Re: Question aout email, icedove/thunderbird
On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 12:34 PM, Paul E Condon wrote: > > I'm learning to use icedove after a long and happy relationship with mutt. I > remember having this question from before I knew about mutt and it still > puzzles me: Why the checkbox labeled "Always check to see if icedove is the > default mail client on startup" > > How does icedove/thunderbird behavior differ if it finds it is NOT the > default or it finds is IS the default? Is there some reason why it matters to > me which way I have this, checked or unchecked? I can't find > any explanation of what this is, other than the tautological "Tell icedove if > it is you default mail client." Where have I set my default main client? > > TIA I believe it matters more in Windows or OS X environments than in *nix environments. Basically, if you have the box ticked, and Icedove/Thunderbird determines it is not your default email client, you will get a notification pop-up alerting you to the fact that Icedove is not your default client and it will offer to change your settings to make it your default. You can accept or decline the offer. If you decline, nothing happens. If you accept, Icedove tries to change your settings so that it is your default. That's it. Generally, your defaults are set by your desktop environment, so where you've set that depends upon what desktop environment you're using. If you aren't using a desktop environment, you don't have any defaults, except as set with update-alternatives. I don't think Icedove can change that setting, because that setting can only be changed by root or via sudo. I suspect, if you are running Icedove without using a desktop environment, that the check box will have no effect at all. But I could be wrong about that. The only reason it might matter to you is so you can control what happens when you click on a mailto: link, say in a browser, or what you want to happen when you try to send an email. For example, if you use Gnome-Do, you can just activate it (Super+Spacebar, by default) and start typing the name of the person you want to email, assuming that person is in your address book. Gnome-Do will then launch your default email client, with a compose window addressed to your intended recipient, so you can compose the message. Obviously, it would be convenient in this scenario if your default email client is actually the email client you want to use. :-) Other than that, it doesn't really matter. Michael M. -- "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." --Thomas Jefferson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Are there any major issues with Debian testing?
On Sat, 2009-06-13 at 13:03 -0500, ZephyrQ wrote: > Just picked up a BBuy cheapo that I will lather/rinse/repeat and put Deb > on...just wondering if testing has any major issues that I should be > aware of before I make the jump (my main system runs stable). What might be a major issue for you might not be a major issue for me, or visa-versa. I'm not having any major issues with Squeeze (yet), but that doesn't mean something you think of as critical to Your Debian Experience isn't hopelessly borked in Squeeze. In short, it's all relative. :-) -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Evolution on Squeeze has Send/Receive button disabled
On Sat, 2009-06-13 at 12:44 +0300, Angelin Lalev wrote: > I'm growing old and impatient. Years ago I'd wait a several days in > which I'd dissect the problem. It appears that I have somehow > activated "offline" mode. That's why evolution would not let me push > "Send/Receive" button. (Debian Squeeze 64-bit) I had a weird problem with Network Manager whereby it somehow didn't recognize that I was connected. The effect of that problem, for me, was that Epiphany and Liferea (though, curiously, not Evolution) were always starting in offline mode, which got old very quickly. I found out that Epiphany can be made to bypass network manager by unchecking the "managed network" key in the GConf configuration editor (/apps/epiphany/general/managed_network), but then I realized I don't actually need Network Manager at all, since I'm only using a basic DHCP/ADSL setup and no wireless connection. So I removed it. Problems solved, even though I don't know why Network Manager was acting up in the first place. A little searching did reveal that lots of people have the same problem with Network Manager (as well as other problems), especially amongst Ubuntu users. I never had any issue with it in Lenny or prior, so I just left it alone. But, actually, I never have really needed it. Anyway, the point is, perhaps Evolution can be configured to bypass Network Manager like Epiphany can be. -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Enabling MySpace in Iceweasel, et al.
On Fri, 2009-06-12 at 08:26 +0100, AG wrote: > > In light of this, which is the best candidate to use: the non-free > mozilla flash plugin or another? > I don't know whether you're on Lenny or Squeeze or Sid, or whether your running a 64-bit or 32-bit Debian system, so this may not pertain. But ... if you're running 64-bit Squeeze or Sid, you probably will want the 'flashplugin-nonfree' package from the non-free Debian repositories, rather than the 'flashplayer-mozilla' package from the Debian-Multimedia repository. The 'flashplugin-nonfree' package installs the new 64-bit version of flash Adobe has been working on (not sure if it is officially released yet, but it works a treat here). The 'flashplayer-mozilla' package installs the 32-bit version of flash and a whole mess of 32-bit libraries. While that worked for me, it would frequently conk-out and require me to shut-down & restart my browser to get it working again (once in a while, it even crashed Iceweasel, but not very often). 64-bit flash hasn't given me any problems at all. Plus, for now I have no need for the 32-bit libraries and would prefer to avoid them if there's a good alternative. Now, for flash, there is. -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Midori dependencies problem with sid
On Thu, 2009-05-28 at 08:35 -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: > On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 09:02:59AM -0500, "Boyd Stephen Smith Jr." > was heard to say: > > Isn't that supposed to change in the future (but perhaps not before > > Squeeze) > > so that we can have versioned dependencies on virtual packages? > > Yes. It's been supposed to change in the future for at least ten > years. :-) Ah then ... like "fusion is the energy of the future and always will be." -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Installing xmonad?
On Mon, 2009-05-25 at 12:05 +0530, Foss User wrote: > I have a simple Debian installation with no desktop environment or > xserver. I want to try xmonad. Will this be enough to install xmonad? > > aptitude update > aptitude install xserver-xorg xmonad You may want to install 'xorg' rather than 'xserver-xorg.' Xorg will pull in xserver-xorg, and some other things you might be expecting. OTOH, if you know what you're doing, xserver-xorg will be fine. -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: hanging up for the previous P2P user
On Mon, 2009-05-25 at 09:50 +0800, jida...@jidanni.org wrote: > Tony Baldwin writes: > > > I'm just guessing here, but I honestly thought killing the client > > should stop the incoming connections from seeking the ip, so I'm a > > little confused, and curious about the matter, now that you've brought > > it up. > > I've used transsmission(1). When one wants to stop torrenting, > transsmission spends several seconds saying proper goodbyes to the > tracker or whatever, then exits. > > What I assume is happening here is when I connect to my ISP, the > previous user of that IP address has not said these proper goodbyes, > hence 'the liquor store has been converted to a church but not all the > previous customer know that so they keep on knocking on the door'. I was under the impression -- perhaps incorrect -- that it takes time for information about which nodes are still available on the network at any given time to spread across the network. I wouldn't necessarily presume that the previous user hasn't said his "proper goodbyes," just that the fact that he has signed off hasn't registered everywhere yet. Likewise, when you shut down transmission, what it does is send your transfer totals to the tracker (which is really only relevant if you're using a private tracker, or some other tracker that needs to know your ratios for some reason) and disconnects. But your availability on the network has already spread to other clients connected to the same trackers you're connected to, and in turn from them to still more clients that will connect to those trackers. The clients don't broadcast information about who has signed on or off -- they only attempt to establish a connection when they're needing connections. So someone coming on to the network, say, 15 minutes after you've left might still try to connect to you because his client is getting information from another client that doesn't know yet that you've left (because it has not attempted to establish a connection with your client in the time since you left). In a reasonably short period of time, every client that knew about you will figure out that you are no longer available, and will stop passing on your information. It's kind of a daisy chain of information, where everybody's information is not exactly up-to-the-minute, but it's current enough for the network to function effectively. If everybody on the network knew, instantly, when any given person had signed on or off, then it wouldn't really be a decentralized network. -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: intro
On Sat, 2009-05-23 at 11:22 -0400, Tony Baldwin wrote: > > I madea nice debian wallpaper for my desktop already: > http://tonytraductor.livejournal.com/123789.html Very nice wallpaper! I was going to suggest you upload to Debianart.org, but I see you already did. :-) Enjoy Debian. -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: X11 issue
On Sat, 2009-05-23 at 01:27 +0200, Francesco Pietra wrote: > Hi: > Following the lines of successful setup of 3D nvidia driver with lenny > amd64, i met failure with lenny i386 on a old K7S5A Elite mainboard > with NV11DDR (GeForce2 MX200 rev b2). I also lost OpenGL, which I used > for several applications. > > What i did: > > # apt-get install nvidia-kernel-common module-assistant > > # m-a -i -t prepare > > # m-a clean,a-i -i -t -f nvidia-kernel-source > > # depmod -a > > # apt-get install nvidia-glx nvidia-glx-dev mesa-utils > > # dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg > > (no X on reboot) > > # dpkg-reconfigure -phogh xserver-xorg > > (X yes, bot no nvidia driver.) > > Then I edited /etc/X11/xorg.conf, adding ' Driver "nvidia" ' 'to the > ' Section "Device" ', which worked with amd64 but not here > > (no more X) > > to regin X, I could either command > > # dexconf > > which removed the line ' Driver "nvidia" ' , or replace with ' Driver "nv" ' > but in either case no more OpenGl, although libmotif3 is installed. > > When trying to launch the scientific viewer Chimera, the error: > > File "CHIMERA/share/chimera/tkgui.py", line 2525, in initializeGUI > File "/usr/local/chimera/lib/python2.5/site-packages/PIL/__init__.py", > line 309, in checkConfig > > File "/usr/local/chimera/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Togl.py", line > 27, in __init__ > Tkinter.Widget.__init__(self, master, "togl", cnf, kw) > File "/usr/local/chimera/lib/python2.5/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line > 1930, in __init__ > (widgetName, self._w) + extra + self._options(cnf)) > _tkinter.TclError: X server has no OpenGL GLX extension > Couldn't configure togl widget > > > An inquiry about nvidia reports: > dpkg -l '*nvidia*' > Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold > | Status=Not/Inst/Cfg-files/Unpacked/Failed-cfg/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend > |/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: > uppercase=bad) > ||/ Name VersionDescription > +++-==-==- > ii nvidia-glx 173.14.09-5NVIDIA binary Xorg driver > ii nvidia-glx-dev 173.14.09-5NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development files > un nvidia-glx-src (no description available) > un nvidia-kernel- (no description available) > ii nvidia-kernel- 173.14.09-5+2. NVIDIA binary kernel module for Linux 2.6.26 > ii nvidia-kernel- 20080825+1 NVIDIA binary kernel module common files > ii nvidia-kernel- 173.14.09-5NVIDIA binary kernel module source > un nvidia-kernel- (no description available) > un nvidia-setting (no description available) Having just gone through this exercise myself, I can't see anything wrong with what you did, nor offer any reasons why it might not be working. Might it have something to do with the mainboard, which you said is old? My only suggestion would be to try using the pre-built module rather that going the module-assistant route. AFAIK, there's no reason one should work and the other shouldn't, but in the absence of better ideas it is worth a shot. -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: KDE is now broken (Fwd: Heads-up: KDE4 hitting testing tonight (UTC) )
On Fri, 2009-05-22 at 17:32 +0100, AG wrote: > H.S. wrote: > > AG wrote: > > > > > Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote: > > > > > > > In <20090521183512.gb7...@cat.rubenette.is-a-geek.com>, lee wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > Yes, I removed them and now KDE is broken. I even tried to get just > > > > > konqueror back to use as a web browser, but that doesn't work without > > > > > the mysql-server :( > > > > > > > > > > > > > > That's simply not true. I've been running 4.2 since it was in > > > > experimental and I don't have mysql-anything installed there. > > > > Konqueror works fine as does kmail. Calendar and address book are not > > > > installed because they both need akonadi-server. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Actually, I was quite surprised to find that mysql was installed and the > > > daemon started on every boot up with the recent KDE upgrade. Trying to > > > remove mysql wants to remove the entire KDE collection, which is not > > > what I want either. I am keeping the mysql because I am not skilled > > > enough to surgically remove mysql without hosing my system, so the > > > lesser of the two evils, I guess. > > > > > > > > > > If you are not using the follow, you need to remove them to not need > > mysql I suppose: > > akonadi-server > > kaddressbook > > kaddressbook-plugins > > karm > > kdepim-kfile-plugins > > kdepim-kio-plugins > > kitchensync > > korn > > ksync > > libkdepim1a > > > > In addition, you may have installed a meta-package that pulls in a whole > > bunch of packages automatically. Removing that meta package should not > > be a problem in most circumstances. To be safe, you may use the "-s" > > flag with aptitude to see what will happen with the removal without > > actually making it happen. > > > > Regards. > > > > > > > > > Thanks H.S. Good advice and can dispense with those suggested > components of KDE without any regret. > > Couple of quickies: > > (1) How would I track down the guilty metapackage? > (2) I use apt-get generally and you're suggesting aptitude -s. Are > there any likely hiccups mixing package management systems? > > Cheers > AG > Personally, when making major changes like this, I find it easier to use aptitude's ncurses interface than just using the command-line. When I did a similar exercise for GNOME, first thing I did was mark "gnome-desktop-environment" for removal, then went through the list of packages that action would remove and manually marked those I wanted to keep. It really doesn't take that long because once you mark a few key components, most of what you want will be pulled in. The list of what will be removed dwindles pretty quickly, and that makes it easier to look at each one that will go and make sure you want it to go. And, of course, if you make a mistake and get rid of something you decide you want, you can always reinstall it. -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Meaning of "score" when looking for package solutions
On Fri, 2009-05-22 at 14:30 +0200, Thierry Chatelet wrote: > On 22 May 2009 13:33:50 Jason Filippou wrote: > > > Daniel Burrows the maintainer of aptitude is a member of this > list. > > > Perhaps he might find some time to respond. I did look into the > same > > > question a while back. I believe what it comes down to is the > lower the > > > score of the solution the better. Although I could be wrong about > that. > > > I took just a minute to see if I could remember where exactly I > read > > > about it. I'm fairly sure it was the aptitude user's manual > written by > > > Daniel. > > > > http://algebraicthunk.net/~dburrows/projects/aptitude/doc/en/index.html > >ttp://algebraicthunk.net/% > 7Edburrows/projects/aptitude/doc/en/index.html> > > > > > > Hope this helps. And if you do find the answer, please come back > and let > > > us all know. > > > > > > > > > - -- > > > Daryl Styrk > > > Naples, FL USA > > > > Thanks for the information. I thought that the exact sequence of my > > commands might give some insight on the subject, until I get the > time to > > fully research that link. I wanted to install the ordinary compiz > config > > settings manager (and I was ashamed to admit it before), so: > > > > Jason > > > > > Jason, it is Friday so let's go > Your question was not answered by anyone, yet it is a ligitimate one. > Lenny, squeeze or sid, aptitude gives you the same score number which > many of us, and I guess for sure people answering, have no idea what > it means. So, wait for for a good answer for your question, it will > help many people on the list > Thierry > You can see at least some of the values that lead to aptitude's scores here: http://algebraicthunk.net/~dburrows/projects/aptitude/doc/en/ch02s04s05.html#configProblemResolver-BreakHoldScore -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: install proprietary nvidia driver without xorg.conf?
On Sun, 2009-05-17 at 19:19 -0600, Matthew Moore wrote: > On Sunday May 17 2009 3:56:23 pm Michael M. Moore wrote: > > It says for Lenny you have to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf to load "glx" > > module and remove "dri" or "GLCore" modules, under the > "Module" section; > > and that you need to change the driver (from "nv" to "nvidia") > under the > > "Device" section. > > With the current xorg, you do not need a xorg.conf file. If you do > have a xorg.conf file, it takes the settings from there and then does > whatever else needs to be done by using HAL. For example, to just > use the proprietary driver and not change anything else that X does > via HAL, the xorg.conf should _only_ contain > > Section "Device" > Identifier "NVIDIA_Device" > Driver "nvidia" > EndSection > > This is the setup that I am running, and everything is working fine. > Running the nvidia xconfig utility produces a _complete_ xorg.conf > file, which I wanted to avoid using. Thanks, Matthew. It worked. When I restarted xorg after installing the nvidia packages, it was still using the 'nv' driver. So I added the lines above to my /etc/xorg.conf and restarted x again ... and, viola, nvidia driver in use. I didn't want to have to generate a complete xorg.conf either. -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Hardware diagnostics
On Tue, 2009-05-19 at 23:37 -0400, Scott Gifford wrote: > > Can anybody recommend a good hardware diagnostic or "burn-in" program? > I have used memtest86 and will try that, but ideally I'd like to > stress test more of the system than just the memory. Something that > can run on Debian Etch while the machine is live is ideal, or > something that can be run from a boot CD. Free is preferred (of > course), but any suggestions are welcome. I haven't used it myself, but some folks in my local LUG have recommended Breakin: http://www.advancedclustering.com/software/breakin.html It runs from a CD or USB key and is mostly open-source (except for one library provided by Intel and one provided by AMD). They say they've built it from source on Red Hat/CentOS 5, Debian Lenny, and Ubuntu Hardy. They also provide a script if you want to build it yourself. > Also, if anybody has a suggestion of what might fix an Etch system > that's freezing up periodically with nothing in the logs, those > suggestions are welcome too. :-) What's the CPU and chipset? I've experienced freezes like that (nothing in the logs, no kernel panic -- just ... stops working), but the problem seems to be specific to my CPU and chipset. -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
install proprietary nvidia driver without xorg.conf?
