Havin_it

'ning all, After (nearly) a year of Mandrake, I consider myself well-enough versed in the core widgets I need to understand to get my laptop + devices working smoothly. That, to my mind, makes it - TIME FOR A CHANGE! No other distro interests me more than Gentoo right now: I like the idea of building my whole system from source and the optimisation that could bring. MDK/MDV RPMs are made for i586, but if I understand everything correctly (which isn't a given), my Celeron 'Northwood' 2.6GHz qualifies as an i686, so it'd be nice to see if this made much of a difference. I'm hoping any Gentoo veterans here can give me some thoughts on what I'm letting myself in for. Some questions: - Just how long does the base install really take, given the above CPU + 512MB RAM? (I've heard it quoted in days ) - Given my Mandy background, what things might catch me off-guard during the install? - Should I research what compiler switches/flags are appropriate for my system in advance (if so where can I get such info), or does the installer detect/advise me sufficiently? - What's the package repository landscape like compared to Mandy? Are some things (like PLF-type stuff or jpackage) not included? Is it easy enough to use 'alien' packages with Portage? - My Linux partition is currently 7.5GB not including swap. Could I need more than that? Can't think of any other biggies at the mo', but will add if I do. Thanks in advance for any wisdom you care to share...!

Yep, that would be yer problem then. Fix: 1 - If you don't know your current kernel version, hit Ctrl+Alt+F1 from inside KDE to get a console screen. This'll have your kernel version at the top. Jot it down and hit Ctrl+Alt+F7 to return to KDE. 2 - Go to System > Configuration > Configure your Computer. In the Control Centre, go to Software > Install and search for kernel-source. Select and install the appropriate package matching your kernel version from step 1. 3 - Ensure there is a link /lib/modules/<kernel-version>/build that points to /usr/src/linux-<kernel-version>. If not, open a console as root, and run this command ln -s /usr/src/linux-<kernel-version> /lib/modules/VERSION/build 4 - Now (after uninstalling old version) install new ndiswrapper. That should do it

Hi Edd, and welcome to teh MUB! The first thing you can do is check whether the module is really not there. It lives at /lib/modules/<your-current-kernel-version>/kernel/3rdparty/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper.ko.gz There should always be a module there (although initially it tends to be an old one that comes preinstalled with the distro). Do you have the kernel-source package installed for your current kernel? You can check this in Software management. There also needs to be a link to this kernel-source from inside the modules directory - read more about these requirements at http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/phpwiki...hp/Installation Hope this gets you started. If you have problems or don't understand anything, just ask.

Going back to that point about Desktop icons for a moment, I kinda wondered what is the point of them? Given they seem kinda temperamental things, especially since I upped my KDE to 3.4, why not just use symlinks? Then it wouldn't matter what WM you used, they would always display correctly.

No use for journaling filesystems; so that's Ext3 and Reiser out then. The fact that there's nothing on Sourceforge (or Google from what I can see) being developed to address this application, one wonders if that's because it is either impossible, or irrelevant, on these types of FS. I certainly don't know much at all about filesystems though, so this is just speculation. I did find this Debian mailing-list page: http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2002/11/msg05579.html The upshot there is that you could temporarily re-mount your disk as Ext2, and then use shred. Of course this means the file has to be on a different partition to the system, or you'll have to reboot (twice) to do it. ...Or if you were using Ext2 anyway, yer laughing.

Too bad Wine can't do XP, or he could have tried out Blaster and Sasser.

In this article: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/73897/french-l...es-lycoris.html It says this is MDV's third acquisition in the last year. Is this correct? If so pardon my ignorance, but what was the third?

Well, I mucked around with UDF for about 3 days solid, and had absolutely no joy from it. I think you guys are right, it's just not a viable way of using a CDRW at the moment, if ever. I might try it again if I ever have cause to buy Nero (and since I have K3B that's quite unlikely!) and try out InCD again. But the memories may keep me away... /shudder

jeanrev, your first link somehow got mangled by the board. Can you re-post it in full? Pleeeease? I'm dying to know what this thread was really about.

I know you weren't trolling ilia. Trolling is when you say Adriano has a stupid beard and paul likes wearing women's clothing and iphitus can't make a peanut butter and condensed milk sandwich to save his life. My (not very educated) point of view on making life easy for yourself when installing Linux, is start with generic kit. My laptop has a bog-standard Intel graphics card, AC'97 audio, everything's integrated, Realtek 8139 NIC, even the Wifi card I bought was the cheapest generic effort on the market. And it just worked. Notice how many people have headaches with hi-end stuff like Nvidia/ATI cards, Gigabit NICs, TV cards, yaddayadda? I believe the cheapo whiteboxen is Linux's greatest friend. (Maybe that's why Dell buys Redhat shares...) BTW to guys mentioned above - J/K!!!! I can flamebait way better than that when I want to, I used to be on a warezboard.

