One computer, three Mandriva installations

[Urmas]

Thunar ain't the culprit here. I have it installed (in Ubuntu/Gnome), and it shows (automounted) "removable volumes" just like Naughtilus etc. do.http://thunar.xfce.org/documentation/C/usi...able-media.html

[securitybreach]

From your link Urmas, first sentence:

Thunar supports removable media if it was built with support for HAL

Maybe that is the problem? Since Eggdog said it was "community project", could that maybe be a bug?Just a thought.

[Urmas]

Bug, feature, issue:Thunar-volman and the deprecation of HAL in Xfce

[securitybreach]

Aha, then maybe it a thunar issue after all.

[Urmas]

Could be... hey Eddie: how is your Thunar configured?

Now, if HAL support is available and thunar-volman is installed on your system, you can choose to enable the Volume Management feature of Thunar. Therefore, open the file manager preferences, go to the Advanced page and check the Enable Volume Management button.The next step is to customize the management of removable drives and media to your needs. Click on the Configure link in the Volume Management section, right below the button. The Removable Drives and Media configuration dialog will be displayed.

( http://thunar.xfce.org/documentation/C/usi...able-media.html )

[Eggdog]

Bug, feature, issue:

Or bug, feature, issue, existential crossroads. I'm bookmarking Pohlmann's (rhymes with volman's??) blog. It was over my head in places, but the parts I could understand were quite fascinating.I didn't even see the volman configuration when I was looking for such a thing the other night; I must have looked right through it. The "play" computer is getting the day off, so I'll check it out later tonight or tomorrow.

[Urmas]

... existential crossroads.

Those be trivial. HOWTO:

[securitybreach]

So true!!

[Eggdog]

OK, the friendly configuration options did blow right by me. Thunar sez it's gonnamount removable drives when hot-pluggedmount removable media when insertedbrowse removable media when insertedauto-run programs on new drives and mediaauto-open files on new drives and mediaI just told it not to do the last 2 any more, just out of personal preference; I pretty sure they have nothing to do with cameras.In yet another tab, it saidimport digital photographs when connectedI just told it not to do that. I don't know if that was overriding the "browse removable media when inserted", or if Thunar doesn't consider my camera to be "a removable medium". I have to go out now, but sometime or another I'll take another picture and then I'll see how it acts, and then I'll try running mount from the command line, and see what works the best. In the long run, I could even go back to having gThumbs do the work. I jut want to figure out the logic with this.

Those be trivial.

You know, I was going to write "a Scylla and Charybdis vibe", but I didn't want anybody to think I was showing off. And I really didn't want anybody to ask how to pronounce "Scylla", or "Charybdis" for that matter. So I wrote "existential crossroads" instead. Sometimes a guy can't catch a break

[securitybreach]

Well I had to look up "Scylla and Charybdis":

Scylla and Charybdis are two sea monsters of Greek mythology who were said to be situated on opposite sides of the Strait of Messina between Sicily and Calabria, in Italy. They were said to be located close enough to each other that they posed an inescapable threat to passing sailors; avoiding Charybdis meant passing too closely to Scylla and vice versa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scylla_and_CharybdisLearn something new everyday :thumbsup:I can see how that applies to this situation

[Eggdog]

