I have just installed a beta of Mageia 6. In the description online it says that KDE 4.14 can be installed - https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_6_Release_Notes#KDE in the traditional manner but I can't see how I might select it and I don't like Plasma.
I selected KDE out of the three choices - KDE, Gnome or XFCE - when I installed Mageia and I fully expected to see the usual KDE desktop. But I don't.
What do I have to do to make it work please?
On Wed, 1 Jun 2016 11:38:07 +0100 Chris Walker alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk wrote:
I have just installed a beta of Mageia 6. In the description online it says that KDE 4.14 can be installed - https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_6_Release_Notes#KDE in the traditional manner but I can't see how I might select it and I don't like Plasma.
I selected KDE out of the three choices - KDE, Gnome or XFCE - when I installed Mageia and I fully expected to see the usual KDE desktop. But I don't.
What do I have to do to make it work please?
It seems that KDE4.14 stopped being supported in August 2015 and so it looks as though I'm going to have give up on hopes of replacing Plasma with the old style of desktop.
Perhaps I need to start looking elsewhere for a desktop that I like.
On 03/06/16 13:34, Chris Walker wrote:
[SNIP]
Perhaps I need to start looking elsewhere for a desktop that I like.
I've been using Cinnamon (specifically Mint Cinnamon) for a year or two now and love it.
Cheers, Laurie.
On Fri, 3 Jun 2016 14:39:31 +0100 Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com allegedly wrote:
On 03/06/16 13:34, Chris Walker wrote:
[SNIP]
Perhaps I need to start looking elsewhere for a desktop that I like.
I've been using Cinnamon (specifically Mint Cinnamon) for a year or two now and love it.
And I've been using Mate (again on Mint) for some time now having switched from XFCE. But both choices are closer to Gnome than KDE. I confess I never liked KDE in any of its incarnations.
(One point worth bearing in mind is that Mate runs better that Cinnamon on older hardware because it does not need the hardware acceleration that Cinnamon demands.)
Mick
--------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net
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On Fri, 3 Jun 2016 15:40:11 +0100 mick mbm@rlogin.net wrote:
On Fri, 3 Jun 2016 14:39:31 +0100 Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com allegedly wrote:
On 03/06/16 13:34, Chris Walker wrote:
[SNIP]
Perhaps I need to start looking elsewhere for a desktop that I like.
I've been using Cinnamon (specifically Mint Cinnamon) for a year or two now and love it.
And I've been using Mate (again on Mint) for some time now having switched from XFCE. But both choices are closer to Gnome than KDE. I confess I never liked KDE in any of its incarnations.
(One point worth bearing in mind is that Mate runs better that Cinnamon on older hardware because it does not need the hardware acceleration that Cinnamon demands.)
I've installed Mate and it's up and running albeit with a permanent hourglass and I don't know why - I haven't looked at much yet to find out.
I prefer it to Plasma already but I suspect it will take me time to make it work how I want. I don't for example like the way that a terminal window - any window in fact - opens up at the top of the screen and it doesn't seem possible to drag it away from its home.
As for older hardware, the new machine (i.e. not this one) is an i7 running 3.4GHz with 32GB of RAM so I don't think it will be too short of power just yet.
On Sat, 2016-06-04 at 13:03 +0100, Chris Walker wrote:
[snippage]
I've installed Mate and it's up and running albeit with a permanent hourglass and I don't know why - I haven't looked at much yet to find out.
I prefer it to Plasma already but I suspect it will take me time to make it work how I want. I don't for example like the way that a terminal window - any window in fact - opens up at the top of the screen and it doesn't seem possible to drag it away from its home.
Huh? I'm running Mate on Mint 17 and it doesn't behave like that!
On Sat, 04 Jun 2016 13:40:30 +0100 Huge huge@huge.org.uk allegedly wrote:
On Sat, 2016-06-04 at 13:03 +0100, Chris Walker wrote:
[snippage]
I've installed Mate and it's up and running albeit with a permanent hourglass and I don't know why - I haven't looked at much yet to find out.
I prefer it to Plasma already but I suspect it will take me time to make it work how I want. I don't for example like the way that a terminal window - any window in fact - opens up at the top of the screen and it doesn't seem possible to drag it away from its home.
Huh? I'm running Mate on Mint 17 and it doesn't behave like that!
Not for me either.
I suggest Chris takes a look at:
Settings -> preferences -> look&feel -> windows -> placement
and System -> Control Centre - look&feel -> compizconfig settings -> window management
I find Mate quite flexible (without the ludicrous malleability offered by KDE). For example I have panels top and bottom with the top panel giving me the traditional drop down cascading menus on the left, my favourite applications launchers iconised across the middle and the clock/calendar on the right. My bottom panel gives me the workspace switcher, wastebasket, network and audio notifications etc. I also particularly like the caja file manager and the neat way I can connect to network resources over ssh using caja.