I thought I'd try the proprietary nvidia driver (currently using 'nv'), so I've been reading through the how-to on the wiki here: http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers I'm a little concerned, though, that it might be out-of-date (for one, because it keeps talking about Etch), especially given the changes in xorg. Specifically, step 3: http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers#ConfigureXtousethenvidiadriver It says for Lenny you have to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf to load "glx" module and remove "dri" or "GLCore" modules, under the "Module" section; and that you need to change the driver (from "nv" to "nvidia") under the "Device" section. My xorg.conf has no module section and the "Device" section is only: Section "Device" Identifier "Configured Video Device" EndSection I thought HAL had taken over some of the functions formerly handled in xorg.conf, but there's no mention of that on the wiki doc. So what exactly is the procedure for installing the proprietary driver now? -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: What is the preferred way to install packages from testing/unstable in stable?
On Sun, 2009-05-17 at 21:50 +0200, Aniruddha wrote:
> On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 4:38 PM, JoeHill wrote:
> > Aniruddha wrote:
> >
> >> I would like to install the latest version swfdec-mozilla (because it
> >> offers autoplay). I intent to track stable as closely as possible. As
> >> far I can tell there are four possibilities to achieve this:
> >>
> >> 1) Temporary enable testing/unstable repositories and install the program
> >> 2) Download *.deb from packages.debian org
> >> 3) Use apt-pinning
> >> 4) Compile from source, this requires option 1 to be enabled.
> >
> > I use apt-pinning and it works really well. I followed the Debian
> > apt-pinning
> > howto and now run a mix of Testing and Unstable.
> >
> > http://wiki.debian.org/AptPinning
> >
> > --
>
> Thanks for the tip. Are there any downsides to be expected from this
> method? e.g. accidentally pulling in dependencies for lots of packages
> turning my 'stable' into 'testing'. Is this a better option then
> temporary enabling testing/unstable repositories or downloading the
> debs from the debian.packages.org? And if so why? I'm really curious
> to find the best way to run stable while installing an occasional
> testing/unstable package. :)
There are always downsides. :-)
You won't "accidentally" pull lots of packages from testing unless you
aren't paying attention. That's important: pay attention. That said,
as long as you do pay attention and don't go blindly installing testing
or unstable packages, you should be fine.
I use a pretty conservative pinning, more conservative than what is
given on the wiki. Mine is taken from Martin Krafft's book "The Debian
System," recently recommended on this list:
mcu...@drifter:~$ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf
APT::Default-Release "stable";
APT::Cache-Limit 33554432;
mcu...@drifter:~$ cat /etc/apt/preferences
Package: *
Pin: release a=stable
Pin-Priority: 900
Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: 90
Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 80
With some packages, attempting to install them from testing or unstable
causes no issues whatsoever. For example, I recently installed zim from
testing (zim-0.28-1), rather than stable (zim-0.25.1), because the newer
version has several improvements. zim-0.28-1 only depends on packages
that are already in stable, so it didn't pull in any dependencies from
testing and didn't require any other upgrades. OTOH, look at what would
happen if I tried to upgrade transmission from stable to testing:
mcu...@drifter:~$ sudo aptitude install -s -t testing transmission
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Reading task descriptions... Done
The following packages are BROKEN:
gtk2-engines-pixbuf libc6-i386 locales
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libgssapi-krb5-2{a} libk5crypto3{a} libkrb5-3{a} libkrb5support0{a}
The following packages will be upgraded:
libc6 libdbus-glib-1-2 libgcrypt11 libglib2.0-0 libgnutls26
libgpg-error0 libgtk2.0-0 libnotify1 libpcre3 libtasn1-3
libxrandr2 transmission transmission-cli transmission-common
transmission-gtk
The following packages are RECOMMENDED but will NOT be installed:
libglib2.0-data
15 packages upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 547 not
upgraded.
Need to get 11.3MB of archives. After unpacking 3309kB will be used.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libc6-i386: Depends: libc6 (= 2.7-18) but 2.9-4 is to be installed.
locales: Depends: glibc-2.7-1 which is a virtual package.
gtk2-engines-pixbuf: Depends: libgtk2.0-0 (= 2.12.12-1~lenny1) but
2.16.1-2 is to be installed.
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:
Upgrade the following packages:
gtk2-engines-pixbuf [2.12.12-1~lenny1 (stable, now) -> 2.16.1-2
(testing, unstable)]
libc6-i386 [2.7-18 (stable, now) -> 2.9-4 (testing)]
locales [2.7-18 (stable, now) -> 2.9-4 (testing)]
Score is 200
Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?]
You can see that would be more disruptive. The good thing is aptitude
will tell you what it wants to do to satisfy your request, and you can
fiddle with it or reconsider whether your request is worth the potential
for trouble.
I suggest using the -s (--simulate) option anytime you are thinking
about installing a package from testing or unstable, just to give
yourself that much more forewarning about what might happen. If you do
end up taking the plunge with some packages that are really important to
you and wind up with substantial chunks of testing mixed in with your
stable system, then you probably also would want to be very careful
everytime you 'safe-upgrade,' maybe using the -s option there too.
Personally, I am being pretty conservative about the whole thing and
only installing a few packages here and there where the gain is
noticable and the pain is negligible.
Pinning gives you enough ammunition to shoot yourself in the foot (or
even
Re: DNS lookups in Sid
On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 13:16 +0700, Old Crankbuster wrote: > * Peter Crawford [2009-05-14 10:49:54 -0700]: > > > Does /etc/hosts begin thus? > > > > 127.0.0.1localhost.localdomainlocalhost > > 127.0.1.1mycomputer.invalidmycomputer > > > > If so, try commenting the 2nd line. > > Tried the above, to no avail, so have reverted to original /etc/hosts > thus: > > 127.0.0.1 localhost > 127.0.1.1 mycomputer.mydomain mycomputer > > # The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts > ::1 localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback > fe00::0 ip6-localnet > ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix > ff02::1 ip6-allnodes > ff02::2 ip6-allrouters > ff02::3 ip6-allhosts > > Interestingly, have been able to solve the surfing problem in iceweasel > by setting the network settings in iceweasel: > > Network -> Settings -> No Proxy > > Originally set to 'use system proxy settings' > > So I think this is a big clue. > > Apt still says it cannot resolve any of the repositories, and I don't > have any proxies configured (that I know of). Hmm. Out of curiosity, if you ping the repositories first, then run apt-get update, does it resolve properly and proceed with the update? I had a problem (under Etch, IIRC, though maybe Etch -1) whereby I was getting constant timeouts, both while trying to browse the web and trying to run 'aptitude update'. It was an IPv6 problem and I solved it by disabling IPv6 everywhere. But before I did that, I found that if I pinged the repositories first, then ran the update, the update worked. It was enormously frustrating. To this day, under Debian I still toggle IPv6 lookups off in Iceweasel and Epiphany, to speed things up. Otherwise, my browsers frequently sit for some seconds on "Looking up..." before proceeding to download the page. I only ever had this problem with Debian and Ubuntu, both installed on my PC and my iMac. FreeBSD, Arch Linux, and OS X all work fine with IPv6 enabled, even Gecko browsers (Firefox, Epiphany, and, on my iMac, Camino) under those OS's are snappy without having to toggle off IPv6 lookups. IMO -- my entirely unscientific uninformed opinion, I stress -- there's something funky about Debian's networking stack. -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: BSD handbook - was Re: debiantutorials.org seeks input and new blood
On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 01:41 +0800, Bret Busby wrote: > However, on the web page at > http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#Multibooting , under the heading > "4.8 - Multibooting OpenBSD/i386" > is > "Only one of the four primary MBR partitions can be used for booting > OpenBSD (i.e., extended partitions will not work)." > > Whilst it would be a 64 bit version that would be intended to be > installed, to be able to use the full 4GB of RAM, I am concerned at the > reference to "the four primary MBR partitions". > > Does this mean that only four OS's can be installed, for multiple > booting? My understanding is that different OS's have different requirements. So I don't think it is true to say "only four OS's can be installed" on one disc, but there are some OS's that must be installed on a primary partition (or at least have their boot partitions on a primary partition). Linux OS's can be installed on logical partitions, and at least some versions of MS Windows can also. AFAIK, the BSD's need the boot slice (at least) installed on a primary partition. I'm pretty sure, though, that not all BSD slices need to be on primary partitions. (For one thing, you can spread your installation over two or more hard drives, and I don't remember reading that those additional slices need to be on primary partitions.) Personally, I found it tricky to get my head around the BSD slice concept, not because it's difficult, but just because I was so used to the "usual" notions of primary, extended, and logical partitions. Slices are a whole other layer you have to incorporate into your thinking. You really have to read the docs and get yourself comfortable with how BSD does things. -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Could someone recommend documentation or books about debian?
On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 10:15 -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote: > > Charlie Dorff wrote: > > > > > >> Hi, > >> I am new to debian and wanted to know if someone could recommend some good > >> documentation or books about how to use debian. Thanks. Charlie > >> > I found "The Debian System," by Martin Krafft, a good overview of the > unique aspects of Debian - the book to read AFTER knowing something > about Linux in general. +1 or, in AOL speak, "me too!" Excellent book, even though it is slightly dated I am still learning things from it. -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Unexplained changes in Gnome functionality
On Wed, 2009-05-13 at 19:56 +0100, AG wrote: > > The commented line is one of the suggestions Gav made yesterday, so I > tried it, but realised I didn't like the placement. But otherwise I'd > say that there is a pretty decent consistency between our respective > Conky(ies?) files. You might look at the effect of 'own_window_type' -- I have "normal," you have "override." Since I've only been playing around with conky for a very short time, I haven't looked into what all the options for the various settings mean, or what effect they're supposed to have. Gav, IIRC, mentioned that he had to change 'own_window_type' from "root" to "normal" when he switched from Fluxbox to GNOME. > It may well be a case of systematically commenting out suspect lines > until something works. It may just be a Nautilus issue. I'll post back > later with any discoveries. You might also consider (if you haven't done this already -- apologies if you have) just copying over the sample from /usr/share/doc/conky/examples and starting with that, just to see if the magic combination of configuration options is buried within. If it is, that would at least give you a .conkyrc that doesn't exhibit the behavior you're trying to tease out. > > Who knows, when I go back perhaps the other problem to do with the mouse > and accessing properties of files via > right click > open properties > may also be fixed too. Perhaps Nautilus is volatile at present. Nautilus is moving to volatile? Whoa ... big changes coming in Squeeze! :-) I am figuring on reinstalling Debian to switch from i686 to amd64 and was pondering whether this would be the time to upgrade to Squeeze. But seeing all the problems Squeeze and Sid users are having lately -- at least, or especially, GNOME users -- I think I'll stick with Lenny for the time being. -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Unexplained changes in Gnome functionality
On Mon, 2009-05-11 at 16:21 +0200, Klistvud wrote: > As opposed to KDE, Conky is a full-blown PITA to configure in Gnome. Funny, I just installed conky and it works fine (using GNOME/Metacity on Debian Lenny). I haven't rebooted or logged out of GNOME since I did it, so maybe the problems you describe will surface when I try that. The default .conkyrc was setup like so (and I'm pretty sure I didn't change any of these, except to comment out the "own_window_colour" property): # Create own window instead of using desktop (required in nautilus) own_window yes # If own_window is yes, you may use type normal, desktop or override own_window_type normal # Use pseudo transparency with own_window? own_window_transparent yes # If own_window_transparent is set to no, you can set the background colour here #own_window_colour hotpink # If own_window is yes, these window manager hints may be used own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager # Use double buffering (reduces flicker, may not work for everyone) double_buffer yes The window appears transparent, with no title bar or window decorations. -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: gnome setup question
On Tue, 2009-05-12 at 19:09 -0400, Jude DaShiell wrote: > Does debian flavor of gnome come with sound that can play on the sound > card when gnome starts up? If so, what needs to be done to turn that > capability on? > > > Gnome menu: System -> Preferences -> Sound Sound preferences (2nd tab: Sounds) Play system sounds (checkbox) Log out: Log in: Is that what you mean? I don't use system sounds, but the facility is there. This is on Lenny. -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Lenny. Wrong displaying of symbols.
On Wed, 2009-05-13 at 11:45 +0400, Mark Goldshtein wrote: > On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 10:51 PM, Kelly Clowers > wrote: > > Open up synaptic or aptitude or whatever interactive package manager you > > prefer and look for fonts for whatever language(s) you need. Most fonts > > start > > with xfonts- or ttf- (ttf is probably what you need most). > > I thought we live in Unicode world. In mswin environment same videos > or same web pages with these characters look right. > Maybe something wrong with default fonts in Debian Lenny? Windows, OS X, and some Linux distros (Ubuntu, for example) install a whole mess of fonts by default. The advantage: you will probably have every font you will need for displaying text in most languages. The disadvantage: you will probably have a lot of fonts sitting around on your system that you don't need, don't want, and/or don't care about, to display text you can't understand. Debian, depending on how you install it, doesn't auto-install fonts for a slew of different languages. The advantage: you have less cruft on your system. The disadvantage: you will be missing glyphs you need to properly display some languages. The solution: install the fonts you need to properly display the languages you care about. The particular issue you're talking about isn't an Unicode issue. -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: crashes without trace--module problem?
Ross Boylan wrote: I have a new system running Lenny, amd64 architecture and 8 core Xeon chips. It has been crashing regularly, often after less than 24 hours uptime. Could it be the powernow-k8 kernel module? That appears to have been the source of system-freezing problem I was having. I disabled the powernow-k8 kernel module almost three weeks ago and have been running without incident since. Before that, my system was locking up (totally unresponsive to keyboard or mouse, monitor image stuck) as often at two or three times a day at worst, once every few days at best. Very different hardware, though, so it might not be your issue. From what I could gather, it seems to affect some amd64 systems and it seems not to matter whether you're running a 32- or 64-bit kernel. Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Location of icons
mond wrote: On Mar 6, 3:30 pm, Frank wrote: On Fri, 2009-03-06 at 21:57 +0100, Thierry Chatelet wrote: On 6 March 2009 21:52:23 Frank McCormick wrote: Looking at my transparent panel in Debian Squeeze I noticed there are a few icons which are not really suitable...that is they are surrounded by white backgrounds. I'd like to modify them.especially the one representing "show the desktop". Can anyone tell me where in the directory structure they might be found? Thanks Gnome, KDE, others? Oh, yes, sorry. Gnome. I think it is related to icon theme and gtk+ theme too. I know some pixmap theme has this kind of problem due to some unclear description in gtk file. I believe most icons are somewhere in /usr/share/. I don't have GNOME installed anymore, so I can't check. They might be under /usr/share/gnome/icons/ or /usr/share/icons/gnome. Some packages have their own icon directories, like /usr/share/iceweasel/icons or /usr/share/metacity/icons. Do 'locate -b icons' and you should find most of your icon directories. Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
anyone have /etc/gmrunrc ?
I recently installed gmrun, which is working fine. However, there are certain changes users can make to its behavior via ~/.gmrunrc or /etc/gmrunrc. From /usr/share/doc/gmrun/README.Debian: Please see /etc/gmrunrc for an example configuration file. Place it in ~/.gmrunrc if you wish to customize gmrun. Unfortunately, I don't have /etc/gmrunrc. I have a symlink at /usr/share/gmrun/gmrunrc that points to the non-existent /etc/gmrunrc. There's already a bug report filed against this package noting the problem. Does anyone (maybe someone who installed gmrun before the bug appeared) have an /etc/gmrunrc they'd be willing to send me? Thanks, Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: How to change console font?
