Re: [newbie] Mandrake_Desk (Grrrr!)
On Sunday 26 May 2002 21:25, you wrote: On Sun, 26 May 2002, civileme wrote: Dale Huckeby wrote: I appreciate the thought, but no, it doesn't. I'm NOT having trouble installing KDE all by myself, or Gnome either, for that matter. I've installed 7.2 dozens of times and 8.1 four or five. The problem is the way Mandrake 8.1 tries to take over the desktop. With 7.2, in Gnome, I could drag and drop icons from the menus to the desktop, a very nice feature. With 8.1 I can't. When it loads I can see the blue background screen, then my wallpaper covers it, then another blue screen covers that, then my wallpaper again covers the whole mess, this time with the Mandrake icons rather than the ones I'm used to. And these icons can't be changed, at least not by the methods I'm used to, nor can I drag and drop from the menus. I'm assuming, perhaps erroneously, that the difference between this and the previous behavior is the Mandrake_Desk package, which didn't exist in 7.2. There are other aggravations, too, but I'll spare you. Ummm, remember what happens in 7.2 if you open some GNOME programs under KDE??? You watch GNOME icons invade your desktop! In 8.0 that was resolved, (almost) but opening Nautilus and calling for help from WM or KDE again caused the invasion (OK if you did not invoke help) Hmmm. Your experience is vaster than mine (and I don't use KDE that much). I wasn't aware of these interesting behaviors. But you can run without Mandrake Desk if you want, and you can use the local menu editors, too (just NEVER use the Mandrake one). The operative command is urpme mandrake_desk It will likely take the Mandrake icons with it, but if it does not, you can delete them and they won't come back. I might try that, just out of curiosity. If necessary, how do I restore it if I want to? I realize, of course, I could just delete the relevant files in my home directory and start over. Also, why do you say NEVER use the Mandrake menu editor? I *have* used it, although I haven't always been happy with the results. Thanks, Dale This may not be relevant but I will add my penny's worth of experience with LM installs and desktops. I have had LM's 7.0, 7.2, 8.1, and now 8.2 in the last couple of years ,nothing with 7.0 and 7.2,but with LM 8.1 + 8.2 I have never experienced anything quite as strange as previously described, but , I have to say that from time to time , perhaps 1 in 15 boot ups to desktop you arrive to find your customary tidy arrangement in Icons spread all over the desktop in one enormous chaotic jumble. You have to start again, and reboot. Sometimes you cannot move the icons back to order, every time you try to do so the icon in question merely flies back to whereever it wants to as soon as you let go of the hold . I then have to reboot , it usually clears that problem , but the icons have learnt a new chaotic jumble and then have to be reordered, and yet another reboot to fix things in place again. I have never experienced unknown icons appearing, though. John -- John Richard Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake_Desk (Grrrr!)
On Sat, 25 May 2002 23:13:18 -0700, shane [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ah i see, you want the minimul thing. i got ya now! i agree, nautilus is a pig (and i am a bloated kde user most of the time!) i do think that is partly gnome, but i see you point. GNOME is much faster if you turn Nautilus off. You can use GMC instead, or just have nothing at all (if you don't mind having a bare desktop). -- Sridhar Dhanapalan Before you complain to us about how this stupid game won't just install and run the way you're used to, please bear in mind that we have been seeing a strong correlation between use of abusive or indecent language in complaints, and use of the MS Windows platform. -- From the Freeciv FAQ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake_Desk (Grrrr!)
