aRTee

Short: I have the epson 1650 too, works like a charm, even though a bit more expensive, it's worth it. Long: I have an HP4200c, should be slightly supported etc. Wasted hours on it, to no avail. Then checked sane support (see links page on my website), checked what they sold in my area, and it came down to the epson. Other contenders were cheap canon (avoid!!!) and hp (some do work, but not all so be careful; the cheaper ones don't work..). I guess I paid 140 US$ (well, 210CHF) for it.

If I get it correctly, you want to automatically load the iso's to the /mnt/cdrom But then, how is mdk / supermount supposed to know which one to mount?? Frankly, I wouldn't do this with supermount, but just with an alias or script, for instance: alias mountiso2 "mount /alt/mdkiso/Mandrake91-cd2-ext.i586.iso /mnt/cdrom -o loop" alias mountiso3 "mount /alt/mdkiso/Mandrake91-cd3-i18n.i586.iso /mnt/cdrom -o loop" alias mountiso1 "mount /alt/mdkiso/Mandrake91-cd1-inst.i586.iso /mnt/cdrom -o loop" Or just use the commands directly. On a side note, you're trying to mount an iso on a device, or at least, it looks like that.....

I have just found some (big) problems with pdf export, 1.0.2 does quite a bit better there... I'll make a testfile and send in a bugreport....

O/T Phunny, sorry to disagree, I'll have cd's any day over minidisc or any other lossy compression medium. They are merely more practical, but the quality is less.. As for betamax, the superior video system was VCC aka Video2000 which had stripeless slow motion and fastforward/backward etc. But they (Philips) didn't want any pornography on their tapes. We all know what happened next.. On topic: What's going to help linux development is the embedded use and high power-system use, just look at the conglomerate of big companies (Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, Sharp, Philips,.. forgot the sixth one) who have joined in developing linux for embedded devices. Motorola who are going to base all mobile phones on linux. There, people won't know it's even running linux. But the system will take advantage of those developments. Why these companies push it? Because they are all sh!t scared of MS, don't want to become an MS lapdog. The fact that linux is FLOSS makes it easy for them to use. As for the desktop, we'll just have to keep helping others until critical mass is achieved, where we can go out and buy any type of hardware compatible with linux; there may be some incompatible harware in any class, but not at lower prices like today.

Interesting: after installation, my OOo1.03 (regular mdk9.1 version) started in 2 seconds...!!!! I'm now testdriving 1.1rc1, had one crash whilst reading the manual to find how to import pdf. Seems it's not there. I don't really care about exporting pdf, always used the standard 'print to file - type: pdf'.... If anyone can tell me how to import pdf (for editing)...? Or is it not possible? Anyway, other improvements: the stylist window is now a separate window on the desktop, so not cluttering / hiding the document you're working on. Very good. The splash screen has a load-idicating-bar on it, but it loads so fast I just barely got to see it.. Anyway, I will have to check if I find any reproduceable bugs, and report them. It is a Release Candidate after all..... ;)

Linux development (not code, but how it progresses in the marketplace) could severely be hampered by MS. But like some guy on LinuxToday often says: competing with Linux is like nailing jello to a tree. As a product, Linux is a moving target, better at responding to the requirements of it's users (for now) since the users are (close to) the developers. On the other hand, progress in terms of marketshare could be slowed down by making it difficult to get linux. For instance, by not allowing vendors to sell preinstalled linux systems. Hey, MS is already trying that! HP is bucking the trend, if people are really buying their linux boxes, Dell and IBM will have to follow... Personally, I think that MS is already trying as much as they can to damage linux' reputation. On their roadmap they seem to go for xml, in Office 2003 they will certainly try to highjack the format and make sure their documents cannot be read by OOo. It may backfire, if MSO2k3 can read swx files those are the ones I'll be sending.... and hopefully many others. MS has said they will connect IE into the next version of windows, so no-one can run it without having windows. This too is done to keep linux down, but possibly will backfire too; with all apple and linux machines doing only safari (khtml), opera, mozilla and then some, and together being 10% of the market, websites will soon have to be compliant with W3C, instead of IE-only. I think we will see radical changes within MS in 2005 or 2006 at the latest, sort of 'we repent, but now we're ready to play nice', just to survive in the FLOSS wave. If they don't port MSOffice by 2005 (or at least, get it in the news then, so people will hold back from switching), they will lose the market to OOo. Looking at linux today, with its 1-3% marketshare (depending on who you ask), it will only get larger. I hear of very few people 'defecting' back to windows; some try linux and don't find all they need, but those who are really converts (we get to talk to some of them here whenever they have problems and find their way here), don't go back. So the marketshare will continue to grow. FLOSS is getting more known, due to media exposure, and linux is the first big concrete thing when FLOSS is mentioned. However, I don't think MS will have clearly lost their monopoly until linux has more than 10% marketshare, which may take until 2006/2007. Until then (and possibly after) I will do what I can to promote linux/FLOSS.