Robert Latest wrote: Hello Kelly, As far as I know, any mode other than 80x25 is FB. There are two way to display a penguin, one is the kernel option for a boot logo (off by default in debian), the other is a boot splash program, such as splashy or usplash. Yeah, but I don't want the penguin anyway. What I want is a usable console. All I do to enable higher resolution fb modes is put "vga=791" in the kernel boot options and make sure console-setup is installed. I am pretty stumped as to why this isn't working for you. So am I. I found that I didn't have the console-setup installed, I installed it, and was happy to see after a reboot that midway through the boot process I got a different video mode. However, after a power cycle, everything was back at 80x25 again. Where are you putting the "vga=791" option? Do you use GRUB? This is what I have in /boot/grub/menu.lst and it works for me everytime: ### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST ## lines between the AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST markers will be modified ## by the debian update-grub script except for the default options below ## DO NOT UNCOMMENT THEM, Just edit them to your needs [...] ## additional options to use with the default boot option, but not with ## the alternatives ## e.g. defoptions=vga=791 resume=/dev/hda5 # defoptions=vga=791 Obviously, by setting the option here, the mode won't be utilized if I boot into a kernel other than the default. But that's fine for me. Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Midnight commander
Frank McCormick wrote: What's the best terminal for running Midnight Commander...it seems all the ones I try ( rxvt, aterm) can't handle the acsii drawing characters so the display is wierd. Midnight Commander works great with URxvt, the unicode version of rxvt. The Debian package I have installed is 'rxvt-unicode.' There are two other packages that may work as well, 'rxvt-unicode-light' and 'rxvt-unicode-ml' (the latter for multilingual support). This is with Lenny. I saw the same garbled display when I was checking out aterm, but I never tried the non-unicode version of rxvt. Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: screen multidisplay with terminals resized
Kelly Clowers wrote: I disagree. Sure, some people use a tabbed term with awesome, but I use urxvt, and based on the mailing list and IRC I feel like most users use xterm or (u)rxvt. FYI, in case you were not aware of this, urxvt can also be a tabbed terminal. There's a perl extension that enables the use of tabs. The capability can be enabled in ~/.Xresources or wherever you put your URxvt configuration. You may not care, of course, but information is usually a good thing. Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: What package would I file this Install bug against ?
mhep...@gmail wrote: So what package would I file the bug report against ? I mean it wasn't technically a failure of grub, since grub never got installed, but why didn't grub get installed during setup ? Would this get submitted to the d-i team ? That would be my guess. The install process is supposed to complete successfully, and it didn't. Even if it didn't because, every time, something went wonky with the grub installation, that would still seem to be a problem with the install process, not with grub. But I'm no expert. Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: [OT] Gmail & my replies to this list
Andrew McGlashan wrote: IMAP folders works strangely too... the [Gmail] folder is weird in itself. To delete messages properly from the "Inbox", I need to drag them to the "Trash" folder and then delete them [and do a purge]. You do? Doesn't work that way for me. I have my Thunderbird (er ... Icedove) trash set to [Gmail]/Trash, so whenever I delete an email, it goes right to the trash, like it's supposed to. GMail, by default, keeps emails in the trash for 30 days from the date they were marked for deletion, then they go away forever. I'm not sure if that behavior can be modified; I've never tried since it suits me. I know, at least, you can permanently delete the trashed mail on the web interface anytime you want. I suppose it would also work from Thunderbird, but I haven't tried that. Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Debian Lenny Based SimplyMEPIS 8.0 is Released
Daryl Styrk wrote: Jimmy Johnson wrote: Hi Neil, I'm along time Debian user (7 years) and if there was something wrong with Mepis I would not suggest you trying it, saying that, Mepis has one click tools that Debian don't have, like it will repair grub for you with a click or reinstall a working x-configuration for you with a click, install and save /home with a click, add and remove users with a click, check file-systems with a click, the list goes on... Sure these things can be done without "One Click Linux", but why? One day the "Debian Live CD Project" may create such a live cd but not today. :) I do love Debian, even as frustrating as it may be at times. I would hope one of the projects goals is to make using it easier and easier with each release. I do agree with Jimmy, what is wrong with "One Click Linux"? Being able to prove that your above it? Regardless those in the know would be able to tinker away to their hearts desire, while defaulting to and making available an easier generally user wide system. I'm just guessing here about whether or not this issue applies to these specific tools people are talking about, but one issue that has often prevented quick uptake of some tools/implementations/ideas from Debian derivatives into Debian proper is that Debian proper supports a much wider range of architectures than any Debian derivative I know of. Mepis, for example, just supports x86 hardware. Ubuntu is the same. Ubuntu used to support PPC, but I'm pretty sure they dropped it. Debian supports those plus SPARC, ARM, MIPS, IA-64 (different from x86-64, or amd64), and others I've never heard of let alone ever seen. They don't call it "the universal operating system" for nothing. I think only NetBSD, 'the operating system you can run on your toaster,' supports more architectures, but my impressions may be outdated. Anyway, the advantage for computer users the world over is that Debian is an option available to them when other distros are not. The disadvantage from the perspective of JoeBlow-x86-home-user is that Debian development can be slower and lag behind other distros in some areas because Debian has to port what it incorporates to so many architectures, and that takes time and developers, each of whom have their own particular priorities and special problems unique to their architectures. So I think it's incumbent upon Debian users to decide whether one of these more targeted distros, like Mepis or Ubuntu, might be better options for them, and one of them very well might be. As for me, I've tried many other distros (Debian derivatives and otherwise), and I keep coming back to Debian. Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 8:49 AM, Daniel Burrows wrote: > On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 03:42:36PM +, Aneurin Price > was heard to say: >> On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 2:05 PM, Daniel Burrows wrote: >> > On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 12:28:38PM +, Aneurin Price >> > was heard to say: >> >> To expand upon this, I believe the OP's situation is some behaviour I've >> >> also seen, which seemed odd until I thought about it and couldn't actually >> >> come up with a better way: >> > >> > I'm pretty sure this is different -- I was talking about the >> > situation of "A Depends: B | C". People sometimes think that if both >> > B and C are installed, aptitude should guess which one they don't want >> > and remove it. >> > >> >> Hmm, what happens in the case that exactly one of B or C is marked auto? > > Same thing. I'm pretty sure I know what happened, more or less. I started off by marking gnome-desktop-environment for removal. That in and of itself would have removed, most likely, almost everything I wanted to remove. However, I wanted to keep gdm, so I marked that for installation (that is, gdm was going to be removed, and I told aptitude not to remove it.) That seems to have been enough to cause aptitude to keep a bunch of other things I didn't want to keep, because of the extensive network of depends/recommends. There were packages already (automatically) installed that were recommended by gdm, like gnome-session, even though gdm didn't require them and even though my system would have been fine without them, but because there were already installed, aptitude didn't remove them. And some of those packages had recommends that were not removed, for the same reason. Sort of a cascading effect. What I should have done was let aptitude remove gdm, then reinstalled gdm. That, in the end, is what I did, I just didn't know I should've done that in the first place because aptitude's behavior wasn't what I expected. But it is behavior that makes perfect sense, because as you say, aptitude can't guess which automatically installed packages one doesn't want anymore, when those automatically installed packages are recommended by something one is keeping. The alternative would be to make aptitude more aggressive about removing automatically installed packages that aren't absolutely required by something being held, and that would probably create more severe problems for users. I'd rather have a few unnecessary packages sticking around that aren't doing any harm and that I can always remove when I get around to it, than find I had inadvertently let aptitude wipe out half my system. It's just that, in this case, I actually wanted aptitude to wipe half my system, and I didn't realize I was preventing that by marking a key package as a keeper. Michael M. -- "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." --Thomas Jefferson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 05:34:09PM -0800, Michael M. Moore wrote: But I'm still left with a whole slew of automatically installed packages I don't want anymore, and I can't figure out how to identify why they are still installed. I thought the gconf2 package might be keeping them installed, but when I selected that for removal, several packages I want to keep (for example, quodlibet, which is not marked as automatically installed and does not depend gconf2) were also marked for deletion. I don't understand why that would be. I've always found that the best way to sort out package dependancies is to use the full-screen mode of aptitude. Pick one of the packages you don't want any more, select it, go down to see what depends on it and choose one of the ones that its installed, etc. Or, you can simple mark the package for removal, which will 'break' the other packages, hit 'b' to be taken to the first broken package and see what's going on. That's most likely what I'll do with the remaining packages I don't need. As it is, removing then reinstalling gdm took care of a bunch of them, probably the majority that were left. Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
Andrew Reid wrote: On Saturday 21 February 2009 20:34:09 Michael M. Moore wrote: Maybe there is no "magic package" that is keeping these things installed and I just need to selectively remove them one-by-one, along with the packages that will break but that I don't want anymore. I just thought I might be missing something obvious about the best way to take care of getting rid of a bunch of automatically installed packages relatively quickly. Any advice? I can't answer the "why" question, but I use "apt-get autoremove" and deborphan to prune the installed package list. Deborphan has to be installed first, and if you're very brave, you do: apt-get remove --purge `deborphan` ... repeatedly until it "converges", i.e. runs out of packages to remove. Thanks for the suggestion. I'm trying to stick to one tool (aptitude) and learn how to use it well, rather than switching back and forth between aptitude and apt-get, and instead of bringing other things like deborphan into the mix. But if I ever get really stuck, it's nice to know they are there. Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
Daniel Burrows wrote:
Or, if nautilus is not a
dependency of gdm, then why is it automatically installed because of
gdm? I still feel like I'm missing something.
Because:
gdm Depends: gnome-session
gnome-session Recommends: nautilus
Thanks for the clarifications, and the tip about 'aptitude why -v'.
(That's a lot of packages!) I removed gdm, which in turn removed the
majority of the automatically installed packages I wanted removed,
including gnome-session and nautilus. Then I reinstalled gdm, which
itself has only a few dependencies, gnome-session and nautilus not among
them. That's the result I wanted, it was unclear to me whether doing it
that way was the "right way" to achieve that result ("right" as in most
efficient, least likely to have unintended consequences).
The thing is I was planning on keeping gdm, though I guess I could
switch to xdm, or do without a display manager. But gdm, according to
aptitude, shouldn't require nautilus. It shouldn't even require
gnome-session, just one of gnome-session | x-session-manager |
x-window-manager | x-terminal-emulator. I have Openbox and xterm
installed, so I should be covered there, right?
Then you need to remove gnome-session and replace it with something
else.
That gets to the heart of my confusion about how this works, because I
didn't *need* a replacement for gnome-session -- I already had packages
installed that satisfied that requirement. But aptitude wouldn't
automatically remove the automatically installed gnome-session unless I
removed gdm. I could have manually removed gnome-session without
breaking anything, but all that would have done was remove gnome-session
-- that action would not have removed nautilus, even though nautilus was
still installed because gnome-session recommended it. Perhaps I'm
mistaken, but it seems like going the route of removing then
reinstalling gdm was the only way to take care of a lot of these
packages that were hanging around in one fell swoop.
Anyway, none of this is a problem. I was just trying to understand what
was going on and learn how to use the tools at hand better. I still
have some odds and ends installed that I probably don't need, but I'll
gradually weed them out.
And, probably in three months or so, I'll decide to give GNOME another
go, and start all over. :-)
Michael M.
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Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
Celejar wrote: On Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:34:09 -0800 "Michael M. Moore" wrote: I thought I had this down by now, but I'm lost. I am in the process of removing much of GNOME, so I removed gnome-desktop-environment, which also removed gnome-core, and a whole bunch of other things. I also removed evolution. But I'm still left with a whole slew of automatically installed packages I don't want anymore, and I can't figure out how to identify why they are still installed. I thought the gconf2 package might be keeping them installed, but when I selected that for removal, several packages I want to keep (for example, quodlibet, which is not marked as automatically installed and does not depend gconf2) were also marked for deletion. I don't understand why that would be. Maybe there is no "magic package" that is keeping these things installed and I just need to selectively remove them one-by-one, along with the packages that will break but that I don't want anymore. I just thought I might be missing something obvious about the best way to take care of getting rid of a bunch of automatically installed packages relatively quickly. Any advice? Try 'aptitude why some-package', and follow it up the chain of packages. If there's indeed one package keeping in a bunch of others, you should encounter it fairly quickly. Thanks. I haven't quite figured out what's going on, but this at least helps me find why I'm confused. Here's an example: mcu...@debdesk:~$ aptitude why nautilus i gdm Dependsgnome-session | x-session-manager | x-window-manager | x-terminal-emulator i A gnome-session Recommends nautilus So, if I'm understanding correctly, aptitude is telling me that nautilus is automatically installed because of gdm and gnome-session. But here is what aptitude shows for nautilus: mcu...@debdesk:~$ aptitude show nautilus Package: nautilus State: installed Automatically installed: yes Version: 2.20.0-7 Priority: optional Section: gnome Maintainer: Josselin Mouette Uncompressed Size: 1507k Depends: libart-2.0-2 (>= 2.3.18), libatk1.0-0 (>= 1.20.0), libbonobo2-0 (>= 2.15.0), libc6 (>= 2.7-1), libcairo2 (>= 1.2.4), libeel2-2.20, libesd0 (>= 0.2.35) | libesd-alsa0 (>= 0.2.35), libexempi3, libexif12, libgail-common (>= 1.10.1), libgail18 (>= 1.10.1), libgconf2-4 (>= 2.13.5), libglade2-0 (>= 1:2.6.1), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.16.0), libgnome-desktop-2 (>= 2.22.0), libgnome2-0 (>= 2.17.3), libgnomecanvas2-0 (>= 2.11.1), libgnomeui-0 (>= 2.17.1), libgnomevfs2-0 (>= 1:2.17.90), libgtk2.0-0 (>= 2.12.0), libnautilus-extension1 (>= 2.17.90), liborbit2 (>= 1:2.14.10), libpango1.0-0 (>= 1.20.3), librsvg2-2 (>= 2.18.1), libselinux1 (>= 2.0.59), libstartup-notification0 (>= 0.8-1), libtrackerclient0 (>= 0.6.2), libx11-6, libxml2 (>= 2.6.27), nautilus-data (>= 2.20), nautilus-data (< 2.21), shared-mime-info, gnome-control-center (>= 2.6), desktop-file-utils (>= 0.7) Recommends: desktop-base (>= 0.2), eject, nautilus-cd-burner (>= 2.6), librsvg2-common, libgnomevfs2-extra, app-install-data, synaptic Suggests: eog, evince | pdf-viewer, totem | mp3-decoder, tracker, fam Conflicts: libnautilus2-2, libnautilus2-dev Replaces: libnautilus2-2 Provides: nautilus-extensions-1.0 Description: file manager and graphical shell for GNOME No gdm, no gnome-session | x-session-manager | x-window-manager | x-terminal-emulator. Here's gdm: mcu...@debdesk:~$ aptitude show gdm Package: gdm State: installed Automatically installed: no Version: 2.20.7-4 Priority: optional Section: gnome Maintainer: Debian GNOME Maintainers Uncompressed Size: 15.4M Depends: libart-2.0-2 (>= 2.3.18), libatk1.0-0 (>= 1.20.0), libattr1 (>= 2.4.41-1), libc6 (>= 2.7-1), libcairo2 (>= 1.2.4), libdbus-1-3 (>= 1.0.2), libdbus-glib-1-2 (>= 0.71), libdmx1, libfontconfig1 (>= 2.4.0), libfreetype6 (>= 2.3.5), libglade2-0 (>= 1:2.6.1), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.16.0), libgnomecanvas2-0 (>= 2.11.1), libgtk2.0-0 (>= 2.12.0), libpam0g (>= 0.99.7.1), libpango1.0-0 (>= 1.20.3), librsvg2-2 (>= 2.18.1), libselinux1 (>= 2.0.59), libwrap0 (>= 7.6-4~), libx11-6, libxau6, libxdmcp6, libxext6, libxi6, libxinerama1, libxml2 (>= 2.6.27), zlib1g (>= 1:1.1.4), debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0, adduser, libpam-modules (>= 0.72-1), libpam-runtime (>= 0.76-13.1), gnome-session | x-session-manager | x-window-manager | x-terminal-emulator, gksu (>= 1.0.7), lsb-base (>= 3.2-14), librsvg2-common Recommends: whiptail | dialog, zenity, gdm-themes, xserver-xephyr | xnest, xserver-xorg Suggests: locales, pm-utils, libpam-gnome-keyring Conflicts: fast-user-
how to find why packages are automatically installed?
I thought I had this down by now, but I'm lost. I am in the process of removing much of GNOME, so I removed gnome-desktop-environment, which also removed gnome-core, and a whole bunch of other things. I also removed evolution. But I'm still left with a whole slew of automatically installed packages I don't want anymore, and I can't figure out how to identify why they are still installed. I thought the gconf2 package might be keeping them installed, but when I selected that for removal, several packages I want to keep (for example, quodlibet, which is not marked as automatically installed and does not depend gconf2) were also marked for deletion. I don't understand why that would be. Maybe there is no "magic package" that is keeping these things installed and I just need to selectively remove them one-by-one, along with the packages that will break but that I don't want anymore. I just thought I might be missing something obvious about the best way to take care of getting rid of a bunch of automatically installed packages relatively quickly. Any advice? Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: console DVD writer?
Ron Johnson wrote: On 02/21/2009 03:19 PM, Joerg Schilling wrote: Volkan YAZICI wrote: On Sat, 21 Feb 2009, asdf asdf writes: What is the "best" DVD writing solution "without GUI"? :D wodim. wodim does not support to write DVDs. Then how am I able to burn DVDs, even though I do not have cdrecord installed? I thought the package dvd+rw-tools was required to write DVDs. No? Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: testing or unstable?
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 1:58 PM, John Hasler wrote: > Michael M. Moore writes: >> Many people have no problem with doing updates daily or nearly that >> frequently. I don't like to be updating quite so often, and I don't like >> it taking very long when I do it. Sid always has a lot of updates >> ... always. > > Why would the mere fact that some DD has uploaded a new version of a > package to Sid compel you to install it? > -- Because it's there, of course. :-) It's not that I felt compelled to install every new package as it showed up, but I did feel a bit more pressure to perform more frequent updates than I wanted to. With Lenny (when it was testing), most of the time I updated once a week, except when I wanted to install something new, then I'd go ahead and update everything while I was installing the new package because there usually wasn't that much that needed updating. The weekly updates didn't usually take very long, some weeks more than others. (OO.org, of course, always being a large download.) With Sid, waiting a week between updates meant loads of new versions, and even updating mid-week when I was installing something new meant a lot of updates. I have a moderate DSL connection, by no means top-tier and not as speedy as cable. I get impatient, but yes, I do also feel compelled to install updates when I see them there and I'm already installing something else anyway. Sometimes you have to, in order to install what you want. Anyway, I'm just more comfortable with testing -- not saying it's better and everyone who doesn't want stable should use testing rather than unstable, just saying it's better for me. Generally, it gets newish stuff at a good clip, with the occasional package lagging behind here or there; it has security support; it's not as fast a moving target as unstable. Michael M. -- "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." --Thomas Jefferson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: testing or unstable?