Dale Huckeby wrote: On Sat, 25 May 2002, Damian G wrote: On Sat, 25 May 2002 11:22:06 -0500 (CDT) Dale Huckeby [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is my first post to the list. Can anyone tell me how to install Gnome and Kde, but especially Gnome, without having Mandrake_Desk shoved down my throat. I can't even install Midnight Commander without it, for Chrissakes! This is for 8.1. If I can't get my desktop to be MY desktop, I'm going back to 7.2, which unlike 8.1 is lean and mean, or to another distro. Thanks, Dale Huckeby mandrake desk? wth are you talking about? if you are having a lot of trouble installing KDE by yourself ( BTW there are howto's Everywhere! try any mandrake related site...), try booting the installation CD, make no changes to the filesystems, choose only KDE and GNOME related packages, and install... HTH I appreciate the thought, but no, it doesn't. I'm NOT having trouble installing KDE all by myself, or Gnome either, for that matter. I've installed 7.2 dozens of times and 8.1 four or five. The problem is the way Mandrake 8.1 tries to take over the desktop. With 7.2, in Gnome, I could drag and drop icons from the menus to the desktop, a very nice feature. With 8.1 I can't. When it loads I can see the blue background screen, then my wallpaper covers it, then another blue screen covers that, then my wallpaper again covers the whole mess, this time with the Mandrake icons rather than the ones I'm used to. And these icons can't be changed, at least not by the methods I'm used to, nor can I drag and drop from the menus. I'm assuming, perhaps erroneously, that the difference between this and the previous behavior is the Mandrake_Desk package, which didn't exist in 7.2. There are other aggravations, too, but I'll spare you. Regards, Dale Huckeby Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Ummm, remember what happens in 7.2 if you open some GNOME programs under KDE??? You watch GNOME icons invade your desktop! In 8.0 that was resolved, (almost) but opening Nautilus and calling for help from WM or KDE again caused the invasion (OK if you did not invoke help) But you can run without Mandrake Desk if you want, and you can use the local menu editors, too (just NEVER use the Mandrake one). The operative command is urpme mandrake_desk It will likely take the Mandrake icons with it, but if it does not, you can delete them and they won;'t come back. Civileme Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake_Desk (Grrrr!)
On Sunday 26 May 2002 03:29, Dale Huckeby wrote: On Sat, 25 May 2002, shane wrote: On Saturday 25 May 2002 09:22 am, Dale Huckeby opened a general hailing frequency and transmitted to all open stations: This is my first post to the list. Can anyone tell me how to install Gnome and Kde, but especially Gnome, without having Mandrake_Desk shoved down my throat. I can't even install Midnight Commander without it, for Chrissakes! This is for 8.1. If I can't get my desktop to be MY desktop, I'm going back to 7.2, which unlike 8.1 is lean and mean, or to another distro. As others have pointed out, 7.2 was a classic, but I'd still consider going forward rather than back, as a lot of apps now need libraries which aren't in 7.2, and updating libraries piecemeal is usually more trouble than it's worth. addition to MS's outrageous corporate behavior, I got tired of having my software dictate to me. Well, 8.1 is getting uncomfortably close to that same sort of behavior. It's buggy, it's bloated, it's slow, and it's too inclined to take me, the user, by the hand because it knows so much better than me what's good for me. Just my subjective impression, of course. That's why I'm seriously considering going back to 7.2, or even Redhat (again), or SUSE, or Slackware, or even Debian. I have to say I didn't like 8.1 much - I have it at work (I'm waiting for the university to mirror 8.2, as this box doesn't have a CDROM drive). The bugs were less Mandrake's fault as a number of problematic software versions coming together in a kind of negative symbiosis (supermount was a case in point). 8.2 is pretty good - I'm using it at home but with the 8.0 kernel. GNOME/sawfish displays some of the silly behaviour with backgrounds you described, but there's probably a way round it - I couldn't be bothered because I was only trying GNOME out of curiosity. KDE 2.2.2 is fine. I've just installed KDE 3.0 into /opt and it also seems to be playing nice, apart from the known bug with Konsole and Kicker. It even saved my old KDE icons and backgrounds. I'll upgrade it to 3.0.1 when the /opt version comes out (installing over 2.2.2 was a disaster - I had to uninstall it and reinstall 2.2.2). In short, like others here, I'd recommend an upgrade rather than a downgrade. The download set is, if nothing else, a cheap and convenient way of getting a lot of new software. Sir Robin -- The reason we come up with new versions is not to fix bugs. It's absolutely not. It's the stupidest reason to buy a new version I ever heard. - Bill Gates Robin Turner IDMYO, Bilkent Universitesi Ankara 06533 Turkey http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake_Desk (Grrrr!)
