Crashdamage

aTRee: Hey, I was only referring to using .rtf as a general-purpose document format, as .doc is, not specifically about a resume'. But as for this... "PS could you please write MS and not M$,..." No. What is M$ all about if not $$$??? "...it comes across as immature,..." I can live with that. "...prejudiced and zealous..." I'll live with that too. I AM predjudiced and zealous - against M$, their crap software and illegal, monopolistic business practices. "...people take you more seriously if you write MS." They can take me any way they want. I'm a big boy, and I can deal with it. Later... :wink:

Most people only have the .pdf reader, and the full version of Acrobat is real expensive. So if you use .pdf, then usually no changes can be made to the document. Many people want to be able to add notes or make changes and save. I agree with using .rtf. Works great, and readable by (almost?) every word processor ever written. Closest thing I know of to a truly universal document format. If there were no M$, everyone would still be using it, but as we know M$ hates anything not M$.

I've heard the Netraverse people say that support for NT/2000/XP is possible but means a lot of work. It's low on their priorities list, 'cause they don't see much need. Neither do I. Win 9x + Win4Lin runs as fast or faster than native Windows, is much more stable, and Win 9x supports nearly every DOS/Windows app ever written better than NTx does. The NTx advantage of NTFS doesn't apply in this case, so no advantage there. I'd bet they'll support NTx at some point, but right now there's neither the demand nor the need. No midi support yet either, but I'm sure that's much higher on the to-do list. You could post to: https://www.netraverse.com:9100/Lists/win4l...users/List.html and see what they answer or just search the list archives. The developers check in and personally post answers there every day. Win4Lin support is second to none.

pmpatrick: I subscribe to the Win4Lin user's mailing list, and they posted for beta testers there. DOlson & joehill: I understand what you mean about "native or not at all" but it's simply not realistic. I always see stuff like running games, MS Office or Outlook given as reasons for not makimng the Linux move, but that's bull, any number of Linux native alternatives like Open Office can handle that pretty well and if you want Linux games, then support Linux-friendly companies and buy 'em. So as far as that goes, you have a point that Win4Lin or Crossover Office are pointless and counter-productive to the Linux cause. No, it's not games or MS Office that's the problem... But there's 2 problems that actually do and will keep most businesses (including mine) from making the move to Linux on the desktop: 1. Thousands of customized business software apps that run on Winshaft. The vast majority of these will never be ported to Linux, not even if pre-loaded Linux machines suddenly popped up in every computer store and catalog tomorrow. It's just too expensive, companies will never do it. Linux will have to adapt to the software, not the software to it. We will never see Linux desktops out there in real numbers unless businesses can continue to use those specialized apps they've invested so much money in, both in development costs and training. Dual-booting is obviously not an answer here. The ONLY reasonable solution is womething like Win4Lin or Wine. There is just no alternative. 2. Internet Explorer. Possibly the lack of a totally, 100% IE-compatible native Linux browser is a bigger problem than anything else. And I mean TOTALLY compatible, including the abilty to run all IE plugins, etc. My business is a good example. We have to do much of our business on websites, and some of these require Direct X support, download & run IE-only plugins, etc. Not only are most of these websites unusable with any Linux browser, they won't even work with Winshaft versions of Opera, Mozilla, etc. They are strictly IE only, and for some it must be v5.5 Service Pack 2 or better, if you please. This means that no matter how badly I want to switch all our workstations to Linux (very badly, believe me) it's not possible until Win4Lin adds Direct X support. Crossover, etc. don't come close to running IE well enough, and dual booting is totally out of the question. After spnding a lot of time on how to make the Linux switch at my business, it's clear that for at least 5-10 years, the ONLY way I'll be able move to Linux is probably Win4Lin. It's the only thing that has a chance of doing everything we need well enough and seamlessly enough with all the specialized Winshaft stuff we have to run. VMware is much too slow, unstable, and expensive. Wine or Crossover can't come close to the functionality we need. I'm not very friggn' happy about it, especially 'cause Win4Lin does require a copy of Winsucks, but there's just no other way. Fortunately, Win4Lin is very, very good. Anyway, point is that it's not simply a matter of getting people to buy Linux and Linux apps. It's more than getting people to throw out and re-purchase all the Windoze stuff they've collected. It's also a matter of, for most businesses, being absolutely necessay to run software that will likely NEVER be available in Linux-native versions, and of the Web itself, or at rather the stupid website designers who refuse to acknowledge there is anything but IE. If we want Linux-native versions of everything, there will have to be Linux machines out there to run them, and I can't see how that can happen without something like Win4Lin to enable widespread Linux use. Then, when the sheer Linux numbers are out there, maybe we'll see Linux versions of everything, even custom business apps, and software makers will be able to brag that there's "NO Win4Lin or Crossover required!"

