Priest

I installed (extraced) xpde to /usr/share/xpde I know I need to start it with ./usr/share/xpde/bin/startxpde but U can't run it from my existing DE. How do I add a menu item for this so that I can boot to it at login.

[root@localhost priest]# urpmi.addmedia rpmplf ftp://mandrakeusers.org/pub/PLF/mandrake/10.0 with hdlist.cz added medium rpmplf urpmi database locked [root@localhost priest]# urpmi eatme urpmi database locked [root@localhost priest]# I broke mine it looks like, I removed the old sources from media manager and this is still all I get. I could use a hand. The howto for this is here

I am not saying a default install of XP runs smooth on 128 megs of RAM. This box iis a loaded Dell 8250. The box next to me is a 500Mhz AMD w/ 92 megs of SDRAM and 8 meg shared video. Althogh 98se was lightning fast on that machine after an msconfig *uncheck all* I probably could not insall XP on it, but the point is that I can't run Mandrake 10 on it either. After 98se I had Win2k advanced server on the system as my desktop, although it was slower to load than 98se, I can't remember it being much less responsive or even slow. (I just threw my XP pro CD in the drive and began to install XP on it jto test) Dragon, I know there are other solution, check out the section under Impractical solutions in the article. Anyway, on XFCE I am missing the top task bar. so if I minimize a windows in XFCE I have no way to recover it again. I know in kde you can kill or restart teh kicker process, if I know the name of the process I can maybe start it manually or... add a script to start that process when I log in.

I just downloaded the RPM's.

OSNews just ran an article about the mainstream linux distros geting fat here, slashdot also covered it here This is one of the first paragraphs in the article: "Recently, a friend of mine expressed an interest in running Linux on his machine. Sick and tired of endless spyware and viruses, he wanted a way out -- so I gave him a copy of Mandrake 10.0 Official. A couple of days later, he got back to me with the sad news I was prepared for: it's just too slow. His box, an 600 MHz 128MB RAM system, ran Windows XP happily, but with Mandrake it was considerably slower. Not only did it take longer to boot up, it crawled when running several major apps (Mozilla, OpenOffice.org and Evolution on top of KDE) and suffered more desktop glitches and bugs." I have to give OSNews credit for saying something that has been Taboo. On XFCE, I wrent to http://www.eslrahc.com/10.0/ and downloaded the following packages libdbh-1.0_1-1.0.18-1mdk.i586.rpm libxfce4mcs1-4.0.5-1mdk.i586.rpm libxfce4util1-4.0.5-1mdk.i586.rpm libxfcegui4_1-4.0.5-1mdk.i586.rpm libxffm0-4.0.5-1mdk.i586.rpm libxfprint0-4.0.5-1mdk.i586.rpm xfce-4.0.5-1mdk.i586.rpm xfce-iconbox-4.0.5-1mdk.i586.rpm xfce-mcs-manager-4.0.5-1mdk.i586.rpm xfce-mcs-plugins-4.0.5-1mdk.i586.rpm xfce-panel-4.0.5-1mdk.i586.rpm xfce-systray-4.0.5-1mdk.i586.rpm xfce-taskbar-0.1.0-1mdk.i586.rpm xfce-themes-4.0.5-1mdk.noarch.rpm xfce-toys-4.0.5-1mdk.i586.rpm xfce-trigger-launcher-4.0.5-1mdk.i586.rpm xfce-utils-4.0.5-1mdk.i586.rpm xfce-windowlist-0.1.0-1mdk.i586.rpm xfce-xkb-0.3.1-0.1mdk.i586.rpm xfdesktop-4.0.5-1mdk.i586.rpm xffm-4.0.5-1mdk.i586.rpm xffm-icons-4.0.5-1mdk.i586.rpm xfprint-4.0.5-1mdk.i586.rpm xfwm-4.0.5-1mdk.i586.rpm xfwm-themes-4.0.5-1mdk.noarch.rpm The above packages seemed to satisfy my urpmi * dependencies but XFCE does not have a taskbar on the top of the screen for some reason. I don't know if it's something I didn't install of if that applet is failing to load.. any ideas?