Dale Huckeby wrote: On Sat, 25 May 2002, shane wrote: On Saturday 25 May 2002 09:22 am, Dale Huckeby opened a general hailing frequency and transmitted to all open stations: This is my first post to the list. Can anyone tell me how to install Gnome and Kde, but especially Gnome, without having Mandrake_Desk shoved down my throat. I can't even install Midnight Commander without it, for Chrissakes! This is for 8.1. If I can't get my desktop to be MY desktop, I'm going back to 7.2, which unlike 8.1 is lean and mean, or to another distro. if by mandrake_desk you mean the rpm, well it is only some icons and backgrounds. don't use them, choose other theme/styles, delete the mandrake shortcuts, whatever. but 800k of icons and backgrounds seems like a poor reason to go back a few versions to me. If it's only some icons and backgrounds, why does Mandrake threaten to uncheck so many other packages, such as GMC and MC, when I uncheck it? It's not just 800k of icons and backgrounds. It's an overall difference in behavior between 7.2 and 8.1. With 7.2 I type in my userid, then my password (at the console), and Bam!, I have a prompt. With 8.1 it takes about 10 seconds. With 7.2, in Gnome, I can put in one of the install CDs, double-click on the CD icon, and GMC pops up and in very short order I can browse RPMs. In 8.1 the same actions bring up Nautilus, which is a bloated pig of a program, and I wait and wait while it loads the same info in about three times the time it takes GMC. Granted, this is Gnome rather than Mandrake per se, but this graphics intensive, take the poor dumb user by the hand attitude seems to permeate the latest version. Dale...I hear what you're saying here, however, had you taken a few extra minutes during the install to carefully inspect the packages available for the install you'd notice that many, if not all of the programs you've come to appreciate in 7.2 are available for an 8.1 or 8.2 install. There are just changing default programs that are being used for the newer version. As for the take the poor dumb user by the hand attitude seems to permeate the latest version thing you mention is the MandrakeSoft response to a great many new Mandrake users coming from the windows environment. People have been asking for a more intutive install. MandrakeSoft, seeking to satisfy the greatest amount of people with what the thought according to the people's choices, were the best and most wanted choices to populate a default install item list. As always, with Linux and especially Mandrake Linux, the users get what they ask for. Moreover the choices that are offered are Still THE best in all the land. I've got a Windows XP installation that I'm quite impressed with and happy with. I've got scads of boxes running Mandrake Linux that absolutely RULE the roost and one Redhat 7.3 install that I really don't care for. While attempting to configure this new RH install I found that many of the old config tools simply aren't there any more in RH. Very disappointing - back in 1997 I started out the RedHat 5.2 ( After Mandrake there just isn't anything to compare in my opinion ) If I come across as scolding I really don't mean to. All I mean to say is that if one takes the time to search out and make the choices that suit them they really can have the best of all worlds with Mandrake. Mark Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake_Desk (Grrrr!), OT to KDE3 users Robin
On Mon, 2002-05-27 at 00:45, FemmeFatale wrote: Robin Turner wrote: I've just installed KDE 3.0 into /opt and it also seems to be playing nice, apart from the known bug with Konsole and Kicker. It even saved my old KDE icons and backgrounds. I'll upgrade it to 3.0.1 when the /opt version comes out (installing over 2.2.2 was a disaster - I had to uninstall it and reinstall 2.2.2). Sir Robin If I may make an aside Robin, 3.01 is out afaik. Saw an announcement on it the other day on a linux news site. Is that the normal, install-over-everything KDE, or the promised install-discreetly-into-/opt KDE? Sir Robin Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake_Desk (Grrrr!), OT to KDE3 users Robin
On 27 May 2002 01:48:29 +0300 Robin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is that the normal, install-over-everything KDE, or the promised install-discreetly-into-/opt KDE? It the install over everything. Mandrake is Supposed to release a 3.0.1 for 8.2 that Will install in /opt. Sorry but I do not have any time-frame Charles Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake_Desk (Grrrr!)