Direct X support is coming! Netraverse just signed up a bunch of beta testers for a new Direct X-enabled version of Win4Lin - that should make it a gamer's dream! Games should run faster and far more stable under Win4Lin than native Windoze! My brother thought Win XP was just the THING until he saw pcAnywhere and TaxCut running under Win4Lin. Opened his eyes a bit, and now he's starting to understand why I made the move to Linux. After the new version is released, if the word can be spread about Win4Lin like it has for VMware - which is just nowhere near as good for most purposes and really only intended mainly as a developer's platform - it should really give Linux a boost. But it really is amazing to watch Windows stupidly extolling it's "virtues" as the install rolls by. I've love to see friggin's Gates' face while he watched...now THAT would be funny...

Can't say for absolute certain about Win4Lin + MDK 9.1 (I use 8.2 and will for quite a while to come) but the 9.1 kernals are definetely available. At least a few have done it, and I haven't heard of any problems at all. The Netraverse people are very good...

All I can say is everyone who looks at the photos that Epson C80 puts out are impressed with the quality for the price. They certainly look good to me, far better than prints from the H-P 912 it replaced. My dad spent over 40 years in commercial photography and printing, and he was impressed enough that he asked me to pick one up - the refurbished one I bought was for him. Seems Epsons always get good revues, too. I my business, we print thousands of digital photos a year, mostly on a H-P 4550 color LaserJet, but when we need better output than a color laser can do, we fall back on a couple of 6-color Epson inkjets. We get really nice output and the ink cost is lower than other inkjets. The Epsons have served us very well. Now I've no experience with the newest Epsons or the 82 or 62 in particular and for all I know they might be junk, but given all this, and yeah, I know you know what you're doing, but I gotta think there must be something else going on here, some kinda driver or setup problem...

I don't understand all this Epson bashing. Epson has been very good about supposting Linux. Anyway, I've got lots of photos that printed very nicely with my Epson C80 from Corel Photopaint 9 for Linux (hey, it's easier to deal with than the Gimp...) They look better than ones my brother printed on his new H-P from Winshaft XP. Sorry, forgot the model number, but that H-P cost about double the $150 C80 did a year ago. BTW, I just bought another C80. Micro center has them factory refurbished for $69.95 - a helluva deal!

TaxCut runs perfectly with Win4Lin. Anything that doesn't require DirectX runs great with Win4Lin. At $80-90, Win4Lin's not exactly free, but much cheaper than VMware at $300 and runs rings around it.

OK, nice to see this finally generated some interest. A little update...I went ahead and bought an Extigy, and have been trying ot get it working with Cochran's driver. There's no /.configure file included in the tarball, so I just did "make" and ran into a long list of errors. I've really been working a lot of hours lately and just haven't had tome to try and start sorting this out any further. I'll try to get back to it very soon, and post any errors I can't get past. I hope someone can help... BTW, Cochran says on his webpage the he doesn't use alsa and dosen't know anything about making an Extigy work with it. His driver is intended to work in stereo only, but does include the microphone input and remote control. As for me, alsa is not an option in this particular installation. I have to make this work with Cochran's driver. Stereo is all I want, and the remote is not needed (but might be cool), but the mic input is a MUST!

If you go with Bastille, that's all you need, no need to mess with IP chains. IP chains is really only for 2.2x kernels, IP tables for 2.4x kernels, but Bastille replaces both IP chains and IP tables and is a more complete and effective solution anyway, 'cause it also does NAT and IP masquerading. By far, the best method of firewalling is a router, or better yet, to use 2 nic cards and setup NAT and IP masquerading in Bastille so your computer acts as it's own router. Not hard to do manually or with the InteractiveBastille GUI and any $5 nic cards are fine. Works like an external router but it cuts down on cost and complexity. It'll make your box pretty much bulletproof - mine never fails any tests, always is full stealth. I have full access to the 'Net, even for running file-sharing stuff like Napshare or Mutella. Of course, since it turns your box into a workstation/router, it can also protect a home LAN you might plug into the 2nd card. Really pretty cool.

