Re:128 bit version?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2
Use Fortify. Netscape doesn't seem to have any glibc versions of its 128 browsers out anyway, so those with glibc systems are stuck with either 40 bits or Fortify if they want a relatively stable browser.
Then again, don't take my word, I haven't downloaded a copy since 4.51 came out.
AC
Re:Mozilla!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3
This is the main reson that I think Linus should just ignore MS/Mindcraft for the time being.
Excellent point!
Pardon my ignorance, but I can't see what's so difficult about writing a browser. It's basically a TCP/IP client with an HTML parser and an image renderer. What's the hard part that takes so long?
There's a classic design rule-of-thumb: "Be strict in sending and tolerant in receiving". The problem (to some degree) is that the 'strict in sending' part of the bargain has been dropped on the floor by various WYSIWYG HTML editors, and well-intentioned authors. Given user expectations, this forces a parser/layout engine to be extremely (even perversely) tolerant. Hence, not as easy as it seems.
It's those pesky users. If nobody used the product, then nobody would expect it to work;).
Actually, there are 128 bit versions for all platforms. It just takes a few days to wire these into the secure servers (as I'm heading off to QA these in a few minutes). Wise slashdotters in the past have found them prior to general announcement. Think of it as a treasure hunt, it ain't that hard.
FWIW, if you poke around you might notice that the "export" version is no longer 40 bit encryption.
It's now 56bit...
I want to die peacefully in my sleep as my grandfather did...
Sick and tired of my browser choking on some JS and killing my email. Notice that this is not a problem with MS products.
My Solution: I create a 2nd account just for browsing. That way when my browser crashes it does not interfere with the messenger email client.
I started using kmail (version 1.0.17 is stabe enough to use) so that when Netscape crashes it doesn't trash my email. I also wrote a shell script that cleans things up after a crash to make things easier.
You're right about MS -- credit where credit is due, IE is a better browser. It has some annoying features, but at least it works.
And on this front, I would say that Mozilla SeaMonkey is currently our best (and maybe our only) hope of getting a better browser for Linux.
It sounds like they're doing it right, which is a good thing. Netscape got so caught up in competing with MS that their product suffered. This is the main reson that I think Linus should just ignore MS/Mindcraft for the time being.
Pardon my ignorance, but I can't see what's so difficult about writing a browser. It's basically a TCP/IP client with an HTML parser and an image renderer. What's the hard part that takes so long? I know the people working on it are all good programmers, so there must be some hidden "tarpit" that I don't know about.
More info in the readme in/usr/doc/netscape-common-4.xx, also with instructions for tcsh etc.
This stops the dns helper from starting. When I did it, Netscape got a LOT faster at dns lookups. Now I guess it just uses the nameservers I specified in/etc/resolv.conf, which is kinda what I wanted in the first place.:-)
If you still think Netscape sucks, try the latest KFM which is not too shabby and renders pages very quickly. Look at Freshmeat on Netscape then try it with KFM. All those bloody tables render faster in KFM. Gawd, I can't wait for Mozilla.:-)
what we need is browser makers to stop trying to make HTML do exactly the same stuff as you can do with DTP programs (ie get pixel perfect layout control).
HTML isnt meant to look exactly the same on every computer. it is meant to lay content out in the best way for your system.
makes me laugh... sites that set their sites up for 640x480 screens.. then running them in 1280x1024 or so...
smash
-- I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
A couple weeks ago just for kicks I downloaded Netscape 2.0x. WOW. It was so fast. Unfortunately,/. and freshmeat rendered horribly. So I tried 3.04 and have been using it ever since. Some pages don't render completely right, but I am more than happy with the speed and memory usage improvements that I've gotten.
Use the glibc2 version if you can!
by
alecf
·
· Score: 2
If you have a Redhat 5.x system, or another Linux distribution that has glibc, use that version!
the glibc2 version will be much more stable on these systems than the libc5 version.
I'm not sure why it's still in the unsupported section - it works better than the libc5 version.
Mozilla has nothing to do with Communicator 4.x
by
alecf
·
· Score: 2
First of all, Netscape has contractual (customer) obligations to continue to fix bugs in the 4.x series, so Netscape will continue to put out new 4.x releases on a regular basis with more and more bugfixes. Secondly, the team that works on 4.x is a TOTALLY different team than the Mozilla/5.0 team. The Mozilla team is NOT distracted by 4.x work.
Re:Redhat 6.0 and Netscape (Specifically glibc2.1)
by
alecf
·
· Score: 3
No - not in 4.6, MAYBE 4.7. And yes, that's an official response:) - I worked on 4.5 and currently work on 5.0
It is considered one of the biggest mistakes of Netscape to have released version 4.5 of their browser instead of concentrating on Mozilla. So what do they do? They release a 4.6 version of their browser. Mozilla has a lot more potential than their current browsers so AOL/Netscape should be concentrating on getting Mozilla usable. Although 4.5 isn't perfect it's OK and is certainly usable (I don't know how people say it crashes every 5 minutes) can they not leave it alone now and put all their efforts into Mozilla and only work on the old browsers if they have to plug a security hole or something as urgent. Mozilla will never get released if they are keeping their developers on the 4.x series.