fissy's suggstion of making a copy to /home/user2 is very good. You could always just create very restricted permissions for the user account if needed. I highly suggest against using KDE on slow hardware. The only thing good about KDE is that it is easy to make changes to stuff, and this is epartly what you are trying to avoid. I have a spare computer (500MHz AMD/92 megs ram/6 gig HDD) that was running a tweaked version of 98se, after throwing Mandrake 10/KDE on the box the time it took to restart and bring up KDE was nearly 8x as long. My girlfriend was laughing at it the first time she saw it (the computer!) Currently running a modified Gnome desktop on the main comuter, much better and she does not seem to mind using the system. When I get home I am going to see about adding the functionality I need to a fluxbox install, I am going to test the setup on the backup PC also.

Anything you want to do in any other Desktop, you can do in Fluxbox; with the notable exception of putting icons on the desktop. You can do that, but you need other software to do it. This is the one thing I don't like about fluxbox. I have not used Flux in a long time but I am going to install it when I get home. I have 2 questions. How do I change the task bar so it shows all open windows like KDE or gnome instead of the one that is active? (I might do this by default now, it has been a while for me) How do I create Icons for the desktop? It does not matter if creating them is difficult or time consuming, since I only need to create 4 or 5 of them.

/opt seems to be mostly for vendor specific stuff. eg. If I ordered ironport spamfilters for my mail farm, their software would usually be installed to /opt So it is mostly used for companies that sell services on the Linux platform, but not for graphical applications, although you probably could use it for that.

We I can say I like Red Hat's blue curve more than the default Gnome or KDE. Blue curve is my favorite desktop environment. I can't comment on the final version of FC2, but I can say that FC2 test2, was horribly buggy and unstable, with SELinux on, it was flat out unusable. I have never used FC2 and I can't base my opinon of it on test2 though. Edit: one major annoyance with FC2 is the lack of native NTFS support. FC is one of the only distros that does not ship with NTFS support. Another major pet peeve about FC2 test 2 was that I still need to manually mount and unmount my CD rom from command line to read or eject it. Writing a CD on FC2 test2 turned out to be a lost cause and I gave up trying. Sound did not work on either computer with FC2, but it didn't with Mandrake either, and rarely ever does, so I can't deduct many points there.

I created the apps directory becasue the idea of throwing everything in /usr/bin /bin /usr/local/bin and managing it from there never struck me as intuitive. This is why: ls /usr/bin /bin | wc -l 1717 This isn't any different than if I emptied the contents of windows "program files" into c:\windows\system32, c:\winnt\system32, c:\windows etc. Fine for Apache, grep, and bash, not fine for Firefox, Gaim, and Gimp. Yes, I have read FHS /bin : Essential user command binaries (for use by all users) /usr/bin : Most user commands Firefox is not a "user command", it is an application. GUI applications are not specified anywhere in the FHS. It would make many peoples lives easier of they just add the /apps directoty to FHS. /apps Optional directory for GUI applications. Problem solved. I use it all the time, the world is still here, really.

I came here looking to see if anyone else had trouble running Tux racer. The highest reading I had on glxgears was 608 fps. Tux racer runs about 1.5 or 2 FPS. System is Dell 8250 w/ ATI 9000 I think.

With firefox I just extracted the tar.gz and copied the folder to /apps/firefox I just needed to be in /apps/firefox/plugins before linking libjavaplugin_oji.so working now.

OK, so I got the flash plugin installed for Firefox, that was pretty easy. MP3 support can wait becasue I rarely can ever get a sound card to work with Linux anyway. But Java, Triied this here http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/faqs/firefox-l...ml#install-java I went to my /apps/firefox, ran ln -s /usr/java/j2re1.4.2_04/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so And I still get the plugin prompt every time I go to a page with Java. I am bitching about this becasue it's not like I am the only person that has ever needed to install java or flash plugins. So anyway, I will ask a question I should have already found an answer for, I am running j2re1.4.2_04, how do I link it to Firefox so it will recognise it?