Re: [newbie] MS: We know we suck, and we don't really care.
So, let's all just stick with Windows and *CONTINUE* to pay for what would otherwise be free with Linux That is the dumbest concept I have ever heard. Can't believe a human being actually thinks that way. I would much rather switch to something, knowing I lost money, if it would keep me from losing *more* money, than stay where I am and, knowingly, *continue* to throw lose away. On Friday 23 April 2004 1:40 pm, JoeHill wrote: Contorer wrote that end users stuck with Windows, despite the operating system's shortcomings, based on the high costs of abandoning heavy investments already made in APIs. 'The Windows API is so broad, so deep and so functional that most ISVs (independent software vendors) would be crazy not to use it. And it is so deeply embedded in the source code of many Windows apps that there is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system, instead,' the e-mail reads. 'It is this switching cost that has given the customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high TCO (total cost of ownership), our lack of a sexy vision, at times, and many other difficulties,' the e-mail said. 'Customers constantly evaluate other desktop platforms, (but) it would be so much work to move over that they hope we just improve Windows rather than force them to move.' Link: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040422231316209 -- Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
[newbie] File Associations lost
I installed Mandrake 10.0 Official Edition, on a PII 450Mhz., yesterday, and, I must say, it's great - so far. Only one little annoyance: I have my file associations tweaked just the way I want them, and I realise that I want/need to install some software from the CD's using rpmdrake. When I am finished installing, I realise that my file associations have been altered. This happens every time I install somethng from the CD's. So, three questions: 1. Why does this happen? 2. How can I prevent it? If I can't, is there a config file somewhere that I can copy (before install) and restore (after install) to get my file association back without having to use the control centre? 3. Am I the only one experiencing this little annoyance? If there were a file containing the file associations/settings, I suppose I could create a bash script to restore my file associations after I install anything - this would be much easier. I found that I like bash scripts - after creating one that will back-up all my personal file in a matter of seconds. Thank you in advance for any help, Ian MacGregor -- Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] File Associations lost
That's OK. If enough people complain, maybe someone will do something about the problem. On Thursday 22 April 2004 7:25 am, Alexandre Aractingi wrote: Le jeu 22/04/2004 à 16:20, Ian MacGregor a écrit : 3. Am I the only one experiencing this little annoyance? Same here... Sorry this is the only answer I have :-) -- Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
[newbie] Kontact weather plug-in
I found that there ais a weather plug-in in Kontact. I tried to configure it in Setting - Configure on the Summary page in Kontact, but, can't figure out how to do it. Is there someone out there who can give me some info on how to configure this plug-in so I can have the current weather for my city? Thanks, Ian -- Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
[newbie] Question about remote access
I have a question concerning remote access and iptables. I have installed Mandrake 10.0 Community on a PII 450Mhz. with 256Mb RAM. I have tweaked all the settings in Mandrake Control Center, but I know nothing about iptables. I have assigned the following to the su and login commands: owner: root group: wheel PERMISSIONS: owner: read, write, execute, setuid group: read, write, execute others: forbidden And, I have added myself (the only user) to the wheel group. I have, and use, rkhunter. Even if someone had remote access to my system, they would not be able to call the su or login commands. I tried to telnet myself in a konsole session and got a reply telling me connection refused. I tried to ping myself and got 6 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 4999ms It seems that my box would be invisible to anyone trying to ping me and unavailable to anyone trying to telnet me. Is this sufficient? Or, must I learn how to deal with iptables? Ian MacGregor -- - Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Question about remote access