On Sun, 26 May 2002 15:17:52 -0500 (CDT), Dale Huckeby [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: KDE is cool is some ways. Multiple wallpapers for multiple virtual desktops is a kick! This is a window manager dependent feature. Sawfish, GNOME's default WM, likes to leave such 'unnecessary' features to external programmes (e.g. GNOME). You can either find an app which will allow you to do this, or you can change your window manager. For example, Enlightenment can do this. -- Sridhar Dhanapalan What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy? -- Mohandas Gandhi Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake_Desk (Grrrr!)
On Sat, 25 May 2002 11:22:06 -0500 (CDT) Dale Huckeby [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is my first post to the list. Can anyone tell me how to install Gnome and Kde, but especially Gnome, without having Mandrake_Desk shoved down my throat. I can't even install Midnight Commander without it, for Chrissakes! This is for 8.1. If I can't get my desktop to be MY desktop, I'm going back to 7.2, which unlike 8.1 is lean and mean, or to another distro. Thanks, Dale Huckeby mandrake desk? wth are you talking about? if you are having a lot of trouble installing KDE by yourself ( BTW there are howto's Everywhere! try any mandrake related site...), try booting the installation CD, make no changes to the filesystems, choose only KDE and GNOME related packages, and install... HTH Damian Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake_Desk (Grrrr!)
On Saturday 25 May 2002 09:22 am, Dale Huckeby opened a general hailing frequency and transmitted to all open stations: This is my first post to the list. Can anyone tell me how to install Gnome and Kde, but especially Gnome, without having Mandrake_Desk shoved down my throat. I can't even install Midnight Commander without it, for Chrissakes! This is for 8.1. If I can't get my desktop to be MY desktop, I'm going back to 7.2, which unlike 8.1 is lean and mean, or to another distro. if by mandrake_desk you mean the rpm, well it is only some icons and backgrounds. don't use them, choose other theme/styles, delete the mandrake shortcuts, whatever. but 800k of icons and backgrounds seems like a poor reason to go back a few versions to me. -- one mans theology is anothers belly laugh -heinlein shane Profile at: http://dmoz.org/profiles/shen.html Proud to be a DMOZ editor since 10-98 Mandrake Users Club Member http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/club/ Registered linux user #101606 http://counter.li.org/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake_Desk (Grrrr!)
On Sat, 25 May 2002, Damian G wrote: On Sat, 25 May 2002 11:22:06 -0500 (CDT) Dale Huckeby [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is my first post to the list. Can anyone tell me how to install Gnome and Kde, but especially Gnome, without having Mandrake_Desk shoved down my throat. I can't even install Midnight Commander without it, for Chrissakes! This is for 8.1. If I can't get my desktop to be MY desktop, I'm going back to 7.2, which unlike 8.1 is lean and mean, or to another distro. Thanks, Dale Huckeby mandrake desk? wth are you talking about? if you are having a lot of trouble installing KDE by yourself ( BTW there are howto's Everywhere! try any mandrake related site...), try booting the installation CD, make no changes to the filesystems, choose only KDE and GNOME related packages, and install... HTH I appreciate the thought, but no, it doesn't. I'm NOT having trouble installing KDE all by myself, or Gnome either, for that matter. I've installed 7.2 dozens of times and 8.1 four or five. The problem is the way Mandrake 8.1 tries to take over the desktop. With 7.2, in Gnome, I could drag and drop icons from the menus to the desktop, a very nice feature. With 8.1 I can't. When it loads I can see the blue background screen, then my wallpaper covers it, then another blue screen covers that, then my wallpaper again covers the whole mess, this time with the Mandrake icons rather than the ones I'm used to. And these icons can't be changed, at least not by the methods I'm used to, nor can I drag and drop from the menus. I'm assuming, perhaps erroneously, that the difference between this and the previous behavior is the Mandrake_Desk package, which didn't exist in 7.2. There are other aggravations, too, but I'll spare you. Regards, Dale Huckeby Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake_Desk (Grrrr!)
