arctic

okay, here it goes: any comments?

well, the download version has three instead of four cds, you don't get the printed manuals and a lovely looking box. just like suse. you can install via ftp or download the isos or buy a box with install support and printed manuals. the manuals are the most expensive stuff in the box. (okay, software is also expensive but we are not talking of windows or adobe.;))

gimp2 is getting very close to adobe photoshop. i read an article in a mac magazine where a professional graphics-designer tested both programs. there are only very few advanced things that are missing in gimp (e.g. some alpha-blending options). okay, gimp has a totally different approach to graphical work than photoshop (very user friendly) or paint shop pro and needs some time to learn, but it is more powerful than psp and it doesn't cost you some 500 bucks. ;) i am wondering what a great interface there will be in gimp3..... :) :) :)

umm... how old is the burner? how much memory (ram) do you have on your machine? what do you do, step by step, when trying to burn a cd? :unsure:

you could place the folder in any directory you want, but i would suggest to create a /shared folder in /home where all these files are placed and setting read-write-access for the specific members and linking a folder the the users /home directory to the respective /home/shared directories. alternatively, you could add anextra partition for shared files and do some linking stuff then.... this is what i usually do.

hi quartz. :) usually, the computer should shut down automatically, but if it doesn't do it ... well, just switch it off manually. on my laptop, it is just the same. it goes all the long way and then i have to push the "power" button in order to completely power it off. if you press the "esc" key, you will see all messages and you will se that all system parts got unmounted and all applications were stopped with the kill command. so you can happily power it off. nothing won't happen to your box. and even if your comp accidently gets stripped off its power supply, your box won't be harmed in any way (at least i NEVER had any problems in nearly two years when powering down the "unusual way" by accident) the usb mounting stuff... well. just plug it in and use the usb stuff and plug it off whenever you like. no special "unmounting" is needed. my digital camera, my card-reader and my external usb-floppy work that way without any problems. and the icons: for something like a camera, the icons will appear by default in gnome, in kde i had to activate it first. but it is all very easy to use.

well. as darkelve got cut-off of our discussion yesterday, here is the result of our discussion of the galaxy-windeco: galaxy windeco should be used as default as well as mandrake-galaxy style (because of consistency with gtk/qt) although with some minor changes: 1. the windeco should be a modified rounded style. the buttons for close, minimize,... must be bigger and more easily identified by the user. white background with a small blue cross won't help. get rid of the beveling, thus making the buttons bigger. they should also think of adding a coloring-option to the buttons. (e.g. red color for close by default would be nice. I will try to make a screenshot of that idea, modifying it in gimp.) 2. the coloring must be changed. the default gradient to black in the lower part should be removed and a complete, user defined coloring available. thus, there could be different gradient-shades of blue in the windeco, instead of ony blue-black gradient. every other windeco has this option. why not galaxy? 3. the buttons in galaxy-style (not windeco) should be a little bit smaller, similar to plastic in its size. big buttons are nice, but they are a little bit too big, without adding functionality. also the gradient from gray to white should be changed from gray to light gray/almost white. thus it will be more eye friendly. any further ideas?

i have several ideas: - it could be that the monitor is dying, especially if it is an older model (older than 4-5 years) - it could be that your home power supply is not at a constant level but drastically changing in some minutes, thus redirecting the power needed by the monitor to the more vital computer to keep it running. this is a supplier problem and you can't do anything about it. - it could be that the power cable is somehow damaged or the plugger for the monitor or the power box. - it could be that your comp doesn't love you anymore. give it some cookies, maybe it accepts your apologies... :P

yes and no. we are discussing this not only on what WE like best, but what is best for the average user and what looks best for a business desktop. this has a lot to do with first look and intuitive approach to a desktop. i agree that mandrake could stick to the mandrake-galaxy theme (and i would not moan) as it is their baby and their "unique tattoo". if i would discuss this only on what i like best, there would be baghira with kxdocker by default and only two icons on the desktop: home and dustbin. but this is not the approach i take. as we all know, the crystal-set, used as default iconset in mandrake is basically an iconset designed by everaldo for conectiva-linux. in my opinion, this is a good icon set, but the nuvola icons are even more self-explaining, while being similar to crystal and they can co-exist with the mandrake icons. so... why should all distros use crystal in kde? why not nuvola if it's maybe even better?