I was going to install yet another Mandriva, this time with LXDE, but I got waylaid. In the Mandriva Free disc installation process, in the “Package Group Selection“ section, LXDE is offered as an option (Xfce isn’t). But there was yet another option: “Other”. I tried that, and pretty much had to take what they gave me. The new installation booted into WindowMaker.I started over and installed another Mandriva on another partition, this time carefully choosing LXDE. But that's an adventure for another post.Window Maker is a minimalist window manager that seems to come packaged with all sorts of Mandrivas, just as IceWM does. The stock version of IceWM that comes with Mandriva is defanged, stripped of much of its prowess. How does Window Maker fare?Upon logging in, the unwary explorer is greeted with a plain screen with four large icons. In the upper left corner is...uh, a giant paperclip. I wish I was making this up. But it’s Clippy, or a relative from the side of Clippy’s family that for generations has been filling Midwestern penitentiaries. The Clippygänger has several options that seem to involve “rename workspace” and “move icons around”. So far, I don’t understand it.Three other large icons inhabit the upper right corner. The first one is Window Maker Preferences. It seems to be a globe with two stylized Ws, or maybe a W and an M, but it looks like the Floating Head of Death. I've clicked on it a couple of times, but, really, it's scary and I don't like it. The second one displays the time and date; it’s not interactive. The third one is a picture of a CRT monitor, and launches a terminal emulator (I think it’s RXvt, but I can’t swear to it).That’s it. It’s not only minimal, it’s stark, and a little spooky. IceWM is a Tiki lounge by comparison.Window management is done by right-clicking in the title bar, and dragging the mouse down the ensuing menu, trigger finger firmly clutching the right mouse button. For instance, doing that in my Emacs gives me Maximize, Miniaturize, Shade (which hides everything except the title bar), Close, Kill (I’m not sure what the difference is, and I’m not sure I want to know), Attributes (which brings up a menu where you can tweak window decorations and placement), and a few other things. Some X11 applications (xpaint, for instance, and the X11 interface for imagemagick) work that way. People who haven’t used a lot of X11 apps might be confused. (I wasn’t able to call up an About in any application, which explains why I can’t tell you for sure whether that virtual terminal was RXvt.)I found that Firefox wants to run in half of my big new monitor (1920 x 1080). “Miniaturize” followed by “Deminiaturize” sproings it up to full screen. (“Miniaturize” reduces a running program to an icon in the lower right part of the display, where it gets covered up by any application that is running in a maximized window. Window Maker doesn’t encourage maximization.)Windows lost focus unexpectedly. I’m sure that this is just something that takes getting used to. Just because something is unnatural doesn’t mean it’s impossible. I will say that Window Maker has a concept. Its concept may not be mine, but it didn’t take me too long to discern a consistent governing logic. In a few (admittedly relatively brief) sessions, I found this installation to be impeccably stable.Mandriva Control Center is available in the regular menu, which is available through right-clicking on a blank spot on the desktop. I was able to disable PulseAudio and set up a printer, just like in any other Mandriva installation. I installed Opera, but it wasn’t added to the menu.I couldn’t figure out how to edit the menus, so I went to windowmaker.org. The home page has a bloggish “release info and latest news” section, which has had one entry in the last 3½ years. The help documents are in a series of FAQs, which seem good as far as they go, but I couldn’t find anything about editing menus. (Maybe I didn’t look hard enough.) Essentially, it looks like Window Maker is not active. It’s not dead, but it’s hard to describe it as alive.And I have to say, Mandriva didn’t do it any favors. The main menu has an entry for Utils, which gives you Calculator and Font Chooser, among other things. The Calculator menu entry points to xcalc, which isn’t installed. (I installed xcalc, and the menu entry now works.) The Font Chooser points to xfontsel, which isn’t installed. Most of the entries under Appearance are empty. I realize that Window Maker is pointing to a number of venerable X11 programs that aren’t standard in modern distributions, but the gap between presentation and availability reeked of neglect, and that made me feel kind of sad.

[securitybreach]

I tried WindowMaker a few years ago to try to get something more minimal and despised it. I played around with it for about an hour and moved on to Fluxbox. I am kind of surprised that Mandriva offers it since it has not been updated since 2008. What is amazing is the first release was in 1997 and it still has not hit version 1.0. Well at least you had it somewhat functional. Last time I tried, I was completely confused.

[SueD]

Upon logging in, the unwary explorer is greeted with a plain screen with four large icons. In the upper left corner is...uh, a giant paperclip. I wish I was making this up. But it’s Clippy, or a relative from the side of Clippy’s family that for generations has been filling Midwestern penitentiaries. The Clippygänger has several options that seem to involve “rename workspace” and “move icons around”. So far, I don’t understand it.Three other large icons inhabit the upper right corner. The first one is Window Maker Preferences. It seems to be a globe with two stylized Ws, or maybe a W and an M, but it looks like the Floating Head of Death. I've clicked on it a couple of times, but, really, it's scary and I don't like it. The second one displays the time and date; it’s not interactive. The third one is a picture of a CRT monitor, and launches a terminal emulator (I think it’s RXvt, but I can’t swear to it).That’s it. It’s not only minimal, it’s stark, and a little spooky. IceWM is a Tiki lounge by comparison.

OMG, that cracked me up! So is it a keeper?

[V.T. Eric Layton]

WOW! Eddie, you are literally "on my heels" running down this Mandriva trail. I've been there; done what you're doing just a couple weeks back. FUN, huh?

