xbob

yes and no. sure, i am asking for a simple way to do things, but must i cripple down a computer system, in order to make it usable for older people? if there were not so much possibilities of bloating systems due to the hardware we have, all would imho be more reduced to the stuff we really need and we would think more of how we construct an operating system, given the limited resources. right now, we tend to program everything the way we like, as long as it works, because with the current technology, it doesn't really matter if one app uses 10 or 30 mb ram. we have enough hardware resources, we can write a "not so clean" code for programs and nobody will cry "foul, you wasted 5 mb ram". i still think that programmers and user got lazy due to the constant "technological progress" we make. yes, some might state that they constantly need all the power their comp has. but for what? most have to agree that they need that power for gaming. boooh! that is no reason for defending bloated and thus complicated systems imho. and rendering images? i have done that on less powerful computers. okay, it might take 2 hours longer, but what the heck? if it takes some more time, then let it and drink a coffee or read a book in the meantime. there are better things to do in life than working faster and faster and faster and faster and ... ;) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I don't know that you can re-focus the whole industry to satisfy ease of use issues for older people, I still contend a good net appliance will fill this need. Put those same older people at a command line and they'll get up and walk away. A fully equipped PC isn't as simple as a toaster or microwave, and it probably can't be. As for bloat, it's in the eye of the beholder. I remember my first 386 but I don't miss it, I much prefer my current system by a long shot, bloat and all. I would rather be able to compile a program in a few minutes to see if it works/if I like it than to wait 2 hours to find out. I like media rich web pages and SuperKaramba with it's guages. I also think much of this demand for speed is required for many business users and not just gamers, and as a network admin I can say that I would much rather have tools open in 2 seconds versus 2 minutes.

Arctic, what you are asking for is an appliance, not a computer. I agree with this to some extent, my parents need a basic terminal for email, web surfing, pictures and word processing. Anything above that is a complete waste on them and I spend a good deal of time making sure things are simple for them. They simply won't click on things "just to see what they do". You can clearly blame this on MS who worked hard for the last 10 years to kill off any "appliance" or "net PC" that came up to keep their Windows and Office revenue high. You can't bury the file system on a full blown computer, so unless you want to set up a machine in kiosk mode you have to live with it, and clearly it isn't for everyone. I think MS and their continuos march to dumb things down is a big part of the problem, what we need are computers and net appliances, can the market and Linux being free finally create this market?

Xbob everything is ok when I run the command urpmi libgcc [ricky@localhost ricky]$ urpmi libgcc bash: urpmi: command not found [ricky@localhost ricky]$ su Password: [root@localhost ricky]# urpmi libgcc Everything already installed <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well, that fixed it for me, I'll have to let more capable hands take over on this one, sorry I couldn't be more help.

Yes, the are several C, C+ and C++ compilers out there, so don't let that worry you. You are probably missing some supporting libraries, this is not uncommon if you install Mdk and skip the developement tools (and this would work if you lived your whole life with RPMs and never compiled anything, but that is rarley the case). Do a urpmi libgcc and see what it gives back, there might be quite a lot you will most like need some of it.

Same problem here, kde-apps.org as well for me?

The 5700 cards have better pixel shader engines than the 5200 cards, and UT2KXXX loves pixel shaders, so take the step up. I know I wish I hadn't cheaped out on my video card for this system, I will probably end up breaking down and replacing it soon with a 5700LE.

The config.log file gets created in the directory where you ran the source directory, so if you untarred it in your home folder it would probably be /home/yourname/gdesklets_version... That said, you got the informantion you need right there, do a urpmi gcc and let it install all dependencies and you'll be fine. If you don't have it set up yet, please go set up Easy-urpmi via this llink. Post back if you need more help.

"The answer is to give the user power." Choice is power, you can choose a distro like Mandrake and create a 'lean & clean' install to some point, or you can go hog wild and load it up with everything you can imagine, I prefer somewhere in between these extremes. Or you can go Arch, Gentoo or Deb and really stick to the basics and have to really "know" Linux to get very far. Is either way wrong? Unlike life in the MS world you have an option, a true sense of user power. The point is there are plenty of distros out there, and there really is something for everybody. And has been often noted, many people switch distros for something "deeper" as their Linux experience progresses, something that isn't too painful or expensive given all distros offer a "free as in beer" version. I'm of 2 minds about it, I am capable and lean toward the command line in most cases, but once in a while it's just faster to open Konq and drag some files from one directory to another. "I think we under estimate the average winblows convert's ability to read." Perhaps you spend too much time with I.T. people, an easy trap to fall into when you work in our industry. I work with some capable and enthusiastic people (and some real idiots as well, but mostly the first group) and they can and do devour documentation so they can really "know" how their PC works and what their software does. But they are the tiny minority, and I think the majority of people enjoy the eye candy and extra features we think of as bloat. The vast majority of end users will not go to the command line if they can get the same functionality, even through a slower, more laborious and click-filled procedure, if they don't have to. I almost feel guilty sometimes running gDesklets or SuperKarmba with sysinfo themes when I know I can get the same information from running Top, but damnit if Superkarmba doesn't look really cool, and like you said (and I agree) my PC is over-powered for what I do with it, so is there really any harm putting those CPU cycels to work for fun? I know the moral answer to that question is that we should all be running Folding or Seti clients with that idle energy, but for a few minutes lets just be selfish. And I don't think running a minimalistic (or no) window manager is going to prevent bugs in software, there were plenty of bugs and bad code long before Windows emerged. I get your point, and even agree with it to a point, but the truth is the problem is already solved and you have a choice. And judging by the popularity of Mandy and the traffic and KDE-Look I would say that plenty of people are willing to fight the bugs for the eye-candy, so everyone should really be happy.

