March 2001 - openSUSE Users - openSUSE Mailing Lists

[Your review]
by Corvin Russell 28 Mar '01

28 Mar '01

------------------------------------------- Dear Messrs Hartje and Dick, I am writing to you as a thoroughly satisfied workstation user of SuSE Linux. I read with puzzlement your recently posted reviews of SuSE Linux 7.1. It is hard to see how one could arrive at the conclusions you present on the basis of the evidence. First things first. You harp on the fact that this is "geared towards" the desktop user, not the server administrator. This is much the most obtuse way of missing the obvious point that the average desktop user is going to need more help than the average systems administrator in setting up a new system. Naturally, therefore, the documentation is heavily weighted towards the needs of this user. And the documentation, when compared to documentation that is bundled with any other OS in a similar price range, is simply and incontestably unparallelled -- it's one of the reasons many people choose SuSE in the first place. To say otherwise suggests one has an axe to grind. However, let me not rest there. There is, in fact, a wealth of documentation addressing basic server setup; and the paperless docs that come with the SuSE CDs are as much as anyone needs. Have you looked through any of this superb work, the online support database, the man pages, the info pages, the pdf user guides? What is more fantastic than the suggestion that SuSE lacks in documentation for server software is the claim that there are "no server utilities". Is this some kind of joke? Please browse through the CDs again. You will find that SuSE comes distributed with more server packages and utilities, all specially packaged for use with SuSE, than any other major OS or distribution (FreeBSD is close, but most of the packages don't come with the distribution; they have to be downloaded from a server). All at no extra charge, and most of this software is very highy quality. For those who want to pay a little more for convenience, SuSE also offers specialized groupware servers, an email server, and a DB server, information on which is available at their website. Did you look there? Surely this is basic research, a minimum standard of journalistic integrity that you should uphold? You say that the (KDE) desktop is very different from Windows, and that this is a demerit; sure, if being very different from a donut is a demerit of being a flan. Your logic, in other words, escapes me. Yes, there are some differences, but there are enough similarities that the user of average intelligence will feel comfortable in no time. OS-X is roughly as different from Mac OS-9; Windows XP, at first glance, seems about as different from 9x as KDE is from Windows. Is this also a "demerit" of these OS's? Will you recommend against upgrading to them as a result? The most stunningly perverse paragraphs of the review are these: At $69.95, SuSE 7.1 professional is much less expensive than Windows desktop competitors. Nevertheless, the costs of retraining and lost productivity associated with migrating from a Windows desktop environment to Linux would be prohibitive. As a desktop operating system, SuSE 7.1 Professional would be a good fit only for Microsoft haters and cash-strapped companies installing systems for the first time. Even with Windows 2000 Professional selling at close to $300 per user and Microsoft Office 2000 Standard at close to $500, we see no compelling reason for companies to shift from Windows on the desktop. Prohibitive? If someone is truly just doing word processing and email, most skills involved in these tasks are easily migrated. More complex tasks like desktop publication, graphics, etc. would in many cases require retraining or would not yet be possible. However, that is an argument for people who have specialized tasks to keep their current OS, or be retrained, not an argument against migrating a whole body of average users. Let us say a company has 100 workstations. You are saying that at $800 a pop, for a total of $80,000, that the price difference between MS and SuSE ($79,930), not including future savings on upgrades, is "not a compelling reason"? I wonder what would count as a "compelling reason" for you, then? Your piece better reflects your biases than your rational abilities. I hope you will reconsider it. -- Corvin Russell <corvinr(a)sympatico.ca>

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MacOS-Aqua
by Gottfried F. Zojer 28 Mar '01

28 Mar '01

Hi, Is anybody using SUSE in combination or on a Mac and can tell me if a tools exist to read Mac CD s or to let KDE look like Aqua. I saw a picture of it in a linux-magazine but I dont know if its a theme or something different like a own windowmanager. Thanks in advance Gottfried

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a nvidia agp card
by Jack Malone 28 Mar '01

28 Mar '01

Last week I attend a techhow that asipartners put on in dallas , they are a major computer parts supplier across the us. I won a geforce2mx based 32 meg agp video card made by pine technology. I'm thinking of dropping this card into my suse 7.1 box, was wondering if I will have any trouble with this card an if the nvidia chipset is a good choice for linux. thanks jack Jack Malone jack(a)malone.tyler.com http://www.ballistic.com/~jemalone Luke 4:18-19 "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." (NIV)

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Re: [SLE] Missing title bars in Gnome
by dizzy73 28 Mar '01

28 Mar '01

yes, sawfish is not installed. I cant find it thru yast. Im wondering why this seems to be gnome specific (as my windows work fine in kde) what is this sawfish? and why do I need it ;-) thanks rob Kevin Breit wrote: > On Tuesday 27 March 2001 07:39 pm, you wrote: > > Does anyone have an idea why my title bars are missing in Gnome? > > Seems like I cant move my windows around or - X > Sounds like either you didn't install sawfish or its not running. rpm -q > sawfish. If its not there, install it. If it is, load up an xtern and type > 'sawfish &' and that should fix your problem. You'll want to make sure > Sawfish runs at startup, but since it probably isn't installed, that should > be taken care of automatically. > Good luck > Kevin Breit

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ICQ and SOCKS4
by Maurizio Firmani 28 Mar '01

28 Mar '01

Hi all, does anyone know how to use ICQ with a SOCKS4 proxy? It seems that ICQ use UDP to transfer data while SOCKS4 handle only TCP packet. Is there any workaround? TIA Maurizio Firmani P.S. Good if you're not bundled in a SOCKS4 environment!