[Eggdog]

OMG, that cracked me up! So is it a keeper?

Glad you liked it I’m getting a kick out of writing out my Linux adventures in a narrative type of form, so if anybody gets anything out of it I’m glad that I’m not totally wasting people’s time. About Window Maker, I wouldn't go so far as to say that I

despised it

, but when I need that partition for something else, it’ll be gone. It’s functional and competent, and I wouldn’t even rule out trying Window Maker (I keep wanting to call it Widowmaker, which kind of tells you what a happy, cheerful WM it is) on another distro just to see if part of its bleakness is Mandriva’s fault, but really, I’d be inclined to go off in another direction, especially since it is semi-abandoned.

[Eggdog]

Bear in mind that I’m installing off a Mandriva Free disc that isn’t an official LXDE release. (There is a community mix, but I haven’t tried it.) So the adventures I have had may or may not be characteristic of what another explorer would get from installing Lubuntu, say, or the LXDE editions from Fedora or Mint Helena.OpenOffice was not part of the installation. We get the lighter-weight AbiWord and Gnumeric (though I will note that when I have installed Gnumeric–a fine spreadsheet app–elsewhere, it has brought with it enough Gnome dependencies to fill the European Parliament). Somewhat oddly, Scribus is installed by default, as well.LXDE presented me with a somewhat Spartan taskbar that had the Mandriva gold star tucked in a corner (that’s the menu), followed by icons for PCManFM, Firefox, MCC (Mandriva Control Center), and “iconify^[1] all windows”.Assigning keyboard shortcuts involves editing an Openbox (LXDE’s default window manager) configuration file that’s written in XML. I like to have [Ctrl-F4] open a terminal emulator, but that’ll have to wait until I get this system working well and can take some time off to edit XML.Fortunately, I was able to assign the compose key by editing a plain text file. I’ll let the LXDE wiki explain it:

How do I make an application autostart on LXDE launch?For system wide you edit the file /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart, for user specific application launches (the more common way) you just add a .desktop file to ~/.config/autostart or add the commands to .config/lxsession/LXDE/autostart.

The file is short. I added

setxkbmap -option compose:lwin

to the end of it, and ”¡Es buena, mis hermanos!” Sometimes I get something to work and I just want to burst with pride. The setxkbmap line came to my attention when I was researching how to add a compose key to Xfce, and free spirit that I am, I decided to try it here. In Xfce, a settings tab allowed me to type in the command, and Xfce obediently trotted off to put it in the right place. In LXDE, I had to go dig up the file and edit it myself. I’m not complaining, of course; just remarking that we’re getting into some minimalist territory.Speaking of terminal emulators, there are no fewer than three of ‘em in the Tools submenu. There is RXvt, an attractive virtual terminal for people who think XTerm is too bogged down with features (hear that, Josh? ), and there’s our old friend XTerm itself, let out to stroll around the graphical world. LXTerminal is, as the name implies, part of LXDE. However, LXDE is very modular. There’s no requirement that you use LXTerminal, or Openbox for that matter. I’d switch over to IceWM (which I actually kinda know) for at least part of this adventure, but for one unhappy fact: a version of IceWM comes with every Mandriva I know about, but it is less flexible than, say, the one you can (and I did) put into Archlinux, comes with a difficult and rather off-putting default appearance, and all in all doesn’t do justice to the sinewy, supple window manager it is.Although LXDE seems to go out of its way not to insist that you use any particular apps, the file manager, PCManFM, appears to be an integral part of the LXDE weltanschauung. PCManFM is similar to Thunar in some of its ways, but I find it to have fewer annoyances (for one thing, it will remember to open maximized), and it’s quite keyboard-friendly.The lxde.org web site seems well-organized and thoughtful. There is a section about distros with LXDE, and while Ubuntu is mentioned and tips are given on how to install LXDE into an existing ‘Buntu, Lubuntu is only briefly noted. (In fairness, even though Lubuntu is in its second release now–it is keeping up with its older sisters in the unfurling of Lucid Lynx–the Karmic version apparently never officially left beta.) The lxde.org forum is small; there is some advocacy (by which I mean, of course, talking smack about the bloatware guys), but the technical discussion is of a high order. In one thread I read, somebody reported some nonconformist behavior in LXTerminal, and a guy named MartyJack verified the behavior and issued a fix a couple of days later. Impressive.I got some of my music working with Firefox. The output to my stereo is quieter, and seems a little less rich, than in my Gnome and Xfce installations. Mandriva comes with PulseAudio enabled by default. I’ve turned it off in all of my Mandy installs and adjusted the alsamixer to my preferred levels, which don’t vary much from one install to another. I don’t know why it should be different here; my first guess is that there’s a subtle difference between Mandriva Free and the Mandriva One discs I’ve been using throughout this voyage until now, and it doesn’t have anything to do with LXDE. Also, Live365 complained about my so-called “obsolete” version of Flash. I went to adobe.com and installed the plug-in right from their site, as I have on the other DE/WM installs documented in this thread. I don’t know why this one should be any different.I installed Opera, but it failed to start up. I uninstalled it, then reinstalled it the next day, with the same unfortunate result. I have to confess that being on Opera almost exclusively the last few weeks has spoiled me. But Firefox works in accordance with all reasonable expectations I have of Firefox. And a Web search indicates that people reply to the LXDE listserv through Opera Mail, so I’m going to chalk this up as a peculiarity.I didn’t mention that this here installation is my very first 64-bit installation of anything. My Shuttle could accommodate 64-bit distros, having two Core 2 Duo processors, but I didn’t realize that until its waning days. I’m really not especially intelligent, though I try to make up for it by being glib. The version that Opera offered me from its Web site, and that the Mandriva installer installed, was an x86-64 .rpm of Opera 10.10.