I know that k3b can directly convert mp3 files, try it with .ogg files, I don't have any handy, but if you just create a new audio project, then drag the .ogg files into the bottom part,...? With mp3 files, it directly converts them, and tells you how much space you have left. I just made an .ogg, and dragged it; it works fine.

? Why not go for Mandrake 9.1 right away? I'm just supposing it is a P200 or so (hey, 4 years ago that was the standard) with 64MB. The install may be tough with only 64MB, but with icewm or so as windowmanager, there's no problem. RH is compiled for 386, so doesn't use pentium optimisations, meaning it will run slower on an old pentium.... You only have to go for RH if there's only 32MB of RAM (RAM is cheap, I know, but not the kind that fits a socket7 board, those are SIMMs, not DIMMs, and hard to come by these days), or if it's a 486 or older cpu.

urpmi memtest86 or you can start the mandrake control center - software - install, then search for memtest, and install it. It is a standalone program, that normally should put itself in the bootmenu. Then after a reboot (hey, a reboot, sometimes linux needs them... ;) ) you can select it and test your system.

Question: how were things under RH? Some of what you describe reminds me of hardware problems, bad ram or so. If I overclock my system (too far), I get a lot of segfaults with kde apps (since I use them; would get gnome segfaults if I'd be using those). While you're in the bios, make sure you set up everything to most conservative/default. Remember, maybe RH doesn't have these problems, but RH was compiled with different options, so it may or may not be sensitive to certain settings in the bios.... To check your ram, use memtest86 (or something like that), it adds itself into your bootloader, and you run it instead of booting your system.

I just know my upload is 8kB(bytes)/s (cable internet), and I always see my eth0 traffic on my work machine, which goes from 0 to ~20-23KB/s, since I always have gkrellm open (urpmi gkrellm), it's part of my work environment, I have it tell me the cpu load, cpu temp, mobo temp, voltages, disk throughput, (2x, for both drives), eth0 (and eth1 too, on my server which has 2 nics)... There are likely plenty more tools to check network activity, but anyway..

I use vnc from my mdk8.2 headless server and check the output on my 9.1 machine(s) (sometimes on my girlfriends machine). Before, when I was still into the evil world of MS, I sometimes checked it with the windows vnc client. Don't know why, but it is terribly slow. Linux to linux works like a beauty though. I even once did it from a friends place onto my server, 8KB upload of which 4 was used for p2p (ed2k) --- that was slow, but doable. With the full 8KB it's quite okay. Normally on my LAN it uses ~20KB. And it works fine...

Hay! Well done! Good for you! Now, you have mastered a steep learning curve (permissions, root 'power', system setup, file ownership, device==file idea, etcetc). Now that you have climbed it-- HOW IS THE VIEW UP THERE??? :P Hope you are enjoying it, reading your words I'm sure about it. Get the rest of your system sorted as necessary (ask here again if needed), and help others that are still on the lower end of the curve!

johnKFT, where did you get that 2cd edition?? Not from Mandrake I hope?

I recently installed Mdk9.1 on a PIII 766 MHz with 64MB (SDR) SD-RAM. It was a complete pain!!! It was easier to install mdk8.2 on a PI 200MHz with 120MB of RAM. (My headless server, still up and running, no problem.) And I never noticed much difference on other machines between 8.2, 9.0 and 9.1,.... So RAM matters bigtime, 96 is starting to get into the comfort zone. In any case, get the exact specs! You can surely breathe life into a sub 200MHz machine with linux (if not with Mdk, with slackware or debian or so, tailored to your needs), but personally I would consider that a hobby project to 'prove it can be done' or so... Nowadays when 200$ buys you a new 1GHz+ machine preloaded with linux, I don't really see the point. Secondhand you should be able to get a 300MHz machine under 100$, then you have all you need: enough ram (128 is good, more (up to ~ 512MB) is better, depending on your needs). Then again, I can't look into your (or her) wallet.

