foot

Bugger it, I'll get a bluetooth headset and dongle from Overclockers and see how it goes at the weekend. Found a few things such as this which suggests its possible and there is some nice stuff about linux and my particular phone here, so it won't be a waste if I can't get the bluetooth skype thing going :) Just thinking how the bluetooth thing would pass me by due to running linux - obviously I was wrong again :D

Skype has a client for linux and it got me thinking about using it to call my friends in US / Canada. Has anyone had any experience with their services? Also, I am tempted to by a bluetooth headphone set for my mobile and wondered if its possible to connect to Skype via a bluetooth dongle? I know the LQ HCL suggests that at least one works, but has anyone got any experience of this kind of set up? Obviously wanna avoid paying out £40 if its never going to work! :) Thanks in advance!

Its apples and pears really - Xine is damned good at playing a variety of video formats (if you make sure you install the codecs from the nightly build page) whilst Amarok is more of a 'jukebox' audio player and is damned good (if a tad confusing at times) at sorting through your music files, making playlists etc etc

Eeek! TBH, if you're as much as a linux newb as me then I'd stick with default Mandrake/DE until you really feel confident about what you're doing - perhaps mandrake will include a fourth 3.4 disk with the upcoming 1.2 release, like they did with 1.1 and KDE3.3?

Pretty sure its the instructions for 1.4 Moz or later. Its not too much of a worry anyway - just test FF with the tests supplied and if it crashes FF, just delete that symbolic link and try the other one :)

Did a couple of searches on this but couldn't find a reference to it.. Have a look at the Darwinia Demo - looks quite good and has got some good review..and best of all, its on Linux (well you have to buy the windows version and then download their installer ala NWN). Played the demo and it looks like a competent real-time strat, though the graphics are kinda retro-ey (though not in the usual linux way :D) Anyhoo, gonna play the demo some more and possibly buy - not that many real-time strategy games on linux! edit: screenie too - excuse the quality of it, couldn't work out how to take it when it wasn't windowed.

Didn't change them for me :)

Thanks Thac! :) Got it working eventually, though I did it on a fresh install and had to urpme out kdeaddons halfway through the urpmi-athon. Few problems, which I presume are related to how mandrake relates to KDE - CDRoms wouldn't automount (sorted it), Can't go straight to turning off the computer (have to log off and 'reboot' or 'halt' now, even if I press 'turn off the computer') and the shadowing / translucency options do horrible things to my system speed. Will keep it until 10.2 final comes out tho :)

I mentioned Pixel32 before and I've had a bit of a play and its not that great - tried a bit of photoshopping and it was hard work, though not as much as the GIMP (GIMP is great, but not so easy when you've spent years using PSP and the like. Pixel is also not F/OSS software - no big problem and its good that its there, but I'm not sure about paying $32 in the hope that the everything gets sorted for the final release. Nero is a good thing - not necessarily because its anything special, but because it means that some attention is being paid to linux.

Isn't it nice when you find a program type that you really missed before and thought you wouldn't see for a long time? Well I was looking through that old list of linux equivalents and found this Pixel32 Now I know its not OS and its not free but I downloaded it yesterday and, from a little play, it looks good and, if everything works OK, it'll be nearly as featureful as one of the latter version of Paint Shop Pro. Yeah, its no Photoshop, but it can handle animation, layers etc and it looks like an intuitive interface and its just a tad cheaper :) Wil have more of a play tonight - hoepfully Gimp has some competition on linux! :)

Hiya! I am on Mandrake 10.1 / KDE which has been running lovely..until today. I replaced a knackered old NEC CD Burner with a LG CD/CD-RW/DVD player. Also have a CD/DVD for a second /slave CD. Now, I tried it out with a DVD and burning a few files and it worked fine..then I looked on Konquerer and..no files! There is a CDRom directory..but there are no files listed, even though the CD has plenty of files on it :( MCC Hardware recognises it correctly..but just no listing :( Any advice? Thanks in advance! :) edit: Doh, didn't notice a little notice on boot up telling me that my 80 IDE cable thingy wasn't correctly installed - took the cable out then put it back in..and hey presto, everything working again. Nothing to see here. Move along. :)

There was a post on here about replacing the version of freetype with a non plf version - can't find it now, but it solved the problem of scaggy looking fonts..now if someone could remember where it went..