On Sat, 25 May 2002, Dale Huckeby wrote: On Sat, 25 May 2002, Damian G wrote: On Sat, 25 May 2002 11:22:06 -0500 (CDT) Dale Huckeby [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is my first post to the list. Can anyone tell me how to install Gnome and Kde, but especially Gnome, without having Mandrake_Desk shoved down my throat. I can't even install Midnight Commander without it, for Chrissakes! This is for 8.1. If I can't get my desktop to be MY desktop, I'm going back to 7.2, which unlike 8.1 is lean and mean, or to another distro. Thanks, Dale Huckeby mandrake desk? wth are you talking about? if you are having a lot of trouble installing KDE by yourself ( BTW there are howto's Everywhere! try any mandrake related site...), try booting the installation CD, make no changes to the filesystems, choose only KDE and GNOME related packages, and install... HTH I appreciate the thought, but no, it doesn't. I'm NOT having trouble installing KDE all by myself, or Gnome either, for that matter. I've installed 7.2 dozens of times and 8.1 four or five. The problem is the way Mandrake 8.1 tries to take over the desktop. With 7.2, in Gnome, I could drag and drop icons from the menus to the desktop, a very nice feature. With 8.1 I can't. When it loads I can see the blue background screen, then my wallpaper covers it, then another blue screen covers that, then my wallpaper again covers the whole mess, this time with the Mandrake icons rather than the ones I'm used to. And these icons can't be changed, at least not by the methods I'm used to, nor can I drag and drop from the menus. I'm assuming, perhaps erroneously, that the difference between this and the previous behavior is the Mandrake_Desk package, which didn't exist in 7.2. There are other aggravations, too, but I'll spare you. Regards, Dale Huckeby Have you thought about trying 8.2? Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake_Desk (Grrrr!)
On Sun, 26 May 2002 05:02, Damian G wrote: On Sat, 25 May 2002 11:22:06 -0500 (CDT) Dale Huckeby [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is my first post to the list. Can anyone tell me how to install Gnome and Kde, but especially Gnome, without having Mandrake_Desk shoved down my throat. I can't even install Midnight Commander without it, for Chrissakes! This is for 8.1. If I can't get my desktop to be MY desktop, I'm going back to 7.2, which unlike 8.1 is lean and mean, or to another distro. Thanks, Dale Huckeby mandrake desk? wth are you talking about? if you are having a lot of trouble installing KDE by yourself ( BTW there are howto's Everywhere! try any mandrake related site...), try booting the installation CD, make no changes to the filesystems, choose only KDE and GNOME related packages, and install... HTH Damian If you are talking about the background image then replace it. For KDE: Control Centre Look 'n' feel Backgrounds. If you are talking about the icons then right click on them and delete them. If it is a popup welcome window there may be a checkbox on it to prevent it coming up. P*ssed off attitudes usually draw p*ssed on replies Dale. It is worse when nobody understands what you are talking about. -- Michael Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake_Desk (Grrrr!)