Gotta agreed with joehill - Napshare's the best, at least for gnutella. Lotsa cool features, rock-solid stability.

joehill... You can run Corel PhotoPaint 9 in Linux, if that helps, or PhotoShop should run with Win4Lin. The Gimp is different and takes some gettin' used to, but seems everyone who "gets" it says it really is a killer once you get the hang of it. Seems to have all the tools...just don't ask me how to use 'em, I'm still tryin'...

Thanks, but as I said a couple of posts ago, I already tried stopping and starting smb, restarting X, checking with ps etc., etc. Nothing I could think of but a reboot would kill the dead shares. I haven't had time to mess with this anymore since my last post, but this weekend I'm gonna try the stuff I talked about like swapping nic cards or reinstalling samba. It's gotta be a corrupted file, goofy nic driver, something odd but simple like that. If I figure out just how to fix it and not through sheer stupid luck, I'll post it here for anyone who has a similar problem.

"...tried all three with the 6.10 and 6.11-shared..." That may be it. I've never had much luck trying to use shared versions of Opera, even in Windoze. Try using the static version. It comes with Java 1.3 I'm pretty sure, but it picked up 1.4 on my system and started running it with no additional configuration by me, just worked.

I have Java 1.4.0 installed and working fine with Opera 6.10. Also 1.3 is installed and causes no conflicts. Maybe you should try going back to 1.4.0 from 1.4.1. I can't remember where or what it was now, but I saw somewhere that 1.4.1 had some problems...that's why I still have 1.4.0. Sometimes the latest is not the greatest...

Thanks for the suggestions. I didn't necessarily expect them to work 'cause I'm working with 2 ML 8.2 & 1 Win98SE machines and none of those should have any proble m with long filenames. But I thought you might have hit on something with the upper-lower case stuff. I tried all the suggestions, but still the same situation. Unstable and frustrating, and it seems just about as unstable no matter which machine I'm working from. I'm not used to all this rebooting anymore. If anyone knows how I can avoid doing it to kill dead shares I'm all ears! I think I'll try uninstalling samba and reinstall with a newer version. I'm still using 2.2.3 that came with 8.2. It's one of the few packages I use much I haven't upgraded. Think I'll go ahead and give LinNeighorhood a try too, I'd kinda like to anyway. Maybe somehow all that will just get me lucky and straighten things up. Maybe it's a samba install gone bad? I'm out of other ideas... Well, maybe not quite...I've got a couple of new nic cards laying around, with different chipsets than the ones I'm using now too. I'll do some swapping around. Maybe a bad card? Some kinda bug in the driver for the ones I'm using?

Just go to Epson's site I gave you a link to. You can get what you need there, with detailed instructions. Probably easier than dealing with whatever you downloaded. Anyway, you haven't said what "bits of sane/xsane" that is, so I have no idea what to tell you to do with it. No matter, really. Once you get the Epson driver installed you can use the scanner with Xsane. I never bothered to install the Epson software. I started with Mandrake 8.0 which didn't support my then-too-new 1650 out of the box, so I was in the same situation then as you are now. I knew next to nothing about Linux, (still don't...) but followed Epson's instructions and got it working. It's really not *that* tough to figure out once you get a little bit of the hang of the Linux way of doing things. If you have trouble with Linux terminology or something trying to do this, try post again here and someone will try to help. For more specific questions about Epson's stuff try posting on the Epson user board, their engineers are pretty good about answering questions. If that doesn't solve your problem, then it may be time to read manuals or try to Google your way out of it.

If you're using Mandrake 8.2, you're probably right that it's a little "too recent" and not supported. I don't know about 9.0, I don't use it, but but you might find out here: http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/hardware.php3 If your scanner isn't listed there, no problem, you're still in luck 'cause you've got an Epson and Epson is very good about supporting Linux. Go here: http://www.epkowa.co.jp/english/linux_e/lsd_e.html and you'll find what you need. Know what you mean about the switch from Winblows, but trashing it is the best thing I ever did. Just keep telling yourself how tough it would be to switch to Winshaft if all you'd ever used was Linux... BTW, my Epson 1650 is supported "out of the box" by 8.2 and runs better than under Winshaft. And Xsane is a lot better than Epson's crappy software.