If you use the file associations in KDE (Configure Desktop -> Components -> File associations) and associate all the file types in the applications and text sections with Firefox that could be relevant e.g. html, shtml, asp, php etc. If you have it installed then its worth changing the defaults for GNOME as this can affect how some programs run in KDE (such as evolution) - log into GNOME..System->Configuration->GNOME->advanced->preferred applications (or something similar). If Firefox doesn't appear as a default then add a custom entry such as /home/<blah blah etc zzz>/firefox/firefox %s - not sure but I presume the '%s' but at the end tells it to search out that particular link - if you don't include it, it'll just open up your home page. For me that makes firefox 'default' for everything that I click that needs it. Hope that helps :) edit: oops - just realised I misunderstood the question - never had firefox or thunderbird ask if they want to be the default browser / mail (..and I am using Mandrake 10.1 & KDE) Are you using the binaries off http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ ?

Just as an aside, I run a small (but old and established) football website which gets about 250-300 unique visitors a day - its visited by lots of people who care little for computers and just want to use them and not mess..burrt I have been calculating the webalizer stats and, after lots of explanation why its important by the more geeky types on the forums, 36% of the visits on the site are done by people using firefox (compare to less than 10% generally) and IE usage is 'down' to 55%. Now, I am the only one I know of in this particular 'community' that uses anything aside from Windows, but I feel its worth mentioning that if you stick to facts and keep plugging, people do get the message and even some of the most inertia-ed MS/IE users can be persuaded to at least have a try..and if the F/OSS product is straightforward / good enough, they'll stay with it.

As someone who has gone from "hey lets try Linux for a laugh" to "this ain't bad" to "Windows..err..no thanks" in the last 2 months, I can only say a big THANKYOU ...to all the people who post solutions on here - there's no doubt that this has been where I have gained most understanding. Still don't understand 99% of whats happening (its more like rote learning atm), but give us newbs time and we'll be able to help answer questions too! :)

Just done this I didn't copy the nphelix file but just did a symbolic link in the firefox plugins directory..hmm ln-s home/blahblah/RealPlayer/mozilla/nphelix.so ln-s home/blahblah/RealPlayer/mozilla/nphelix.xpt worked a treat :) Not sure if the xpt link is necessary, but did it anyway :)

Kinda bit weird posting about a problem that has already been solved, but I know it may vex a few people, particularly as AA is one of the few games that runs natively (and very well, so far) on linux. The game was going a little screwy when trying to change resolutions and was only offering me 640x400 and 800x600, so I did a bit of searching around and found that the default settings in etc/X11/Xorg.conf for screen depth was set at only 16, when it should have been 24 - a quick change to root and vi xorg.conf (in the appropriate directory) enabled me to change the default setting to 24 and hey presto..lotsa resolutions and the game is stable! :)

Thanks for the pointer! :) It was my printer and its USB connection - when I took the printer out it allowed me to boot up properly (then bizarrely it allowed me to use the printer if I stuck the USB back in once it had finished booting). Anyhoo, I had a flounder around for some USB/Mandrake tips and all you have to do is go to the Mandrake Control Centre -> Boot -> Boot Loader and then check the 'Force No APIC' thingy (Next->Finish). Printer is now OK to stay connected and works a treat. Many Thanks.