*

A day or two later: I took some time off from LXDE, resolving to return only when, in the words of the poet, “My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.”So. Early in the LXDE exploration, I had set my monitor to a slightly unpleasant resolution: 1920 x 1200. I reset it to the more polite 1920 x 1080, logged out when it told me to log out, and...that was the last I ever saw of that installation. Couldn’t get back in, even after a shutdown.So I reinstalled. This time, I did some of the configuring during the installation process: Mandriva gave me a chance to review my settings, so I disabled Pulse Audio. I also availed myself of the opportunity to install parts of OpenOffice. Once in, I tried Opera again.Opera didn't load at all. OpenOffice Writer loaded, but with text-only toolbars. When I went into Options, which I do immediately to shut off nuisances like URL recognition, Writer crashed. Tried again, crashed again. The strength of ten, yeah, right.So my experiment with LXDE staggered to an ignominious close. And so will this thread, eventually. I want to wrap up what I’ve learned from it all, and I’ll do that in another post.

*

Since writing the above, I saw Jim the Planner’s post alerting us to a kernel regression in Mandriva 64, and I wonder if that’s what bugged out the LXDE installation. I don’t think so, but you never know.I also downloaded the first beta of Lubuntu 10.04. I looked at it a bit, was suitably impressed, and installed it. I can’t get into it now; I asked it to stash its GRUB on /dev/sda10, and I don’t think it did–but just from a few minutes of running it from the CD, I can attest that it’s a different, and I think a considerably more pleasant, experience from the Mandriva ideation. I’ll look at the newest ‘Buntu again after the final release in a month.___^[1] I assumed that the word “iconify” predated graphical interfaces. But the earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1986, and every citation refers to little things on your desktop.

[Eggdog]

