Install successful for newbie :), a couple of questions...

[Guest kronos]

Hi !

 

I successfully installed Mandrake 9.1 from CDs. I prepared by reading this forum, install documentation and everything went OK. I am happy. :)

 

I have a question though,

 

- How do you setup the "brightness" in KDE ? I am not joking :)

I mean everything is very bright. Using monitor and reducing the brightness and contrast doesnt help or. should I say the result is not there. Especially white colour is very "unnatural", hurts to watch to monitor.

Perhaps I should ask, can you control gamma brightness in KDE ?

 

Many thanks !

 

I use dual boot:

I have AMD 1700+

Radeon 9000 pro

and samsung syncmaster 753DFX

motherboard is Epox 8K5A2+

[manly]

Open up a console and type xgamma --help. I'm just not sure if changing gamma that way works across reboots/logins.

 

I have a package installed called Kgamma that adds an applet to the KDE Control Center. I *think* I got it from Synaptic/texstar... you'll want to set up Synaptic, etc. There are lot's of posts/HOWTO's on the forum all ready.

 

What did you set your monitor profile to be? You check in the MDK control center -->Hardware.

 

--Andrew

[bvc]

man XF86Config

 

tells of a "Gamma <gamma-value>" setting in the MONITOR Section for the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file.

[Guest kronos]

Open up a console and type xgamma --help. I'm just not sure if changing gamma that way works across reboots/logins.

 

I have a package installed called Kgamma that adds an applet to the KDE Control Center. I *think* I got it from Synaptic/texstar... you'll want to set up Synaptic, etc. There are lot's of posts/HOWTO's on the forum all ready.

 

What did you set your monitor profile to be? You check in the MDK control center -->Hardware.

 

--Andrew

 

Currently I have monitor set up as Plug'n Play.

If I choose "Vendor" and "Samsung" my monitor 753DFX is not available.

[bvc]

Find out what your monitor can do and choose a Generic that's very similar. That's what I had to do for a year until XFree86-4.3 finally included my 2 year old monitor :roll:

[Guest kronos]

I also found this using Search function.

 

I have exactly the same problem as sameerb in this thread:

 

http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php...ighlight=kgamma

[Guest kronos]

OK, I managed to screw the config giles somehow...

 

I hope someone will be so nice and help me :)

 

When I boot linux (no errors here, everything says OK when booting) I get the following error when I type "startx" in command prompt:

Using config file "/etc"/x11/XF86Config-4"

Data incomplete in file "/etc"/x11/XF86Config-4"

 

Undefined monitor "monitor2" referenced by screen "screen2"

 

(EE) Problem parsing the config file

(EE) Error from xf86HandleConfigFile ()

 

Fatal server error:

no screens found

 

 

XIO: fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0" after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining

 

 

 

So I guess config file is bad. Please bear with me as I am new to Linux environment.

 

Thanks !

[manly]

Try running XFdrake at the prompt. That should help you regenerate your config file.

 

You have to use the su (switch user) command to become root. Type su (it defaults to root) and type your password, then run XFdrake.

 

What text editor are you using? Some are more complex (vi, emacs) than others (joe, pico). Before you edit a file, make sure to back up a copy so if you mess up you can just replace it with a backup. Some editors may do this automatically.

 

--Andrew

[bvc]

Post

Section "Screen"

and

Section "ServerLayout"

of your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.

 

Example

Section "Screen"

   Identifier "screen1"

   Device "device1"

   Monitor "monitor1"

   DefaultColorDepth 24



Section "ServerLayout"

   Identifier "layout1"

   InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"

   InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"

   Screen "screen1"

   #Option "Xinerama"

EndSection

 

Do you see how

Section "Screen"

   Identifier "screen1"

and

Section "ServerLayout"

Screen "screen1"

match? The Section "Screen" has an Identifier of <screen1> and the "ServerLayout" Section tells the server to use Screen <screen1>.

[Guest kronos]

Try running XFdrake at the prompt. That should help you regenerate your config file.

 

You have to use the su (switch user) command to become root. Type su (it defaults to root) and type your password, then run XFdrake.

 

What text editor are you using? Some are more complex (vi, emacs) than others (joe, pico). Before you edit a file, make sure to back up a copy so if you mess up you can just replace it with a backup. Some editors may do this automatically.

 

--Andrew

 

Thanks manly !

 

XFdrake helped. I was able to login.

 

I edited my config file from with vim. (after reading the FAQ: How to edit a file).

[Guest kronos]

bvc,

 

Here are my sections "Screen" and "ServerLayout": (I have two "screen" sections acctually, I dont know why...)