Mick
--------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net
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On Sat, 4 Jun 2016 14:13:41 +0100 mick mbm@rlogin.net wrote:
On Sat, 04 Jun 2016 13:40:30 +0100 Huge huge@huge.org.uk allegedly wrote:
On Sat, 2016-06-04 at 13:03 +0100, Chris Walker wrote:
[snippage]
I've installed Mate and it's up and running albeit with a permanent hourglass and I don't know why - I haven't looked at much yet to find out.
I prefer it to Plasma already but I suspect it will take me time to make it work how I want. I don't for example like the way that a terminal window - any window in fact - opens up at the top of the screen and it doesn't seem possible to drag it away from its home.
Huh? I'm running Mate on Mint 17 and it doesn't behave like that!
Not for me either.
I suggest Chris takes a look at:
Settings -> preferences -> look&feel -> windows -> placement
and System -> Control Centre - look&feel -> compizconfig settings -> window management
I couldn't find those settings within Mageia so have persevered with Plasma. It's not as objectionable as I thought it was and am slowly getting used to it.
In an old issue of the MagPi magazine was an article about customising a linux desktop. So I might take a look at that to see if that helps. I might well experiment with a Pi first though ;-)
I have a couple of other problems now though.
One is the Windows partition. It says it's not been cleanly dismounted and won't mount it. I've switched off the fast-start that Windows seems to like but that hasn't helped. The Windows partition is on a 480GB SSD with the rest of the drive being a data partition. The data partition mounts fine as do all the other drives. So I can't see a reason why linux won't mount it. It doesn't appear to have any errors under Windows chkdsk and if I run fdisk -l here, it doesn't show any errors. What does though is the linux disc itself. That declares 'The backup GPT table is corrupt, but the primary appears OK, so that will be used.'
What should I do about that? And how might I overcome the Windows disc problem?
Another one is get_iplayer. The conversion to mp3 fails with libmp3lame not found. If I look at ffmpeg, that doesn't appear to have been compiled with that option whereas on my old machine it does. That has v2.4 whereas this machine has v2.8. Do I really need to compile ffmpeg from source to fix that?
The final one is the keyboard response. It seems to halt for a few second at a time. Just as I'm typing this, the display stops and after a few seconds, the words will appear.
Any ideas what's going on there and where I should start investigating?
On 11/06/16 10:22, Chris Walker wrote: {SNIP}
I have a couple of other problems now though. One is the Windows partition. It says it's not been cleanly dismounted and won't mount it. I've switched off the fast-start that Windows seems to like but that hasn't helped. The Windows partition is on a 480GB SSD with the rest of the drive being a data partition. The data partition mounts fine as do all the other drives. So I can't see a reason why linux won't mount it. It doesn't appear to have any errors under Windows chkdsk and if I run fdisk -l here, it doesn't show any errors. What does though is the linux disc itself. That declares 'The backup GPT table is corrupt, but the primary appears OK, so that will be used.' What should I do about that? And how might I overcome the Windows disc problem?
b Alternatively, and perhaps better, run gparted on it. On each Windows partition, right click and chose check (of fsck, or similar, I can't exactly remember). This will check and fix problems, and it sometimes shows problems that fsck alone might not*
[* Aside: After copying from one sd card to another slightly smaller one, running gparted on the sd card gave me a "partition outside physical disk that nothing else had reported. Having been told, I could google how to fix it.]
Another one is get_iplayer. The conversion to mp3 fails with libmp3lame not found. If I look at ffmpeg, that doesn't appear to have been compiled with that option whereas on my old machine it does. That has v2.4 whereas this machine has v2.8. Do I really need to compile ffmpeg from source to fix that?
I know you're not using ubunutu, but in ubuntu, there's a PPA for get_iplayer. This contains the latest version of the software. Installing it from this often cures problems. I suggest downloading a ersion from the get_iplayer home page and see if that helps. It often does. Also, see if there's a newer version of ffmpeg, and see if libmp3lame (or similar), or if it's available inside another package.
The final one is the keyboard response. It seems to halt for a few second at a time. Just as I'm typing this, the display stops and after a few seconds, the words will appear. Any ideas what's going on there and where I should start investigating?
USB keyboard? Something hogging the USB bus? Unplug any other USB devices and see if there's a change. Check log files. Check DMESG.
Good luck.
-
Chris Walker -
Huge -
Laurie Brown -
mick -
steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk