the page as you do it, so the page is never covered up by a dialogue box. I could right pages about its advantages, but they would probably be ignored, so I won't go on. :wink: Too bad IBM stopped selling it in stores last year; and even worse that they never ported it to Linux and don't have plans to, since they cut their Lotus staff. Have a nice day, all. Richard L.