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Re: Suse 10.0 (Bob Dove)
by Peter 03 Dec '05

03 Dec '05

We've been using Suse 9.2 and 9.3 for the last year or so, and also Mandriva - 10.2, 2005 and now 2006. I do find Suse much less usable and much flakier. We are both using Gnome, so the differences are very very clear. The detection of usb peripherals isn't reliable. On Mandriva, you plug in and there they are on the desktop. On Suse, they may or may not be depending on how long you wait and what they are. My flash card reader mostly works, depending on what is in it. My USB pen drive never. On Mandriva, I have never had a partition fail to mount at startup. On Suse (9.2) one partition, a whole disk actually, simply vanished for no apparent reason. Upgraded to 9.3 and back it came. On Mandriva, the interface in either Gnome or KDE seems reasonably laid out. The default version of KDE on all of the Suses seems to have been designed by someone trying to make it look unusable. Then there is package installation. Urpmi really works quite well. YaST has you making pencil notes of whatever else you need to get as a dependency, then its dependencies, and I have actually found myself going around in circles - A requires B which requires A. My impression is that Suse comes with a less complete set of the libraries you need for adding more packages. Yes, you can install apt-rpm and edit the repositories. On Mandriva you don't really need to. Then there are the weirdnesses. Install Sylpheed, get through the dependencies (apt-rpm is essential if you are not to be driven mad by this) and the interface is simply weird - proliferation of folders as a default for instance, terrible fonts, compared to a nice clean look on Mandriva. The file manager - I cannot for the life of me figure out why sometimes when you are looking at a folder of photos, you seem to open in EOG and at other times in some kind of viewer with editing capabilities. And why has the zooming scroll wheel suddenly stopped working? Bottom line: your failing installation is a Message from Above. Someone is saying to you, You Do Not Want This Installation. Get Mandriva 2006 instead! It should have been right there on the stand. If they are out now, I'll copy one for you if you like. If you download the free CDs, you need to use the Mandriva admin centre and then add the official and contribution repositories, but it will lead you through that. You can also install over the net using one of the boot disks. I've done both, on different machines, and found either completely painless. Good luck Peter

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Re: Another newbie joins
by Phil Wade 03 Dec '05

03 Dec '05

> Not quite as old as I am, I beat you by a year, and my computing career > started long before yours - I've earned my keep by programming since > around 1970. Oh dear, does that mean I've let in a goal or something? Do we get to play again? Anyway, I'll bet my dad can beat your dad... :) -- Phil Wade

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Rant from Japan: Linux must give cost-effective performance in business world, surely?
by Tatsuhiko Maegawa 03 Dec '05

03 Dec '05

Rant from Japan My heartfelt thanks first goes to Mark Rey, Paul Russell and Andrew Savory there in Norwich. These guys invited me Linux world, when I was a politics student and did not know much about computing world. Without them, I probably have not arrived to the point where I stand now. Six years is long, and I miss them very much. Now that I live back in Japan for in sixth years period, I felt it is good time to reconsider the use of Linux in business world. Over the time I had business with managers and well wishers who want to have system. Many had no idea of computing world like what I used to. All had same thoughts - fast application development with cheap expenses. All agrees that their imaginary system will be beneficial to everyone. No one knows how to use that system - until it gets there. System being made and time elapsed, you talk to the exact same people, and now they are asking to retrieve informations that have not been asked before. Cost adds up, data structures becoming to look complicated, firely arguments opes, and the end seems imminent. But every single person all agree there must be Microsoft Windows. They all believe Bill Gates provide proper system with fault-torelance guaranteed. All simple, all easy, they say. Not quite, I must admit. Nowadays system is made of OS and open-source programming language. Microsoft .Net (VB/C++/MS Java) is the exception of the talk. MacOSX, Linux, NetBSD will be amongst the choice. Linux and RDBMS is having better relations. MySQL and PostgreSQL are certainly the choice. Even Oracle supports it, providing developer chooses right Linux OS. Apart from choosing Oracle and Linux for RDBMS management, first installation and system management should ended up cheaper. FTP version of Linux still allows essentials that require to run. And if I consider the use of softwares to add up on top of OS fee, it could go up higher. Next, key Criteria of cost. These are backup and restoration, execution, and everyday management. Everyday management consists of log checking, patches, and memory usage. Execution is really the speed of application. Backup and restoration can be the most annoying factor of cost, but let me assume of Disk to Disk to Tape backup solution for now. Like the others I agree GUI gives faster setups and visual confirmation for all. BUT when it comes to automation, the story changes slightly. The answer, in my opinion, is that it won't change much. Speed, execution, and all other issues do not change much. Apart from my home servers, why do I still waive the use of Linux at business? Simply there is not much people who have much skills with Linux, and do not know how to use much of it. Adopting Linux requires some skills to teach and acquire. That said ... really? I saw people taking equal amount of time to understand how Windows works before. So why I still be afraid of using Linux? There seems not much answer against the question. Unfortunately I do not have opportunity to run business with Linux and manage with Linux yet. Needs for Linux was way too low six years ago, but now it seems growing. Look at E*Trade, they run application with Linux. Unless customer wish some fancy features of .NET (such as ClickOnce), I think Linux server system should break the cost barrier and usablity a lot more easier than I first expected of. Tatsuhiko Maegawa tatsuhiko(a)jazzman.jp http://blog.jazzman.jp == This is private mail ==

