payasam

Well, the theme is one which came with Gnome, which came with Mandriva.... Still, what you advise is a course to follow, perhaps the only valid one.

Scoonma, what you suggest is not possible. The taskbar ("panel") properties option does not include complete disappearance. An arrow should remain visible. This seems to be a bug.

I am on the only theme I like, Coverup, but I haven't yet found a way to customise it exactly to my taste. It is eminently reasonable to suppose that if you could add shadowed type, I can remove that [sorry] abomination. Obviously I haven't looked hard enough. Thank you for pointing me in what may well be the right direction.

Scoonma, I shall state the problem more clearly. When I click on one of the arrows, the taskbar vanishes completely off the face of the Earth. I know that I did not configure it to do this.

Moderators, please move if appropriate.

After using KDE for five years, first in Mandrake/Mandriva and then in PCLOS, this is my first time with Gnome. When I click on one of the arrows on the taskbar to make it disappear, the arrow also disappears and the only way I can bring them back is by a hard re-boot. Never happened in KDE.

Scarecrow, I've thrown out Helix Player, and Real Player does what I ask of it.

Thank you, tux99 and Greg2. I now have things moving, after a fashion. Without my having done anything, Helix Player started running. However, it refused to play the RM file, saying that Real Player would do that. I downloaded the RP 11 RPM (the earlier one was BIN file, I said RPM by mistake), which was installed after a dependency was satisfied. It played the RM file all right, as well as other formats. Helix Player still does not play WMV and AVI files.

I have been using Thunderbird almost since it became widely available. Never had the problem I now face: the function to search within a message does not work.

I received a small file with the RM extension. Downloaded the Real Player 10 RPM and installed. All seemed to go well, but the program did not run. When I tried to remove it with rpm -e, I got a "not installed" message, and when I tried to re-install, I got an "already installed" message. The Devil and Deep Sea story. A friend told me of Helix Player, which I pulled in through MCC. It too does not run.

Coverup, suit yourself. For me, having to look at shadowed text all the time is a major Problem.

Thank you, AI. I understand and will give it a go.

That's right, tyme: the names under the icons.

Thank you, Yves. If the metacity trick does not work, I'll go to drak3D.

[No luck] metacity --replace appears to have done nothing but hang all the applications running so that I had to do a hard re-boot, and turning off 3D effects in drak3D made no difference.

Will look around in MCC, Coverup. What does your code do, AI? I prefer actions to be reversible.

Thank you, Coverup, but there's no Visual Effects to be found.

Mandriva 2009, Gnome. I do not like shadowed type on the desktop but can find no way to turn it to normal. Help appreciated.

Yves, you really know your way around. Thanks yet again.

[edit] Done, Yves. I've kept your colour but removed the week number, which I do not need. Most important, I have used <big> for both date and time. If I knew how to make the type even bigger, I would do that. [little edit] I've made it bold, which is something.

Ah, yes, semaine. It comes back. I spent some weeks failing miserably to learn a bit of French in college in 1967. Will chase the first link and see if I can do something. Thank you again.

[edit] Went along apps -> panel -> applets -> clock, but found no prefs there.

Does this code go in the same file? How? And is "Semaine" the name of a fount?

Anyhow, time for bed. A half past midnight in India.

It works, Yves. Not the best solution (fount size cannot be changed, for example), but certainly better than nothing.

Will do. Thanks.

[grumble] Analogue clocks must be pretty large if they are to be readable. No provision for showing day of week, and month can be expressed only in numerical form.

Don't see why Gnome's panel clock cannot be made configurable. In software terms it would be a trivial thing to do.

You've stated the problem exactly, Ian. The clocks I've tried -- except for an enormous "melting" one -- give only the time, while I want date and day and month also. If no one comes up with a good idea, I expect I'll make do with what I have. A friend suggested Superkaramba, but that's rather too full of unwanted "goodies" besides being a KDE app.

I've used Linux for over five years, always KDE. I am accustomed to having an easily legible clock in the panel, one whose colours and founts and size can be configured. This is my first time with Gnome. I chose this option because, frankly, I found the new KDE ghastly. The Gnome panel clock does show day, date, month and time -- all I need -- but the type is too small, and if the panel is made transparent to allow a background photo to show through, the clock can become invisible until the mouse arrow is placed over it. Could someone please tell me where to find what I'd like to have?

I do use Save As in the GIMP, because I load ORF (Olympus raw) files and save them as TIFFs. Nothing of the kind in other programs, though, certainly not in Firefox. If I'm stuck with libbeagle -- well, then, I'm well and truly stuck.

Hullo again, Ian. No themes.

Thank you, tyme. I now see the point of launching an application from the command line.

Scarecrow, I am confused since I saw that Control Centre (which too has hung once) also describes Slim as a log-in manager. I don't know what will become different if I install that. I shall see about permissions in .gnome2. Thanks.

There's no problem, medo3891, when launching an application: I have trouble when I'm working within it. I looked up the link you gave and found that it pertains to beagle, which I have already removed.

Scarecrow, Slim and Metacity are entirely unknown to me. Before this install I always used KDE. I switched to Gnome because I thought the new KDE bloody awful. I wouldn't know where to begin to check the Gnome settings' permissions.