Unfortunately, I don't know anyone who knows how to ping :( On Wednesday 21 April 2004 8:21 am, Paul wrote: On Wed, 2004-04-21 at 17:05, Ian MacGregor wrote: I tried to telnet myself in a konsole session and got a reply telling me connection refused. I tried to ping myself and got 6 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 4999ms It seems that my box would be invisible to anyone trying to ping me and unavailable to anyone trying to telnet me. Is this sufficient? Or, must I learn how to deal with iptables? I'd have a look at the IPaddress your machine has when connected to the net, send that to a good friend and see if (s)he can ping you. That would be a better test imho. If you are hesitant about IPtables, there are helpful scripts, like EasyTables, QuickTables etc, that do a great job in helping you set up a good firewall. Paul -- - Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Question about remote access
I just sent you some info. thanks for volunteering. On Wednesday 21 April 2004 8:36 am, Paul wrote: On Wed, 2004-04-21 at 17:27, Ian MacGregor wrote: Unfortunately, I don't know anyone who knows how to ping :( Hmmm. Not sure if you could see me as a good friend, but I do ping once in a while. You can send me your IP through private mail, I could check for you. Paul -- - Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake 10
From what I understand, the majority of the problems are a result of upgrading rather than formatting the hard drive and doing a clean install. I never upgrade for this very reason. Doing a clean install aleviates many headaches. Upgrading should not even be a consideration. On Saturday 17 April 2004 12:27 am, Keith Powell wrote: Reading through the recent posts, it appears that many on the list who have broadband (lucky lot!!) and have downloaded version 10(CE) or version 10 (Official) are having problems. There seem to be many bugs still in them. My question, and it is a serious one, is: When the boxed sets come out in a few weeks time, will they still be buggy, or will the bugs have been sorted? Or would it be better to wait several weeks before buying, if this means that all the updates to sort these bugs out are available on CD? Alternatively, I could buy the download edition on cheap CDs, and use that as a test to see how things are beforebuying the boxed set. Cheers Keith -- - Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake 10
I have been using a download edition which I purchased from almostfreelinux.com about 3 months ago for $10.00 US. I have never seen any adverts. And, I have never had any of the problems reported by others on theis list. On Saturday 17 April 2004 5:17 am, Keith Powell wrote: On Saturday 17 April 2004 9:19 am, Anne Wilson wrote: On Saturday 17 April 2004 08:27, Keith Powell wrote: Reading through the recent posts, it appears that many on the list who have broadband (lucky lot!!) and have downloaded version 10(CE) or version 10 (Official) are having problems. There seem to be many bugs still in them. My question, and it is a serious one, is: When the boxed sets come out in a few weeks time, will they still be buggy, or will the bugs have been sorted? As I undertand it, 'Official' is what will be in the boxed sets. Or would it be better to wait several weeks before buying, if this means that all the updates to sort these bugs out are available on CD? The greatest number of bugs have been ironed out between CE and Official. There are, of course, always bug fixes to follow. Alternatively, I could buy the download edition on cheap CDs, and use that as a test to see how things are beforebuying the boxed set. - From Mandrake's point of view, buying the cheapies and subscribing to the club is much better than buying direct from MandrakeSoft. They get all of club money, but only a bit from sales. Anne A very good suggestion, Anne. There is one thing, which I am hoping that you, or anyone else with a greater knowledge of Mandrakesoft than I, can answer. I assume that the cheap CDs I would buy from, for instance, The Libranet Emporium, would be the download edition. If I remember correctly, it was mentioned on the list some time ago that the download edition will have adverts which will pop up at any time. This inconvenience is to help 'persuade' us to buy the boxed sets, which will be free of them. Is this correct, or am I dreaming it? Knowing me, it is probably the latter! Any information will be greatfully received. Many thanks Keith -- - Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] updates
