ping brucie

[Mark Parnell]

Found Screem and had a bit of a play - not sure that I entirely like it,
though it does have some nice features.

Installed 10.0 Official and then upgraded to 10.1 Community through
RPMdrake. (Couldn't be bothered to download the 10.1 Community ISOs --
I'll buy a boxed set of 10.1 Official when it't out me thinks.)

A friend downloaded it and burnt me a copy - no way I was going to
attempt to download them on dialup. :-o

 

[Spartanicus]

Using XP and Mandrake 10.1 with GNOME 2.6 at work, both are roughly the
same speed on similarly specced machines. But I know that if I wanted to,
I could speed up Mandrake by switching to a more basic window manager,
turning off various services, etc.

With Windows XP, that's it -- there doesn't seem to be any tweaks I could
do to make it significantly faster.

Same as with Linux you can install another GUI shell.

I use Mandrake 10.0 with GNOME 2.4 at home and though nowhere near as fast
as my machine at work, my 400MHz Celeron serves me well as a desktop
machine, all the while running Apache, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Postfix, ProFTPd
and OpenSSH in the background! Much the same speed as Win98, but with more
power and far more eye-candy.

Here W98 with Litestep as the GUI shell is significantly faster than
MD9.1 with IceWM as the window manager, more stable also, and all of my
hardware works. User friendliness of the W98/Litestep combo is way
better than the MD9.1 IceWM combo.

 

[Blinky the Shark]

brucie wrote:

Puzzling, KEdit takes less than a second here, on only modestly
powerful hardware (AthlonXP 2100), even the first time it is ran. My
2-disc (software) RAID array and ReiserFS should speed it up a bit,
not not as much as 5 times.

Half a second, here, *tops*, first time; noticeably faster second time.
Athlon 2400+, ext3, KDE 3.1.3, Kedit 1.3, kernel 2.4.22-10mdk.

 

[Jim Higson]

In alt.html (e-mail address removed) said:


looks interesting but i have to wait 5 years (if i'm lucky) for linux to
support my sat internet connection. its pointless if i cant connect to
the net.

How aren't they compatable? I thought most sat connections were just
standard ethernet. Unless it's a 'winmodem'. Then, yes, it's unlikley to
work, although really that's the fault of the hardware vendor; just like
old printers that don't work with WinXP aren't really MS's fault.

 

[brucie]

In alt.html Jim Higson said:

How aren't they compatable?

if we pretend that linux can recognize the hardware there are no drivers
to configure the transmitter.

 

[Toby Inkster]

if we pretend that linux can recognize the hardware there are no drivers
to configure the transmitter.

Makes and model numbers?

 

[brucie]

In alt.html Toby Inkster said:

Makes and model numbers?

find something more interesting for me to waste my time with.

 

[brucie]

In alt.html Jim Higson said:

Unless it's a 'winmodem'.

the cult of winmodem really shits me. every time theres an issue they
start chanting "winmodem, winmodem, winmodem".

i have a bog standard external serial modem. over the years i've used a
lot of different ones. linux has never automatically detected them and
when manually configuring them linux keeps trying to insist they doesn't
exist. surprise surprise they work without a problem even
sending/receiving faxes despite linuxs continual insistence they don't
exist.

its not always winmodem! so you know where you can stick your winmodem
mantra.

 

[brucie]

In alt.html brucie said:

find something more interesting for me to waste my time with.

NGs are dead so i climbed up and had a look and i cant find a model
number without pulling the dish apart and i'm not going to do that.

i need software to tell the transmitter which satellite i want to use so
it can configure itself to talk to it and my lat/longitude coords for it
to send so the satellite knows which aerial to transmit my goodies back
to me on. after that the transmitter looks after itself.

at this stage i'm not connected to the net. all thats been done is
confirm the transmitter and satellite can talk to each other.

ericsson doesn't make software for linux to do the above and they
couldn't name any third parties who do.

i assume there wouldn't be any issues with the transmit/receive modems,
its just an ethernet. except its USB and linux is crap with USB.

 

[Toby Inkster]

except its USB and linux is crap with USB.

Linux supported USB2 before Windows did.

I had some problems with my USB scanner when I first got it, but that was
about 4 years ago. I decided to fully switch to Linux anyway -- I could
live without my scanner.

When I moved flats a couple of years ago, I came across my scanner again.
After I'd wiped it off, I plugged it in, installed the SANE (Scanner
Access Now Easy) package -- as easy as typing "urpmi sane" at the command
line -- and it was instantly working (no reboot!).

I don't know whether it's age, poor calibration or SANE's fault, but
things I scan now have a slight greenish hue. It's easy to correct in The
GIMP of course.