 

Section "Screen"

   Identifier "screen1"

   Device "device1"

   Monitor "monitor1"

   DefaultColorDepth 24

 

Section "Screen"

   Identifier "screen2"

   Device "device2"

   Monitor "monitor1"

   DefaultColorDepth 24

 

Section "ServerLayout"

   Identifier "layout1"

   InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"

   InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"

   Screen "screen1"

   Screen "screen2" RightOf "screen1"

   #Option "Xinerama"

EndSection

 

I changed the following in "screen2" section. "monitor2" to "monitor1". (bold above).

 

Now it works.

 

 

I still have slight problems with gamma brightness, however now with Kgamma instalation it is better...

 

 

- I have further questions. Sorry. :)

 

The fonts are a little blurred. Is there any way to solve this. If yes., how ?

 

- I have ADSL though ethernet. (using pppoe)

I can start (and disconnect) my connection only from MCC --> Network etc...

Is there a way to get connection shown in taskbar ? (like in windows)

 

Connection works flawlessly. I am impressed :)

 

- What firewall do you recommend ? (I have dynamic IP, that changes every 12 hours but I would still like to have a firewall installed)

 

- One reason I installed Linux is because my hobby is creating websites.

What HTML editor do you recommend and how do I install it ?

 

- Is it possible to install "test" apache server with MySQL and php support ?

To test php scripts like forum etc ?

 

Many thanks !

[manly]

The fonts are a little blurred. Is there any way to solve this. If yes., how ?

If you have a Windows install, you can use Drakfont in the MCC to import your windows fonts. I would also recommend downloading and installing the Bitstream Vera fonts (free from the gnome website). My guess is that you have anti-aliasing on in KDE. Look under fonts, and play with the settings until you are happy. I have all the fonts set to use Vera, with anti-aliasing on. It looks better than my XP box @ work :-).

 

Is there a way to get connection shown in taskbar ?  (like in windows)

 

There might be a KDE app. What I would do is set your connection to activate at boot, and run KDE Net Mon. It puts two icons in the systray, one for data in and one for out. They can each have different scales (good for ADSL).

 

- What firewall do you recommend ? (I have dynamic IP, that changes every 12 hours but I would still like to have a firewall installed)

 

Check the MCC, it has a firewall config somewhere in there. I've never used it, but I would guess that it's pretty good.

 

Here is an idea. Go to dyndns.org. You can get a domain for free that works with dynamic IP's. Use the ddclient program. It runs as a service and checks when your IP changes. You can then run really cool things, like an ssh server (urpmi sshd), vnc, apache, etc.

 

Try Quanta as an HTML editor. I've never used it, but it's KDE native, so that has to be a good thing!

[Guest kronos]

The fonts are a little blurred. Is there any way to solve this. If yes., how ?

If you have a Windows install, you can use Drakfont in the MCC to import your windows fonts. I would also recommend downloading and installing the Bitstream Vera fonts (free from the gnome website). My guess is that you have anti-aliasing on in KDE. Look under fonts, and play with the settings until you are happy. I have all the fonts set to use Vera, with anti-aliasing on. It looks better than my XP box @ work :-).

 

I downloaded ttf-bitstream-vera-1.10.tar.bz2 file.

 

How do I install them ?

 

Extract them and copy them or something like that ?

[manly]

The easiest thing to do is open up the .tar.bz2 in konqueror. Copy the folder inside the bz2 to a directory. Then, load up drakfont, and add the fonts. They will then be avalible to all applications. Note that they are called Bistream Vera, not Vera - I installed them and was wondering where they went at first :wink:

 

The coolest thing is that you can install the fonts on windows as well. They look just as cool :-)

 

--Andrew

[Cannonfodder]

You can also extract them in a command-line terminal.

 

bunzip2 whatever.tar.bz2

 

What I did was make a file called myalias.sh and put various alias's to uncompress commands in it. I can never remember the arguments for uncompressing .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, or whatnot.

 

Here's what it looks like..

 

#uncompress

alias targz='tar xzf '

alias tarbz='tar xjf '

alias tgz='tar -zxvf '

alias bz2='bunzip2 '

alias untar='tar xf '



#compress

function maketar() { tar -cvf $*.tar $*; gzip $*.tar;echo 'Created tar.gz'; }

 

So to uncompress this file, I would have typed

 

bz2 whatever.tar.bz2

 

To uncompress a tar.gz file, I would type

 

targz whatever.tar.gz.

 

It's easy to remember. If you do this, you need to store the file in your /etc/profile.d directory and also type

 

chmod +x myalias.sh

 

When ever you open a commandline console, they will be available. You can really define any number of aliases and shortcuts. I have one

 

alias k='clear;ls -a1 | more'

 

clears the screen and gives me a directory listing..