Did you get a curl error? that's what I have been getting. I don't know about downloading Mandrake 10.0 Official, but, you can buy the Official Power Pack edition (5 CD's) for about $10.00 Us at: http://www.almostfreelinux.com This is how I got my current Mandrake 10.0 Community and it installed without any problems. I am very happy with it. I bought the Official 10.0 from Almost Free Linux yesterday and they shipped it the same day. I should have it arriving in the mail Monday or Tuesday - or thereabouts. I would look into downloading it, but I have dial-up and I don't feel like taking a chance on having a 20+ hour download broken ;) Ian On Friday 16 April 2004 12:50 am, Thujan wrote: Hi, I just installed mdk10.0 C and I can't get updates? Ain't 10.0C supported any more? I tried several mirrors so it couldn't be one particular mirror problem. Is this cause of official 10.0 release? Can one download official 10.0 somewhere? Thanks best rgds ~ tt -- - Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
[newbie] Mandrake Update problem
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 I am new to this mail list, so, it is possible that I am asking about something that has been asked already. If so, please forgive the duplication. I am using - or, trying to use - MandrakeUpdate. When I run it, I keep getting this error: Unable to add medium, errors reported: ...retrieving failed: curl failed: exited with 9 or signal 0 retrieval of source hdlist ( or synthesis ) failed no hdlist file found for medium update source problem reading synthesis file or medium update_source I click on OK and it tells me that the list of updates is empty. What does all this mean? And, how do I fix it? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Sincerely, Ian MacGregor - -- - - Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAfUv51ZEuizqPRqERAmkzAJ46cBPVdFJG4eJd2RgTLShudPoutACgxlm3 X+inBbTTbukdi1PU81XMTGY= =ac7b -END PGP SIGNATURE- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
[newbie] Re: Floppy problem
These mailing lists are great...everyone is so helpful. Best mailing list I've ever seen. Maybe y'all can help me too. I have a 3.5 floppy icon on the desktop which has a tiny green arrow at the bottom right corner... this means that the floppy is mounted. But this shows up as soon as I boot the computer, so the floppy is mounted from the time of boot. I can read and write to floppies and Konqueror will show the correct floppy contents when I change floppies, however, when I right-click and choose 'unmount', before ejecting the floppy, I get an error saying: umount: only root can unmount none from /mnt/floppy Please check that the disk is entered correctly. Still new to Linux and was told to never eject a floppy until it is unmounted. So, I have been leaving the darn thing mounted all the time, but ejecting the floppies anyway. Is it safe to just leave it alone and eject floppies whether it is unmounted or not? Or, is there some way I can fix this? My Mandrake 10.0 Community install does have some problems in its current state, and I have been hearing that other people have the same problems and will, hopefully, be fixed when the 'Official' release is out. However, as it is, Mandrake 10.0 beats anything else I have tried, including other distros, and I ain't going back to Windoze Ian MacGregor -- - Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Re: Floppy problem
1. My Mandrake 10.0 Community installed without one single problem and it correctly recognised all my hardware - guess I was one of the lucky ones. 2. Is there any way to disable supermount? If so, how and where? Thank you, y'all are great! Maybe I need to join a LUG or something. On Wednesday 14 April 2004 4:14 pm, Kaj Haulrich wrote: On Thursday 15 April 2004 00:45, Ian MacGregor wrote: These mailing lists are great...everyone is so helpful. Best mailing list I've ever seen. Maybe y'all can help me too. Maybe...at least we'll try... I have a 3.5 floppy icon on the desktop which has a tiny green arrow at the bottom right corner... this means that the floppy is mounted. But this shows up as soon as I boot the computer, so the floppy is mounted from the time of boot. I can read and write to floppies and Konqueror will show the correct floppy contents when I change floppies, however, when I right-click and choose 'unmount', before ejecting the floppy, I get an error saying: umount: only root can unmount none from /mnt/floppy Please check that the disk is entered correctly. This means that you probably have supermount enabled. If so, you can safely eject the floppy without unmounting it first. But wait a second or 3 depending on your sync frequency. Still new to Linux and was told to never eject a floppy until it is unmounted. So, I have been leaving the darn thing mounted all the time, but ejecting the floppies anyway. Is it safe to just leave it alone and eject floppies whether it is unmounted or not? Or, is there some way I can fix this? You have done your homework well. Until the arrival of a (functional) supermount exactly that was the gospel. My Mandrake 10.0 Community install does have some problems in its current state, and I have been hearing that other people have the same problems and will, hopefully, be fixed when the 'Official' release is out. However, as it is, Mandrake 10.0 beats anything else I have tried, including other distros, and I ain't going back to Windoze Ian MacGregor The Official release is out. Of course there are problems. Consider the huge variations in hardware combinations and it would be a miracle if Mandrake (or any other OS) installed without a hiccup somewhere. But that's what this list is for (amongst others). Welcome to the free community ! Kaj Haulrich. -- - Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Re: Floppy problem