On Sat, 25 May 2002, shane wrote: On Saturday 25 May 2002 09:22 am, Dale Huckeby opened a general hailing frequency and transmitted to all open stations: This is my first post to the list. Can anyone tell me how to install Gnome and Kde, but especially Gnome, without having Mandrake_Desk shoved down my throat. I can't even install Midnight Commander without it, for Chrissakes! This is for 8.1. If I can't get my desktop to be MY desktop, I'm going back to 7.2, which unlike 8.1 is lean and mean, or to another distro. if by mandrake_desk you mean the rpm, well it is only some icons and backgrounds. don't use them, choose other theme/styles, delete the mandrake shortcuts, whatever. but 800k of icons and backgrounds seems like a poor reason to go back a few versions to me. If it's only some icons and backgrounds, why does Mandrake threaten to uncheck so many other packages, such as GMC and MC, when I uncheck it? It's not just 800k of icons and backgrounds. It's an overall difference in behavior between 7.2 and 8.1. With 7.2 I type in my userid, then my password (at the console), and Bam!, I have a prompt. With 8.1 it takes about 10 seconds. With 7.2, in Gnome, I can put in one of the install CDs, double-click on the CD icon, and GMC pops up and in very short order I can browse RPMs. In 8.1 the same actions bring up Nautilus, which is a bloated pig of a program, and I wait and wait while it loads the same info in about three times the time it takes GMC. Granted, this is Gnome rather than Mandrake per se, but this graphics intensive, take the poor dumb user by the hand attitude seems to permeate the latest version. In 7.2, for instance, if I wanted to run a program that needed root permission while in a GUI as user, up pops a window that lets me type in root's password, then the program itself comes up. Now, after I type in root's password, nothing happens, so I have to exit the GUI, type, say, xinit /usr/bin/startgnome from a root console, then watch the GUI scold me for running it in root as I do what I tried to do unsuccessfully from the user GUI. Can you spell b-u-g? Don't get me wrong. I have used and loved Mandrake for several years. And I appreciate that one of the 8.1 wizards was able to recognize that my new ISP (I just moved cross-country) required a PAP login with the password twice, not once, something tech help (We don't support Linux) was too incompetent to tell me, and thus got the connection going. But Mandrake_Desk, if that's the package that's doing it, interposes an extra layer of control over the desktop, giving me the icons IT wants me to have and taking away some of the functionality I had in 7.2. The reason I abandoned Microshaft several years ago in the first place was that, in addition to MS's outrageous corporate behavior, I got tired of having my software dictate to me. Well, 8.1 is getting uncomfortably close to that same sort of behavior. It's buggy, it's bloated, it's slow, and it's too inclined to take me, the user, by the hand because it knows so much better than me what's good for me. Just my subjective impression, of course. That's why I'm seriously considering going back to 7.2, or even Redhat (again), or SUSE, or Slackware, or even Debian. Dale Huckeby ps. I'm also thinking of reinstalling 7.2, and then upgrading specific packages, such as replacing the older Gnome with 1.4. But the point is, I want *only* Gnome 1.4, without Mandrake's own desktop aps trying to run the show. The problem with this is the (shudder) download time over a dialup connection. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake_Desk (Grrrr!)
On Sat, 25 May 2002, Roger Sherman wrote: On Sat, 25 May 2002, Dale Huckeby wrote: On Sat, 25 May 2002, Damian G wrote: On Sat, 25 May 2002 11:22:06 -0500 (CDT) Dale Huckeby [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is my first post to the list. Can anyone tell me how to install Gnome and Kde, but especially Gnome, without having Mandrake_Desk shoved down my throat. I can't even install Midnight Commander without it, for Chrissakes! This is for 8.1. If I can't get my desktop to be MY desktop, I'm going back to 7.2, which unlike 8.1 is lean and mean, or to another distro. Thanks, Dale Huckeby mandrake desk? wth are you talking about? if you are having a lot of trouble installing KDE by yourself ( BTW there are howto's Everywhere! try any mandrake related site...), try booting the installation CD, make no changes to the filesystems, choose only KDE and GNOME related packages, and install... HTH I appreciate the thought, but no, it doesn't. I'm NOT having trouble installing KDE all by myself, or Gnome either, for that matter. I've installed 7.2 dozens of times and 8.1 four or five. The problem is the way Mandrake 8.1 tries to take over the desktop. With 7.2, in Gnome, I could drag and drop icons from the menus to the desktop, a very nice feature. With 8.1 I can't. When it loads I can see the blue background screen, then my wallpaper covers it, then another blue screen covers that, then my wallpaper again covers the whole mess, this time with the Mandrake icons rather than the ones I'm used to. And these icons can't be changed, at least not by the methods I'm used to, nor can I drag and drop from the menus. I'm assuming, perhaps erroneously, that the difference between this and the previous behavior is the Mandrake_Desk package, which didn't exist in 7.2. There are other aggravations, too, but I'll spare you. Regards, Dale Huckeby Have you thought about trying 8.2? I bought the 7.2 powerpack several years ago. I turned my daughter and son-in-law on to Linux, they bought the 8.1 poerpack, and I burned copies and installed from that. But having just moved and not having a job yet, I don't have the wherewithall to buy 8.2, and I'm a little chary of the download time and possible difficulties in upgrading to 8.2. But yes, it's still an option that I should consider. Thanks for mentioning it. I hope it fixes some of 8.1's bugs, such as refusing to give me the console resolution I ask for during setup, or even by editing the relevant GRUB file in the /boot directory. If I want 80 by 23, I can only get it by using the nonfb image. Thanks, Dale Huckeby Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake_Desk (Grrrr!)