I do what tyme suggested too; I actually gave away my last copy of the cd's, and still have the .iso's. The advantage of having the iso's instead of the RPMS folders on your harddrive is that you can burn them whenever required/requested (hey, think about spreading the word,... ehm,.. distro, okay! ;) ). Of course if you have enough diskspace, you could still have the iso's and also the folders with all RPMS ... but then again who ever has enough diskspace... (I have 1x46GB+120GB and 1x60GB+120GB, but still,... I don't want to do things double, and you do save 1.5GB this way.. :D ) Just check when you use urpmi where it asks you to insert the disc, /mnt/cdrom or /mnt/cdrom2 or whatever, then mount the iso to that point.

Okay, it would be nice to see what your system answers to the following: (possibly as root) cat /etc/lilo.conf cat /etc/fstab ll /bin/cdrecord ll /bin/cdrdao ll /bin/mkisofs and (I forgot which command) something that shows which groups your user chris is in (groups? man groups or so...) I will have another look tonight (unless my girlfriend has something else planned) on my linux box, but my guess is that your user is not added to cdwriter group (man addgroup if there is such a command... ;) ) or your user has no rights to execute the necessary programs as indicated above. And on ide-scsi, you definitely have it, or you couldn't write cd's as root. We'll get there.

Your system is set-up to use ide-scsi emulation, there's something else missing/wrongly set up which is why you can't burn as a normal user but you can as root... Do a cat /etc/lilo.conf (as root probably, don't think ordinary users have the right to read that file) and post the output here. You only need to fiddle with that (normally) if you want to make direct disc to disc copies. Crosscheck the files of my setup (see my specs in my sig). On a side note, if you are worried about changing your bootloader (lilo) when using it in the standard setup, namely in the MBR (master boot record), here's what you can do: Use the command lilo but indicate it to use a different lilo.configuration file, I think the command should be: lilo -C alternative.lilo.configfile (man lilo should tell you what the exact command should be) Then if it doesn't work, you can always pop in the first Mdk cd, do a rescue and select: repair bootloader. That one will use the standard /etc/lilo.conf If you messed up but did change the original lilo.conf file, but know what to put to repair it, you could boot with a knoppix live cd and then edit (after mounting for read/write) the lilo.conf file; I couldn't manage to actually repair the MBR bootloader the last time I needed to, had some weird problem...

During installation, did you select 'development platform'? If not, you don't have gcc (3.x) installed. BTW gcc2.x is the older one. You can run through the install again, just do upgrade (one of the few instances where that isn't too risky) and make sure you select development platform (or whatever it's called). Or try: urpmi gcc and see what it tells you. It may take some trial and error, maybe someone else on this board knows a quicker way (there should certainly be one.. ;) ) On a side note, stupidly enough, even if you select development platform, you still have to select kernel-source in package selection, or install it later with urpmi kernel-source

Hmm, so ark doesn't find your unrar binary..? Maybe there is a way to configure ark, where you can indicate the location of the binary. To find the location: which unrar or whereis unrar Maybe ark has a config file in your homedir, .ark Personally, I don't know, I have never used it...

Slightly off-topic: I have reached this point some time ago to find I hardly ever have to. urpmi package.rpm works even on packages that are not specifically made for Mdk; as long as the dependency list doesn't contain anything that is not in the mdk onboard urpmi database, you're okay. The only thing I have ever had to recompile are the Nvidia drivers, but with the new nvidia setup this too is a thing of the past.

1 - don't worry about it 2 - I just tried to do 'configure modules' on my pci sblive5.1 and harddrake2 loaded my system to the max (100%) for some time (couple of minutes) until I had seen enough (nothing) and closed the window ;) I wouldn't worry about it, I have never done / used anything there, apart from the harddisk configure tool to do partitioning and the like.

urpmi unrar assuming you have done your urpmi resources setup (see config page on my site) and while you're at it: urpmi unace usage: unrar e file.rar or unrar x file.rar On a side note, since I like to download and keep the rpm's that get installed, I use: urpmi --noclean programnamehere then I can find the rpm's in /var/cache/urpmi/rpms/ in case I want to install them on another pc or burn them to discs I pass to friends who don't have broadband (together with Mdk9.1 install discs, so they have all they need).

I wonder if they have listened too much to SCO's whining lately... Of course that quote should say: Otherwise, good for Afghanistan. At least something has really improved! ;)

Ixthusdan says it should be turned off, anna and I say it doesn't. I can't say that I completely disagree with Ixthusdan though; in case of problems I would also turn it off. But on the other hand, I have installed 4 systems with a burner and all with supermount and k3b fully functional. No problems. So no, it doesn't have to be turned off, but in case of problems, that may be the first thing to try.