Greetings / Newbie questions

From: Dale Maggee (dale.b.maggee_at_death-to-spammers.team.telstra.com)
Date: 09/08/05

  • Next message: Angelus: "Re: Fedora 4 install woes" 
    Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2005 14:32:13 +1000

    Greetings linux community! Please welcome your newest member! (group hug)
    I have been running Fedora core 3 for about a week now, and I LOVE IT!!!! I
    am FINALLY FREE OF MICROSHAFT!!! I feel like Mel Gibson in 'Braveheart':
    "FREEEEEEEEEDOM!"

    I have a bit of previous experience messing around with Red Hat 6 & 8, and
    FreeBSD 4.7, and I'm a winblows ace and a BASIC Programmer (C64 Basic,
    QBASIC, VB, Access, etc), but I'm still very green in terms of actually
    knowing how this great operating system works & being able to use it
    properly..

    I am having a couple of issues which I am hoping somebody will be able to
    help me out with...

    First, about my system:
    AMD Athlon 800
    I don't know what type of motherboard.
    512Mb RAM (2x256Mb PC-133)
    Promise Fasttrak ATA-100 IDE controller Winblows Ex-Pee calls this a SCSI
    Controller but it connects to IDE Drives. I think it's doing this through a
    SCSI Interface (It loads a BIOS when it detects drives during startup, just
    like a SCSI card).

    40 & 200GB Quantum HDD attached to the Promise Controller. (40Gb Hdd is
    /dev/hde, this is the boot drive. Ex-Pee is installed here, 200Gb HDD is
    /dev/hdf. Fedora is installed here. My partitions are:

    /dev/hde1/ - FAT32 - Winblows Ex-Pee. mounts to /media/dos (40Gb)
    /dev/hdf1/ - NTFS - Old, Dead Winblows Ex-Pee Installation. Not mounted yet
    as I have not installed the NTFS kernel driver yet. (20Gb). I have only kept
    this and /dev/hdf2 as I need to recover data.
    /dev/hdf2/ - NTFS - Data. Not mounted yet as I have not installed the NTFS
    kernel driver yet. (60Gb)
    /dev/hdf3/ - Ext3 - / (15Gb). I Forced LBA32 during setup as this partition
    starts way past the 1024th cylinder.
    /dev/hdf4/ - Ext3 - /home (20Gb)
    /dev/hdf5/ - Swap (500Mb)

    LG DVD+RW on /dev/hda
    LG DVD-Rom on /dev/hdc

    128Mb ATI Radeon 9250 AGP Video Card.

    Creative Sound Blaster Live OEM

    Ok, now the issues:

    0. I am having a bit of trouble deciding which to use: Gnome or KDE. KDE
    seems much prettier and more configurable (visually / behaviour wise), but
    it also seems slower and less stable. I have had a few lockups where the
    machine just hangs using KDE. Currently I've got my default session set to
    Gnome. Any comments comparing the two which might help me decide would be
    nice...

    What's the story with Gnome & KDE? Why don't the two join forces and build
    an uber, configurable, stable, pretty window manager? If this happened, I
    think M$ would have some SERIOUS competition!

    1. I've read that Fedora comes MP3 and DVD disabled out of the box. I have
    managed to get MP3 Playback with XMMS working by copying the appropriate .so
    file from an older version of XMMS I had lying about into the XMMS plugins
    directory, but what do I need to do to get totem playing Movies and DVDs? I
    have tried:
        - Running Totem as Root (I've found that lots of things need to be done
    as root. This is a seperate question)
        - ensuring Gstreamer is installed (it is, V0.8). It even seems to have
    heaps of plugins installed...
        - Fiddling with totem preferences. I can't see anything wrong in there.
    Does anyone have any Ideas as to what I need to do? I am using a work
    internet connection, so downloading is difficult. I have been thinking I
    should download MPlayer and Xine...

    2. I've read that it's not a good Idea to be logging in as root. My 'normal'
    username on my system is antisol, and this is what I log into gnome as, but
    I have found that alot of things need to be done as root. For example:
        - Burning with K3b. If I don't run this as root, it won't do anything,
    because it doesn't have sufficient permissions to /dev/hda (my CD Burner)
        - Running XMMS with 'Use Realtime Priority' option enabled (I have been
    getting the odd skip in XMMS when playing Mp3s)
        - Running the Audio Cd Player. same problem as K3b - insufficient
    permissions to the device.

    In KDE, There is an option with each launcher to 'run as a different user'.
    I have set this up to run as root for these applications, but there are a
    couple of issues with this: I have switched back to Gnome and cannot find
    any equivalent option so I have to run these programs from a terminal after
    typing 'su'. Also when I'm using KDE, it prompts me for a password every
    time I want to run these programs. Can this be turned off? I don't want to
    have to type in the root password everytime I want to run XMMS!

    What I'd like to be able to do is either give my 'antisol' user almost the
    same rights as root (i.e editing configs etc, but I think this might pose
    the same risks as logging in as root?), or to save the authentication or
    give antisol the permissions to run these programs as antisol. I have
    considered doing a recirsive chmod on /*.*, but decided that this might
    break things. Suggestions?

    3. I have noticed some sort-of random lockups. This usually occurs when
    running multimedia type stuff. For Example, Tux Racer will usually play
    music and display the main 'press any key' screen, but that's it. It freezes
    at that point with the music still playing. Pressing keys does nothing,
    pressing CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE to exit X does nothing, CTRL-ALT-DEL does
    nothing. When this happens I have to hit the reset button... I have left it
    there for up to 10 minutes, and the music just keeps playing. If I press any
    key INSTANTLY as soon as Tux Racer starts up, it might let me play one game
    before freezing.

    Also, I have Installed Unreal Tournament 2004 for Linux. This works fine but
    will occasionally just lock up as well. When UT locks up, it just freezes.
    No sound, no mouse, no keys do anything. Reset button.

    I have also noticed some odd lockups when doing lots of things in X. these
    aren't really lockups, though, more like 'thinking sessions'. The mouse will
    still move, System monitor either freezes or says the CPu is at 100%, but I
    can't click on anything. If I just leave it there for a couple of minutes
    though it will start responding again. This usually happens when I have
    multiple nautilus windows open and am moving/resizing one of the windows.
    It's a strange one. It happens in both gnome and KDE, but more often in KDE.
    I'm thinking some kind of memory/hardware incompatibility thing?

    4. Can someone point me to a good link (or type an essay, if you're bored)
    explaining what a 'journaling' filesystem is, and why I don't need to defrag
    it? This is WAY COOL!!!

    I can't wait to get myself familiar and confortable with Linux. I have found
    these current versions to be excellent in terms of ease of installation and
    user-friendliness, and I think Linux is starting to approach a point where
    it should be useable for the masses. I'm very interested in starting to
    learn C so that I can maybe even contribute to it (I have become an
    open-source fanboy). Does anyone have any good general links / info /
    programs / whatever that they think I might find usefull / helpfull?

    Thanks for taking the time for reading all this, and thank you in advance to
    anyone who replies!

    Regards,
    -Dale Maggee

  • Next message: Angelus: "Re: Fedora 4 install woes"