On Sat, 25 May 2002, Dale Huckeby wrote: Have you thought about trying 8.2? I bought the 7.2 powerpack several years ago. I turned my daughter and son-in-law on to Linux, they bought the 8.1 poerpack, and I burned copies and installed from that. But having just moved and not having a job yet, I don't have the wherewithall to buy 8.2, and I'm a little chary of the download time and possible difficulties in upgrading to 8.2. But yes, it's still an option that I should consider. Thanks for mentioning it. I hope it fixes some of 8.1's bugs, such as refusing to give me the console resolution I ask for during setup, or even by editing the relevant GRUB file in the /boot directory. If I want 80 by 23, I can only get it by using the nonfb image. Another option would be to buy it from Cheapbytes, or some other place like that...you just get the download disks, but it only costs about $5. Judging from another one of your posts, I really think you'll like 8.2 a lot better - I think it's the first Mandrake version to wrest the title of Best Ever Mandrake from 7.2. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake_Desk (Grrrr!)
On Saturday 25 May 2002 05:29 pm, Dale Huckeby opened a general hailing frequency and transmitted to all open stations: If it's only some icons and backgrounds, why does Mandrake threaten to uncheck so many other packages, such as GMC and MC, when I uncheck it? It's not just 800k of icons and backgrounds. It's an overall difference in behavior between 7.2 and 8.1. With 7.2 I type in my userid, then my password (at the console), and Bam!, I have a prompt. With 8.1 it takes about 10 seconds. With 7.2, in Gnome, I can put in one of the install CDs, double-click on the CD icon, and GMC pops up and in very short order I can browse RPMs. In 8.1 the same actions bring up Nautilus, which is a bloated pig of a program, and I wait and wait while it loads the same info in about three times the time it takes GMC. Granted, this is Gnome rather than Mandrake per se, but this graphics intensive, take the poor dumb user by the hand attitude seems to permeate the latest version. ah i see, you want the minimul thing. i got ya now! i agree, nautilus is a pig (and i am a bloated kde user most of the time!) i do think that is partly gnome, but i see you point. In 7.2, for instance, if I wanted to run a program that needed root permission while in a GUI as user, up pops a window that lets me type in root's password, then the program itself comes up. Now, after I type in root's password, that sounds like perhaps a missing suid or some such. i haven't had that trouble in any version. The reason I abandoned Microshaft several years ago in the first place was that, in addition to MS's outrageous corporate behavior, I got tired of having my software dictate to me. agree there! though the wizards are getting close to out-o-control there are signs they are getting smarter. it is nice to see the kde wizard want to walk me through everything first boot, but still include the cancel button -- We know what we are, but not what we may become -William Shakespeare shane Profile at: http://dmoz.org/profiles/shen.html Proud to be a DMOZ editor since 10-98 Mandrake Users Club Member http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/club/ Registered linux user #101606 http://counter.li.org/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