On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 5:02 AM, Rodolfo Medina wrote: > I've been using Debian for more than three years now, but always using the > official DVDs of the most current stable version: first Sarge, and then Etch. > > Recently, many times I've been needing to use a testing/unstable Debian > version > for many applications that were too old in stable Debian, so now I'm thinking > of switching to a testing/unstable Debian version for good. > > Now, my question is: which one is more advisable, testing or unstable? > > Excuse the basicness of my question, thanks for any reply > Rodolfo You have a lot of good advice to go on. I just wanted to add one more thing to think about, which may or may not be an issue for you. For a time I ran Sid (unstable) and I found the pace of updates somewhat exhausting. The someone more relaxed pace of testing updates (currently, testing is Squeeze) was more to my liking. Of course, stable (currently, Lenny) only gets security updates from here on, so the pace is very relaxed there. :-) Many people have no problem with doing updates daily or nearly that frequently. I don't like to be updating quite so often, and I don't like it taking very long when I do it. Sid always has a lot of updates ... always. You have to decide for you yourself what you're most comfortable with. I have been using Lenny for about a year, ever since I dropped down from Sid, and never had any problems. But I will be sticking with Lenny until Squeeze seems to be settling into a groove. I don't think right now is the ideal time for most of us who aren't pretty advanced users to be messing with the testing or unstable branches. Michael M. -- "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." --Thomas Jefferson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: test for package dependencies without installing
On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 4:18 PM, Paul Yeatman wrote: > Hi, I'm wondering if there is a command I can run on a debian package that > would test for whether all dependencies of that package are already installed > on the system without actually installing the package if so. This mailing > list thread http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2006/09/msg00292.html is on > the exact topic and many suggestions are thrown out but none of which I can > prove true. You can simply look at the package detail in aptitude's ncurses interface and see at a glance which dependencies you already have installed (also, which recommends and suggests). Michael M. -- "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." --Thomas Jefferson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Web page development tools in Lenny?
On Sat, 2009-01-31 at 21:26 -0500, A. F. Cano wrote: > > Ahh... I think iceape was called mozilla-iceape in Etch, and so I looked > for "mozilla" in aptitude and of course didn't find anything. I see it's > there as just "iceape", so I have a fallback position. Has anyone tried > vimperator with the iceape composer? Not an answer to your question, but just in case you werent' aware: aptitude search mozilla will return all packages that have "mozilla" in their names; aptitude search ~dmozilla will return all packages that have "mozilla" in their descriptions. If you'd done the latter command, your results would have included "iceape" (and "iceape-calendar" and a whole bunch of other stuff). I'm constantly forgetting Debian's absurdly unique names for Firefox, SeaMonkey, etc., so I do searches on description pretty frequently. -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: boot-time script
On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 3:35 AM, Sebastian Günther wrote: > * Umarzuki Mochlis (umarz...@gmail.com) [27.01.09 04:27]: >> I tried making boot-time script for deluge like below >> >> #!/bin/bash >> /usr/bin/deluge >> >> Then I ran update-rc.d to the deluge script hat I saved in /etc/init.d >> # update-rc.d deluge defaults >> >> But when I rebooted my PC, it didn't start. Please tell me where I got it >> wrong? >> > > What exactly are you trying to achieve? > If want to autostart deluge when you login, this is the wrong way to do > it. > > If you are searching for system service, which runs even if you are not > logged in: stick with bittorent, since it does not require X to run... > rtorrent is another command-line client: http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/ I think it has more features than the bittorrent client. Michael M. -- "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." --Thomas Jefferson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Is it exist a mailing-list for console only users ?
On 11/23/07, SPKills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > All is in the question... > As i don't (almost) ever used the X server then i'm not really able to > help others and not really interested in their problems, i would like to > know if it exists a list of this kind. I didn't realize you could use gmail from the command line. -- ...Michael M. Moore [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run." -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: what's your favourite FLOSS?
On Tue, 2007-11-06 at 13:15 +0200, Tshepang Lekhonkhobe wrote: > Here's a template where you can fill in your favourites; feel free to > add missing categories: > audio player: * quodlibet > cd-ripper: * abcde > desktop OR window manager: * GNOME or Openbox > disc burner: * Nautilus > e-mail client: * Evolution > file manager: * mc > ftp client: * gftp > image viewer: * gThumb > misc utilities: * rgrep > news: * Pan > p2p: * rtorrent > package manager: * Aptitude > pdf-reader: * Evince > spreadsheet: * OO.org Calc > tag editor: * quodlibet/ex-falso > terminal emulator: * urxvt > text editor: * vim > video player: * mplayer > web browser: * Epiphany > word-processor: * OO.org Writer Favorite gui app not mentioned above: Tomboy -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Which browser is better, firefox?
On Sun, 2007-11-04 at 10:59 +1100, hce wrote: > Hi, > > Is the firefox the best browser? I can say definitively that Dillo is the best browser. There, that's settled. Next question? (p.s. I can also settle the vim vs. emacs question once and for all, but I charge for that. I take Amex, Visa, MC and Discover.) -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Apt-Get or Aptitude
On Thu, 2007-11-01 at 19:02 -0400, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: > On Thu, Nov 01, 2007 at 08:33:00PM -, BartlebyScrivener wrote: > > > So exercising an abundance of caution I usually stick with synaptic. > > Maybe on my next install I'll look into Aptitude. > > What do you do when X dies or needs changing? I don't understand the question. Aptitude doesn't need X. It's an ncurses/command-line app. Usually, I run it (curses interface) from a VT when I'm logged out of X. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: going from XFCE to Gnome?
On Mon, 2007-10-29 at 10:50 -0700, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: > On Sat, Oct 27, 2007 at 03:24:28AM -0700, Michael M. wrote: > > On Sat, 2007-10-20 at 21:12 +0200, Florian Kulzer wrote: > > > As far as the fam vs. gamin problem is concerned, > > > aptitude figured out the correct course of action all by itself. It > > > proposed to ignore the recommendation of fam by these two packages and > > > to leave fam uninstalled, thus keeping gamin intact on your system, for > > > both XFCE and Gnome to use. All you had to do was to accept the proposed > > > solution. > > > > > > Running aptitude --without-recommends sidestepped the problem, but now > > > you might be missing some Gnome features which are implemented by other > > > recommended packages. > > > > > > I found a few problems on my system (Lenny/testing) after I replaced fam > > with gamin: > > > > 1) Menus in OO.org took many seconds to open -- at least 15, perhaps > > 20. This was extremely irritating and made OO.org a pain to use. > > do you perhaps have the openoffice.org-gnome package installed? that > integrates with GnomeVFS and other stuff. You may want to try adding > or removing that package to see if that makes a difference. I did have it installed, then tried removing it. It didn't make any difference. Still, a good suggestion! > > 2) The GNOME trash applet no longer updated to show when there were > > items in the trash. I could no longer empty the trash from the panel. > > Not such a big deal, but I typically have most windows on most desktops > > maximized so I don't usually make use of any icons on the desktop. So I > > found it convenient to empty the trash from the panel. > > > > 3) Nautilus was considerably slower to respond to any attempts to open > > a new window. The problem wasn't as severe as the problem with OO.org > > > > Restoring fam and removing gamin put things back to normal. > > just out of curiosity, what other packages got pulled in/out as a > result of this? Exaile was the only thing I had installed that required gamin, so I (temporarily) removed that when I removed gamin. Removing fam didn't cause anything I can remember to be removed, but dpkg showed warnings about a couple of packages requiring fam. > > But the > > reason I installed gamin in the first place is that exaile requires it, > > so in the end I decided to remove a lot of GNOME and am using Openbox > > instead. OO.org works fine with gamin, as long as you aren't using it > > under GNOME. If you use it under GNOME, it appears you need fam, or > > will face some major irritation. I still use the GNOME panel, mainly > > because I love Tomboy and find a few other features of that panel > > appealing, but I no longer use the Trash applet nor the trash bin at > > all. I'm no longer using Nautilus, though it is still installed. I can > > get by pretty well with mc and the command line. > > > > So much for Linux "just working." When they tell you Linux is "about > > choice," they often forget to mention that you'll find your choices > > restricted by packages and apps that do not play as well together as > > they are supposed to. GNOME is a really nice DE, but I am sick and > > tired of my choices being restricted by using it. > > > > I understand you are frustrated. FWIW, I found things "just work" much > better if you get out of the main DE's. They force lots of stuff on > you in order to set up their environments, but as a result the > possibilities of conflicting are much higher... Yep, that's the problem with the DE's. You either accept the GNOME/KDE ways of doing things or you probably run into some incompatibilities somewhere down the line when you try to use other things. It's been awhile since I last tried KDE, but GNOME at least has improved considerably over the past several versions in working better with software not developed with GNOME in mind. It's still not all the way there, at least not the way Debian packages it. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: problems replacing fam by gamin (was: going from XFCE to Gnome?)
On Sun, 2007-10-28 at 12:54 +0100, Florian Kulzer wrote: > On Sat, Oct 27, 2007 at 03:24:28 -0700, Michael M. wrote: > > [...] > > > I found a few problems on my system (Lenny/testing) after I replaced fam > > with gamin: > > > > 1) Menus in OO.org took many seconds to open -- at least 15, perhaps > > 20. This was extremely irritating and made OO.org a pain to use. > > > > 2) The GNOME trash applet no longer updated to show when there were > > items in the trash. I could no longer empty the trash from the panel. > > Not such a big deal, but I typically have most windows on most desktops > > maximized so I don't usually make use of any icons on the desktop. So I > > found it convenient to empty the trash from the panel. > > > > 3) Nautilus was considerably slower to respond to any attempts to open > > a new window. The problem wasn't as severe as the problem with OO.org > > These seem to be pretty serious problems, worthy of being reported as > bugs. I cannot comment any further on these issues since I don't use > Gnome. I wondered about that, but then I didn't know (heh, I almost typed "gnow") whether they were GNOME bugs, OO.org bugs, or gamin bugs. I never know what to do when it's the combination of packages that present a problem, rather than a specific package. > > Restoring fam and removing gamin put things back to normal. But the > > reason I installed gamin in the first place is that exaile requires it, > > so in the end I decided to remove a lot of GNOME and am using Openbox > > instead. OO.org works fine with gamin, as long as you aren't using it > > under GNOME. If you use it under GNOME, it appears you need fam, or > > will face some major irritation. I still use the GNOME panel, mainly > > because I love Tomboy and find a few other features of that panel > > appealing, but I no longer use the Trash applet nor the trash bin at > > all. I'm no longer using Nautilus, though it is still installed. > > I think it is unlikely that such obvious problems would go unnoticed by > the (Debian-)Gnome community. Could you be missing some recommended > packages? You could run > > aptitude search '!~i(~dgnome|~dgtk|~dopenoffice)~RBrecommends:~i' > > and check if anything suspicious turns up, for example something related > to gnome-vfs. (This search command should find all not installed > packages which have "gnome", "gtk" or "openoffice" in their description > and which would satisfy a currently unfulfilled recommendation of some > installed package.) I regularly audit the recommendations using aptitude. The only problem I could find was aptitude complaining about fam being uninstalled, which of course I already knew. In any case I've changed things all around again and have moved up to unstable. I used to think that one day I would find the *perfect* distro, configuration, and set of apps for me, but now I've realized that the whole thing is perpetually a work-in-progress. :-) -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: going from XFCE to Gnome?
On Sat, 2007-10-20 at 21:12 +0200, Florian Kulzer wrote: > As far as the fam vs. gamin problem is concerned, > aptitude figured out the correct course of action all by itself. It > proposed to ignore the recommendation of fam by these two packages and > to leave fam uninstalled, thus keeping gamin intact on your system, for > both XFCE and Gnome to use. All you had to do was to accept the proposed > solution. > > Running aptitude --without-recommends sidestepped the problem, but now > you might be missing some Gnome features which are implemented by other > recommended packages. I found a few problems on my system (Lenny/testing) after I replaced fam with gamin: 1) Menus in OO.org took many seconds to open -- at least 15, perhaps 20. This was extremely irritating and made OO.org a pain to use. 2) The GNOME trash applet no longer updated to show when there were items in the trash. I could no longer empty the trash from the panel. Not such a big deal, but I typically have most windows on most desktops maximized so I don't usually make use of any icons on the desktop. So I found it convenient to empty the trash from the panel. 3) Nautilus was considerably slower to respond to any attempts to open a new window. The problem wasn't as severe as the problem with OO.org Restoring fam and removing gamin put things back to normal. But the reason I installed gamin in the first place is that exaile requires it, so in the end I decided to remove a lot of GNOME and am using Openbox instead. OO.org works fine with gamin, as long as you aren't using it under GNOME. If you use it under GNOME, it appears you need fam, or will face some major irritation. I still use the GNOME panel, mainly because I love Tomboy and find a few other features of that panel appealing, but I no longer use the Trash applet nor the trash bin at all. I'm no longer using Nautilus, though it is still installed. I can get by pretty well with mc and the command line. So much for Linux "just working." When they tell you Linux is "about choice," they often forget to mention that you'll find your choices restricted by packages and apps that do not play as well together as they are supposed to. GNOME is a really nice DE, but I am sick and tired of my choices being restricted by using it. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Upgrading from Etch to Lenny
On Thu, 2007-09-20 at 22:59 -0500, Mumia W.. wrote: > Non sequitor. We're not comparing Debian with Windows in this thread. > We're comparing Debian with Debian (i.e. Debian/Testing to > Debian/Stable). "Testing" consists of software that is still being > tested; the distribution is going to have a lot of bugs, and it's going > to be a lot more problematic for new Debian users than "stable." Debian Etch (stable) contains GNOME 2.14, which was released in the spring of 2006. Debian Lenny (testing) contains GNOME 2.18, which was release in the spring of 2007. GNOME has just release 2.20 this month. By no stretch of the imagination is GNOME 2.18 "software that is still being tested." At this point, neither is GNOME 2.20, and that hasn't even hit Debian Sid (unstable) yet. > Your work is helping to create the next great version of the Debian O/S. > That's because you're willing to use "testing" and report on its bugs. Or not. Many of us use testing because, on the one hand, we can't stand to run a hopelessly outdated OS on our desktops (stable) and, on the other, we don't like the occasional breakage and pace of change in unstable. Testing represents a great way to use not-too-outdated software, as compared to stable (if not to Fedora, or Ubuntu), without having to deal with the more frequent glitches that crop up in unstable. > "Testing" is not a released version of Debian; "testing" exists to get > bugs fixed. You only use testing if you want to test software. Speak for yourself. No one is "testing" Evolution 2.10, or GNOME 2.18, or much of the other software in testing. Much of it isn't even the most recently released version of any given piece of software. What is being tested is how well everything fits together in the Debian system, and most of that gets fixed in Sid. Debian has the most conservative release policy of any Linux distro I know of. That suits some types of users very well, particularly those who need reliability that's as close to 100% as you can get, those who's servers truly are mission-critical and can't afford a few minor glitches that might temporarily mess something up. It does not suit many garden-variety desktop users who systems are less than a few years old and who don't want to be stuck in early 2006 for the next year while Debian drags itself kicking and screaming through yet another protracted and endlessly delayed release cycle. -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
etc/X11/xorg.conf format change?
I recently reinstalled Debian Lenny and have just realized that my new /etc/X11/xorg.conf has some substantial differences from the version I had previously. (I was also using Lenny previously, upgraded from Etch rather than installed from scratch.) Gone are the "Files" and "Modules" sections. Yet, at least so far, everything seems to be working fine. The log indicates that numerous modules are loaded and contains a line: (==) ModulePath set to "/usr/lib/xorg/modules" I don't have any logs from my previous install to compare, but I did save the old xorg.conf. I guess, as long as there are no problems going forward, it's nothing to worry about. I just thought I would've seen some discussion about a change like that -- big chunks of the file going away -- since historically configuring XFree86/Xorg has often given users headaches and there has always been a lot of discussion about the conf file. When did this happen? And funnily enough, this is the first time any Linux install has configured the correct optimal resolution & refresh rate for this machine & monitor from the get-go. Previously I have had always to edit the conf file to add it in. -- Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: linux on ipod nano?