So with that, the multiple Mandriva installation adventure comes to an end.Anybody who has read through this thread might have idly wondered, “What happened to KDE?” Simple. I installed it. It works great. Mandriva did a wonderful job of toning down the visual excesses. I cast no technical aspersions on the developers. Nor do I toss stones at KDE’s enthusiastic acolytes. I even installed it on the Big Honkin' HP, where the differences in performance will certainly be minimal. And I'll look at it again. In theory, I’d like to explore some of those K-apps. But I just don’t boot into it. Personal preference.Obviously, the lightweight experiments didn't work out. I don’t think that Mandriva is the best vehicle for exploring offbeat window managers. It’s a distro built with mainstream environments in mind, and if the implementation of the lightweights continues to be this haphazard, maybe Mandriva should just stick to KDE and Gnome and not even offer the others.If I want to look at lightweights again, I’d do that with some distro that’s more amenable to that type of fixer-uppering: Archlinux, maybe, though my last Archlinux adventures ended in a Balaclava of error messages.^[1]I found a lot to admire in the LXDE experiment, and I'll peep it again in the future (the very near future, if my Lubuntu installation can be reclaimed). I was especially pleased to make the acquaintance of PCManFM. (Josh, Ranger wasn’t in the repos.) But, ultimately, it’s not a full-fledged desktop environment, and it’s not a lean-and-mean window manager; it’s something in between, and I’m not sure I need in between. (Eric, you had all sorts of grief with LXDE, and that’s the only one I was able to out-and-out crash–Window Maker was bizarre but totally stable–so I have to think there’s something going on there besides dumb luck. Eric’s as smart as Linus^[2], Eric crashed LXDE to smithereens, I crashed LXDE into smithereens....)I loved Xfce. I even ordered an Xfce T-shirt from the Xfce Café Press store. The difference between Xfce and Gnome is this: I go to bed at night with some kind of music or another playing, and I drift off. The next morning I get up. The computer is still on. In Gnome, I can close out Opera, and it’ll take a couple of seconds, and an error message might flash by too quickly to read. In Xfce, I can close out Opera, and it’ll give me a “this application is not responding” message. I’ve found Gnome, over the past few weeks, to be a little more stable, a little smoother around the edges here and there. Xfce is friendlier in a way–it’s Arlo Guthrie to Gnome’s Jerry Vale–but there’s something to be said for the bland comforts of stability. And so there I rest.___^[1] I just tried to install Arch x86_64 Core from a newly burned CD-R. The I/O Error messages were flashing at me with an anger that I last saw in the Girl Next Door’s eyes at our wedding reception, ¾ of a second after she looked toward the bar and saw Motorcycle Irene pouring a frosty. Whoa!^[2] True fact, backed up by scientific research.

Edited March 26, 2010 by Eggdog

[sunrat]

If you're keen on LXDE, try what I have on my EeePC. Sidux kde-lite installation then apt-get install lxde. This automatically gives you a choice at the logon screen menu to boot into LXDE with OpenBox, OpenBox, KDE, or KDE with OpenBox as WM. The best of all worlds! Xfce is also installable or there's a sidux/xfce CD available.I expect there will be a new sidux release soon, after KDE 4.4 hits sid repos. Currently at 4.3.4.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

You should blog, Eddie. You'd be darn good at it.

[securitybreach]

There is RXvt, an attractive virtual terminal for people who think XTerm is too bogged down with features (hear that, Josh? :)), and there’s our old friend XTerm itself, let out to stroll around the graphical world. LXTerminal is, as the name implies, part of LXDE.

Nice writeup :thumbsup:As far as rxvt, I am long time user of urxvt (rxvt-unicode). Urxvt is the terminal you see in all my screenshots, transparent and beautiful.

rxvt-unicode is a highly customizable terminal emulator forked from rxvt. Commonly known as urxvt, rxvt-unicode can be daemonized to run clients within a single process in order to minimize the use of system resources.

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Rxvt-unicodePlus the configuration is pretty straight-forward . Here is mine for instance:

 ╔═ comhack@Venus 12:09 AM ╚═══ ~-> cat ~/.Xdefaults	URxvt*termName: rxvt	## borderless and no scrollbar	URxvt*scrollBar_right: false	URxvt*scrollBar: false	URxvt*borderLess: false	urxvt*background: rgba:0000/0000/0000/dddd	## teh transparency stuff	URxvt*inheritPixmap: true	URxvt*tintColor: white	URxvt*shading: 20	## geometry and font	URxvt*geometry: 90×287	urxvt*font: xft:Droid Sans Mono:pixelsize=11:antialias=true	urxvt*boldFont: xft:Droid Sans Mono:pixelsize=11:antialias=true!Theme Nine*background: rgb:1a/1a/1a*foreground: rgb:d6/d6/d6*color0:	 rgb:00/00/00*color1:	 rgb:9e/18/28*color2:	 rgb:00/88/00*color3:	 rgb:96/8a/38*color4:	 rgb:41/41/71*color5:	 rgb:96/3c/59*color6:	 rgb:41/81/79*color7:	 rgb:be/be/be*color8:	 rgb:66/66/66*color9:	 rgb:cf/61/71*color10	 rgb:7c/bc/8c*color11	 rgb:ff/f7/96*color12	 rgb:41/86/be*color13	 rgb:cf/9e/be*color14	 rgb:71/be/be*color15:	rgb:ff/ff/ffURxvt.urlLauncher: google-chromeURxvt.matcher.button: 2URxvt.matcher.pattern.1: \\bwww\\.[\\w-]\\.[\\w./?&@#-]*[\\w/-]URxvt*perl-ext-common: default,matcherURxvt*urlLauncher: ~/.scripts/uzbl_launch.shURxvt*colorURL: #86a2beURxvt*matcher.button: 1

Pretty easy and full of features.