My £40 USB digital camera (sadly now defunct) took a bit more work, but
that's only because my custom kernel didn't have digital camera support in
it. If I'd used the default kernel it would have been fine. Once I'd
recompiled my custom kernel with digital camera support, and installed
gphoto2 -- "urpmi gphoto2" -- it was working fine. I could either use
gphoto2's odd commands to download the photos to my hard drive, or mount
the camera so that it appeared as part of the file system.

USB webcam works fine. Photo on the front page of my web site as testament.

My new computer at work doesn't have any standard mouse and keyboard
sockets. Shock?! Horror?! No. I just plugged in a USB trackball and
keyboard and was on my way. Didn't even need to install anything.

(The Broadcom Gigbit ethernet card was a little more tricky. The model was
too new for Mandrake 10.0 to recognise, so I had to upgrade to Mandrake
10.1.)

 

[brucie]

In alt.html Toby Inkster said:

Linux supported USB2 before Windows did.

windows USB worked before linuxs did.

I had some problems with my USB scanner when I first got it, but that was
about 4 years ago.

i have issues with my scanner i got 3 years ago. serial and scuzzy work
ok but linux only recently has recognized it connected via USB and of
course it doesn't work.

same with my printer. recognizes its there but doesn't work. (does
parallel)

same with keyboard

same with mouse

same with digital camera

same with digital still camera

same with USB drive

on the plus side at least linux is now recognizing that they're
connected but thats only been in the last 12 months. just have to wait
for drivers for them to work now.

 

[brucie]

In alt.html brucie said:

i have issues with my scanner i got 3 years ago. serial and scuzzy work
ok but linux only recently has recognized it connected via USB and of
course it doesn't work.

same with my printer. recognizes its there but doesn't work. (does
parallel)

same with keyboard

same with mouse

same with digital camera

same with digital still camera

same with USB drive

and i forgot.... my 12 month old mother board isn't supported. keeps
popping up messages with "we know the chipset is there but we don't
support it yet"

 

[brucie]

In alt.html brucie said:

and i forgot.... my 12 month old mother board isn't supported. keeps
popping up messages with "we know the chipset is there but we don't
support it yet"

and i forgot.... dvd r/rw can read/write/play cds and play dvds but wont
burn dvds.

 

[Jim Higson]

In alt.html Toby Inkster said:



windows USB worked before linuxs did.


i have issues with my scanner i got 3 years ago. serial and scuzzy work
ok but linux only recently has recognized it connected via USB and of
course it doesn't work.

same with my printer. recognizes its there but doesn't work. (does
parallel)

same with keyboard

same with mouse

same with digital camera

same with digital still camera

That's an unusual one - most digital (still) cameras are just seen as usb
drives - which certainly are supported without much fuss.

As for the others - you must buy a lot of unusual hardware!

 

[Jim Higson]

In alt.html Jim Higson said:


the cult of winmodem really shits me. every time theres an issue they
start chanting "winmodem, winmodem, winmodem".

i have a bog standard external serial modem. over the years i've used a
lot of different ones. linux has never automatically detected them and
when manually configuring them linux keeps trying to insist they doesn't
exist. surprise surprise they work without a problem even
sending/receiving faxes despite linuxs continual insistence they don't
exist.

its not always winmodem! so you know where you can stick your winmodem
mantra.

I only suggested it might be!

So it's a standard ethernet device, which will connect to any OS but needs
proprietry software to configure - tsk - so near yet so far!

Having said that, most such devices provide a web interface, have you tried
http'ing it? Even on Windows I just throw away the modem driver CDs and use
the web interface, I like to install as little as possible.

 

[brucie]

In alt.html Jim Higson said:

That's an unusual one - most digital (still) cameras are just seen as usb
drives

thats my understanding

which certainly are supported without much fuss.

not mine

As for the others - you must buy a lot of unusual hardware!

my theory is its because they're all connected through hubs, not direct.
i haven't bothered checking if they work direct because theres no way
i'm going to jump up and down swapping cables over depending on what i'm
doing.

 

[brucie]

In alt.html Jim Higson said:

[winmodem]
I only suggested it might be!

i'm a little sensitive. every time i looked for help on why linux kept
saying the modem didn't exist but worked anyway i got "winmodem" thrown
at me.

So it's a standard ethernet device,

i assume theres no issues with the transmit/receive modems. i need
software to configure the transmitter to establish a connection to the
satellite. thats before i even think about connecting to the net.

Even on Windows I just throw away the modem driver CDs

i'm not talking about the modems. i'm talking about the transmitter
attached to the dish. it needs to be told which satellite to connect to
(i have a choice of two) so it can configure itself to talk to it. it
then tries to establish a connection sending my lat/longitude so the
satellite knows which aerial to use to send the goodies back to me.

once the connection has been established the transmitter looks after
itself. /then/ i can think about trying to connect to the net.