Hiya Replaced my old NV Geforce MX400 with a FX5700 and decided to save everything and reinstall Mandrake. Everything went swimmingly as per usual until I started booting up..and it freezes when it gets to the 'hardware detect' bit. I'm kinda confused - from the Mandrake site it would seem that the FX5700 is just as well supported as the MX400 (in fact it has a big shiny tick on it)... did try going through failsafe and then removed (ahem) harddrake thru the command line, but then it only got a bit further before hanging again. Have rechecked this twice now :( Windows and Ubuntu have no problem detecting everything I have.. Ubuntu is OK, but I'd prefer me old Mandrake back. Thanks in advance!

Some nice looking screens there :) Still the basic KDE set-up, but fiddled a bit (and it has Natalie Imbruglia ;) )

Another one here! Been using Mandrake for a coupla weeks after having Win98 crash on me twice in a coupla hours (IE I expect, but the whole OS was getting a tad silly). Downloaded Mandrake, installed, played with it, got a tad confused, so I thought..bah give XP a go. Within about 20 minutes of getting XP up and running about 4-5 things had annoyed me (the ugly desktop, annoying reminders, windows explorer trying to sell me stuff (?!?) amongst other things) then I managed to crash IE. I dunno how I do it (just sit me in front of any version of IE on any computer and it'll crash, trust me :( )...soo, I erased it off and reinstalled Mandrake and haven't looked back. It is difficult and it can be frustrating, but a coupla days later, I have everything I need set up and it works lovely..and it looks great..and they can send me whatever carp they want..not that I have seen much cos Firefox and Evolution have been just fabulous in getting rid of it all. Internet is faster too (due to a lot of factors, but stuff I wouldn't have done if I had not decided to change). I miss me old games but not enough to do anything about it, as I could. Oh and I haven't needed to pay a penny (though I'm deciding who to donate the money I have saved) nor use dodgy cracks. The downside? No dreamweaver (though quanta and Nvu will be OK), no PSP (GIMP is fine, but I can't find a decent animation app with a GUI - ganim8 just doesn't seem to want to work for me) and the games (like I said, I could do something about that, but I just can't be arsed). Here's the thing though...I am not that far above 'Joe Blow' standards - if people want to think that I have a great wealth of techie knowledge simply because I can put a mandrake disk in then..woo..fine by me, but in reality touching Konsole brings me out in sweats and I have to go and do loads of research before I do anything that you lot would (probably) consider routine. Terrible thing this learning business. Tell you what though, its a hell of a lot more preferable to sitting on Windows re-updating spyware S&D, Adaware, Norton, waiting forever as I just double check with that online virus checker (that trend one), pulling my hair out trying to work out why another app has crashed again and why it takes down everybloodything else with it. In a coupla weeks you can count the number of times I have had to kill and application on Mandrake on two hands and certainly not had the OS crash like it did on Win98 frequently. Bah, of course from installation its not easy enough for a lot of people, but give it time and with MS constantly takin the pee it seems kinda inevitable. :)

I'm using KDE though I found the bugger eventually - Kmenu-System-Configuration-Hardware-CD Properties...then just changed the pointer to the shell script to a pointer to Xine ('/usr/bin/xine -pd' to be exactly - it just pops up without the pd bit). probably not the best way to do it..but, it works! :unsure: Don't suppose anyone knows how to change it so that the desktop label for the CD drives are something a bit more helpful than 'CD-ROM (hdc) [/mnt/cdrom]' like a disc label or just given name 'CD 1' or something??

Hiya Complete newb to Linux (well by a coupla days) but I've come across an annoying problem with playing DVDs - they won't seem to autoplay when the DVD is put in (though I can get them to play within Xine or whatever). They did do so with Kafeinne but I uninstalled that and now nothing happens when I put a DVD in :( Anyone know how to change the default DVD app? Also, I've been updating all me stuff via the Many control centre, but I've got stuck with one file - ldetect-lst-0.1.23-1.1.101mdk.i586 - apparently I have an 'unsatisfied' /usr/sbin/update-ldetect-lst , which is news to me. I asked the hard drive loudly about what it was feeling so unsatisfied about, but it just whirred back at me. Any ideas. Google doesn't seem to want to help Muchos Thankos Foot.