Guest chrisblack Posted February 2, 2005 Report Share Posted February 2, 2005 As a total newbie to linux - I've managed to install 10.1 on an old K62 500 64mb laptop. and have a few questions. 1. I've installed Open Office and it is running in something other than English (possibly Catalan which the install process told me it must install language support for) - how do I get this back to English. 2. I was expecting it to run slowly 'cos of system spec, but it takes anything from 15 seconds to 3 minutes to launch an application (which I'm sure it shouldn't) - any suggestions on that (there appears to be a 484mb swap file set up duing the install process - if that has anything to do with it) 3. I'm obviously used to running windows, and so am looking for equivalent features to scandisk,defrag etc... where can i find these??? Thanks in advance - I'm sure I'll have loads more to ask. Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted February 2, 2005 Report Share Posted February 2, 2005 Easy ones 1st.... scandisk/defrag are not needed in linux unless you are running on a windows partition. The filesystems are designed 'properly' and don't fragment like FAT partitions. speed: Its the memory that's killing you. 64MB is absolutely minimum... it will never be a speed demon but choosing a very lightwieght window manager would be a good start. I have an XBOX running linux which is a PII-733 with 64MB RAM and running a light window manager is essential. Im using ratpoision right now but fluxbox or icewm are good bets. IceWM is usually installed in the install ... (you need a sperate thread probably) OpenOffice I would deinstall the -ca (if you look in the MCC/software) then you can remove the -ca part and search for the openoffice...-en (if you want english) It will be quite slow to open on the laptop but its OK once it is opened. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chrisblack Posted February 2, 2005 Report Share Posted February 2, 2005 OpenOfficeI would deinstall the -ca (if you look in the MCC/software) then you can remove the -ca part and search for the openoffice...-en (if you want english) It will be quite slow to open on the laptop but its OK once it is opened. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I tried to deinstall the -ca, but the panel wouldn't allow me to do that without deinstalling the whole of open office, which I did. On reinstalling I was told it couldn't install it without installing the -CA !!! - has my distro (downloaded from mandrake site) got the CA version rather than the English version?? You'll have to enlighten me about running a "light window manager" - not sure about Icewm and how to boot into it.... Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted February 2, 2005 Report Share Posted February 2, 2005 Hopefully the WM (Window Manager) is already installed. If you have set up not to autologin then you go to the box on the bottom right and select a different WM before you login. Im assuming you have KDE as the default. When yuo type your username or select it automatically selects the last WM so you need to type/select your yuser then click down then type password.. it should then default the next time :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chrisblack Posted February 2, 2005 Report Share Posted February 2, 2005 Thanks I'll give it a try at home this evening. If for any reason I didn't install it - which rpm's do i need? Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted February 2, 2005 Report Share Posted February 2, 2005 try IceWM its .. well OK and should get you started .... lots of people get enthusiastic about WM's, especially minimal ones but lets get you up and running comfrtably then you can experiment. Use the MCC and add progs and search for Icewm choose the full one (theres a lite) and also the config .... OO - damned pain.... I recommend deinstalling it all then reinstall selecting -en. This will the add the common for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted February 4, 2005 Report Share Posted February 4, 2005 Make sure your mandrake language preferences are set to English, As for scandisk and defrag, you dont need to do that on Linux, it has much more reliable filesystems. the linux scandisk tool is called fsck, and will run itself automatically on boot occassionaly, it only takes about 10 seconds, so its not a problem Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Artificial Intelligence Posted February 4, 2005 Report Share Posted February 4, 2005 Here's a trick to spped up Open Office (and Star Office for that matter) Open Open Office. 'Tools' tab ---> 'Option' ---> 'Memory' . Set 'Memory Per Object' to 2.0 mb I don't know if these are avaible for Mandrake reps. but also get ooqstart-gnome or oooqs-kde and enable it. Eg. in Gnome 'Right click on the panel', then 'add to panel', choose 'OOffice quickstarter'. When the icon appear, right click it and choose 'preference'. Then click 'enable quick launch'. Now you can open eg. a text doc. via the OO icon (right click on it). That way I made my OO 60% faster! (and that's alot) My OO time is around 1-2 sec. now .:=The AI Dude=:. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chrisblack Posted February 4, 2005 Report Share Posted February 4, 2005 Thanks for the advice guys - I've tried IceWM and it's certainly better on the old k62 than KDE!!! (although its very boring to look at!!!) I got oo -en sorted and can now see english - I'll give the other oo tips a try this evening I'm also going to do a trial on a p3 700 with 256mb to see how KDE copes for me there. Any other tips on running linux/mandrake would be appreciated regarding speeding it up on an old system One question on RPM's - not all software appears to have the option to download as mandrake platform - does this mean they won't run on mandrake - or will for example a fedora platform work?? Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wilco1973 Posted February 4, 2005 Report Share Posted February 4, 2005 I'm also going to do a trial on a p3 700 with 256mb to see how KDE copes for me there. check out GNOME too!!! i find it better, offcourse there are lots of people that like KDE over GNOME but trying won``t hurt you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac57 Posted February 6, 2005 Report Share Posted February 6, 2005 Thanks for the advice guys - I've tried IceWM and it's certainly better on the old k62 than KDE!!! (although its very boring to look at!!!) IceWM doesn't have to be boring to look at! There are TONS of themes out there for it. I would personally recommend the IceQua them, which looks remarkably like MacOSX. Not that I am a Mac fan, but I do recognize a good visual theme when I see it. I ran IceWM with the IceQua theme for almost a year before changing over to KDE when 3.3 finally came out (it is faster) and I got a faster computer (yes, I know that KDE3.3 doesn't come with Mandrake - I installed it myself from source). Now KDE runs acceptably fast and I don't use IceWM any more. However, it is a good, fast, and very configurable Window Manager. You may miss icons on your desktop? Add in the program xtdesk, which will allow you to do this. There are several just like xtdesk as well, if you don't like it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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