Re: I Want to identify best Linux approach, and any pitfalls.

On Mon, 30 Jan 2006 21:25:26 +0000, The Natural Philosopher staggered
into the Black Sun and said:
> Dances With Crows wrote:
>> On Mon, 30 Jan 2006 18:09:40 +0000, The Natural Philosopher staggered
>> into the Black Sun and said:
>>> The machine will be run as a wired networked machine with one MAC
>>> OS9 and one PC Win 98SE on a local network, behind a NAT router
>>> [attached] to the Internet.
>> MacOS 9? Glutton for punishment, eh?
> No, married. Oh. Yes, it's the same isn't it?

This is what I hear, though some of my married friends appear happy most
of the time. (Drugs. Drugs and beer. That's the only possible
explanation! (-: )

>>> LPR)and a HP designjet 650C large format inkjet...parallel only that
>>> one..be mice if [the] Mac [could] talk to it though..ghostscript?
>> If the old Mac can talk to a Samba printer, no problem. Check your
>> MacOS software, since that's probably where the problems will show
> Printing is fine - MAC OS9 understands LPR/LPD. Well almost anyway -
> and will spit out a postcript stream over it.

OK, set up an LPD queue with CUPS (or whatever) and you should be good
to go.

>>> I'd like to play DVD's as well, but I understand there are issues.
>> xine or vlc or ogle. No problems using xine here. You'll have to
>> install libdvdcss, but the RIAA aren't going to go after you for
>> that.

That should be "MPAA". I get large stupid organizations that end in AA
confused sometimes....

> Ok..so there is ripped libraries around that dare not be sold or
> openly given away..?

libdvdcss is freely downloadable from many mirror sites all over the
world. It's just that most distros don't include that particular
library because they fear lawyers. I know .uk isn't as litigation-happy
as .us is, but you should see what I mean here.

>>> Ideally I'd like to use an integrated cheap motherboard with Intel
>>> graphics chips. Built in sound and networking etc.
>> "Cheap" is the *LAST* thing you should look for in a motherboard. In
>> x86 machines, the motherboard is the thing that's the most difficult
>> to diagnose problems with, and the thing that's the most difficult to
>> replace. Also, Intel's graphics chips suck.
> Cheap as in inexpensive, not cheap as in utter crap.

With computer hardware, you generally get what you pay for. There is
usually a positive correlation between how much you pay for a piece of
hardware and how well it'll work. Given that, you *never* buy the
cheapest piece of hardware you see via http://pricewatch.com/ unless you
have much more time than money.

> I don't want to play games. At best I want to watch video

Most graphics cards now support XV acceleration, so this is less
worrisome than it was in previous years.

>> ? Linux is not Windows and never will be. KDE behaves fairly
>> similarly to Windows by default, and it can be made to look a lot
>> like Windows, but there are and will always be differences
> Thats no problem..what I mean is that mouse actions are not as hugely
> arcane as they can be with X..like moving a cursor over a window makes
> it active - Yuk. I want to click to make it active - stuff like that.

Click-to-focus is the default behavior in KDE and GNOME.

>>> Firefox NEARLY works, but some sites I use daily require IE6
>>> rendering engine
>> I.Exploder rendering is only available via I.Exploder, which doesn't
>> exist for Linux. If this is a deal-breaker for you, you will not be
>> happy with Linux.
> No, its available on Mozilla (Nestcape 8?)..not sure if that is
> operable on Linux platform. No..seems not.

Mozilla(Windows) != Mozilla(Linux). There's a Firefox extension for
Firefox(Windows) called "view in IE" that uses the IE rendering engine
to draw a broken HTML page. This extension doesn't exist in Linux,
because IE's renderer doesn't run natively in Linux. It's possible to
use Wine or Crossover Office to run IE in Linux in some way. I haven't
ever done this because I don't need to do it, but YMMV.

>>> I have a Nikon Coolpix camera with USB interface...I'd really like
>>> to be able to pull images off that and delete them on it
>> Most USB cameras behave as Mass Storage Devices. Just plug the
>> camera in, mount it, and treat it like a disk.
> Ok there are low level drivers that recognise a USB device as
> 'storage' then? one can define a device as a USB storage device..?