Yes, but the floppy formatter doesn't work while the floppy drive is mounted. How do I format floppies? Besides booting with a LiveCD (Knoppix) and using their format floppy tool. On Wednesday 14 April 2004 6:26 pm, Kaj Haulrich wrote: On Thursday 15 April 2004 01:28, Ian MacGregor wrote: snip 2. Is there any way to disable supermount? If so, how and where? /snip You can do it by editing (as root) /etc/fstab. But why ? Until a few months ago supermount was a pain in the ass and we all had to disable it, meaning we had to mount everything manually, such as floppies, CD's, USB devices (cameras and such) and one thing and another. Those were the good old days. We were in control. Nowadays, it's different : supermount is an approximation to the dumbded-down attitude of a very inferior operating system that assumes everyone to be an idiot. The beauty of linux is, however : YOU are in control. You can choose to mount whatever filesystem to your hearts content. Be it a network, a CD, a floppy or whatever. Supermount is OK now. But if you want to be in control, having the conn, decide for yourself and feel good, disable it. Just my opinion. Kaj Haulrich. -- - Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Re: Floppy problem
snip Supermount is OK now. But if you want to be in control, having the conn, decide for yourself and feel good, disable i /snip I did disable it, and my system would not boot at all. I had to boot from a LiveCD and delete fstab and mtab and replace them with the old copies I made before I made any changes to them. Thank God I always make backups of files before tinkering with them. Everyone should have a copy of a LiveCD. AlmostFreeLinux.com has MandrakeMove LiveCD for, I think, $5.00 - this really saved my ass. On Wednesday 14 April 2004 6:26 pm, Kaj Haulrich wrote: On Thursday 15 April 2004 01:28, Ian MacGregor wrote: snip 2. Is there any way to disable supermount? If so, how and where? /snip You can do it by editing (as root) /etc/fstab. But why ? Until a few months ago supermount was a pain in the ass and we all had to disable it, meaning we had to mount everything manually, such as floppies, CD's, USB devices (cameras and such) and one thing and another. Those were the good old days. We were in control. Nowadays, it's different : supermount is an approximation to the dumbded-down attitude of a very inferior operating system that assumes everyone to be an idiot. The beauty of linux is, however : YOU are in control. You can choose to mount whatever filesystem to your hearts content. Be it a network, a CD, a floppy or whatever. Supermount is OK now. But if you want to be in control, having the conn, decide for yourself and feel good, disable it. Just my opinion. Kaj Haulrich. -- - Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Re: Floppy problem
Thank you, this is most helpful :) On Wednesday 14 April 2004 6:59 pm, Kaj Haulrich wrote: On Thursday 15 April 2004 03:42, Ian MacGregor wrote: snip Yes, but the floppy formatter doesn't work while the floppy drive is mounted. How do I format floppies? Besides booting with a LiveCD (Knoppix) and using their format floppy tool. /snip You cannot format anything mounted. Mounted means that a filesystem is active. If you want to format a floppy, umount it first. To do so, in a terminal (as root) type : umount /mnt/floppy. Then, you can format it to whatever filesystem you want. If I remember correctly there is an option in KDE : System -- Configuration -- Hardware -- Floppy Formatter. Or some such. Linux is about discovery. Eventually, if you are totally lost, type : man fdformat. HTH Kaj Haulrich. -- - Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Re: Floppy problem