On Wed, 2007-08-29 at 15:08 +0100, Richard Lyons wrote: > > In fact, I mis-reported in the original post. I am using gtkpod, not > gpod. Gtkpod has two strange charactistics, but seems to be ususally > workable. The oddities are > > - if you create an extra copy of the ipod by mistake (or when trying > things out), there seems to be no way to delete it again, other than > identifying the relevant lines in the ~/.gtkpod/prefs file. I have > not tried this method incase I mess it up. > > - it has two copies of the same window offering "Artist" "Album" > "Genre" etc tabs, and I have no idea why one is not enough. > > Until I do damage the filesystem, I've decided to accept the occasional > error messages and continue simply unplugging it when it wont eject. > Then I'll delete the ripped files that failed to copy from the computer > on the assumption they are faulty in some way. I am going to leave > experimentation with ipodlinux as at > http://www.linux.com/articles/53221 > for another day, when I have an ipod spare... > > Thanks for your comments. I'm using gtkpod also; meanwhile, anxiously awaiting Floola to make its way to Debian. I don't use gtkpod to mount / unmount my nano, though. I launch gtkpod after the nano is plugged in and mounted, and exit it with the nano still mounted. Have you considered using another tool for automounting your device, or just mounting and unmounting manually with mount / umount? -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: how can I find out if ttf native hinting is enabled?
On Sat, 2007-09-01 at 08:59 +0100, Liam O'Toole wrote: > On Fri, 31 Aug 2007 20:50:00 -0400 > gavron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Does anyone know how I can figure out if native hinting for truetype > > fonts is enabled? > > > > I've been running etch for a couple months now and I understand that > > this is the way to go with quality fonts such as Microsoft Verdana. > > > > That's the screen font I use wherever I can and it does not render > > quite as well on debian etch as on a Windows machine. > > > > Is there a way I can find out? > > Try this: > > debconf-get-selections | grep fontconfig On my system, debconf-get-selections returns "command not found." How does one get a list of all packages that debconf configures? The man page for debconf-show says, "The most common use is "debconf-show packagename", which displays all items in the debconf database owned by a given package, and their current values. Questions that have been asked already are prefixed with an ’*’. This can be useful as a debugging aid, and especially handy in bug reports involving a package’s use of debconf." But it doesn't say how to figure out which packages use debconf. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: How to disable ipv6 tunneling
On Mon, 2007-08-06 at 21:15 +0200, Marko Randjelovic wrote: > Andrew Sackville-West wrote: > > On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 04:57:30PM +0200, Marko Randjelovic wrote: > >> I run Etch and at every boot, as message on the screen states, it > >> activates some "ipv6 over ipv4 tunneling driver" and it lasts several > >> seconds. I don't need ipv6. How can it be disabled? > > > > I think you can blacklist the ipv6 module. > > > > A > > I blacklisted the modules, now it shows a message about not loading it, > but waites for 10 seconds anyway. Does someone have a better idea? I made the following change to /etc/modprobe.d/aliases alias net-pf-10 off # alias net-pf-10 ipv6 (added the first line; commented out the second line) I don't know if that's the "right" way to do it. It worked for me. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: searching for graphical torrent client
On Fri, 2007-07-27 at 10:39 -0500, Owen Heisler wrote: > On Fri, Jul 27, 2007 at 08:25:16AM -0700, Alan Ianson wrote: > > On Fri July 27 2007 03:07, Giorgos D. Pallas wrote: > > > I tried google but can't seem to find something that both looks decent > > > *and* is available for debian (testing) as a binary. For example I tried > > > qtorrent, but it is so minimal that I don't like it... > > > > When I need a torrent app I have always used the good old bittorrent on the > > terminal. I guess it's not pretty (it's not bad though), but it works > > wonderfully. > > rtorrent works well, with a ncurses interface and session management. > > It's faster than all the rest in my experience. Seconded. What kept me from using rtorrent (and kept me stuck on azureus) for a while was the lack of documentation accessible to non-geeks, which is so often a problem with Linux apps in general. But after it had been around awhile and started catching on, mercifully various and sundry bloggers and the like posted more accessible how-to's that explained various features in plain English. I've been using it exclusively for about 3 months and have found it fast, stable, and minimal in terms of the resources it uses but not in terms of the features it offers. Between aptitude, mc, rtorrent, cplay, and one or two others, I'm developing a real fondness for ncurses apps. In general, I find it easier to use them for managing the tasks at hand than the bare command line, and nearly as capable as both CL and GUI alternatives with far less bloat than the latter. But that's only when developers or helpers take the time to explain their usage, with examples, in jargon-free language intended for ordinary users. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: setting default screen resolution for Gnome desktop
On Fri, 2007-07-06 at 13:10 -0700, yong lee wrote: > Hi, Is there a way to set the default screen > resolution (to 1280x768. perhaps) for a debian Gnome > desktop ? I have 4 machines, but I have only 1 > monitor. Currently, I am using a Belkin monitor > switching device to switch from one machine to another > whenever I need to see or work on a machine. > > The problem is if there is not a monitor/screen > attaching to it when the machine is booting up, the > screen resolution will be set to 640x480 by default. > So when I switch to this machine, the screen and image > look very bad. I wonder whether I can set the default > so I would not have this problem. > Did you try menu item "Desktop" => "Preferences" => "Screen Resolution"? -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: lenny comfortable yet?
On Fri, 2007-07-06 at 22:19 -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: > > My daily must-haves really are mild: base system, a brower (lynx or > links2), an editor, mutt, exim, fetchmail, and I like mc, and aptitude > (or apt-get or even dselect or plain dpkg in a pinch), along with > ppp/chat. It wouldn't bother me if anything else stopped working for a > while, but if I loose the ability to dial out, loose email, then I'm in > difficulty. > > I know that, just like mutual funds, past performance does not guarantee > future performance, but what has the experience been like for > non-developers over the past couple of months? Do people think that > Lenny is ready for a desktop run by a knowledgeable user? I can't speak to whether Lenny amd64 will solve your flash-related issues, but Lenny itself is perfectly comfortable. If anything, personally I've been getting a bit frustrated again with the pace of change in Lenny. My purely unscientific, based-on-nothing-more-that-feeling opinion is that Lenny so far is lagging compared to the pace of change in Etch when Etch was the current testing. I've been debating switching to Sid, but I hesitate to take that road since it's difficult (if not impossible; at least, unsupported) to backtrack. Or maybe switching to Ubuntu or trying another distro or FreeBSD. There was a burst of activity over the past few weeks in Lenny upgrades, none of which caused me any problems whatsoever. But it still seems behind where I thought it would be by now. OTOH, if you're worried about instability in Lenny, so far x86 has been rock-solid. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: I want to install lenny from scratch
On Wed, 2007-06-06 at 12:32 -0400, Andrew J. Barr wrote: > -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- > Hash: SHA1 > > On Thu, 07 Jun 2007 03:10:15 +0530 > arijit <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > I am sorry for the email-problem. I just hit 'reply' in evolution and > > sent it. Now I've become more cautious. > > Use 'Reply to all'. In Evolution, it would be better to use "Reply to List" (Ctrl+L) than "Reply to All" (Shift+Ctrl+R). The former will send the reply to the debian-user list. The latter will send the reply to all addresses listed in the "from," "to," "cc," and "Reply-to" fields of the message to which you're replying. *Most* people here prefer not to receive replies off-list, because they get them on the list, and the rule of thumb is to ask for a reply off-list if you're not subscribed. In this case, if I'd done "Reply to all," this message would have been sent to the list, to you separately, and to arijit separately. As it is, using Ctrl+L, this message gets sent only to debian-user. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: rampant offtopic and offensive posts to debian-user
On Sat, 2007-05-19 at 08:43 +0200, M. Fioretti wrote: > On Fri, May 18, 2007 16:41:49 PM -0400, Joey Hess ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > > Frans, Cord, Martin, Pascal, > > > > I'm writing the listmasters because reading debian-user has become > > nearly unbearable for me (one of the sadly few DDs who bothers to > > read our user lists) due to volume and offensiveness/repetativeness > > of offtopic posts there. > > Thanks Joey for publicly addressing this issue! I had decided to write > an almost identical complain, so you saved me some time. > > I joined this list around Christmas and, since then, I have found it a > real pain in the neck for the very reason you have just signalled to > the listmasters. Ron, Celejar, Judd, Roberto, Michael, Michelle and > surely a few others I have forgotten (yes, it's necessary to make > names at this point) have flooded this list with *hundreds* of totally > unnecessary messages, regardless of what I think of their contents. Excuse me. This month I have made 8 posts, this being the 9th. Of those, four were off-topic and marked as such. One was marked off-topic, but wasn't actually off-topic (it concerned a package found in Debian, clive). Last month I made all of 14 posts, one of which was off-topic and was marked as such, and it was just a joke. In March I made a whopping (for me) 29 posts, 3 of which were off-topic (in the "dumb query" and "A Republican!!!" threads). I'm not sure I've broken 100 posts in total this year, let alone 100 off-topic posts, and certainly not "hundreds." Which brings me to the only point I wanted to make, because frankly I could care less what you think. Some people's (present company included) hysteria over the supposed off-topic abusers is, IMO, astonishingly overheated. I find it hard to believe that the majority of people technically proficient enough to install Debian in a Windows world are utterly helpless to filter out unwanted mailing list email. I'm much more inclined to believe that those who complain are probably control freaks, which seems more in keeping with the tone and tenor of even the on-topic discussions I've followed among Debian developers and other Linux developers and advocates -- discussions Joey Hess has certainly participated in. Compared to what I've seen following similar lists and discussions in the *BSD world, I'm beginning to realize the farther away one gets from the DFSG and the GPL, the more relaxed and easygoing people are more likely to be (Theo de Raadt notwithstanding). -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] The record industry, RIAA and US law
On Thu, 2007-05-17 at 20:21 -0400, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
> On Thu, May 17, 2007 at 04:25:26PM -0700, Michael M. wrote:
> >
> > Given the current status of gay marriage in the U.S., we plainly do not
> > have an unambiguous right to the pursuit of happiness -- not when the
> > President, playing to the typically bigoted and intolerant Christian
> > base of the Republican Party, has proposed a Constitutional amendment
> > restricting marriage to opposite-sex partners, in the same way that the
> > majority of states once restricted marriage to members of the same race,
> > also because of Christian prejudices. ("Almighty God created the races
> > white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate
> > continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there
> > would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the
> > races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." -- from the
> > ruling upholding Virginia's anti-miscegenation law, which the Supreme
> > Court overturned.)
> >
> A few points:
>
> - There is no *scripture* that can be used in support of preventing
>interracial marriage. The words of the judge that you quoted are
>certainly *not* the words of God.
That doesn't seem to matter to the Christian right, who regularly used
religious justifications about what, in their view, God intended the
natural order of things to be to justify segregation, and slavery before
that. Most of the most vehement opponents of gay marriage on the
Christian right were also opponents of interracial marriage and
proponents of segregation -- from Strom Thurmond through the recently
deceased Jerry Falwell. This is hardly a coincidence; it represents a
way of looking at the world, an ideology that is inherently monotheist,
whether grounded in scripture or not. What there is or isn't scriptural
justification for doesn't matter to these people; they can bend and
twist their religion to suit any preconceived prejudice they please.
Given that Jesus Christ, supposedly this great moral teacher, never
explicitly condemned the practice of slavery, and the Bible is rife with
it, this is pretty easy.
> - There *is* scripture that clearly illustrates that God hates
>homosexual relationships:
>
> "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of
> them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to
> death; their blood shall be upon them." Leviticus 20:13
I don't believe Leviticus is the law of the land, else we would also be
putting to death children who curse their parents and stoning people who
wear cotton/poly blend fabrics. I find it odd that Christians who use
Leviticus to condemn homosexuality seem to have no problems shaving,
eating pork or doing other things prohibited in Leviticus. So you're
saying you agree that homosexuals should be put to death, but a man who
sleeps with a slave woman acquired for another man should be punished
less severely because she was a slave, as it says in Leviticus? How
many of your own (female, of course) slaves have you slept with?
What? No slaves? How unchristian of you!
Actually, that's the least of what I find odd about Christianity and
many of it's adherents. But it doesn't really matter, because I think
people ought to be free to believe whatever nonsense they want -- the
Earth is 6,000 years old; people can rise from the dead; werewolves;
vampires; a great magic man in the sky (or wherever heaven is supposed
to be) who knows all, sees all, and is responsible for everything; the
Flying Spaghetti Monster. It's no skin off my nose. I'm sick of having
those beliefs shoved down my throat, however, and sick of those beliefs
being used to deny others their own personal pursuit of happiness.
When I was a child, I remember my mother (who was, at the time,
something of a racist) tsk-tsking at the sight of an interracial couple
walking by with their quite young children as we waited for my dad in a
parking lot. She made some comment to the effect of "I don't care what
they do with each other, but it's so unfair to the children." Even at
age 8 or so, I knew there was some flaw in her "logic," though I really
couldn't define what it was. But I remember looking at the kids, one of
whom was an infant and the other maybe 2 or 3, and thinking, "they look
okay to me."
The other day, I saw this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Gm9mq3ORpX4
Same arguments; same bullshit; same Christian ugliness and lies. Though
at least my mom was never *that* inarticulate.
Then there's this:
http://www.dailypressandargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070510/NEWS01/705100316/1002
Which is a good illustration of how this Christian big
Re: [OT] The record industry, RIAA and US law
On Wed, 2007-05-16 at 22:04 -0400, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
> >
> I'm sorry, but that is ridiculous. Everyone has a right (at least in
> the US) to the "pursuit of happiness."
Not really. The phrase comes from the Declaration of Independence, not
the Constitution. There's no explicit right to "the pursuit of
happiness" in the Bill of Rights.
Interestingly, though, the phrase was used by Justice Earl Warren in
Loving v. Virginia, which overturned anti-miscegenation laws. Warren
wrote "The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital
personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free
men."
Given the current status of gay marriage in the U.S., we plainly do not
have an unambiguous right to the pursuit of happiness -- not when the
President, playing to the typically bigoted and intolerant Christian
base of the Republican Party, has proposed a Constitutional amendment
restricting marriage to opposite-sex partners, in the same way that the
majority of states once restricted marriage to members of the same race,
also because of Christian prejudices. ("Almighty God created the races
white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate
continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there
would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the
races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." -- from the
ruling upholding Virginia's anti-miscegenation law, which the Supreme
Court overturned.)
--
Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions
of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to
dream." --S. Jackson
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Good, evil and religion [WAS] Re: A way to compile 3rd party modules into deb system?
On Sun, 2007-05-13 at 14:53 -0400, Celejar wrote: > > My point is simply that the Bible clearly views sacrifice as > religiously valuable, and whatever the value may be, there's no a > priori reason to assume it's less legitimate than nourishment. The only > possible basis to attack the bible as condoning immorality is if one > denies the basic premise that sacrifice is valuable. The concept of "sacrifice" is significantly broader that the act of animal sacrifice. It's certainly possible to find value (religious or otherwise) in the notion of personal sacrifice while nonetheless condemning the practice of animal sacrifice. The religious types can sort out what's moral or immoral; personally, I think animal sacrifice is distasteful, disrespectful, and just one of many unappealing aspects of the Christian bible. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] The record industry, RIAA and US law
On Tue, 2007-05-08 at 14:18 -0400, Curt Howland wrote: > It doesn't take being an anarchist to know that there isn't any > difference between "Republican" and "Democrat". It's all just > carefully crafted false ideologies designed to "divide and conquer". Well the party in power certainly makes a difference on some issues. There have been some significant changes here in my state since the Dems took control of the legislature. Just don't expect party change to work miracles, in and of itself. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] SWF to MP4 converter
On Mon, 2007-05-07 at 23:17 -0400, Carl Fink wrote: > If you want to download the raw FLV video that's being streamed through a > SWF file on a web page, you can use the youtube-dl package (included in > Etch) or the VideoDownload addon for Firefox. I use clive (available in Debian) to download flash videos and ffmpeg to convert them to AVI's. I'm always getting emails and so forth with links to YouTube videos, which I generally do want to watch, but not at that particular moment. So I paste the URL into a text file, then every so often run clive -y < yturls.txt which downloads all the FLV files from YouTube in one go (the '-y' option just tells clive to go ahead and download without asking for confirmation). Any that I like and want to save I convert with ffmpeg -i goodvideo.flv goodvideo.avi. You can tell clive to download and convert in one go, but since I really only convert maybe 10% (if that), I haven't bothered. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: (solved)Re: why these files can't be displayed properly by gv
On Mon, 2007-05-07 at 08:09 +0200, Joe Hart wrote: > Figuring out how to do things is one of the best ways to learn. Not > reading a dry book. > > Although, books and other documentation are quite valuable nothing beats > "getting your hands dirty". > > > > > --- Greg Folkert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> > >> My guess, the landscape format is killing it. Plus the file is 14 years > >> old, back then postscript was slightly different than it is now. > > You're probably right. > And yet, I can easily read a "dry book" printed & bound more than 100 years ago, but a file that's a mere 14 years old creates problems for various apps that are supposed to render it. Makes you wonder how much information will ultimately be lost because of this blind faith in computers. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: what's with epiphany?