okay, going for some minutes... the wallpaper idea is not bad, but how about that idea? open web browser, go to wallpaper site, right-click on file: "set as wallpaper" or "save to wallpaper folder and set as wallpaper". two actions with one click. would be nice imo. and the user should be able to define in browser or kde or anywhere else (kcontrol?) where the wallpaper-folder will be and how it will be named. : ) now, back on track: i had some other ideas: if someone uses a dial-up connection, it would be useful to have a little symbol in the taskbar that shows data-transfer (similar to the windows systray modem-control icon). maybe also an con that shows incoming emails (just like in gnome-taskbar "x messages, y unread") ? the "launch new session" icon: i think a simple monitor-icon is useful as default icon or alternatively a symbolized user-icon. the rocket is nonsense anyway. ;) edit: buaaaah.... purple-star button again... :wacko: :wacko: :wacko:

yupp, i remember, but i doubt that mandrake would rewrite the scripts of all programs in order to manage downloads that way. although i would appreciate it. :D yuyo: i forgot to mention:color for window deco is nice but maybe a bit too dark for the buttons. :)

yuyo: nice to see some other suggestions. but i have to say, that the desktop you designed is filled with too much stuff. it might be your favourite, but think of what the average user or average business needs. i don't think that noia is a good selection for a business desktop, it looks too cute for business imho, although i do like noia and had it for a long time as default. :D you might also notice that the noia set is far from complete and you do have some gnome-icons on the desktop, which somehow harms the consistent overall look. also, if you want to use a transparent taskbar, why do you use such a dark background color, that leaves the e.g. clock unusable? i think that one still can be improved a lot. ;) and yes, you are right. the network/internet-part of mcc could be made more clear, more user friendly. some things are irritating. darkelve: looks much better now. but i am asking myself since several days if there should be a specific download folder on the desktop or in /home directory. there are pros and cons: pros: all downloaded data can be stored in a central folder, thus making administration of it quite easy. cons: in business, few people are allowed to download some stuff. and once people download stuff, they almost instantly save it in the final-destination folder (pictures, music,...) thus ignoring such a folder. but this kind of folder can be useful if using a download manager. but these usually use their own folders... difficult task to decide something here, i guess... :unsure: and: prullenbak is the funniest name i ever saw/heard/read for a dustbin :lol:

hi again. i just bought a laptop (1 ghz, 256 ddr-ram, 30gb, dvd-burner) for my mother, whose comp went down like titanic some days ago. as she also works as a journalist, she needed a portable device. but she has no idea of computers or laptops. so, off i went and got a cheap offer (799,- € without preinstalled os). i just thought about installing windows next to mandrake (i tested the machine with knoppix and suse.live cd first), because my mother is accustomed to windows. but i know how instable windows is, so i wanted to make sure, i can recover everything via linux, if win crashes (which it always did... it is its hobby as it seems). started fdisk and formatted everything, installed win me, put in the laptop-support cd (graphic drivers,...) and... bang! setup didn't start. alter on i found out that the drivers only work with win xp and win 2000. bugger. okay, what did i do? i simply left the install the way it was, that is 640x480 pixels, 16 colors (will be upgraded later on) and installed mandrake 10. and that one was (once again) painless. :) the comp works fine now, no problems, everything was detected in a hurry. and everone (especially the vendor) told me... linux on a laptop? you must be mad... :P

yupp. i am currently thinking of an alternative splash. i will show my results once i have a really good idea.

usually, the ati radeo cards are somewhat tricky and they do lead to system freezes from time to time. you have to keep in mind that the drivers for ati are not really supported if you use the mandrake communitiy edition (because the drivers are commercial ware). there are several topics in this board with the ati radeo cards. have a look at them (use te search tool on top of page), maybe there is the exact solution for your card-problem. if nothing works in mandrake, i suggest to try other linux-distros as well (there are sooooo many! :)) and i am sure that one of the distros will work for your card... or... buy another card. just kidding. :P

first of all, you should use our search tool and take a look at the faq section. well, what is compiling, what do you need, how do you do it. many questions... compiling is usually building the driver or application you need from a source if there is no other option available to get things running. this source is a "code" written in e.g c++ or qt or... thus you will need some libraries for compiling drivers and apps. if you want to compile e.g. something for gnome, you will need the gtk-libraries. kde stuff will need e.g. qt-libraries and there are many other libs available. if you want to compile something, you open a terminal. a so called "console". these are in kde or gnome the black monitor icons. if you click on these, you get a command line interface where you can put in your commands, similar to old dos. every package you want to compile needs a "configure" file in it. if this file is there, then type at the prompt: ./configure make make install if some error occurs, it will tell you almost exactly what went wrong, e.g. which libraries you are missing of if compiling can only be done as root. if it is about libraries that are missing, these can be obtained with "urpmi", simply type in the console as root "urpmi <packagename [e.g. libqt]> and the packages will be installed, so you can restart compiling afterwards.... ooh... its late. i am off to bed. i hope i helped you nonetheless a bit... :D

if you get error messages from your comp, please post them in here and try to be as precise as possible, because the error messages are a great help when trying to find a solution. ;)

check your mixer if something is muted. also look in e.g. kcontrol center ("configure my desktop") in the sound section -> sound setup, then on the right select the "hardware" tab and change from "auto select" to ALSA or OSS (ALSA works for most). i hope it helps you in any way. ;)

agreed. :) yes, after some thinking i am also coming to the conclusion that the "show desktop" button should be placed next to the pager. it would make more sense.

well, the transparency can indeed redirect the focus of the user from the taskbar to the windows he uses, but we have to keep in mind that for the average user, the taskbar is the center or fundament of their desktop. everything is accessible from there, thus it must be highly visible and easy to navigate. although i do like transparency, i don't think that it helps most people to get a fast access to the icons, apps, window-tabs they search. this is also the reason why imho the icons on the desktop should be in a good contrast to the desktop-wallpaper. if we have dull/soft-colored icons, they will be hardly visible on a soft-colored background of some similar color. so, we do have to work with contrasting techniques.... well that is my opinion. :P here is a new layout i made for the "business" desktop. (just think of the home-user desktop with one extra folder for music on top of screen and kate in taskbar replaced with e.g. xmms, noatun or some jukebox...) http://mandrakeusers.org/index.php?act=Att...ype=post&id=989

okay, here is my new proposal for a business desktop (having kate in taskbar), the home-user would have an additional folder on top and kate replaced by multimedia-player.

okay, some guys need a fast, less bulky wordpad. this is okay, but i think it should be named differently, because Kate won't tell a new user what this does. when i see the icon, this could be either writing notes or my personal information manager (appointments today). so, it should be called e.g. Kate - Wordpad or simply Wordpad or Kate-Texteditor or simply Texteditor or... whaddoiknow. ;) edit: i am still wondering if adding transparency is so useful. things get less clearly separated imho, thus "hiding" some important things. i think the conrast given by the kicker by default is a useful thing for a business desktop (although i mostly use transparent kickers). but apart from that a nice layout, darkelve.

hi :) take a look here: http://mandrakeusers.org/index.php?showtopic=17713&hl=

hmmm, you can install firefox via urpmi. it is not version .93 but .82 but it works okay nonetheless. as root type in your console urpmi firefox and you are done with menu entries et all. if you use the binaries, it should work this way: extract the files, run the installer script. it will create a directory for firefox (or thunderbird respectively) in your home directory. go to that directory. there should be a "firefox"("thunderbird") entry. use menudrake to link your new menu-entry to that file, save and you are done.

i also had this once. gnome completely borked. the only way i got rid of it was creating a new user and ship my sensitive data to the new /home/... directory. still dunno, why this had happened.