[securitybreach]

^[1] I just tried to install Arch x86_64 Core from a newly burned CD-R. The I/O Error messages were flashing at me with an anger that I last saw in the Girl Next Door’s eyes at our wedding reception, ¾ of a second after she looked toward the bar and saw Motorcycle Irene pouring a frosty. Whoa!^[2] True fact, backed up by scientific research.

Could that of been a bad burn perhaps? Not for sure if I suggested it last time.After you enjoying lightweight software so much now, why not give Arch another try?

[BarryB]

Yeah Mandriva doesn't support WM's other than Kde and Gnome very well. And they are pretty up front about being KDE centric. The community releases are much better for other WM's. I think that pretty much holds true for most distros that support a centric WM. (Ubuntu community guys are very good at alternate WM's...)

[Urmas]

You should blog, Eddie. You'd be darn good at it.

Absolutely true. Eddie is to Linux talk as

is to Mozart.

[securitybreach]

Absolutely true. Eddie is to Linux talk as

is to Mozart.

That guy is pretty good on the piano!! He really starts jammin in the middle of the vid!!!

[Urmas]

Bodo has opinions... here's what he thinks of Windows:

Ich hab’ Probleme. Und das nicht zu knapp.Ich sitze hier und gräme mich. Man sieht’s mir an, ich hab’den Blues.Oh yes, I’m telling you ze truez.Und der Grund dafür heißt wie in letzter Zeit so oft Microsoft.Ich schreibe nun bereits seit geraumer Zeitan einer schwierigen, langwierigen Semesterarbeit.Ich bin so gut wie fertig. Als ich sie speichern will,sagt plötzlich mein PC zu mir: „April, April!“.Und was ich dann zu ihm sag’, sag’ ich sonst nie,und das ist nicht PC.Ey sachma Bill, Gates noch?Wieso bist du eigentlich der reichste Mann der Welt?Ich finde, du verdienst völlig zu Unrecht soviel Geldmit deinen Betriebssystemen, die nicht richtig funktionierenund sich permanent mit irgendwelchen Viren infizieren.Bill, sieh es endlich ein: Indeinen Rechnern ist der Wurm drin.Und daß sie ständig abstürzt, deine mangelhafte Software,könnt’ ich ja noch ertragen, wenn es nicht so oft wär’.Neulich mal im Traum packte mich das nackte Grauen.Ich hab’ geträumt, Microsoft würde Flugzeuge bauen.Ich gehe seitdem ja gerne mal ins Kino,in Quentin-Tarantino-Filme, z.B. Kill Bill.Wir sind globalisiert und bis ins letzte vernetzt,doch bis jetzt hat sich irgendwie nur Sch<BLEEP>ße durchgesetzt:Mac Donald’s, Windows und natürlich der PC,wobei Mac ohne Donald’s find’ ich ganz okay.Ich hoffe ja, daß irgendwann der Wind sich wieder drehtund die Leute nicht mehr Geiz geil finden sondern Qualität.Denn dann, Bill, ginge deine Firma sehr schnell hops.Doch keine Angst, für deine Leute hätte sicher Steve Jobs.Dann bräuchtest du deine PCs nicht weiter sinnlos aufzupäppeln.Nee, laß dich stattdessen mal lieber schön von Macintosh ver-apple-n.

[Eggdog]

Try what I have on my EeePC. Sidux kde-lite installation then apt-get install lxde

Downloaded, to be burned as twilight falls. Uhh, I’m not really that Goth, but I’ve seen Sidux mentioned here from time to time, and your suggestion gives me an excellent motivation to finally fire it up.

Yeah Mandriva doesn't support WM's other than Kde and Gnome very well. And they are pretty up front about being KDE centric.

I always thought of Mandriva as being “a KDE distro”, but its implementation of Gnome is well-nigh perfect. After my experience with the Xfce version, I’d try any other Mandriva community mix in a New York minute. I just won’t try to roll my own; I’m not in that league, no way!

Absolutely true. Eddie is to Linux talk as

is to Mozart.

Having watched the video, I guess I can safely take that as a compliment. Bodo’s pretty talented for...

