Sridhar wrote:
>> Have you tried KDE's own help? <<
Certainly. Let me tell you about KDE's own help. There is no "search"
for a keyword. So effectively, you have to page your way through the
whole thing trying to find a section that *might* pertain to what you're
looking for. If you click on "search" in Konqueror's left panel when you
have KDE Help in the right panel, when you type in a keyword and click
on Search nothing happens. If you then click on Update Index, you get a
screen telling you you need another program called ht://dig. I clicked
on the link to the Web site, figuring I'd download and install it so I
could get keyword searches for KDE Help. Alas--the Web site was totally
confusing and apparently you need to _compile_ this program if you want
to use it. No thanks. I know that true Linuxians love the idea of
compiling code, but "regular people" don't. It seems unrealistic to
expect new, non-techie users, who are most likely the ones who will be
looking for things in KDE Help, to compile programs in order to do a
search in Online Help. I realize that a working keyword search is
probably on the agenda for future releases, but for now, KDE Help is
difficult to use unless you just want to read through it or are able to
pinpoint exactly where the information you're looking for may reside and
then click on the hypertext.
>> I don't mean to pick, but I hope you do realise that giving yourself
"all the permissions I could" just defeats the purpose of logging in as
a user. You are effectively using the machine as root. <<
I was following suggestions given here about expanding permissions for
user when user and root are the same person. If that's still not good
enough, so be it. I'll take my chances. The firewall is working and my
ports are all stealthed and I go online as user, not root, so I hope my
system is not a good target for trojans and worms.
>> su is a good command to use at the console. <<
I do use it. I always have a second desktop with a root console and a
Super User file manager open. Then when I need to do something as root
that doesn't require a root login, I just switch to that desktop and do
the deed. It's tolerable. Remember that I am not familiar with the names
of programs I might want to launch as root, so I have problems starting
the program in a console unless I either know or can find the program's
name in less than five minutes. Today I found lists and descriptions of
KDE programs in the KDE Online Help (no thanks to keywords<g>). I'll
print out those screens and keep them around as a "cheat sheet" until I
learn the ones I use the most.
>> For the full graphical experience, use kdesu. You can even make icons
using kdesu, so you will be asked for the root password when you click
it. For an example on how this works, go to the Mandrake menu ->
Applications -> File Tools -> File Manager (Super User Mode). Look at
its properties. <<
Well, first I had to figure out how to see the properties of Super User
File Manager. There is no icon I can right-click on to check properties
and I had no idea what the program file was called. But what I did was
right-click on the K on the bottom left, Panel Menu, Menu Editor (aka
MenuDrake) and found the Super User File Manager in the list of
Applications. That showed me that the command word is "kdesu konqueror"
(no quotes). I had no idea that this "kdesu" stuff you and others are
talking about meant you were suppposed to type "kdesu" before the name
of the command. That's exactly the kind of information newbies need but
don't get and is another thing for John to include in his online book.
It would be clearer for non-techies if someone said "in a Run line
(Alt+F2 shortcut), type 'kdesu plus the name of the program'."
>> Have you tried refreshing the file manager's view after changing
discs, or even opening another file manager window to browse the new
disc? This can sometimes work. <<
Yes, I did all of that. What I've found out is that you do have to issue
either a umount or eject command for /mnt/zip, and before you can see
the contents of another disk, you have to do a mount /mnt/zip command.
Then it'll read the disk. I have some suspicions about the supermount
thing that's used for the Zip, floppy, and CD-ROM drives. I read on
MandrakeForum.com that people are finding supermount to be unreliable
and troublesome. Is there a way to set up a Zip drive so that simply
inserting a disk will mount it automatically, even after the ejection of
another disk? I enabled mount and unmount for user by editing
/etc/fstab.
>> For both Zip and CD-ROM issues, try the command "eject /mnt/disc".
Replace "disc" with what you want to eject. <<
CD-ROMs generally seem to work by just pressing the drive button. The
times I can't eject them with the button have been when I have been
installing something from my two distribution CDs. Maybe this is related
to supermount, too. I just don't know.
Thanks for your help. I'm doing a lot better with this latest
reinstallation and slowly but surely learning how to get things set up
to my satisfaction.
--Judy Miner
