Havin_it

Just coming back to this for the sake of an update. Couple of months back I went over to Gentoo, and - um - forgot to backup the CXOffice installer for some reason this prompted me to try getting everything running in vanilla WINE. It took a fair amount of trial and error, but I have now done it. What I learned (bear in mind, some of this is Gentoo-specific): 1) wine-20050725 would not let me install MDAC_TYP.EXE (Microsoft Data Access Components, needed by Dreamweaver). Got round this by downgrading to 20050624. 2) A bug in Gentoo's latest ebuild for X.Org (6.8.2-r2) causes all icons with transparency (e.g. most toolbar icons in IE and the Studio MX apps) to appear black. Downgraded to 6.8.2-r1 which fixed it. 3) The best 'helper' utility I tried (and I tried 'em all) is wine-config-sidenet. I recommend acquiring dcom98.exe and instmsia.exe and placing them in the setup folder before running the setup, so it installs them for you. (I believe the latter, which is the MS Installer utility, fixed the InstallShield probs I was having earlier when trying to install Studio MX.) 4) WINE's Notepad can be replaced with XP's, if you want the bonus-feature of saving in different encodings.

'ning all, So I have a new toy in my sights. Since I've made my core utilities (web, printing) networked, I figure the next 'logical' (read: megalomaniac) step is to acquire some extra disk, and have that networked too. I'm thinking Ethernet, so I can connect it to my router. But as a total novice in such matters, I'm hoping for some pointers about this. Since I dual-boot Win/Lin, I guess I'd need capability for more than one filesystem on the drive. (Unless it's all FAT32, but that doesn't sound like the best recipe for all my backup storage...) Can these things be partitioned? Do they have their own OS built-in, and if so can it be replaced/hacked? So much to learn... hope you folks can give me some pointers!

<BUMP> from someone suffering similar problems. I get the same LibGL errors when running OpenGL-related things as my normal user (no problems with root). glxgears outputs and behaves exactly the same as described above. I joined the video group, but this hasn't made any difference. The difference for me is I get the same amount of output from glxinfo whether running it as root, or user. Also of note, is I don't have any section like this in my xorg.conf: Section "DRI" Mode "0666" EndSection How would I determine how this section should be written for my system? [My graphics card is Intel 82852/82855GM/GME, using the i915 driver, kernel 2.6.12-r1 on Gentoo unstable]

Running 1.0.6-r3 on Gentoo [i686, march=pentium4, CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS=-O2 -pipe -funroll-loops], with router as DNS server. Don't have kernel IPv6 support turned off. No complaints here...

LOL well mine likes Linux better I guess :lol: [belkin F5D7630uk4A if yer interested. Hope they pay me for the plug]

For the sake of a quick and strictly non-empirical comparison, I loaded up Hotmail in Firefox/XP, rebooted and did the same in Firefox/Gentoo. Based on bvc's distro continuum, I would expect Gentoo to be closer to the Debian (slow) end, but I noticed no perceptible difference between load-times. FWIW, I also use my router as DNS server. How about pinging a server in both OSes? Would that be a valid test? It definitely sounds as if bvc's issue is a DNS one, or failing that perhaps something in the way the deb browser packages are built...

Well, admittedly I had no particular reason to believe it was the REAL speed, just what I witness on my progress-bars. I initially thought perhaps it was an artifact of the download commencing in the background (while I'm still clicking-thru the download confirm dialog in Firefox) but if so, it still doesn't behave that way in Linux. I'd still like to know why... And can you really say it's impossible? I know nought of what happens down at the telephone exchange, but hypothetically, perhaps it takes a moment to throttle-down the connection from what it CAN do (up to 4Mbps, maybe more) to what you've actually paid for. Doesn't seem so implausible to me, although why this delay wouldn't occur with a Linux client remains puzzling.

This is exactly what I have. I just got through repartitioning my HD to give Linux all my spare room, because I can't sustain torrents for more than a couple hours on Windows before getting kicked-off by my router. Always wondered why... To the on-topic issue, I find page-loading can be perfectly fast in Linux, though not much faster than Windows. Where I do see a difference is in the first few seconds of a download: On Windows, it usually starts at around 2x the normal rate (say about 220KBps for 1Mbps ADSL) but then drops to the normal rate (110kBps). On Linux, it starts and remains at the normal rate. I guess you can call that 'stability' too...?

I just realised what I miss most of all...of all things... The GALAXY THEME, dammit! You dunno what you got until you lose it.....

