SoulSe

I'm not sure which is better, the only one I have seen in action was ejabbered and it seems to be pretty straight-forward stuff. That said, do you have to run an internal server? Why not just make use of one of the thousands of available servers on the net.

Forgot to mention Iomega - they have been making an effort to mention the Linux compatibility of their storage solutions and even develop some tools for Linux.

I bought a Gigabyte Nvidia Geforce FX5700 Ultra about two years ago - not only said it was Linux compatible, but they had the Nvidia Linux drivers on the included CD I won an AOpen DV3000 digital camera in a competition a while ago and on the box it said 'Compatible with Linux kernel version 2.4 or above.' What else... of course, from a software perspective, I enjoyed buying Unreal Tournament 2004 with the little Tux icon on the box :) Oh, and the Segate external hard drive I use at work listed Linux compatibility on the box.

If it gives problems in Mandriva and doesn't when you use Fedora (which is the only thing you've changed in the environment, I'm assuming) then the problem must be with Mandriva. The solution? Use Fedora :P ...or try rolling a different (I recommend vanilla) kernel for Mandriva and see if an alternative NIC module doesn't offer better support.

Hmmm.... I've used both and prefer the GIMP. But I'm no pro. ... and I also have Mac :P

Hard drives should never be used as backup sources. In fact, it's one of the least reliable data storage solutions. Anything with moving parts / heads or magnetic for that matter is not ideal for backup. They fail, develop bad sectors, etc. I reckon the best available backup medium right now is Iomega's REV technology. It truly is an amazing medium. As for cdrs, I agree that there is much ado about nothing. I recently listened to an episode of This Week in Tech where John Dvorak was talking about using CDs that were burnt twelve years ago that still work. Data loss rate on a succesfully burnt CD is pretty low, unless you have oxidisation or something weird happening.

You have to run the FreeCiv server (either on the same box or another on the network) for the client to connect to. It's very simple, although I did it quite a while ago and can't remember where the server is / what it's called *shrug*

No shit, SoulSe! :D My eldest sis spends all her free time in WoW! It's like an addiction. If I didn't live in another country than her, I'd do something about it. But yes, I generally find hiking and researching stuff about mythology more exciting and rewarding, i.e., I get something out of it too. Gaming seems too much of a time wasting for me, time that can be spent in more productive activities. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I thought so too, but when compared to, say, watching TV or reading a trashy magazine, at least she is engaged in a mildly cinstructive manner with WoW and has some social engagement with the other players, so I guess there's that. Although too much of anything is bad - moderation, I say! To get back on topic though: I must admit that, since installing my Windows partition for gaming, I have been finding that I waste less time trying to get games to work with Cedega and am generally enjoying better resolutions / eye candy and performance. Hate to admit it, but Cedega wasn't giving me anywhere near the performance in Windows for most games. Native Linux games.... well, that's another story.

There's something more interesting and valuable than World of Warcraft? /me looks at solarian, vacantly.

I use Flash in my site design now and then. I once found Flash for Linux. The project was in its infancy when I first visited that site, haven't tried it out yet... besides, I use Macromedia Flash on my Powerbook ;)

Wiki's are the way. Well done man ;)

I also think that http://www.linux.org/ is a great resource, as is http://www.tldp.org/ For what it's worth... :P

I haven't used that, but it is something I've been looking for. I can think of a million ways I could get into trouble with this...

I think most home users don't play games as opposed to most home PC's where one person might have games installed. My mother and father both have PC's with no real games (excluding kde toys) installed and my brother to my knowledge doesn't have any games either. My GF's father only has games her brother has installed .... My old man does photo retouching and printing and my mum word processing and internet access. Picassa already exists on IE and Windows but why not just move the whole thing serverside. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I just meant that home computers often perform more demanding tasks than your average office desktop (unless you work at Pixar ). Games were merely an example. Insert audio editing, video editing, dvd compilation, media encoding, etc.

I also want a 360 - although I know it'll spend 80% of the time in my house looking pretty on a shelf, since all I play these days, when I get time, is WoW (yes, yes, I know the rumour that they're porting it). Transgaming's new API might just be that answer. I believe it's called Swift? May be wrong, often am...

Google's motto is "don't be evil", but I get your point phunni :) I think thin clients and web services are the future for offices, but not for the home. It makes sense for a business to make use of thin client technology; it's cheaper, safer and more secure in general. Home users (and especially gamers) are a different market. I think Google know this and they're aiming at productivity computer users. Kudos to them for the insight, although, honestly, everyone is thinking this way now.

Excellent. I've just installed Windows for the first time in five years. I needed it to do some reviews and I thought I'd benchmark my games against Liinux whilst there. After loading up World of Warcraft and seeing the remarkable differences in performance and graphics, I think I'll keep it around... purely for gaming, of course. But Linux gaming and gaming in general is about to take a major turn - I believe that's what the new Swift api from Transgaming will lead to.

It's good to see Linux in retail. Seems to be jumping up all over the place. I maintain that the only users not currently convertable to Linux are gamers. Everyone else is slowly starting to see the light.

Surprised? No. Although, Apple did say there would be no video ipod the week before they released one :P

The advantages of Linux on a PDA (or any other) device are the same as those on your computer IMHO: Stability, fun-factor (or break-factor, depending :P ), it's super geeky, you'll have the CLI.... etc. Mostly, it's the challenge of getting it installed (if you aren't going for a pre-installed device). There are some amazing projects for portable devices that have really come along and benefit from open source development, just as they would've on the PC. Checkout Familiar Linux for one. Palm OS is shaky at the best of times I find... it's slow, buggy and crashes often (if it's still anything like it was around Palm OS 4 - haven't used it since) and Pocket PC is... well.... Windows. I had an ipaq with Pocket PC and it sucked piles.

I have a headset. I've only tried teamspeak once and now all it gets used for is skype. My 2c: forget about usb - just get a headset with plain old audio jacks. Plug one into your mic in port and the other into headphones out - sorted. Unless, of course, you have a notebook or something without those ports. USB is unecessary and may well lead to headaches in Linux.

That's if this isn't all BS ;)

Fat is a file system that will allow you to utilise it fully in Linux and Windows, _but_ it is an archaic, unjournaled and horrible FS to be using, especially on a RAID5 storage solution. The current vanilla release of the 2.6 kernel has experimental support for NTFS writing capability. While I have had success with this though, it may be worth waiting for a stable integration. It is also possible to make Windows speak ext2, ext3, ReiserFS and a variety of other filesystems. I have never done this myself, but it is apparently very simple. Google is your friend here.

If you're moving things, use the mv command instead of cp. Simply: # mv /dir /target For cp, I usually just use $ cp -rvf /dir /target/ Not entirely sure why yours did what it did...

This would be easier if we knew what those devices are - are they SATA hdd partitions? As for why it changed to sdf - this depends on your setup. I'm not sure if Mandriva is using udev now or how it tackles devs, so I'll leave that one to somebody more knowledgable - needless to say, it doesn't change anything and if you set an fstab entry for that device, it would stay constant. There is a lot to be said about partitioning and it is something we have discussed on the board ad nauseum. Generally, Linux only needs two partitions; a root (/) and a swap (/swap). Here is wikipedia's article on swap partitions (see 'Virtual Memory in Linux'). Now, some people like to split their partitions more than that - for, say, their /home folders; this allows them to turf other partitions to reinstall or whatever, without effecting their home / user files - you get the idea. I have /boot, /swap, / and /home. So my kernels I spent much time compiling live safely in /boot and all my user files in /home. If I want to reinstall Gentoo (or another distro), I merely take out root (/) and leave the rest in tact.