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Mounting drive
by Bob Dove 02 Dec '05

02 Dec '05

Evening all, As a now fully paid up member of the Linux community, my first query is: In Suse 10.0, in media, both my DVD drives appear. One is a DVD ROM, the other a DVD RW. Once, and once only despite it being the drive the system was installed from, the DVD RW won't mount! Now I have discovered Yast which in hardware/CD shows the two drives - twice. Like DVD RW, DVD ROM, DVD ROM, DVD RW. When Yast/CD is opened, neither have mount points. Asking Yast to mount them is done, the message says changes made so I finish. I close Yast, go back to media and only one drive - the DVD ROM - is mounted. Further, my external USB drive is 'locked' if it show which mostly it doesn't. Any suggestions? There also seems to be a number of apps missing; Krita and KOffice for instance. Cheers, BD.

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Suse 10.0
by Bob Dove 02 Dec '05

02 Dec '05

Hi folks, Visited WH last eve, found a couple (well three actually) mags with new Linux distros on the cover. Suse 10.0 and Ubunto 5.10. I bought Linux mag with Suse 10.0 which as I write is half way through a 2 hour 2.5 gB installation. Cover price for Suse £5.99 on DVD, for Ubunto (on 4 cds) £9.99. Did I hear some-one complaining about 'doze bloat? Well, again as I write (her indoors keeps finding jobs for me to do) the installation froze with just 4 mins to go and nothing but nothing would start the machine up again apart from pulling the plug and restarting. 1: "Do you want to install?" 2; "Do you want to update?" Choosing update, the usual questions come up on screen and after a few minutes blank screen and then a red DOS like error message saying errors encountered and back to boot up screen!! I'll report and undoubtedly ask silly questions in due course! Is that another one bites the dust? Cheers, BD.

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Alternatives to TWiki for single user
by Chris Green 02 Dec '05

02 Dec '05

I have installed TWiki on my Linux box and i works well and has got me writing stuff on the web that I'd otherwise not have done. However I suspect that for quite a lot of what I am doing I am going to be the only user so all the 'co-operative' abilities of TWiki are wasted. What I find really useful are the simple ways to enter information into web pages and the simplicity of creating links within the Wiki. Are there any alternatives out there that would be more suited to a single user developing [mostly text] web pages with lots of cross links? I'd like something that can be used remotely via the web but management etc. can be local (even command line). -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Open office peculiarity
by Stuart Bailey 01 Dec '05

01 Dec '05

I have oo 2 (as shipped with SuSE 10) installed on my AMD 64 box (also SuSE 10). I keep my important files on a server, that is mounted using NFS. However, OO crashes whenever I try to access these files. If I copy the files to my local hard disk, they work fine. OO is the only app that seems to have a problem - I can access files for attachment in KMail, accounting files in GnuCash and text files in Kate, vi etc. Has anyone else come across this problem? Many thanks, Stuart. -- --------------------------------------- Stuart Bailey BSc (hons) CEng CITP MBCS LinuSoft (Proprietor) Linux Specialist (01953) 601294 (07778) 383739 http://www.linusoft.co.uk ----------------------------------------

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O/S et al.
by Bob Dove 30 Nov '05

