scarecrow

Amarok 2.0.2 was a pita... you should try to upgrade to 2.1.0 But other than that, Amarok is using the selected phonon backend, which can be xine, mplayer, or gstreamer. Which one are you using?

Why not using grub instead, which does not need an installation update after a kernel update?

These hybrid devices sometimes aren't recognized properly, and need special udev rules. What do you get by typing # lsusb in a root console? And... about the Veesta compatibility, and linux incompatibility: You could (and should) complain about that at the hardware vendor, who does not care about anything else than windoze and (maybe, just maybe...) OSX.

What are you using as video output in mplayer, or whatever you use for playing back your videos? In a system like yours, the best choice for output seems to be "xv" - not x11, gl or gl2. There's also vdpau, which works best with 3D-desktop on and HD videos, but it needs a patched mplayer/ xine and a very recent nvidia card (8xxx series or newer).

Did you consider Openbox? It works fine here with both Gnome and XFCE4, and probably KDE4 as well.

Run once from console emerald --replace If you still have no decorations, call "fusion-icon" (or compiz settings directly) and there under effects check the "window decoration" item in.

Never heard of something called like that. If you mean grdesktop then it's just an RDP client, and of no use to our friend's problem/ query. He wants to know how to connect to a Linux remote desktop from windows - not the opposite.

There are no special "settings". Having a remote Linux desktop on your XP machine is quite easy, and it can be done in two different ways: either via VNC, or freenx. Both solutions have pros and cons. VNC sessions are easier to setup, while freenx sessions have (generally) better performance, and better security. One thing that you MUST have in mind is that you can connect to a remote Linux machine either to a virtual X-session, or you can connect to a real X-session (that is, connecting to a running X-session, ala-windows). On windows, the only option is connecting to a real remote session (unless you are using some commercial third party software, and not RDP). Currently you can have either one via VNC, or freenx... but the way to achieve these remote sessions is different. Just tell us what you want to do, and we will give some tips.

I think PLF has a metapackage named "gstreamer0.10-plugins" which pulls every needed gstreamer plugin, "free" or "non-free" - but since I'm not using Mandy right now, I can't be sure.

No probs. I know about the changes, because I had submitted a bug report for version 2.13 some months ago... :D Apps like tunapie may look odd, because they are awful-looking (pretty much the norm for any wxgtk/wxpython app), but they are very small, very simple, very stable, and surprisingly functional.

Tunapie is a most characteristic example. It's purely python, and it could work even if you put the scripts at a home folder. For the record, it has been updated quite a few times recently, because some changes in wxgtk have made some of the scripts nonperforming.

Do you have installed something like a babelfish FF extension, or so?

Please do a # lsmod | grep snd and paste here the whole console content.

OK. You may have to check on XFCE4 settings "start gnome services at startup" if you want exaile to work properly. I'm also using XFCE4 (mainly), and I have this checked as I'm forced to use gdm as login manager (unfortunately slim is currently totally broken, and most probably unmaintainable). You will also need dbus-python and pyinotify, else the library will not be updated in realtime.

Check again the status of the CMOS battery. If the battery is tilt, then you should expect all sorts of anomalies. Nobody can tell for sure if your RAM was faulty... did you run a thorough memtest on your old ramstick(s)? The worst scenario is that the mainboard is misbehaving. In that case, it would be quite difficult to find a replacement- only secondhand ones, with no warranty.

It's a separate package, named "alsaconf" which is installed by default. You should also have alsa-utils and alsaq-plugins-pulse-config installed by default.

The HD partitioner does not touch the BIOS, nor it could do so if the intention was there. Simply check the condition of your onboard battery- this is the most probable reason the BIOS isn't loading. If you still believe that the HD partitioner wiped your BIOS, then you're probably mixing computers with Star Wars.

Shut down every app that may use your soundcard (including gnome mixer on the tray- you are running Gnome, or not?), and in a root console run alsaconf You have three chances: 1. seeing your PC internal speaker as default sound device 2. your actual soundcard listed and 3.a prompt to search for ISA soundcards, as none was detected. On which case of the above you are belonging?

IMO there was something else- not the dirty lens. Reason? If something is not read properly from the installation CD, then it's not installed, and the installer pops up an error message. But- since the second installation went fine, all the above is just philology.

It may sound stupid, but... here it goes: does it work with ndiswrapper?

Some error message would be fine. When the boot graphical screen appears, press esc to see them, and if they scroll too fast, you can always find them logged inside /var/log

I cannot tell, as I have switched to the go-openoffice clone. But since the base for both is the same, then no, it is not slower for me than OOo 2.4.X Eating more RAM yes indeed, but not slower overall. @ Neddie (again) : If your GTK apps aren't looking good, and you have neither Gnome, or XFCE4 installed, then the simplest way to tune their appearance is the "lxapperance" application. It's part of the LXDE desktop, but it it's not dependent to any LXDE components.

The CPU and RAM amount are just adequate. But I suspect you're having hardware issues (most likely misbehaving RAM or HD controller).

If running gnome, just check what the above complain about: if gnome-settings-daemon and libnotify are installed, and the daemon running. If running KDE, you would probably run Amarok instead (the latest SVN revisions are quite usable).

@ Neddie: If you are using Openoffice under KDE and it's looking fugly, you can start it like OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=gnome soffice (it doesn't matter if you don't have Gnome installed!). The old KDE3/QT mode has been removed. Or, if you don't like typing many things, then include export OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=gnome to your /etc/rc.local (this makes it apply for all users), or to your .bashrc, or to your DE startup script, or to any convenient startup script. You may have a couple of other useful tips at our wiki (all of them aren't Arch-specific): http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Openoffice