My personl favorite, the firewall is pretty decent and a nice step up over just plain NAT so many broadband routers use.

anna this i s really nice work, I am having too much phun just messing with the config file and seeing what happens. Great work...

I'll be relieved when I see it run on my hardware (other rig is an Athlon XP 2800+/1 gig DDR/Radeon 9600XT). It's kind of out of character for iD to not release a demo prior to retail launch, my question is simply are they chaning business practices or taking the route many devs take and hiding brutal system requirements? We'll see, although that said, I still have a lot of faith n iD.

First time I opened this app I was shocked how nice it was, to think you have to pay upwards of $70 for something this nice on Windows (and still have to deal with serial numbers and registration codes ).

I was running in to this a lot over the weekend and last night, says the PLF mirror I had set up was down. I finally gave up and did a urpmi.removemedia PLF and then used the list at easy-urpmi to generate a new one, back to working like a champ.

The build on urpmi is 1.26-2, they don't have the point release yet. You can get the source and compile from here, and it does use less resuorces. I haven't taken the time to set these up entirely the way I want, but damn they are cool little toys.

Ix nailed it, our media loves to publish big headlines about divisive issues that can never be resolved (there will always be people for and against many controversial things) but misses the importance of the technology we use every day, which is why so many people have no idea why there is such an anti-MS crowd out here, the vast majority of the American media and our (so-called) computer press pretend there aren't alternatives.

I'll check that out John, thanks for the tip, that actually sounds promising (have to try later I'm stuck on a conference call with work to plan how we are going to respond to a big batch of MS patches being released over the next few days, man I love my Linux box). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'll reply to my own post to keep it in context. I tried just about everything anyone has with XMMS, always the same crash. I had pretty much written it off, and when the 1.2.10 rpms did the same thing I removed the whole thing. Then last night when I couldn't sleep I thought I would try it one more time, installed via urpmi and got the same result. So then I thought that the only thing I didn't have on my system that might help was the xmms dev libs, so I installed them via urpmi and now it works prefectly. Just goes to show what persistence, insomnia and urpmi can do together...

What YinYet said, I just built this system a few weeks ago and chose all my hardware by doing Google searches like "Shuttle SK41G Linux" or nVidia GeForce 4 Mandrake 10" (not always fruitful but sometimes you get perfect information), perusing forums and reading specs very carefully. Linuxhardware.org is also very useful and can give you some good insight into chipset support and performance. Personally, I find buying a few months back almost guaruntees good Linux support as the community works pretty hard to support most everything that comes down the pike, but bleeding edge stuff can be hard to deal with on occaision. Good luck.

I've never been a big winamp fan so XMMS has never done it for me, and it's buggy with my sound card, but amaroK has my interest, will have to try that when I get home tonight.

I think ASUS quality has dropped in a lot of recent models. and the issues between their own motherboards and their own Radeon 9600XTs have created some long running discussions on the VIA Arena boards. Too many other good choices at better prices out there to worry about them, but it would be nice if there was some place we could see a definitive list of hardware makers who are active in their "embrace" of Linux while staying true to the GPL, etc... Any such thing?

I used to prefer Gnome, but I have to say KDE has grown on me, at least this week :lol:

The problem your having is usually because when you built the link for the plugins folder you linked against the wrong version (the one in the ns610 folder vs the ns610-gcc32 folder). Go to your ~/firefox/plugins directory and delete anything with "java" anywhere in the name (i.e. usually a soft link to libjava.plugin.so or similair) and then open a terminal, su and run this command... Issue the following command: ln -s /usr/java/j2re1.4.2_01/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so then restart FireFox. I had the same problem you do, so try that.

I think you'll be pleased, I was actually surprised just how nice it is, good luck.

I think this is a tough number to hit because so many people download Linux instead of buying it. I think Gartner group did a study and showed more Linux users thatn OS X, but I wouldn't know where to find it. My personal feeling is there are more Linux installs than documented by any of these studies, at one client site we have on Linux box serving one web page, but behind the firewall we have 4 other boxes doing print and file serving, and a couple console workstations, so I think the number will be elusive for a long time to come.

Found somewhere to use a wrapper: artsdsp -m /usr/local/games/et Man, Let me tell you, I'd rather play without audio. There is about a one (1) second delay. Drives you up the wall. So, basiclly, sound is still an issue. Hopefully someone could help me out. I posted a message in the Games Section, we'll see if someone else has had this issue. BTW. Thanks for all you help. -SP <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No problem, I learned the same way you did, I have an unsupported chipset as well. Glad to help.

If at all possible skip the USB modem and get an ethernet-based model, best bet would be to get some kind of hardware firewall (I use a Linksys BEFSX41 which has an actual firewall with stateful packet inspection, not just running NAT, but I am also a paranoid network admin, so your mile may vary ). So basically from the wall, to the DSL or cable modem, to the router/firewall to your PC. You can set up your connection in the router and eliminate the need for the CD from the ISP. Once you pick an ISP and get an idea what hardware they offer I'm sure lots of folks will have opinions. Of course, you could also do this with a spare PC and any number of nice .NIX based firewall/ routers.