Here's a tip: Don't recompile your kernel unless you know what you're doing. Oh well, a complete re-install only takes an hour :) Live and learn... I guess. On Wednesday 14 April 2004 7:12 pm, Kaj Haulrich wrote: On Thursday 15 April 2004 03:46, Ian MacGregor wrote: snip Supermount is OK now. But if you want to be in control, having the conn, decide for yourself and feel good, disable i /snip I did disable it, and my system would not boot at all. I had to boot from a LiveCD and delete fstab and mtab and replace them with the old copies I made before I made any changes to them. Thank God I always make backups of files before tinkering with them. Everyone should have a copy of a LiveCD. /snip Good heavens, Ian - How did you disable supermount ??? Never in my days, since 7.0, did I have to reboot, so I'm just curious ? -- How did you do it ??? Kaj Haulrich. -- - Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] pw prompt/sudo
Hi, I am running Mandrake 10.0 Community and ran into the same problem. I found a solution that, maybe, can help you as well. I am not familiar with Mandrake 9.2, but, maybe this can help. Click Menu-System-Configuration-Configure your computer. You will asked for the root account password, enter it, and the drakconf window (Mandrake Conrol Center) will be displayed. Choose 'Security' and then 'Levels and Checks'. You will be met with a window that has some tabs. Check that the correct settings are set for ALL these tabs. I found that Mandrake had higher security than I was used to in Fedora Core and some of these settings would not allow me to run certain programs. After adjusting these settings, I could run all my programs. I felt good about Mandrake's security. Much better than any other distro I had used. Hope this works for you. Regards, Ian MacGregor On Tuesday 13 April 2004 7:39 pm, Steve Hammond wrote: Hmmm Got a new harddrive, reinstalled Mandrake 9.2use GNOME, have a good idea of what i'm doing during install so I don't think i did anything drastically different from previous ones. However, since install, over half of my applications/launchers/etc can't be run as any user outside of root. plus, instead of just prompting me for root pws on applicable stuff, i.e. rpmdrake, harddrake, and the like, it just pops a window on me quoting insufficient rights. I thought this might have something to do with sudo (not too familiar with the program, it's just that it was suggested on a linuxhelp channel. I wasn't really sure where to start with sudo (except that I knew I had it), so I tried removing it and then recompiling it. As far as I know, it got reinstalled properly, but did nothing to change my situation. I'm thinking this lack of access to half my launchers is the reason why i can't get anything on my menu unless i recompile them. Thanks in advance, -stv _ Tax headache? MSN Money provides relief with tax tips, tools, IRS forms and more! http://moneycentral.msn.com/tax/workshop/welcome.asp -- MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] MK 10 and Windows dual boot solved + partition?
I have a 9 GB hard drive and installed almost everything in Mandrake 10.0 and am still only using half of my partition. That should give you an idea of how much HD space to dedicate to a Linux partition. It will really depend on how much you will fill up with personal files. I don't know much about WindowsXP, but, I just accepted the default partitioning that MK 10.0 offered and am very happy. I have Red Hat Fedora Core 1 and Mandrake 10.0 in a dual boot setup. On Tuesday 13 April 2004 7:56 pm, Laura Callier wrote: This is advice I'll certainly use. I just started to work with 10.0. I may want to partition my compter, and run xp and mandrake. I suppose I could get Knoppix...also, from what you say, I could use any other distro to set up a partition. I think I have a xandros and a fedora disc. I do have a question about partitioning. If I decide to dual boot with xp and mandrake, is there a particular size of partition that I should manke for mandrake, or should I just follow the recommended partition of the other linux distro I'll be using for the partitioning? Laura - Original Message - From: josh [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2004 6:11 PM Subject: Re: [newbie] MK 10 and Windows dual boot solved On Tue, 2004-04-13 at 09:18, Owain Sutton wrote: I found the answer to the problem I was having a few days ago, installing Mandrake 10 alongside XP. It appears there's a problem with the partitioner in the Mandrake setup, which damages the existing FAT. This explains why it was impossible to recover the XP install. The workaround is simple - boot off any other Linux distro, set up your partitions there, quit and start the Mandrake install. I had the same problem, came up with the same solution. Happened to me on a machine that was dual booting, and one that was only linux. It seems that the partitioner has a problem reading some types of drives/setups. Knoppix was my friend on both of those occasions. --- - Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com -- MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