Also why 4.6? I can't see anything different to 4.5 so it should have been version 4.52 --
It seems to me that if Netscape wanted to fit the "UNIX Mentality" well enough, they would include autocompletion, bash style. It would be nice to hit tab once to fill in the name, and if it doesn't have a match, you can hit tab again and get a drop down menu of choices. It would be similar to the IE5 version, with a bit of a UNIX twist.
Ah well, we can hope that future browsers (cough, cough, Mozilla or Gzilla developers) will do something similar to this.
This is from the README. I've been told it applies:
Starting with 4.0, we strongly suggest setting the MOZILLA_HOME environment variable to point to the Communicator installation directory. Many Netscape Client components now look at MOZILLA_HOME as a fallback or default mechanism in addition to the existing mechanisms from previous releases.
Hope this helps. ---------- mphall@cstone.nospam.net
-- ----------
mphall@cstone.nospam.net
"A horse laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms"
Re:Too bad USGOV/NOAA "standardizing" on NS
by
IntlHarvester
·
· Score: 2
You're hitting the nail on the head - NT stability is highly dependant on what hardware you are using. So your "sysadmin" skills really need to be to know what hardware to requisition.
Note that this is similar to Linux's hardware support problem, except that the linux community is more honest about what hardware is "supported" (although much of that supported hardware has beta level drivers). Microsoft is totally willing to hand out hardware certifications and the "Designed for Windows NT" sticker to unstable platforms.
I was under the impression that you shouldn't hot plug PS/2 mice under any OS... --
Another way to avoid having NS block on DNS lookups is to use the Junkbuster proxy, and you get to filter out banner ads as a bonus.
One word of caution, though, manually bind Junkbuster to 127.0.0.1 - this may have changed, but previously the default setup you get by following README binds junkbuster to any IP address, resulting in an open proxy invitation to script kiddies.
Well folks, I would say this is not completely unwelcome--4.6 does seem a little more stable than 4.51 was, although even so, I still can't get it to run more than a few minutes without crashing. And worst of all, unlike the current Mozilla SeaMonkey project, 4.6 is still proprietary, so don't even think about trying to go into the code and trying to fix the bugs yourself... If you don't like the bugs, tough--you'll have to live with them. Personally, I think Netscape has got to be the most unstable, bloated piece of software I've seen for Linux yet. I think the Linux platform is desperately in need of a better browser. I say, while 4.6 is a nice interim measure, at the same time, I hope Netscape isn't spending too much in the way of resources on the 4.x line still, for as Jamie Zawinski said, Netscape sunk a huge amount of engineering effort into the 4.5 release in 1998, and that was a huge blow to Mozilla.
And on this front, I would say that Mozilla SeaMonkey is currently our best (and maybe our only) hope of getting a better browser for Linux... And what could be better? It is even open source! I therefore would like to call to all of you to help with the Mozilla project. Let us prove to Jamie Zawinski that all Mozilla needed was a little time.
I am one of the people who is contributing. Admittedly, I am not much of a coder--I only just completed some introductory C/C++ courses. But you do not even have to know C/C++ to do things like file bug reports, or even just give tips. For example, check this out. These open source tools were suggested to them by me.
Or, check out bug reports, like this. I submitted the patch that fixed that bug.
My point is, you don't have to know much about programming to help. And I think Mozilla deserves all the help it can get right now. So please, let us help Mozilla.
In case you people want to know what Mozilla is like... Let me say:
1) It is a radical departure from the old Netscape, and about time, too. 2) It is STANDARDS based. Example: ALL CSS1 properties are now supported. 3) It is truly cross-platform, unlike IE. Cross-platform UIs are built using a form of XML, in.XUL files. These are really cool. 4) It will support Skins (or Chrome), much like WinAmp. Skins anyone?? 5) Also please check out MozillaZine. They have some chrome available there.
Re:Too bad USGOV/NOAA "standardizing" on NS
by
Dredd13
·
· Score: 2
I don't understand why this is a problem...?
It allows them to run Linux desktops/laptops instead of being slaves to MS's operating systems, paying fees for something they don't need.
We should be happy about that, not upset.
Re:4.6 and Encryption
by
Raul+Acevedo
·
· Score: 2
As was already stated, you should check out Fortify. It can take any 40-bit encryption Netscape browser and convert it to 128-bit safely and reliably.
I don't know if it will work with this new 4.6 version, but I'm going to try it. I'm sure they'll add official support for it soon enough. ----------
-- In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror,
and you would not have been notified.
I'd love to see URL completion. I don't understand what the complaints are about. The last time I used it on Lose95/98, it worked beautifully, because it automatically highlights the "inserted" text, so if it's not what you want, you just ignore it and keep on typing right over it.
So, if autocomplete guesses correctly, you're golden and hit RETURN. If it doesn't guess correctly, you just ignore it and keep on typing the URL, i.e., it's exactly as if it weren't enabled. So what's the problem?