30 Nov '05

Hi Folks, I'm glad some of you are as old as me (if not even older)! My first encounter with a 'pooter was at Dixons (for whom I worked at the time) when a Hungarian whiz kid installed the second photo-business 'pooter in the UK - he had already installed the first in Kodak. Dixons 'pooter was intended to reduce overheads by loosing a lot of stock control staff and reduce the usage of trees. (Stanley Kalms was very young, knew every member of his staff by their Christian names and I've a feeling he was a socialist.) Well, as we all now know, 'pooters don't make work forces smaller or save trees - far from it. However, this 'pooter took up the whole of one floor of Dixon House, comprised of floor to ceiling cabinets with tape drives, was in a dust free environment on a concrete floor floating on a rubber layer (Metallastic?) and was tended by a team of white coated, hatted and slippered persons of greater number than the stock control team! However, this 'pooter could do the weeks business in about an hour and was therefore largely unemployed whereas the white coats had to be kept busy - so young Kalms rented out time on his new toy! Many many years later, a very specialist pro photo dealer ran their whole business on a PCW - which encouraged me to buy one for myself - PCW 8256 with green screen. Now of course the PCW was not a 'real' 'pooter, just an electronic typewriter where you could see your mistakes on screen before committing to paper. So, command line operation in CP/M - easy!!! However, the PCW run company was a competitor and the company that I worked for decided they (or at least the 'financial director') would emulate Dixons and install a mainframe machine - some Swedish company who also make cars and flying machines. This was like the Dixons machine intended for stock control and POS and was linked by landline to Kodak who was a major supplier so they could automatically top our stocks up. Naturally, this was expensive, and didn't reduce our overheads. What it did was to allow 14 digit product codes - and yes, 14 digit codes were used. As most brilliant sales persons are like doctors and can't write, they just couldn't cope with 'one roll of Kodachrome part #12354368700912 £5.98.' Prior to POS, £5.98 would have been rung up in the till, with POS, an invoice had to be written. The invoice set of five copies cost about £1.20 per set. A team had to be employed to check all sales invoices to correct product codes and descriptions and our 'human resources department' had to warn and eventually rid us of dyslexic sales persons. The said HRD discovered they could employ two young diploma'd persons for the same salary as one high flying sales bod and we were soon populated with diploma'd know nothings and without a quality sales force... Needless to say said company no longer exists! However, the local library who then conducted all ins and outs on an Acorn still is. My PCW was up graded (by myself) to 512 - that's 512 kB of RAM. (I know machines prior to the PCW ran three apps on 64 Kb), from a single drive to a twin drive, eventually one 3 in and one of those new 720 kB 3.5 in things and lots of 'dongles' for mouse, scanner &c. Eventually, the Amstrad PC 512C replaced the PCW and this was initially a single drive 5.25 floppy drive machine running Locoscript Pro in a form of DOS which was also fitted with a 3.5 in floppy as drive B. Eventually, a 20 mB 'hard card' drive was fitted - so much power, so much space! What's the minimum space required today? Linux SuSe seems on a 'simple' installation to require close on 1 Gb of HDD space. I don't know what the minimum amount of RAM required is but it runs in 512 mB. The PC 512 still resides in my garage - must get it out and fire it up and see what happens! It was replaced by 386, 486, Pentiums et al, currently AMDs. Incidentally, I have a large quantity of 5.25 floppies to dispose of! And I still have Locoscript Pro on my desktop! Now, is that progress? Cheers, BD.

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[ALUG] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: main Digest, Vol 5, Issue 47#
by Chris Green 29 Nov '05

29 Nov '05

On Tue, Nov 29, 2005 at 09:26:15AM -0000, Peter Onion wrote: > > > > > > > Do you know what a "sub-menu" is ? > > > Do you know how to organize information hierarchically ? > > > > > It's not for me to organise it surely. > > Who else do you expect to do it for you ? You don't seem to like the > default organization provided in your distro, but rather than do something > about it to customize your desk top you choose to bitch about it to the > list. > I don't want anyone to do it for me, I was just saying that menus aren't necessarily the answer. > > If I know the commands I can > > just as easily (and more quickly) type them in at the command line. > > OR you could learn how to customize menus/desktops and make it a "one click" > operation. > For commands that are very infrequently used (but vital) this is overkill to my mind. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: main Digest, Vol 5, Issue 47#
by Chris Green 29 Nov '05

29 Nov '05

On Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 02:05:35PM -0000, Peter Onion wrote: > > > I'm now confused about what point you are trying to make. > > > > > I was simply saying that a menu with twenty or thirty entries is fine, > > and useful, but that one with hundreds of entries isn't useful. > > Do you know what a "sub-menu" is ? > Do you know how to organize information hierarchically ? > It's not for me to organise it surely. If I know the commands I can just as easily (and more quickly) type them in at the command line. > > But you don't need a menu entry for every possible command line you may ever > use. ... but where we came in was - 'how do you find that command you don't know about'. I am suggesting that menus don't really help as they (like icons) are pre-configured and can't cover all the possible commands (not command lines, I mean just the names of the utilities) that are available. What I do is to use 'man -k' when I can't remember what the command to do something is. It's *very* rarely that I will find what I want by searching through menus and just about never by using icons. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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