Let me try again. Most cameras identify themselves as USB devices of
class "mass storage" via USB standard protocols when they are plugged in
to a USB 1 (or USB 2) port. The usb_storage module then retrieves the
mass storage device's manufacturer and model#, and implements whatever
model-specific workarounds are necessary for the device to function
properly.

In many modern distros, the "hotplug" system gets alerted whenever a new
USB or Firewire device is attached to a machine. This hotplug daemon
then typically loads all modules that are necessary for that device to
work. It may do other things, like mounting the device and creating a
new Konqueror/nautilus window that shows that device's contents.

>>> Any discussion on CAD and 'artistic' drawing programs that run
>>> native would be of extreme use. I will pay for the [right] software
>>> here as this is something I use a fair bit.
>> No idea about CAD. What do you mean by "artistic" here?
> in general CAD cares more about exact dimensions and very little about
> appearance of the drawings..whereas artistic stuff will have a lot of
> features for e.g. textures and shadings...

Sounds like you want something sort of like MacDraw. I don't typically
need or use this type of software, though I've used POVRay to do a few
things that are similar, so I can't really advise you on this.

>> Avoid anything made by PCChips. I've had good luck with Abit and
>> Asus motherboards. Athlon64 is the way to go for best bang/buck.
>> Integrated video cards are usually terrible. Integrated sound can be
>> a crapshoot.
> http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/d845gvsr/index.htm

Don't go uATX unless you have special requirements like "fanless" or
"must fit in tiny space" or "I have too much money". These things
usually cost more than ATX boards and are a PITA to expand. Also,
searching for "d845gvs" on pricewatch and newegg returned 0 results, so
this may not be popular or available from vendors.

>>> I am leaning towards SUSE Linux, but have no particular religion -
>>> used Debian and Redhat in the past.
>> I've heard that SuSE's documentation has gone downhill a great deal.
>> If you're feeling confident and you have a decent Net drop (> ISDN),
>> try the Debian netinst CD--the installation process has improved
>> tremendously with the ncurses-menu-driven thing they're using.
> Mmm. I don't have a problem either downloading or getting Linux
> up..nothing could be worse than Interactive Unix 386....however I
> don't have a ROM burner so getting the download on will require
> assistance from friends

I hear they have Linux User Groups in .uk; Google for
"$NEAREST_LARGE_CITY Linux User Group" and see what you find. Most LUGs
would be happy to burn you an install CD for just about any distro you
could think of. They're usually a good source of local support for
Linux questions as well. (Yes, they've got some seriously bad anoraks
in them sometimes, but oh well....)

> prefer to use a board from my local supplier, simply because we have a
> 15 year relationship of no questions asked top quality support..he
> doesn't do AMD..

If your local supplier "doesn't do AMD", fire your supplier. AMD just
has too many advantages in bang/buck to put up with one vendor's crap.

> I have heard that ATI are not hugely compatible..he does XFX cards as
> well...and one thing I might want to do is go for a 3 meter video
> cable using digital video (DVI) to an LCD...so I could build the
> machine into a 19" rack rtather than have it on or under the desk? Pie
> in the sky?

The most important thing is not whose "brand label" is on the cards, but
the make of the video chip on the card. As others have said, nVidia is
the easiest to get working and the best for 3D support. pricewatch says
the XFX cards they list are nVidia, so that should work OK.

For the LCD, I thought you were trying to keep the cost low. CRTs are
still cheaper, and they offer better contrast ratios and multiple
resolutions without interpolating. Most 19" racks that I've seen don't
fit on or under a desk, but rackmount stuff is another thing entirely.
You typically pay a premium for rackmount hardware, and it can be a pain
to attach peripherals to a rackmount machine or upgrade a rackmount
machine's hardware. Ah well, HTH anyway,

--
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin / mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong
http://www.brainbench.com / "He is a rhythmic movement of the
-----------------------------/ penguins, is Tux." --MegaHAL
.

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