On Thu, 2007-05-03 at 07:02 -0700, Alan Ianson wrote: > On Wed, 2007-02-05 at 22:50 -0400, Mark Grieveson wrote: > > Man, I'm getting a bit annoyed with Epiphany. Very frequently, when I > > visit http://www.thestar.com, and click a news link, it crashes. What > > is up with that? After the initial crash, it's usually fine, but the > > constant first crash when I'm browsing is a little annoying. > > I use Etch. > > I have never looked at the site before but have been surfing it for a few > minutes without any problems. I'm running etch-amd64 here so I don't have > a flash player, as Kushal says it may have to do with flash. No problems here, and I do have flash installed. I'm running the lenny amd64 kernel with a 32-bit userland. Maybe the OP could point to a specific link that crashes Epiphany. I've tried several and not had any crashes. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: webhttrack. start please
On Sun, 2007-04-29 at 14:28 +0100, somethin2cool wrote: > Michael M. wrote: > > On Sat, 2007-04-28 at 18:13 +0100, somethin2cool wrote: > >> Amy Templeton wrote: > >>> somethin2cool wrote: > >>>> Well, If I type "lynx" into I expect > >>>> it to launch lynx. ie, launch a terminal with command > >>>> lynx. > >>> xterm -e lynx > >>> > >>> Amy > >>> > >>> > >> Well, can't it just know that Lynx is installed and run it in a > >> terminal? It can't run anywhere else, so one would think this would be > >> the default action. And it should be possible > > > > > > Can't you just alias the command as above, so that when you execute > > 'lynx' it launches 'xterm -e lynx'? > > > > Do you have more than one terminal app installed? How would it know > > which terminal you want to use for any particular command? Or which > > profile you want to use, if you have more than one? Some things I like > > to run in a borderless, (pseudo-)transparent gnome-termimal; some things > > in an xterm; some things in a regular gnome-terminal (default profile; > > i.e., what starts when I just click on the terminal icon on my panel or > > select "Terminal" from the Gnome Applications menu). You have to set up > > your preferences. > > > > > that is a good idea. however, i have another thread about making a > symlink, but all the responses involve real 1980s command solutions. > which, while fully capable of doing, i refuse to. when my friends see > this, they will laugh at a system which requires you to open a terminal > just to make a link (and rightly so). It takes longer to open a terminal > than it takes to right click In GNOME, open Nautilus (the Gnome file manager), right-click on the particular item you want to link to, and select "Make Link" from the menu. Done. GUI methods of creating symlinks are typically handled by file managers, so it's really a matter of finding a file manager that does what you want. The desktop enviroments (GNOME, KDE, XFCE) come with their own file managers. Window managers typically don't, though some recommend particular file managers and/or other apps, especially for users who like the basics of the window manager in question but are missing some particular capablilities. If whatever you're using doesn't provide some functions you think would be desirable, your best bets are either (1) find something that does (either as a replacement for what you're using, or a supplement to it), or (2) request that those functions be incorporated by the developers. Another option would be to code it yourself and submit the patch to the project. Even if your patch isn't accepted, you can always use it yourself. > I'm sure the responses will be "this is linux, if you don't like it use > windows' and 'its free what do you expect' and 'linux is all about > terminal' ...these excuses just don't get old. It's 2007 Well, my response is more along the lines of "diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks." :-) Anyway, I happened to stop in at Powell's Technical Books Annex today and I noticed a book called "Point and Click Linux," so I don't think you're alone in preferring not to use a terminal. OTOH, you started off mentioning lynx. Lynx runs in a terminal. You would have a pretty hard time using lynx without a terminal! -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: webhttrack. start please
On Sat, 2007-04-28 at 18:13 +0100, somethin2cool wrote: > Amy Templeton wrote: > > somethin2cool wrote: > >> Well, If I type "lynx" into I expect > >> it to launch lynx. ie, launch a terminal with command > >> lynx. > > > > xterm -e lynx > > > > Amy > > > > > > Well, can't it just know that Lynx is installed and run it in a > terminal? It can't run anywhere else, so one would think this would be > the default action. And it should be possible Can't you just alias the command as above, so that when you execute 'lynx' it launches 'xterm -e lynx'? Do you have more than one terminal app installed? How would it know which terminal you want to use for any particular command? Or which profile you want to use, if you have more than one? Some things I like to run in a borderless, (pseudo-)transparent gnome-termimal; some things in an xterm; some things in a regular gnome-terminal (default profile; i.e., what starts when I just click on the terminal icon on my panel or select "Terminal" from the Gnome Applications menu). You have to set up your preferences. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Etch 32-bit system w/ AMD64 proc.
On Fri, 2007-04-27 at 12:40 -0700, Bill Thompson wrote: > On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 21:13:23 +0200 > Andreas Janssen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Etch/i386 also comes with an AMD64 kernel package. It should run fine > > with a 32 bit userspace environment. > > I was confused about that. I tried the Etch i386 linux-image-2.6-amd64 > kernel last night, but ran into weird module problems. I wasn't sure > of it was a bug or if I was using a 64-bit kernel on a 32-bit system. > Running the system on linux-image-2.6-486 got rid of the module issues. > > Is the linux-image-2.6-amd64 package truly compiled for a 32-but user > space? > I've been using linux-image-2.6-amd64 for a few months (in Etch, with a 32-bit user environment) and haven't had any problems. I guess we must be using different modules. Originally, Etch installed the -486 image. Some time ago I switched to the -k7 image, then to the -amd64. All have worked without issue. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: edit the subject line of a thread?
On Sat, 2007-04-28 at 08:45 -0700, Paul Johnson wrote: > P Kapat wrote in Article > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> posted to > gmane.linux.debian.user: > > > I googled around a little bit, and did some simple mailing-replying > > actions.. It seems like gmail uses "subject" for threading the > > conversations. Kmail uses something else (i guess, In-Reply-To). Not > > just that, when you change the subject line when replying to a > > thread/conversation using gmail, it "removes" the In-Reply-To header; > > as a consequence any MUA ( i think) will get that messsage wrongly > > threaded. So, to me it seems like a problem with gmail's mailing > > system rather than MUA at the reading end... To prove the point > > (hopefully!), my next mail on this thread (using gmail) will have a > > modified subject line, check if the In-Reply-To header is removed, or > > whether it is threaded in a proper way with whichever MUA you use at > > your end.. > > I wonder if this is something that Google knows is wrong with GMail or not? Well GMail *is* in beta, after all! :-) -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: edit the subject line of a thread?
On Thu, 2007-04-26 at 15:21 -0400, P Kapat wrote: > OK, this is just a small nitpicking, to which even I am guilty of in > the past, but I wanted to know the right mailing etiquettes. The > agenda is: > > When replying to a mail/thread it is best not to modify the Subject > line, like adding "(solved)" or something similar. Because that breaks > the thread, which possibly is unintended and unwanted. In such cases, > it is better to add "SOLVED" (or sometihng to that extent) in the > begining of the mail body. > > Now I have seen this thread breaking in Gmail and Kmail, I am not sure > of other frontends, like those who read the list from a news reader > Knode (using gmane's servers). > I am sure people might agree/disagree but I think it is worthwhile to > argue. Let your opinions flow Editing the subject line does not break the threading in Evolution. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Dates and times in Icedove
On Wed, 2007-04-25 at 19:08 +0200, Joe Hart wrote: > Granted days like 12/04 could be confused for the 12th of April, but > really mean the 4th of December. Still, your system should know the > real day, and really so should you. Therefore, I am not asking for a > fix, rather I am just pointing out the way it is on my system. Here in Oregon, if it's December 4th, it's probably raining. OTOH, if it's April 12th ... ... it's probably raining. I'm not seeing the difference! :-) -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian User List
On Tue, 2007-04-24 at 19:29 -0400, Greg Folkert wrote: > On Tue, 2007-04-24 at 18:06 -0400, Michael Pobega wrote: > > On Tue, Apr 24, 2007 at 05:53:35PM -0400, Greg Folkert wrote: > > > > > > conky? > > > > Yeah, but doesn't Conky embed on the desktop? And as far as I know > > window managers like Ion3 don't have desktops, just split windows. > > It can, but it can also do a "real window" too > > You can install it and look the examples config, it does a nice job of > demonstrating its possibilities. This is that first time I've heard that Conky can use an actual window, rather than just appearing on the desktop. Cool! I'll have to give it a shot. Personally, I've not seen the value of putting useful information (or, for that matter, icons) on the desktop, because most of the time I'm not looking at the desktop. I tend to run most apps full-screen and find it a hassle to minimize everything to check some info on the desktop. And I don't like leaving space for things like gkrellm or gdesklets; doesn't strike me as an effective use of screen real estate. Thanks for pointing that out. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Exim4 EHLO/STARTTLS/AUTH and buggy client
On Sat, 2007-04-21 at 13:11 -0400, Greg Folkert wrote: > To be honest, this is an exact kind of message for the Exim Mailing > list... only *DO NOT* tell them you are using DEBIAN. You will be shot > on sight. Why? What's the issue the Exim folk have with Debian? -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Help! Strange FF/Iceweasel problem
On Sat, 2007-04-14 at 15:44 +0200, Joe Hart wrote: > -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- > Hash: SHA1 > > Kamaraju S Kusumanchi wrote: > > Wayne Topa wrote: > > > >> Think about what you would lose _if_ you delete .mozilla. Bookmarks > >> and passwords come to mind. Ask me how I know that. > > > > I stopped relying on browser's bookmarks. That is because they are not > > available if I shift to another browser, another machine or another os. > > These days, I am using google's toolbar and using their bookmarks > > facilities provided by www.google.com/bookmarks > > > > just my 2 cents > > raju > > > > Very handy tip. I use many different machines and could definitely use > a web service like that. Thanks for the info. Shame on me for not > finding that myself. There are at least a dozen different social bookmarking services out there. Like Kamaraju, I prefer Google's implementation because it's simple and integrates well with my search history. But I also use del.icio.us sometimes, mainly because it has achieved "critical mass" and thus can be an excellent place to find relevant links, even better than searching Google for some topics. If you're a Firefox user, del.icio.us has pretty good extensions too. But I mostly use a simple bookmarklet, because I mostly don't use Firefox/Iceweasel anymore. Have a look around, you might find something you like better than GBookmarks. As for the privacy concerns, I have pretty much put my faith in Google. Google knows all about me. Google is Borg. I have been assimilated. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Youtube on non X86 platforms.
On Tue, 2007-04-10 at 11:54 -0400, Michael Pobega wrote: > -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- > Hash: SHA1 > > On Tue, Apr 10, 2007 at 04:34:46PM +0100, Ananda Samaddar wrote: > > Hello all, > > > > I know cross-posting is frowned upon but I just discovered a useful > > item that you may like to try. > > > > http://blog.mikeasoft.com/2006/11/24/playing-youtube-videos-without-flash/ > > > > The above link is a Greasemonkey script that plays Youtube movies > > through MPlayer. You'll need MPlayer and the MPlayer Mozilla plugin > > as well as Greasemonkey installed to use the script. I'm using the > > unofficial Marilliat MPlayer on Etch AMD64 and it works fine for me! > > > > regards, > > > > Ananda Samaddar > > > > > > Wow, very nice find. Too bad I can't do anything like this on Galeon, > but I guess I could keep Iceweasel around for YouTube. > > Now I can watch YouTube AND keep Adobe's flash player off my system! :D Maybe you could give the bookmarklet version of the script a try? I haven't tried it myself (I use Epiphany, primarily, which has a Greasemonkey extension), but it looks like it should work. See comment #2 at the link Ananda posted. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Question - KDE-Gnome-xfce
On Sat, 2007-04-07 at 16:47 -0500, Randy Patterson wrote: > Thanks for taking to time to post all that information. I have installed > Gnome, just haven't figured out how to get it going yet! After reading your > post one of the things that I think I need to do first is read some good > articles/overviews of the WMs that are out there and how they work. I have a > backlog of reading to do but will do some googling to read up on this. As your Google search will probably indicate, [1] Matt Chapman's site is one of the most popular overviews of desktop environments and window managers around. It's a good place to start. Be warned that a lot of the links are outdated. In some cases, it's because the project is defunct; in others, it's just because the link hasn't been updated. You can search or browse Debian's repository to see how many WMs are available through apt. As far as WMs go, you'll find that many are variations on a theme and fit into broad categories. 1) The *boxes: These include Blackbox, Fluxbox, and Openbox. They all share a similar design philosophy. Blackbox, I believe, was the first. Fluxbox is the most popular. Openbox is my favorite, not least because of its pipe menus. You'll have to read up on that feature as I can't really explain it properly. 2) Tiling WMs: These include ion3, PekWM, PWM and others. They especially excel at managing terminals and can be really cool to use if you find yourself doing lots of work in the shell. That's not to say they can't run graphical apps too, though. I would recommend checking out at least one of these, just for the experience of seeing how they work. They are very different from anything I ever encountered in MS Windows. 3) Minimalist: Even more barebones than the tiling WMs, these include Ratpoison and EvilWM. They are for people who *really* don't like reaching for the mouse! 4) Maximalist/traditional: WMs that provide some familiarity to anyone who's been using computers for a while. They often seem like DEs, but they aren't. They vary pretty widely in their design, so there's a lot to look at. Among the most popular or useful are WindowMaker, IceWM, Enlightenment, AfterStep, and FVWM (which has been discussed quite a bit on this list recently). One thing you might want to keep in mind is standards compliance. Another reason Openbox is my favorite of all the stand-alone WMs is that it aims for (and achieves) 100% [2] ICCCM compliance. WM developers vary in their adherence to [3] xdg specs; some are downright contemptuous of them and they have their reasons for that attitude. Using a WM that is good on standards compliance means you'll be able to use a wide range of apps and tools out there that are designed to work with any standards-compliant DE or WM. See, for example, [4] Devil's Pie. Using a WM that isn't standards-compliant means that many of these types of apps won't work well (or at all) in that environment. Just something else to consider. [1] http://xwinman.org/ [2] http://tronche.com/gui/x/icccm/ [3] http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications [4] http://burtonini.com/blog/computers/devilspie -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Question - KDE-Gnome-xfce
On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 07:29 -0500, Randy Patterson wrote: > On Thursday 05 April 2007 06:22, Michael M. wrote: > > On Wed, 2007-04-04 at 20:19 -0400, Javier Enrique Tiá Marín wrote: > > > Why Gnome is the Default Desktop for Distributions like Ubuntu/Debian, > > > RedHat/CentOS/Fedora and OpenSuse? > > > > Because Gnome is superior, of course. :-) > > As stated previously I am a newbie in the Linux world, but one that seen > enough to know that there is no going back now! So currently I don't really > have a loyalty to any of the higher level window systems. I would be > interested in knowing from your experience why you feel that Gnome is > superior to KDE. I guess what I am looking for deals more with the > functionality than anything else and not speed. So far going from Windoze to > Linux/KDE is like going from dialup to wireless! Well I was joking of course, as the smiley was supposed to indicate. It's more accurate to say "I prefer Gnome," but I don't believe there's any objective criteria by which one can say definitively that Gnome or KDE is any better than the other or that either one is better than XFCE. I settled on Gnome after lots of trials with other DEs and WMs. For a while I avoided DEs altogether and just used various WMs, which IMO is a good way to learn about some of the under-the-hood functionality of Linux OSes. WMs tend not to do many things for you except manage your windows, so using one forces you to learn about doing things manually (things like mounting filesystems, for example, or starting various processes at boot or later). It can be really useful to know *why* things happen the way they do, so you know where to look when something you expect will happen doesn't. DEs add a layer of complexity by automating a lot of tasks and giving you DE-specific tools to automate even more. That can be a real timesaver, but if you don't understand what they are doing it will leave you helpless when something breaks. Especially if you're coming from Windows or OS X, where everything is of a piece, sticking to just a WM for a while helps you grok the separation of functionality that's inherent in Linux OSes. The other thing that's useful about trying various WMs is that it can give you ideas about how you'd like things set up on your system, ideas that you might never have been exposed to otherwise. Just go visit various screenshot galleries and you'll see how very different from each other Linux desktops can look, and you'll start to get an idea of how differently they can function too. As for Gnome vs KDE, my preference for Gnome basically comes down to two factors. The first is that, after trying out lots of different apps, I found that I tended to like apps using the GTK+ toolkit better than apps using QT. It is certainly possible to use GTK+ apps under KDE and QT apps under Gnome -- many people do all the time -- but generally speaking (and I do mean *very* generally!) GTK+ apps are more suited to Gnome or XFCE and QT apps are more suited to KDE. Since I found very few QT apps essential (in fact, I don't have any QT apps installed anymore), it didn't seem to make much sense to me to use a DE that was designed using QT. To put it simply, "it's the apps, stupid." :-) The second factor is that I like the way Gnome is laid out by default. I like the thin panels at the top and bottom (you can run Gnome with only one panel if you prefer, but I like having two). I like the themes available and don't feel the need to tweak them much. In fact I'm happy with most Gnome's defaults and haven't felt the need to change much. Once in a while I'll go into gconf to tweak something or other, but mostly it just suits me. I didn't feel the same about KDE. KDE has an enormous number of preference options and can be customized out the wazoo, which is one thing many people like about it and some others criticize it for, so you can probably bend and twist KDE into just about anything you prefer. But that's a lot of work and I got tired of it, especially given that after all was said and done, I was still using more GTK+ than QT apps. (It probably didn't help that the very first Linux distro I tried defaulted to what I thought was a particulary ugly KDE environment; it was a while before I figured out that KDE can look quite beautiful if you put the time and effort into it.) Gnome can be customized pretty extensively too, but heavy customization isn't exactly the design philosophy behind Gnome. Personally, I felt like I was constantly fighting with KDE, trying to change all the things I didn't care for, whereas with Gnome I didn't need to. To put it simply, "it's the defaults, stupid." :-) > One example of what I mean. One of my part time jobs
Re: Newbie Question - KDE-Gnome-xfce
On Wed, 2007-04-04 at 20:19 -0400, Javier Enrique Tiá Marín wrote: > Why Gnome is the Default Desktop for Distributions like Ubuntu/Debian, > RedHat/CentOS/Fedora and OpenSuse? Because Gnome is superior, of course. :-) -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Desktop user: Etch or the next testing?
On Tue, 2007-04-03 at 06:51 +, Joe Hart wrote: > -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- > Hash: SHA1 > > Greg Folkert wrote: > > On Tue, 2007-04-03 at 00:45 +0200, Sven Arvidsson wrote: > >> There have been a lot of talk and suggestions, for example, Joey Hess > >> described Constantly Usable Testing, it sounds a bit like your > >> suggestion. > >> http://kitenet.net/~joey/code/debian/cut.html > >> > >> Also, there seems to be some interest of making official backports to > >> support new hardware and new releases for typical desktop users. I would > >> be surprised if this didn't happen for the Lenny release, or even > >> sooner. > > > > CUT was exactly what testing was supposed to be, in the beginning. > > Period. It hasn't become that. It has gotten to the point that sometimes > > testing is borkdened for long periods of time... in small areas mind > > you, but still broken. > > > > I think it would be good to have the Sidux group latch onto this. They > > could really improve the whole process. It would make Testing usable at > > any one moment. And make something you could always point to and say: > > > > try that > > > > And then watch problems melt. It would be a good thing, as it would make > > Debian able to release a new version at nearly any time. In other words, > > 1 month between releases, 2 months, 4 months, 6 months, 2 years... > > whatever they want. > > I don't think the Sidux developers plan on tackling testing, but I think > Kanotix is. According to the latest scuttlebutt, Testing is going to be > the basis for Kanotix, not Ubuntu. > > Kano changes his mind frequently on the issue, so we'll just have to > wait until he releases something. It would be great if *someone* would try that. There are so many Debian-based distros out there that version off unstable, but none that I know of that version off testing. IMO, it would fill a gap and be a good alternative for those of us for whom Ubuntu, Sidux, etc., are too bleeding-edge and bug-prone but get frustrated by the long periods of stagnation in Debian testing. I'd be happy enough if there was backports.org-type project for testing, but a separate distro focussing on fewer architectures would be ideal. And it wouldn't compromise or distract Debian from its core mission and goals. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Woohooo! Dell + Linux
On Sat, 2007-03-31 at 17:25 -0400, Kamaraju S Kusumanchi wrote: > Andrei Popescu wrote: > > > Kamaraju S Kusumanchi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > >> That is awesome news! Thanks for sharing it. Now I just hope that the > >> Dell systems come pre-installed with Debian! > > > > As much as I like Debian, but wouldn't Ubuntu make a better option? > > > > Actually no! If they go with Ubuntu, every 6 months they have to train their > staff for the new release Ubuntu makes. Moreover, from my personal > experinece, I think Debian Stable is much more stable than Ubuntu Stable. > > If they are serious about this, it is better if they go with Debian. >From what I was reading, I gather Dell is considering creating community support for whatever Linux distro(s) it offers, rather than its traditional method of supporting the installed OS (Windows, most of the time). That was among the questions it asked in its poll of potential customers interested in buying Dell with Linux pre-installed: Would you be satisfied with community support from Dell, Dell Linux user forums, etc.? (Dell already has forums for Linux users and they can be pretty helpful if you have a Dell and are having some problem with one distro or another.) If they went that route, you would probably only call Dell with hardware issues, though sometimes it can be hard to tell whether something's not working properly because it's misconfigured or because the hardware is faulty. So in one sense, it wouldn't really matter which distro they offered if it was to be primarily community supported. OTOH, going with a distro like Ubuntu would mean Canonical could also provide premium support if it wished, which might give potential Dell customers an extra sense of security. Many people, especially in Dell's target demographic, are happy to pay something for support just for the ability to call a toll-free number when they can't figure something out and have someone walk them through what they need to do. They would prefer that to searching mailing lists and forums and what-not. With Debian, there currently isn't any commercial premium support for these people to turn to. Another problem with Debian as a pre-installed distro is that stable, at any given time, is often well behind others in supporting newer hardware. Dell is not about to hold back on offering the latest and greatest hardware because Debian stable doesn't support it yet. And of course there is the issue of Debian not holding to any sort of schedule. Businesses like predictability; they don't like "when it's ready." That's what Ian Murdoch was referring to when he opined that Debian is missing opportunities. Debian essentially takes itself out of the running because of this attitude. Microsoft can afford to delay and delay because it is a monopoly still, but OEM's were not happy about Vista's endless delays. In the Linuxverse, there are plenty of distros to choose from that do release in a timely fashion -- OEM's are not going to go with one that does not. The company I bought my box from, [1]Groovix, used to offer Debian pre-installed -- now they offer Ubuntu. They do so precisely because Ubuntu offers them predictable releases to choose from, whereas Debian does not. A guy in support there told me Ubuntu is so much easier to support than Debian testing, which is what they used to offer, because it's less of a moving target. Stable was, most of the time, too old for the hardware they were selling. Furthermore, they don't have to move up to the latest release every six months -- Ubuntu supports its regular releases for 18 months, its LTS release for five years. An OEM could easily upgrade the distro they offer once a year, rather than every six months. [1] http://groovix.com/groovix.html -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Which OS? Was "I do consider Ubuntu to be Debian" , Ian Murdock
On Sat, 2007-03-31 at 22:57 +0300, Andrei Popescu wrote: > "Michael M." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > If I knew, for example, that for up to six months out of every two > > years, testing will be frozen, I could live with that. If that were > > Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the freeze started only about 4 > months ago and it looks like it will end in April. No you're probably right, but I guess there's more to the concept of a "freeze" than when it starts, strictly speaking. To use an example I'm familiar with, Gnome 2.16 was released in October (six months ago) and did not make it into Etch, though bits and pieces of it have. I remember it being an open question whether 2.16 would be included in Etch. I'm not complaining that it isn't; I'm just saying that decisions about what would or would not make it into Etch were made, in many cases, before the freeze officially started. Some things, like OO.org 2.0.4 (also released in October) made it, others did not. I was more-or-less thinking along the lines of, "I don't care if testing falls six months behind it's usual timeliness factor during the run-up to a release," but I guess I didn't phrase it very well. Usually, testing is pretty up-to-date. If it does end in April, hallelujah! -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Which OS? Was "I do consider Ubuntu to be Debian" , Ian Murdock
On Sat, 2007-03-31 at 21:38 +0200, Joe Hart wrote: > > Greg Folkert wrote: > > > > "To infinity^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HLenny... and beyond!" > > I wonder how many people will not understand that. You know that only > well educated or old-timers know those control characters. ^G^L Anyone who reads Slashdot even semi-regularly has seen it often enough. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Which OS? Was "I do consider Ubuntu to be Debian" , Ian Murdock
On Sat, 2007-03-31 at 19:39 +0200, Joe Hart wrote: > The problem with Ubuntu is that while it is based on Debian, several key > items are different (restricted modules, sudo/root, etc.) to make it not > appealing to many Debian purists. Sidux on the other hand offers 100% > compatibility with Debian, and some really smart people helping smooth > any bumps one might experience with it. Sidux is Sid, with a custom > kernel and a few really good scripts. > > For Debian people who might be afraid of running Sid, Sidux might be > just the answer that they were looking for. However, I would have to > admit that it might be dangerous, and Etch is the safe bet. It might > not have the latest packages, but it will work as promised. What would be the differences between running Sidux and Sid? The [1] "Why Should I Use Sidux?" page seems to stress security & package timeliness over stability, so I'm wondering whether Sidux is any more stable than Sid. It kind of sounds like the main purpose of Sidux is to provide a shortcut to Sid, without having to install Debian stable or testing and upgrading. Am I missing something? "100% compatibility with Debian" is a good -- actually, a great -- thing, in my book. I used the late, lamented Libranet for a time, before using Debian proper, and I thought the compatibility factor was very important in making it an excellent distro. Most distros forked off Debian don't aim for that. But it looks like Sidux uses KDE. Would it work just as well with Gnome, or are some Sidux alterations so KDE-oriented that there'd be no point to using the distro if you weren't a KDE user? (I'm not.) [1] http://sidux.com/index.php?module=pnWikka&tag=whysidux -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Which OS? Was "I do consider Ubuntu to be Debian" , Ian Murdock
On Sat, 2007-03-31 at 09:51 -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: > On Tue, Mar 27, 2007 at 05:41:45AM -0700, Michael M. wrote: > > > What has made Debian a great fit for me over the past months is its > > beefed up efforts to make testing a more viable option for users (for > > example, by providing security updates for testing). I started using > > Etch some months ago, perhaps close to a year ago, pulling in just a few > > packages from unstable, and it has been a great fit for me. Until the > > past few months, when it has increasingly come to seem stale to me. > > It's only natural, then, for me to question whether *I* really fit in > > with your definition of "We the Debian people." > > > > Why don't we reframe this as: What is the best OS/Distro for Michael? > > Perhaps you have some conflicting needs that requires a non-standard > answer? I _think_ that what I hear that you want is: > > More recent software than what is in stable or testing (when its > frozen). > > Less dynamic than Sid That pretty much sums it up, the important qualification being testing *when it's frozen.* Prior to the freeze, and for at least a while after it began, I was happy with testing. That's the only reason I am frustrated with Debian's reluctance/refusal to commit to a schedule. If I knew, for example, that for up to six months out of every two years, testing will be frozen, I could live with that. If that were the case, testing would be the optimal distro for me more than 75% of the time, which would be good enough. But as past and recent history (Dunc-Tank tanking, etc.) has indicated, Debian has no inclination to do that, and many Debian users appreciate its reluctance to do so, for reasons I can understand. I just don't happen to be one of them. > What about: > > Debian stable or testing to run your hardware with a *buntu in a > chroot? Gives you a base OS that won't crash but more recent > software. Yikes, that sounds complicated! > Is Linux for you? What about one of the BSDs? I've been looking at > OpenBSD; they release every 6 months (their Release is like Debian's > Stable), with security update (source patches) as necessary. Following > every security update even if it doesn't apply to you, you end up > running their Stable. Their Current is like Debian's Sid. I have tried FreeBSD and quite liked it. I didn't keep it around because, at the time, FreeBSD slices weren't accessible from Linux OSes, which made bouncing between Linux and FreeBSD problematic. However, someone on this list pointed out a month or two ago that the situation has changed. Multiple file system types make me a little nervous -- I was happy to leave Windows behind once and for all in part because it freed me from the NTFS/ext3 divide -- and switching to any *BSD would bring back that issue, but it would be worth it if I found a *BSD to be a better option for me because I could eventually leave Linux behind like I did Windows. OTOH, in terms of alternative OSes (alternative to the dominant OS today), Linux seems to have more momentum behind it, and a wider range of hardware support. It would be kind of ironic to ditch Linux just as a company like Dell is preparing to sell computers preloaded with Linux. All my Windows & Mac using friends already think I'm a masochist for using Linux (my friends are non-techie liberal arts types, as am I) -- it would only confirm their opinion if I dropped Linux just as it's making mainstream headway! Anyway, I never looked closely at the advantages (or lack thereof) of one *BSD over another. FreeBSD seemed to me to be the most user friendly, and it's the one that the desktop-oriented projects, like DesktopBSD, PC-BSD, and FreeSBIE, are based off. That was just an impression I had at the time, I would certainly look into the others if I decide to try that route. > They can release every 6 months because they only focus on the main OS. > Third-party stuff (upstream) is in packages (binary) and ports (source > tarballs pre-tweaked to compile properly on a given release level). > Using the ports and packages system is supposed to be similar to > using aptitude from the command line. It brings in whatever > dependancies there are, compiles anything required, and installs it. > It also will uninstall. > > It sounds to me like this may be a viable option for you: > > Stable, reliable, OS > > Upgraded every 6 months > > Fairly recent third-party software. > > So tell us what your ideal OS would be and do. There's enough cross-OS > experience on this list to give good suggestions. > > I'm not marking this thread as OT since a disc
Re: "I do consider Ubuntu to be Debian" , Ian Murdock
On Thu, 2007-03-29 at 13:45 -0600, Paul E Condon wrote: > It can take a while for a newish Debian user to get used to the Debian way. > My preference is to stay somewhat 'behind the curve', but yours appears to > be to stay somewhat 'ahead of the curve'. Yes, somewhat, though I tend to think of it more like "in the middle of the curve." Testing, up until it gets frozen, is actually pretty up-to-date for most desktop-type packages. Once in a while, something or other will lag a bit, but usually for very good reason. I thought it sufficiently up-to-date without being bleeding edge, which was fine by me. > For me, I run stable until I hear rumblings that testing is about to > be frozen in preparation for becoming the new stable. Then, when I > know that I have some free time to deal with computer glitches, I > change my sources.list to mention the testing version by its code > name, and do a dist-upgrade, and enjoy all the stuff that is > new-to-me. With etch mentioned by name in sources.list the coming > release of etch will be a non-event for me. > > You can use a different strategy: If you are not already running > testing, dist-upgrade to it now, and use the word 'testing' in your > sources.list. When etch is released, do nothing to your sources.list. > There will be a hiatus in testing as all the packages that have been > held back because of the freeze are released from Sid. Live thru that > as best you can. It will, in effect, bring your system into reasonable > sync with Sid. Then when you start hearing about a freeze of the next > testing (Lenny?), do a dist-upgrade to Sid, and stay there. If you > were to stay with testing, you would experience the same unhappiness > that you express now, when Lenny gets frozen for many months. Actually, my plan is to stick with Etch until after it is released, then install a second instance of it and upgrade that to Lenny, and migrate my data over. I would like to have Etch as my "back-up," in case something goes wrong with Lenny. It's unnecessarily cautious perhaps, but I'd rather set aside a few gigs for an OS I know will boot and function properly than be stuck with odds & ends that aren't working. It's just that lately I've been thinking maybe I should try another distro, instead of using Lenny. I would still keep Etch no matter what. But I expected to be doing this by the new year, and here it is almost April, and still no Lenny. And you're right, it doesn't look like Debian is ever going to speed up the lag between freeze and release, so that just means another long freeze down the road. All the more reason to look about for an acceptable alternative, if there's one out there. Sid is too unstable and fast-moving for me. I tried it for a while before I settled on Etch. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: "I do consider Ubuntu to be Debian" , Ian Murdock
On Tue, 2007-03-27 at 09:37 -0400, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote: > As was already pointed out, if you want the latest and greatest, then > run with testing or unstable. I wager that they are easily as stable > (if not more so) than other popular distros (like FC, for example). As stated, I've been using Etch (in "testing" mode) for close to a year now. Characterizing Etch as having the "latest" is a stretch by any measure. It is behind the curve of most of the popular distros' released versions -- versions that in most cases released in 2006. My hope is that the next iteration of testing (Lenny, I think?) returns to what I personally found to be the optimal balance between timeliness and stablility, up until (and at least for a while after) Etch was frozen. That won't happen until Etch is out the door. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: "I do consider Ubuntu to be Debian" , Ian Murdock
On Mon, 2007-03-26 at 16:42 -0400, Michael Pobega wrote: > On Mon, Mar 26, 2007 at 11:35:02AM -0700, Michael M. wrote: > > > > Call it what you want: schedule, timeline, target, whatever. The point > > is that the Debian Project doesn't value it enough to stick to it. I > > doubt there's a large software project in existance that hasn't missed > > its targets sometimes -- Ubuntu, Fedora, openSuSE all have had release > > delays in recent memory, and then there's Windows Vista. But Debian is > > fairly unique in being so cavalier about it. > > > > Now this is unfair. You're complaining that the Debian developers > don't release things on time, but think about what the stable branch > is used for; Servers, (some) home computers, and some mission critical > data centers (I am not 100% sure on this, but doesn't NASA use Debian? > I remember reading something about it, or the likes of it) It may surprise you to learn that I am not NASA. :-) > If Debian worried about sticking to a schedule rather than worrying > about the stability of the product, you'd hear about a few more > missing astronauts and a couple of billion dollars gone from (I'm > going on a limb here) some bank data centers. Obviously this is all > worst case scenario, but it's what Debian is primarily made for. Which begs the question, "Is Debian made for me?" > Most of the PR Debian gets is negative, and that's because no one > truly understands the Debian project; (Note: I'm not a dev, but I'll > use "We" as in "We the Debian people") We don't care about release > dates, we don't care about the newest versions of software, we care > about rock hard stability. Even the testing branch of Debian is known > to be pretty stable, for the most part. And even if you wanted the > things most "Desktop" distros offer, you could apt-pin from unstable. > With enough wits about how Debian works you can get any install of > Debian to feel to the end user exactly like an up to date Ubuntu, > Mandriva, or Fedora install. Negative compared to?: "Microsoft is evil," "Apple values style over substance," "Gentoo is imploding," "FreeBSD is dead," "Mandriva betrayed its users," "Ubuntu is Debian made stupid," "Fedora ignores its community in favor of Red Hat's priorities," etc. Everybody has their critics. What has made Debian a great fit for me over the past months is its beefed up efforts to make testing a more viable option for users (for example, by providing security updates for testing). I started using Etch some months ago, perhaps close to a year ago, pulling in just a few packages from unstable, and it has been a great fit for me. Until the past few months, when it has increasingly come to seem stale to me. It's only natural, then, for me to question whether *I* really fit in with your definition of "We the Debian people." > Release dates aside, Debian also has the largest repository for > software. And like Gentoo, Debian is (For the most part) a rolling > release distribution, you never really have to upgrade to a new > release. You could stay testing, or unstable, instead of sticking with > "Sarge" or "Etch". Debian is about choice, and it gives you the power > to use your operating system however you want. Whether you want to > install a mission critical server, or beef up your system ala Gentoo > (Using apt-get source) you could do it. > > Sorry about the rant, but I have to defend Debian. It has become my > love in the past few months, I only wish I started using Debian > earlier (Damned Windows). You don't have to defend Debian, at least not to me. Just don't try to pretend that it is the perfect solution for everyone. The things you are suggesting are routinely and actively discouraged on this list -- apt-pinning, mixing branches. Yes you *can* do it, but be prepared to face the chorus of "you should be sticking to stable" when you ask for help with something that's not working. Likewise, you could make Debian similar to Gentoo if you wanted to, but that's not really how Debian is designed to work. If you wanted to make it into a source-based distro, wouldn't it be better just to use a source-based distro in the first place? Debian is amongst the most flexible distros around, but it can't be stretched beyond all reason into something it's not (not without a great deal of difficulty, requiring a great deal of skill and knowledge). That's why there are so many distros based off Debian, directly (Ubuntu, DSL, Kantonix, etc.) or indirectly (Mepis, Linspire, etc.). If Debian could easily be made into what the