Well, here I am a week-and-a-bit later speaking to you from an emerged Firefox..! Shame it's En-US, but whatever. Whoever said "don't do it for speed reasons" was probably right, although the loading of KDE seems maybe an ickle bit faster - I wouldn't say it's anything worth jumping distros for. The first weird thing is having no kernel modules to load. I compiled everything right into the kernel, so I do an lsmod and there's NOTHING there. Well, until I installed ndiswrapper at least... ;) Also the network configuration methods are a bit different. I haven't made much sense of the new system yet, but I like the idea of defining all wirelesss network properties specific to a given ESSID - useful for me as I use three different APs day-to-day. And ndiswrapper worked with my OEM drivers, unlike Knoppix which forced me to download an alternative set from Dell. There are still various niggles to be worked out - no sound, and some K apps taking 5mins to open for a kickoff - but all-in-all, no worse than a MDK Community install, albeit a bit more lengthy. So I'm kinda dual nationality now. I know now there are some Gentoo fans here too, and some things will probably need explaining from a Mandy-aware perspective, so I don't intend to be a stranger here. I may be a little less frequent, 's all.... >sniff<

Thanks guys, for the input. I've taken the plunge now, and gotten a fair way through the process, but am now stuck on the kernel configuration. Hope someone can advise. The operation: emerge gentoo-sources is choking because of failure to build xmlto-0.0.18. The output I'm getting is suggesting that "Your system does not have the required support for XML Catalogs." Any ideas how I can fix this? I've come so far, I don't wanna throw it away, but I've only got a few hours left to do this before work...! EDIT: Got this sorted. It was necessary to issue this command first: emerge -v docbook-xsl-stylesheets xmlto Onwards...

<spies flamebait> ... <bites> Reasons to buy XP Pro over Home: 1) IIS (though this can be hacked-in to a Home install with the aid of a Win2K CD) 2) Participate in and control Windows Domains (have heard of a hack for this too, but not tried) 3) Encrypted FS (equivalent if not better alternatives are available for free) 4) Some system binaries (taskkill, schtasks...) which just need to be 'sourced' and dropped into System32 directory 5) GUI control over NT permissions (another hack-in, this time from the Win2K Resource Kit) I guess if you NEED this stuff and are not prepared to be 'economic' with your EULA, then it must be Pro. Or, y'know, Linux...?

Another factor can be addon devices. Using USB, PCMCIA etc. devices can drain power anyhoo (my wifi card is a prime example). On Windows these devices have native drivers made by the manufacturer, which include power-management routines to economise on this battery-use. On Linux, the hardware manufacturers often don't make a Linux native driver, and/or won't make enough source available for community-built drivers to fully match the capabilities of the Windows equivalent - power management would be a prime example. So, you will find many of these devices sucking up more battery on Linux.

'ning, Some time ago I posted a general enquiry to test the waters about Gentoo. Since then I've been reading up on how to do it, but still could do with a couple of pointers. I'm planning to do a Stage 1 install. 1) I'm keen to optimise things as much as possible, but don't know how much is too much. Is "-O3" gonna cause problems with a lot of apps? If so, are there further optimisations that are reasonably safe to add on top of "-O2"? 2) I found the package-list for 2005.0 and it didn't seem as up-to-date as I hoped. How would I go about installing KDE 3.4 rather than the stock 3.3 - would there be problems with Portage from doing this?

It's probably a script-file that contains a binary, which it tells itself (or tells the shell, rather) to install. The installer for Crossover Office is like that.

Cheers iph - I must have been thinking along the same lines, as this is more or less what I did. Since the command apparently only works when run through the Command Interpreter, I put in the startup folder a shortcut containing the line cmd /q /c "mount 0 3 x:" which seems to have done the job. The fact that it only mounts per-user is still bothering me though. If I open Explorer under a different account the X: drive simply isn't there. There are all these other accounts in XP, like LOCALSYSTEM, DefaultUser, etc. Anyone know where I can get more info about these different accounts and their respective purposes?

Meh, looks like I overlooked a wee detail. The Ext2fsd driver isn't supposed to write to Ext3 according to the docs. Mind you, the installer gives you the option to force this functionality. (I tend to avoid like the plague anything that mentions 'forcing' things - it don't seem right, you should have a consensual relationship with your computer!) Another annoying thing is it doesn't want to mount automatically on boot. The service is running, but how to do an auto-mount I dunno. Tried putting it in the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run reg key, tried putting it in AUTOEXEC.BAT (does XP even read this?), no joy. Doesn't work from the Run dialog either, only from a terminal. AAAANNND, it seems only the user who mounted it can actually see the darn drive in Explorer. Worrying...! How exactly do Ext2 and Ext3 differ anyhoo? I'm curious about this because there was another thread recently that mentioned you couldn't do shredding on Ext3-mounted files because of how the data was organised. Can anyone explain?

Not something that'll cause me enormous disappointment for the immediate future (try 30GB) :P I can't see slow write-speeds breaking my heart either, the real issue is safety, which from what you say is getting to acceptable levels. So, anyone else tried the Ext2/3 for Windows driver?

'ning, Just came across this: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd Works for Ext3, too - though it only mounts partitions per-user, slightly annoying but still, great to have all that fileage opened up from the Windows side. My drive is all mine, wherever I boot! Now, the earnest question: I'd like to hear from anyone who uses or has used either this, or the Captive NTFS R/W support on the Linux side. Was writing support reliable? Did everything survive reboot? Any quirks worth mentioning? I ask this mainly because I'm possessed of one small-disk computer, two OSes, and a knowledge that I can't/won't be rid of either one, for various reasons. Storage needs are constantly fluctuating between the two, so I'd dearly love it if I didn't feel I'd need to repartition every time a big swing was needed. Bring it on...

I think you may have problems getting the wireless interface up with only a boot floppy. You need to get the ndiswrapper package installed (I believe this was on CD3 in MDK10.1) and also install your Windows drivers for the card. If you don't have a wired interface, the only other way I can think you might manage it is if you put the packages and files you need into a separate partition which you don't format when installing, or onto a USB pen-drive perhaps, then are able to install them from there. But I don't know if the installer will permit you to do this...

Wow... it's good to see that this topic attracts so many of the heavy-hitters of this board, and the discussion is so lively. It seems so much more balanced than if I'd said Hey, I wanna try Ubuntu, or MEPIS, or Arch (you lot and your pet distros, honestly ;) ). More forensics, less sermonising = deep joy! I'm swotting-up via the links you've provided, and taking your views onboard. My current thinking is that a Stage-2 might suit my level and interest best, though I still seek to better understand the differences better before I commit. I have some 'me' time next week, so I may just go for it then if I feel ready. The preparation includes a possible repartitioning mission (3 OSes on a 30GB laptop is the mother of economy) so I have to weigh things up carefully. This could be the time I finally make the move to Linux taking the dominant share of El Disk...!

Heh... I weaned off MCC pretty quick after attempting to use Drakconnect a few times <grrr>. Guess I'd miss a couple of things from it though: browsing the packages with RPMDrake, and the Services panel being the main ones. Guess I'll need to do a lot of reading to decide if I'm really ready for it. I mean if I can bugger up a MDK install (yes, really) I want to be better prepared if I go this route. cybr, can you explain about stages? I saw something in the ISO repo's that mentioned Stage 1, but I'm not clear. Is Stage 3 corresponding to -O3 optimisation?

Guys, thank you both for your viewpoints. arctic, it's particularly good to be told explicitly to take careful 'rehearsal time' over configuration - I need this because I am a cardinal sinner of blattering straight in without preparation. MDK lets me off with such transgressions, of course :) I think setting up LAMP will be one thing requiring a lot of thought. Apache alone must have at least fifty configure switches, which is the sort of thing I've never had to worry about before... I read some reviews over at linuxquestions.org and one phrase kept coming up, about having to do things "the Gentoo Way" [their inverted commas, not mine]. What exactly does this mean? Are they just referring to the business of actually building everything from source, or is there some darker secret?

Edd, you don't mention whether you've created a config file for the wireless connection. This isn't done automatically (unless you used MCC), so I'll assume the answer is no. Basically you put your configs into a text file called (assuming the interface is called wlan0): /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0 For information about the format of this file, type in a console: man ifcfg (there are wireless-specific items near the bottom) The main things you should have are DEVICE=wlan0 BOOTPROTO=dhcp HWADDR=<MAC address of router> WIRELESS_ESSID=<your ESSID> WIRELESS_ENC_KEY=<your WEP key> WIRELESS_MODE=Managed MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=Yes DHCP_HOSTNAME=<your computer name> NEEDHOSTNAME=Yes I think that's about it - did I miss any?

Hi again Edd, as pmpatrick says, the xorg.conf file (you may find this is a link to the file XF86Config in the same directory, but that's normal!) holds the settings for the touchpad, so you can make permanent changes by editing this file as root. If you find this doesn't solve the problem (some values returned by synclient -l do not match the settings in xorg.conf), you can add some correction commands to a startup script and place it in KDE's Autostart folder (obviously it needs to run *after* X starts). Read this: https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=25134 wherein I concocted a script to auto-correct any incorrect entries (you'll find it down the bottom). Just copy it into KWrite or whatever, save it in /home/yourName/.kde/Autostart and make it executable (chmod +x thefilename). I'll answer your wireless question in the thread you started on that subject.