Denn dann, Bill, ginge deine Firma sehr schnell hops.Doch keine Angst, für deine Leute hätte sicher Steve Jobs.Dann bräuchtest du deine PCs nicht weiter sinnlos aufzupäppeln.Nee, laß dich stattdessen mal lieber schön von Macintosh ver-apple-n.

a shill for Steve Jobs . I used to have a little blog about Connecticut-related matters, but gave it up a year or so ago. I had to come up with at least one thing worth reading–profound, eloquent, or at least glib (I can do glib)–every single week, and that was so much like work it made my head hurt. But thanks!

Could that of been a bad burn perhaps? Not for sure if I suggested it last time.After you enjoying lightweight software so much now, why not give Arch another try?

I just found a 32-bit Arch that I know is a good burn. I think the real problem is that archlinux.org has been subverted by a secretive cabal of my enemies . But I’ll try the older disc this weekend, probably not tonight because I’m tired.

I also downloaded the first beta of Lubuntu 10.04. I looked at it a bit, was suitably impressed, and installed it. I can’t get into it now; I asked it to stash its GRUB on /dev/sda10, and I don’t think it did

Wrong again, Cap’n Crispy! I didn’t take into account the fact that the ‘Buntu 10s use Grub 2, and chainloader won’t work; I had to load it like so:

title Lubuntu 10.04 Beta 1root (hd0,9)kernel /boot/grub/core.img

Which brought up Lubuntu’s own GRUB menu. But something else is wrong with my Lubuntu; the only thing in the menu is “run”, and I did see an error message about “unable to load [some LXDE module or another]” scroll by before the splash screen took over. I’ll wait until the final release before trying to sort that out. (I could run the live disc, but that’s so slow it’s painful.)

Edited March 26, 2010 by Eggdog

[Urmas]

for... a shill for Steve Jobs .

Oh, he's an equal opportunity offender... here is a gospel for... you know...Believe in Steve

[securitybreach]

I just found a 32-bit Arch that I know is a good burn. I think the real problem is that archlinux.org has been subverted by a secretive cabal of my enemies . But I’ll try the older disc this weekend, probably not tonight because I’m tired.

Well give it another try.Also, am I the only one who only speaks english? I would love to know what the windoze/jobs rant was all about. Well there is always google translator.

[Urmas]

I would love to know what the windoze/jobs rant was all about. Well there is always google translator.

Here is a short version:In the first song our hero has "MS Blues" because when he tried to save his [university] work, Windows just did an "April Fools" on him. And what he's gotta say (to Bill) is not very PC.He goes on by challenging the logic of Bill being the richest guy alive – after all, he sells a defective, non-working, virii ridden, full-of-worms piece of OS.In fact, it crashes so often that just the other night he had a nightmare: MS had begun to build airplanes. After that nightmare he begun to go to the cinema... to watch (and watch again) Kill Bill.Then he says that, lately, the "goods" that have come with the globalisation have been of iffy quality (McDonald's, Windows)... but a "M(a)c" without the "Donald's" would be OK.The song ends with a wish for folks going for quality instead of mere thrift; that would be the downfall for Microsoft... but, hey, when Steve takes over and "applifies" the PC, the MS folks would have safe Jobs... erm... jobs.The other song is a "gospel" beginning with the good old "3% market share" – Steve will help [the Orthodox Mac Users] to change the situation, Steve, who is our savior (Heiland), the greatest of "Heiländer" (then he goes on about whether there actually be a plural – saviors – nope, there can only be one: Steve.And then the gospel part begins. Thanks to Steve, they're seeing EVERYTHING in a positive light, and as a response, even their houses are to be of "Apple Design" – yup, no Windows ('cause, these days, who needs Windows?)The next verse is a prayer for Steve's Kingdom to arrive.But. There is Evil... that goes by the name of Bill. And he is a powerful pestilence (he's got the whole world in his hands) – the "all-evil" enemy, the Beelzebub our Bill is.While Bill is driving the masses bonkers with crappy Vista, we, the Apple users, are buying everything that You, Steve, provideth – even the MacBook Air that costs €1,700 and comes without a CD rom drive. Wo cares – it looks great.Finally comes a warning for the congregation – don't succumb to the dark side of the Power; become "Appleleptics" [cf. epi-] instead.

[securitybreach]

Thanks Urmas. Although, I think Linux is more a saviour than Mac is.