Re: "I do consider Ubuntu to be Debian" , Ian Murdock
On Mon, 2007-03-26 at 14:45 -0400, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote: > However, the predictability that it appears you want, timely releases at > predefined intervals, is not very likely to be realistic with Debian. That's exactly right, at least based on the history of the project and its release cycles, such as they are. That's the rub. I'm not expecting or even asking that Debian change its character or modus operandi just for me (or for users like me, who would appreciate a greater emphasis on timeliness than currently exists). I'm just saying it is what bugs me about how Debian works, and in the end, if anything finally causes me to move on to a different distro once and for all, it's that -- the lack of predictability; the long release cycles that result in the long feature freezes; that whatever "stable" happens to be at the time of release, it is inevitably behind the curve (compared to many other distros) in terms of freshness. At the same time, it's also ahead of almost everybody else in terms of stablity and reliability. As always, each user has to decide for himself whether any given OS's priorities are the best fit with his own priorities. There's no "right answer" for everybody, or we'd all be using the same distro, a BSD, Windows, OS X. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: "I do consider Ubuntu to be Debian" , Ian Murdock
On Mon, 2007-03-26 at 15:28 +1200, Chris Bannister wrote: > On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 05:37:00PM -0700, Michael M. wrote: > > All that is to say that Ubuntu serves a purpose, and it's a valuable > > one, IMO. It's not for everybody; nor is Debian, nor any other distro > > in particular. Ubuntu at least provides an experience quite similar to > > Debian while doing things that Debian stubbornly refuses to do, like > > sticking to a schedule. On that score, I agree 100% with Ian Murdoch -- > > Debian is missing a big opportunity. > > What schedule. There was/is no promised schedule. "Dec 6th 2006" was > never an actual release date. The schedule that the release team puts together. It contains target release dates. Debian missed its December target for Etch. It remains to be seen whether it will make the new target of 2 April 2007. Call it what you want: schedule, timeline, target, whatever. The point is that the Debian Project doesn't value it enough to stick to it. I doubt there's a large software project in existance that hasn't missed its targets sometimes -- Ubuntu, Fedora, openSuSE all have had release delays in recent memory, and then there's Windows Vista. But Debian is fairly unique in being so cavalier about it. Like I said, it's the "when it's ready" attitude taken to the extreme -- to the exclusion of providing users any kind of predictablility or expectations of timeliness -- that I don't like. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: "I do consider Ubuntu to be Debian" , Ian Murdock
On Thu, 2007-03-22 at 20:59 -0400, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote: > On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 05:37:00PM -0700, Michael M. wrote: > > Personally, I'm getting a little > > frustrated being stuck on Gnome 2.14 when 2.18 has been released. Etch > > is two Gnome releases behind already, and Etch itself hasn't even been > > released. > > Out of curiousity, what features are in 2.18 that are not in 2.14 that > you absolutely cannot live without? What about that you just consider > nice to have? Absolutely none! :-) At least, none that I'm aware of. Actually I think 2.16 was a somewhat more significant release for Gnome in that more features were incorporated, many of which can be added manually anyway. I use Tomboy and Baobab with 2.14 -- the latter, at least, is I think an "official" part of Gnome 2.16 but not 2.14. I haven't bothered trying alacarte (the menu editor) because I don't have any pressing need for it. That, I believe, is also newly included with 2.16. I remember thinking, when I read about it, "that might be nice, but no need to bother with it now." For me, it's not really an issue of "Oh I must have this NOW ... damn you Debian for making me wait!" It's more like I read about little improvements and modifications that sound good, and I think, "cool, something to look forward to." Stuff for Epiphany, stuff for Nautilus, Evolution, etc., etc. Rarely anything earthshattering, so mostly I'm content to wait, and let other more intrepid and knowledgable types work out lingering bugs. In fact I'm quite happy to be a whole release behind something big and complex like Gnome, not to mention various other apps. It's just that over time, these things build up, and that's when I start to get ancy. If Etch had been released in December, per the original plan, I'd probably be using Lenny by now, and Lenny would probably have moved up to 2.16 by now, and I'd be a happy camper. Even if the Etch delay had been a month or two, that's not really a big deal for me. It's just that here we are approaching April, and still no Etch release. Ok, so maybe it will be released in April -- there was something on the developer list to that effect -- so maybe I can be patient for a while longer. But maybe it will be delayed again. Ugh. So gradually, I start thinking maybe I should look at other OSes again ... maybe give Arch Linux or Ubuntu another shot, or try one I haven't tried yet. It's really more the "when it's ready / schedules don't matter" attitude of Debian that bothers me. The thing is, I'm comfortable with how Debian functions (as an OS, if not as a project, entirely), so that's a lot of inertia to overcome. (I tend to think that's why a lot of users never leave Windows despite all the problems -- they are just comfortable with it, and something pretty irritating has to come along to force them away, or their irritation level has to build up quite a bit to overcome the inertia of sticking with what they know.) If I had started using Ubuntu before I ever used Debian, maybe I'd be more comfortable with it. As it is, I find the little differences in how Ubuntu does things more annoying than anything else, because it's not what I'm used to. So it comes down to, at what point does my increasing annoyance with Debian's habitual delays overcome my discomfort about switching to a different OS, and any attendant annoyances of that OS? (That's a rhetorical question!) (FYI, Arch Linux is a really interesting OS, IMO. It tends to attract more Slackware and Gentoo converts, but there are quite a few former Debianistas in its community. I learned a fair amount of basics about Linux from using it, in part because its structure is so simple compared to Debian -- BSD-style init vs SysV init, for one thing. The package manage, Pacman, is not yet as sophisticated or developed as apt, but it functions similarly and is quite usable, also somewhat easier for relatively unsophisticated users like me to grok creating their own packages. It has some things I find attractive in common with Debian -- versatility; multi-purpose focus, rather than a "desktop" or "server" focus; no "favored" DE or WM like so many distros. I would heartily recommend it to anyone looking for something else to play around with, simply for the sake of getting more general experience with Linux under his belt.) -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Installation advice needed for a really stable desktop machine
On Thu, 2007-03-22 at 12:50 +0100, Joe Hart wrote: > With 4 GB of RAM, you probably don't need a swap at all. Since you have > a duel core machine, make sure you use an smp kernel. Everything should > work fine and you'll have a fine system that I and others can be jealous > over. I thought all the kernels were SMP-enabled now, no? Didn't Debian do away with the distinction between SMP and non-SMP kernels? At least, when I look at what's available with aptitude, all the kernel images labelled with "-smp" are given as "for transition only." -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: "I do consider Ubuntu to be Debian" , Ian Murdock
On Thu, 2007-03-22 at 06:34 -0400, Michael Pobega wrote: > I didn't mean "seemed" in a way that I didn't know. I actually went to > the forums everyday, and there WAS at least three topics about > dist-upgrades breaking going from Dapper to Edgy, or Edgy to Feisty. > Dist-upgrades to break here, but we hear about them maybe once a week. > > I am 100% SURE that Ubuntu's dist-upgrade breaks more often than > Debian's, and I am certain that the number is 75% or so (Give or take > a bit, 75% is an estimation, not a number written into stone). Well I would think Ubuntu's dist-upgrade *would* break more often than Debian's, since Ubuntu has so many more of them! :-) Ubuntu releases every six months, Debian maybe every two years, if we're lucky. That's a lot more dist-upgrades. One advantage Ubuntu offers is long-term support for Dapper. An Ubuntu user could have been on Dapper for almost a year now, stay there, and still be way ahead of Sarge and pretty much on par with Etch. All that without hearing the tiresome "you shouldn't be using testing/unstable unless you're prepared to deal with breakage" warnings you hear around these parts all the time. Etch has been quite stable for months and in that respect I don't see any particular advantage to using Dapper over Etch, but Ubuntu has given users the option of using Edgy since last October, and it's ahead of Etch. Personally, I'm getting a little frustrated being stuck on Gnome 2.14 when 2.18 has been released. Etch is two Gnome releases behind already, and Etch itself hasn't even been released. But I'm not so frustrated that I want to run Sid, because I've tried that and I find it too difficult. (The big Python policy fiasco last year pretty much turned me off Sid -- that, and the general pace of updates.) OTOH, upgrading an entire system every 6 months isn't much to my liking either. In general, the "testing" release of Debian, whatever it happens to be at any given time, seems for me to be the best compromise between all-around "up-to-dated-ness" and stability, except when Debian goes into its bi-annual epic feature freeze that ends up delayed and extended beyond all reason. That's when other distros start to look more attractive, Ubuntu included. I've tried numerous others at various times and the only ones I've liked almost as well are Arch Linux and Ubuntu, but for one reason or another I've returned to Debian. One day I'll probably get frustrated enough that I won't. All that is to say that Ubuntu serves a purpose, and it's a valuable one, IMO. It's not for everybody; nor is Debian, nor any other distro in particular. Ubuntu at least provides an experience quite similar to Debian while doing things that Debian stubbornly refuses to do, like sticking to a schedule. On that score, I agree 100% with Ian Murdoch -- Debian is missing a big opportunity. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: web browser choices
On Mon, 2007-03-19 at 20:11 -0400, Matthew K Poer wrote: > I'm using Epiphany with Fluxbox WM right now. It works. I like it better > than Firefox (1.0.4 Sarge) for most things, because it's faster. Interesting. I didn't think Epiphany would work very well outside a Gnome environment. I really like Epiphany and mostly use Gnome anyway, but when I feel like a change of WMs I use Iceweasel as my web browser. I'll have to try sticking with Epiphany even when not using Gnome. > I like Firefox better if I want to use one of the extensions. One Firefox/Iceweasel extension I like is for quick access to Google Notebook, which I make use of sometimes. I guess I could use some other means of quick copy/paste from the web if I stopped using Iceweasel altogether. That's the only one of my favorite extensions I can think of that isn't available for Epiphany. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: iceweasel always requesting to be default browser
On Sat, 2007-03-17 at 10:27 +0100, Roman Stöckl-Schmidt wrote: > Michael M. schrieb: > > So what is your default browser? Do you have iceweasel set as the > > default in any DE you are using, if you are using one? What does > > update-alternatives report? > > Okay, I'm using Gnome and in the preferred applications settings or > whatever it's called in english it says custom with the command to run > the application set to "/usr/lib/iceweasel/firefox "%s". When I set it > to iceweasel in the dropdown menu and start iceweasel, it gives me the > "I'm not your default browser, buhu"-crap again. And when I confirm to > let the app set itself as default the etnry in the default app-settings > from Gnome are as they were in the beginning. > > So apparently everything is fine but iceweasel doesn't detect that the > entry it made itself is actually iceweasel as the default rather than > some other program. easiest workaround for now would be to just disable > the warning in iceweasel, butr the underlying problem wouldn't be solved > by that, now would it? > > Assuming that you guys don't really now what to do to change this > behaviour either, apart from filing a bug report to change the source, I > have only one more question: Where should I file this, is it a debian > related problem, firefox or Gnome? > > Thanks again. > > P.S.: I've never used update-alternatives before but couldnt really > figure out how to use it in my case from the man page. I did > > #update-alternatives --display firefox > #update-alternatives --display /usr/bin/firefox > #update-alternatives --display /usr/bin/firefox > #update-alternatives --display browser > > and they all returned no alternatives for $command > > As Andrei and Joe indicated, you should be using "x-www-broswer." My results: :~$ sudo update-alternatives --display x-www-browser Password: x-www-browser - status is auto. link currently points to /usr/bin/epiphany /usr/bin/epiphany - priority 85 slave x-www-browser.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/epiphany.1.gz /usr/bin/iceweasel - priority 70 slave x-www-browser.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/iceweasel.1.gz Current `best' version is /usr/bin/epiphany. Per the update-alternatives man page, the default directory for the alternatives system is /etc/alternatives: "The generic name is not a direct symbolic link to the selected alternative. Instead, it is a symbolic link to a name in the alternatives directory, which in turn is a symbolic link to the actual file referenced. This is done so that the system administrator’s changes can be confined within the /etc directory: the FHS (q.v.) gives reasons why this is a Good Thing." So if you want to see a list of all the alternative categories available, you can do: :~$ ls /etc/alternatives Since you are using Gnome, you may also want to check that "gnome-www-browser" also gives the result you want: :~$ sudo update-alternatives --display gnome-www-browser To change any of these settings, you use "update-alternatives --config [...]", per the man page. If you make sure your alternatives settings are correct for "x-www-browser" and "gnome-www-browser," and you still get the "I'm not the default browser" message from Iceweasel, then I would guess that's a bug. But as Joe said, you can just turn that check off as long as Iceweasel is functioning as your default browser. In this case, if it is working the way you want, does it really matter if it for some reason doesn't recognize that it is working the way you want? -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: iceweasel always requesting to be default browser
On Thu, 2007-03-15 at 10:38 +0100, Roman Stöckl-Schmidt wrote: > Hi guys! > > I've got a really strange behaviour in iceweasel since upgrading to the > newest package in etch (2.0.0.2+dfsg-3). > > When I ran it for the first time after upgrading it asked wether I > wanted to set it as the default browser. Since the previous version had > been my default browser and I intend to keep it that way I was surprised > by the prompt, but confirmed it anyway. Now the strange thing is that it > keeps aksing the question every time it start it, stating that it is not > the default browser atm and wether or not I want to make it. So what is your default browser? Do you have iceweasel set as the default in any DE you are using, if you are using one? What does update-alternatives report? -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Suggestions about the Debian install process
On Wed, 2007-03-07 at 22:34 +0530, Masatran, R. Deepak wrote: > What is a "Standard system" in Tasksel? According to this: http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/apds02.html "Standard system" in tasksel takes up 365MB of disk space, whereas the minimal base installation will take 227MB. I'm not sure, though, if there is a list of what is included in the former that is missing from the latter. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: a dumb query? pls humor me
On Sun, 2007-03-04 at 14:34 -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: > > Or a Brit needing an operation for which there is a very long > waiting list because of NHS inefficiencies? Life Expectancy at birth (years): U.S. E.U. U.K. Canada Male:75.0275.1076.0976.86 Female: 80.8281.6081.1383.74 Total: 77.8578.3078.5480.22 Infant Mortality Rate (per 1000 live births) U.S. E.U. U.K. Canada Male:7.09 5.60 5.67 5.15 Female: 5.74 4.50 4.47 4.22 Total: 6.43 5.10 5.08 4.69 Sure looks like socialized medicine is sucking there, huh? I guess conservatives in the U.S. are only concerned about a the life cycle of fetus until a baby is born, after which it's fine by them if the baby dies, as long as the dreaded spectre of "Universal Health Care" is kept at bay. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Growing an HFS file system
On Sat, 2007-03-03 at 16:41 -0500, Stefan Monnier wrote: > I have an HFS+ filesystem (on a powerpc-mac style partition) that I need to > grow. parted/gparted seem only able to shrink it. Is there some other tool > that's able to grow an HFS+ filesystem. I looked at tools under macosx as > well, but macosx is only able to resize an HFS+ partition if it's on a > GUID-style partition. > > Maybe there's a way to switch from powerpc-mac-style partition to > guid-partition, then resize, than switch back? I kinda think you are out of luck on that one, but you might get more expert advice on the debian-ppc list, or failing that Ubuntu's or Gentoo's PPC mailing lists or forums. Good luck! -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