Alright, after quite a bit of foolin' around yesterday, I've got this working, but not quite right. I'm not even quite sure how. I can mount and copy from the /data1 & /data2 drives now, and file managers don't immediately lock up, but it's (samba itself?) very unstable. Tried using Endeavour2 (which never,*ever* gives any trouble normally), Konqueror, XWC, MC - doesn't matter what file manager I use, any of them may lock up anytime when trying to copy or browse the shares. Endeavour2 seems a little better than the others, no surpise there. This might happen while browsing the shares or in the middle of copying a group of folders - just stops, locked up. Randomly, as far as I can tell. It isn't a file permissions thing, 'cause it may stop while copying folders with the exact same permissions. I noticed it always has finished a folder, not stopped in the middle of a group of files, at least so far. When it locks up, it leaves the accessed share dead and unable to be unmounted, and the only thing that really clears it up is rebooting the client machine. A couple of times, I had to reboot the server unit because it left a dead share there too. I hadn't rebooted that machine in months, but I couldn't get it straightend out with ps, restarting X, stop/start samba, etc. so...do it the old Winshaft way... I tried several definitions for the shares in /etc/samba/smb.conf including variations of the examples suggested and a couple of others I thought might work. Finally just went back the the simple ones I started with. Present examples of some of my shares: [Data1-MP3] path = /data1/MP3 comment = /data1/MP3 public = yes guest ok = yes writable = yes [Data2-MP3] path = /data2/MP3 comment = /data2/MP3 public = yes guest ok = yes writable = yes [Downloads] path = /home/tim/Downloads comment = /home/tim/Downloads public = yes guest ok = yes writable = yes Passes testparm, of course. Been using Komba2 and thought about switching to LinNeighborhood but I get the same results mounting shares manually from a terminal so screw that. I don't understand why this is so unstable, much less why the shares didn't work at all when I tried these same entries the first time. I thought I had some idea what i was doing with samba - I've setup samba a couple of times before and never had much trouble. I get the feeling the answer to this is really simple, one of those things where you appreciate the aynonimity of the 'Net where you can be real stupid without guilt...

Yeah, I'd thought to do "service smb stop" & "service smb start" and file permissions are ok. I messed around some last night and got the new shares to mount, (it WAS an overlooked file permission screwin' that up) but any attempt to browse or copy them immediately locks up any file manager. Tried a couple of configurations in /etc/samba/smb.conf, including configuring them just like the public shares that work corrrectly. Testparm still ok with what I was trying. I was falling asleep before I got it fully sorted it out. I'll play with it some more this weekend and tell what I've done in more detail. Thanks!

I should've been a little more complete in my first post but I was in a hurry, sorry. I already tried manually adding shares in /etc/smb.conf like you suggest, but couldn't get the newly defined shares to mount. I thought it must be something to do with the thing about no shares allowed except in /home. Anyway, that's when I thought I'd try creating links to the drives in /home instead. Didn't realize Samba doesn't allow links. I must've goofed somehow in defining the shares, but it passed testparm...hmmm...I'll go back to that and make sure I make no mistakes. At the time, I thought that's how I should do it and it still sounds right that that's the correct approach. I'm at work now runnin' Winblows, but I should have time tonight to try it again. Thanks!

I have 2 Linux and 1 Winshaft98 machines setup with Samba. Everything works OK, but 1 Linux machine has a couple of large HDs with many, many gigs of mp3s, photos and other stuff I want to make available to the other machines, especially the other Linux unit. These drives are mounted as /data1 & /data2. Problem is Samba only allows shares that are mounted in /home. I tried putting links to the drives in public shares, but Samba doesn't support links either. I know this has probably been asked before, but searches in Google, Samba mailing list archives and Samba manuals have been no help. Probably a simple solution, but I'm too dense to figure it out. Any Samba experts out there know how to do this?

Sendmail and postfix both have security problems. I'm sure a Google search will turn up examples. If that really bothers you, use qmail or ssmtp. qmail is based on sendmail, but kinda more advanced and better security. Both are easy, easier than postfix. ssmtp I haven;t messed with, but I know bvc's right, it's very small and simple and does not run except when you use it. That would make it inherently more secure, except that it apparently has really no security while in operation. From everything I've read, I should use qmail, but I use sendamil 'cause it was easy and ...uhhh...there, and I'm lazy. I take security pretty seriously. I'm firewalled with Bastille, IP mask, NAT and portsentry behind 2 nic cards. Nobody's gettin' in my machine unless they work at it. But I'm just not worried about sendmail's relativly minor security issues...it's still real low risk.

Has anyone gotten an Extigy external USB sound card working in Linux? This is just the thing I need. I downloaded the driver for it from http://www.cs.umass.edu/~cochran/exaudio.tgz but if possible before I actually go buy one I'd like to know what I'm up against and just how well it works. Google wasn't much help, neither is http://opensource.creative.com/, and the instructions at http://www.cs.umass.edu/~cochran/ are pretty sketchy for this dummy... Thanks!