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No font AA in KDE 2.1.1
by Kevin Breit 28 Mar '01

28 Mar '01

Greetings, I had anti-aliasing working in KDE 2.1 with qt-experimental 2.3. I then installed KDE 2.1.1 and most of the AA appears to have disappeared. The AA appears in Licq and on the desktop. Any reason for this? Thanks Kevin Breit

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Simulators for Opto-Elwctronic devices in Linux?
by Alex Daniloff 28 Mar '01

28 Mar '01

Hello Linux folkz, Does somebody know if there existing sumulation programs for opto-electronic devices in Linux. Thanks in advance for any hints. Alex -- MS Windows users should be covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act! --------------> Try Linux and you'll understand why <--------------

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Woe, Woe, and Woe: The Only Things I found in KDE 2.1.1
by Timothy R.Butler 28 Mar '01

28 Mar '01

Hi everyone, Well, this is something new for me. I've been using KDE since version 1.0, and except for version 1.0 (which I had to compile myself), I have never been unable to get a stable version to install. This has changed with KDE 2.1.1. I have spent the better part of today trying to get the SuSE 7.1 RPM's to work - and I simply can't. Here's how it all started, and went: 1.) The newsticker last night displays a /. article saying that KDE 2.1.1 has become available. I go madly around from KDE mirror to mirror trying to find it. 2.) After downloading 2.1.1, I try to install it, and get a dependancy problem from KDevelop when I do a rpm -Uvh *.rpm. Soooo, I check, and the dependancy (html_dtd) actually is installed only it's named html-dtd. SuSE also (for some reason) decides to include an older version of their customized icons for KDE/FVWM/CDESIM (the ICONS package), which makes things look rather odd until I switch back to the newer version that is on the 7.1 DVD. 3.) I switch to rpm -Uvh --force *.rpm, and everything installs, but most of the RPMs report something to the effect of "Package index.html is not contained in the index." 4.) I launch KDE via KDM, and all of the fonts are badly "mis-shaped", and illegable (i.e. they look like non-scalable fonts that are way to big, and then are stretched out to make things worse). The only way I seem to be able to fix this is to delete ~/.kde2/share/config/kdeglobals . 5.) I figure out that for some reason TrueTypes aren't loading - that font _isn't_ scalable. Later figure out something happened to my fonts.dir in the truetype directory, and have to restore that (things were fine before installing 2.1.1, so I suspect the problem is due to SuSEconfig running to through the /etc/rc.config that the RPM's I installed updated). 6.) KDE 2.1.1 seems to be working _okay_ so I switch to QT experimental (SuSE's name for QT with XFT support). Once I figure out that KDE has anti-aliasing disabled, and how I go about restoring it, I get AA on. 7.) I customize Kicker once again with different icons. 8.) KDE 2.1.1 ceases to load correctly (a DCOP error saying that kicker won't load), and causes X to crash at the Kicker loading stage. 9.) I give up and restore 2.1. I think that covers everything leading up to this point. The main question is: is there something wrong with the SuSE RPMS? Is it something I'm doing? Help! Thanks, Tim -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy R. Butler Universal Networks Information Tech. Consultant Christian Web Services Since 1996 ICQ #12495932 AIM: Uninettm An Authorized IPSwitch Reseller tbutler(a)uninetsolutions.com http://www.uninetsolutions.com ============== "Information Powered by Innovation" ==============

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Replacing kernel on bootdisk
by James Macnicol 28 Mar '01

28 Mar '01

Hello, I need to replace the kernel on the SuSE 7.1 boot floppy because I want to use Automatic YaST and install over the network but on at least one machine I have I get errors from the eepro100 driver (something about "wait_cmd"; noted elsewhere as a driver bug in 2.2.18). I have tried a number of times this morning to compile a new kernel and use it to replace the one on the floppy however it never reads the auto. YaST info file, presumably related to this message I see on the third VT : auto2_init:645 There seems to be no floppy disk I am trying to use 2.2.19 (+ reiserfs patches). I'm sure the floppy disk driver is in the kernel (it's the default and I certainly didn't turn it off). Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong ? Thanks. -- James Macnicol jamesm(a)faceng.anu.edu.au

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Re: [SLE] yast dies when mounting a DVD rom
by Chris 28 Mar '01

28 Mar '01

These re the messages I get in /var/log/messages Mar 27 17:55:30 athlon kernel: VFS: Disk change detected on device ide1(22,64) Mar 27 17:55:33 athlon kernel: ISO 9660 Extensions: RRIP_1991A On Tue, 27 Mar 2001, Chris wrote: > root@athlon:/home/chris > yast > Program aborted! > Tue Mar 27 12:50:35 2001 > ERROR: Unknown Error!, DETAIL: 0 FILE: PkgRetriever.cc LINE: 569 What about in /var/log/messages ? and screen 10? [alt+F10 that is ;o)] -- -=[Tigersden Internet Services]=- ************COMING SOON************* -=[For All Your Internet Needs]=- * HTTP://www.tigersden.demon.co.uk * -=[P.G.P. Public Key Available]=- ************COMING SOON************* -=[ !!Powered by SuSE Linux!! ]=- My eyes are 20-20, but my brain isn't too good at interpreting what they see =o) -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe(a)suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help(a)suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Just Another Happy Penguin!! Chris Wrobel (aka Kemical) ICQ #76945303 Personal Websites: http://komunikation.homeip.net One Day All Desktops Will Be Free-------Get More Info About Linux At http://www.linux.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------

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