Thanks for the links DM. Something struck me with the first one, in this sentence: I wonder if this is the nub of the problem. I've been trying to compare with the Windows DUN settings to work out what's different, and I note that all PAP/CHAP authentication methods are enabled, but there is no username or password used. KPPP didn't permit this flexibility; If I changed the auth method to PAP/CHAP, it refused to attempt a connection. (Please enlighten me if this is not an appropriate comparison.) I've seen an article where the person did make GPRS work using KPPP, but it didn't really cover any Gotcha's, so didn't help much. WRT the above quote, would this equate with the 'noauth' option for pppd? I tried adding this to KPPP, but it told me this was a privileged option (presumably meaning I'd need to run it as root, which seems unwise). The man page for pppd is enormous and unhelpful at times (see above), but if I understand correctly, I could use a 'peer' file to specify this option - if that was the right thing to do. Any advice on this?

Some more info and screenshots from various browsers. http://www.sitepoint.com/blog-post-view.php?id=258586

Ah, sorry. Good point. Acid2 is a test of standards-compliance. It's here: http://webstandards.org/act/acid2/test.html I read about it in a Sitepoint newsletter, article below:

Crossover works for the apps I use (Macromedia Studio MX 1.1) which is good enough for me. I did try Wine on its own, but lost patience with config hell. Crossover doesn't cost much (about 40 squid), I think it's well worth it for a user-friendly installer and UI integration. You should note that Wine (and therefore Crossover) is limited to emulating Win9x, so apps that only work on Win2k/XP tend to be a non-starter. You didn't mention which apps you are looking to run, but you should find all your answers here: http://appdb.winehq.org/

Great houpla among webpersons for this development. http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/1129 It seems that in the middle of the cat-fighting between the Konq and Apple (Safari) teams, iCab popped out with a beta that passed the test, and somehow this brought the warring KHTML devs to a reconciliation of sorts, and Apple started sharing again. Just makes me feel all gooey inside :woops: Anyone care about this?

Gnomes are closely related to trolls, you know. Why Mandrake? Folks said it was a good place to start. Guess they were right, since I live on the third floor and the PC has not yet made the descent by 'express elevator'.

phpBB for me. Con: I'd miss the quick-reply (unless there is now a hack to provide that?) Pro: all the above, plus email notifications that actually come when a post is answered (my main unanswered gripe about this board)

'ning, I've succeeded (finally) in getting my PC and phone talking over Bluetooth, but the method of using GPRS to connect to teh Intarweb still eludes me. I've got KPPP configured to connect through the Bluetooth device /dev/rfcomm0 and found the right number to dial and the right line-endings for the AT commands to talk to the phone's modem, but when I try to connect, pppd dies with exit code 10. Looking at man pppd, the hugely helpful (irony) explanation of this code is: 10 The PPP negotiation failed, that is, it didn't reach the point where at least one network protocol (e.g. IP) was running. Very illuminating. Of slightly more use perhaps is the log output: Jun 8 11:37:47 localhost pppd[27242]: pppd 2.4.2 started by robin, uid 501 Jun 8 11:37:47 localhost pppd[27242]: using channel 2 Jun 8 11:37:47 localhost pppd[27242]: Using interface ppp0 Jun 8 11:37:47 localhost pppd[27242]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/rfcomm0 Jun 8 11:37:47 localhost pppd[27242]: sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1 <asyncmap 0x0> <magic 0xc9d83f71> <pcomp> <accomp>] Jun 8 11:37:47 localhost pppd[27242]: rcvd [LCP ConfAck id=0x1 <asyncmap 0x0> <magic 0xc9d83f71> <pcomp> <accomp>] Jun 8 11:37:47 localhost pppd[27242]: rcvd [LCP ConfReq id=0x1 <asyncmap 0x0> <auth pap> <magic 0x1962426b> <pcomp> <accomp>] Jun 8 11:37:47 localhost pppd[27242]: No auth is possible Jun 8 11:37:47 localhost pppd[27242]: sent [LCP ConfRej id=0x1 <auth pap>] Jun 8 11:37:47 localhost pppd[27242]: rcvd [LCP ConfReq id=0x2 <asyncmap 0x0> <magic 0x1962432d> <pcomp> <accomp>] Jun 8 11:37:47 localhost pppd[27242]: sent [LCP ConfAck id=0x2 <asyncmap 0x0> <magic 0x1962432d> <pcomp> <accomp>] Jun 8 11:37:47 localhost pppd[27242]: sent [CCP ConfReq id=0x1 <deflate 15> <deflate(old#) 15> <bsd v1 15>] Jun 8 11:37:47 localhost pppd[27242]: sent [IPCP ConfReq id=0x1 <compress VJ 0f 01> <addr 0.0.0.0> <ms-dns1 0.0.0.0> <ms-dns3 0.0.0.0>] Jun 8 11:37:47 localhost pppd[27242]: rcvd [LCP ProtRej id=0x1 80 fd 01 01 00 0f 1a 04 78 00 18 04 78 00 15 03 2f] Jun 8 11:37:47 localhost pppd[27242]: rcvd [IPCP ConfRej id=0x1 <compress VJ 0f 01>] Jun 8 11:37:47 localhost pppd[27242]: sent [IPCP ConfReq id=0x2 <addr 0.0.0.0> <ms-dns1 0.0.0.0> <ms-dns3 0.0.0.0>] Jun 8 11:38:05 localhost pppd[27242]: rcvd [LCP TermReq id=0x3 05 00 00 0a 00 00 00 00 00 00] Jun 8 11:38:05 localhost pppd[27242]: LCP terminated by peer (^E^@^@^J^@^@^@^@^@^@) Jun 8 11:38:05 localhost pppd[27242]: sent [LCP TermAck id=0x3] Jun 8 11:38:05 localhost pppd[27242]: rcvd [LCP TermAck id=0x3] Jun 8 11:38:05 localhost pppd[27242]: Connection terminated. Jun 8 11:38:05 localhost pppd[27242]: Exit. I've tried to copy as much as possible from the Windows dial-up settings, but this is as far as I can get. And since I haven't used ppp since my Speedtouch days (which was a rather different kettle of fish, I'd venture) I really don't know what to be looking at next. Which is where I'm hoping one of you guru types can jump in. The hammer is in my hand, if you just tell me what to hit!

So far things went a bit better than I expected. I've got KPPP installed and configured (quite a relief as this app. gave me hell in the past). I got as far as querying the modem, all of which seems to go okay, but upon connecting it always craps out and kills pppd in the process. Since we're up to this point, it seems appropriate to continue with a new topic in Networking. Thanks all for the input thus far.

Thanks, Steve. Installed udftools and I'm trying a quick format now (not very quick it must be said!) Would mkudffs or mkisofs be viable methods to shortcut this process (by making a preformatted ISO then burning it)?

nice, I have got teh h00kup! First, I actually had to turn on many more services than I had. the bluetooth service entry actually covers sdpd and hcid apparently, but there were one or two others. dund: Dial-up networking (for GPRS hookup, hopefully) hidd: human interface device (not likely to use this, but testing) pand: personal area networking (ditto - no other BT devices!) I also had to run the following command to create the /dev/rfcomm0 device rfcomm bind 0 [phone MAC address] 1 Ran Kmobiletools and am now able to send texts and browse/sync addressbook. Hurrah! HOWEVER: I'm not done yet. I'm a tiny bit scared of the next step (GPRS) for two main reasons: - dund service doesn't seem to start on demand; - When I ran sdptool search --bdaddr [MAC address] DUN, this line of output: Service Provider: /a/mobile/system/cl.gif [i know from my hacking adventures with this phone, that cl.gif is the image displayed on the flip when it's open. Now how does that 'provide' anything?] So I'll come back to this as the GPRS mission progresses. Any more useful links always appreciated!

A rather disturbing discovery: I have services missing! Namely, sdpd (service discovery protocol daemon) and hcid (not sure about this one, but should have it apparently). Perhaps this is why the rfcomm device is not appearing? How can I install these services?

'ning, When I got my first CD burner it came with Nero (natch) and included with this was InCD, the UDF software. The idea of CD-as-floppy seemed ideal and I had a crack at formatting a disc. 3 hours and a nearly melted burner and disc later, I said 'never again'. But hostility dulls with time, and I thought I'd give it another look. I found one thread on the board (from 2003) in which UDF was all-but written off, though it was mentioned that it would have support in the 2.6 kernel. I guess they said that about many things though... So I'm just wondering whether this did happen, or whether it's been successfully implemented elsewhere in software. I did notice that mkisofs has a UDF switch, but does this mean it can add all the structure necessary for packet-writing when it creates an ISO? If true, this'd be incredible - bypassing that god-awful lengthy formatting process.

Meh, must have missed this originally. #10307

OK, I bit the bullet and got a dongle, and you might just be right about it being easier than the cable. I've had *some* progress, but will need to swot up on the ways of Bluetooth. So far, I've installed KDEBluetooth and KMobiletools, but neither is working smoothly. KDEBluetooth pops up an error-box on boot (repeated about nine times!) and KMobiletools won't do much because it expects the bluetooth device to be at /dev/rfcomm0, except this doesn't exist on my system. The rfcomm command-line tools don't return any results either, so it seems something's amiss there. On the plus side, when I make the phone discoverable, I can see services available in KDEBluetooth, so at least I know the link can exist, I just can't seem to make it permanent.