Anyway, yes, I'd love to see it. I think removing it from the UNIX versions is STUPID. Didn't it occur to anyone to make it an option in the Preferences, perhaps disabled by default if indeed it didn't make the UNIX "mentality"? ----------
-- In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror,
and you would not have been notified.
For those looking for it... For whatever reason, the link above doesn't work correctly; an extra space is inserted between the 'e' and the 'n' in the term "win32-en-complete"
https://wwwus.netscape.com/usdl-bin/pdms_dnstest .cgi?PRODUCT=communicator4.6-win32-en-comp lete-128&COMPONENTS=CLIENT&TEMPLATES=NSCP Copy the link, paste it into the correct place, delete the extra space, and grab the 128bit copy!
It seems, subjectively, to be working better than 4.51 for me. (N.B. I'm using the glibc2 version)
Slashdot seems to render faster, as do other sites, and it hasn't hung yet - though 4.51 hadn't hung in a while since I setup squid as a local proxy for my machine. (most of the hangs I used to get appeared to be blocking dns lookups and the like, so by using squid locally, squid deals with the dns lookups + data download, and always gives netscape something to chew on - even if it's a page of html saying "not found").
Using the computer as its own proxy server may seem like overkill, but it's definitely upped the responsiveness of my machine. Squid is pretty good at downloading stuff:-)
-- Choice of masters is not freedom.
Using Netscape + fetchmail + procmail
by
DGolden
·
· Score: 3
Here's the way I get my mail. Note that fetchmail supports IMAP as well, AFAIK. This isn't any use with the remote message storage features of IMAP, though. However, it may be useful to some people, so i'll post it one more time.
By a little constructive work, you can get netscape's "MoveMail external program" option to use procmail. First, I set up fetchmail to check my mail every few minutes, by calling it in.bash_profile, and putting this in my home dir:
> more ~/.fetchmailrc
set postmaster "myusername" set bouncemail set properties "" set daemon 600 poll my.pop3.server with proto POP3 user "mypop3username" there with password "my password" is myusername here
fetchmail loops mail from my pop server into my linux box's internal mail system (sendmail) Sendmail is set up to use procmail on my RH6.0 box, anyway, so I didn't need to use the.forward mechanism to use procmail.
Procmail can accept a list of rules for what to do with your incoming mail, _in addition_ to the system wide rules. These are stored in.procmailrc
I added this rule ("recipe") to my ~/.procmailrc
:0c: $HOME/nsmail/.netscape.mail-recovery
This tells procmail to move a _copy_ of all my system mail (including the external mail looped in by fetchmail) to a file in the netscape mail directory called.netscape.mail-recovery This happens automatically whenever mail comes in.
Then, within Netscape, I went to Edit/Preferences Mail&Newsgroups/Mail servers.
I changed the server to (Using MoveMail), and changed the movemail preference to "using external application"
Now's the tricky bit - netscape calls the external movemail program with a few parameters, which are supposed to tell it to get the mail from/var/spool/mail/myusername, and put it in the (undocumented, AFAICT) file ~/nsmail/.netscape.mail-recovery
However - procmail's already done that bit! So, we don't need to do it again. I changed the "external movemail program" to "echo" with no parameters, as a sort of dummy command - netscape returns an error if no command at all is present.
So now, when I click on "get mail", netscape goes off and finds a copy of all my mail.
This is dead handy. note that a backup of all the mail could be kept by the procmail recipe (eg.):
:0c: $HOME/mail.backup
This rather convoluted sounding approach is the one I've found to be by far the most flexible. It allows me to use any combination of mail readers, by distributing copies of all messages between them, and allows me to use procmail's advanced filtering functions. It also neatly gets round netscape's "only one pop3 host" limitation, since fetchmail can poll as many as you like, and allows me to read all my system internal mail in the comfort of Netscape Messenger.
Note also that, for security, the.fetchmailrc and.procmailrc must have restricted permissions set as documented in the fetchmail+procmail manuals.
There - that wasn't so hard now....
-- Choice of masters is not freedom.
Re:Too bad USGOV/NOAA standardizing on NS
by
mpe
·
· Score: 2
If you can't get NT 4 SP3 to be stable, what makes you think you can make Linux+VMWare stable?
A VMed version of NT crashing is a lot less destructive than the thing crashing nativly. Crashing 3 times a day is abyssmal and that's not NT's fault. Learn some basic sysadmin skills and then ALL of your OSes will be stable.
This comment comes up quite often ignoreing that a) MS specifically markets this product as not needing a trained admin. b) information on NT admin is not always easily available
Re:Too bad USGOV/NOAA "standardizing" on NS
by
Harvester
·
· Score: 2
I work for the House of Representatives and all we run is MS Office products, Exchange email servers, and NT Servers. It bites. My f'ing computer (running NT workstation 4 SP3) crashes so hard at least 3 times a day that I have to cut the power. I can't wait until I can install Linux on that puppy and vmware NT.
I would rather everybody was standardizing on Netscape than MS. At least my boss hates MS too...
Slashdot Mirror
Use Fortify. Netscape doesn't seem to have any glibc versions of its 128 browsers out anyway, so those with glibc systems are stuck with either 40 bits or Fortify if they want a relatively stable browser.
Then again, don't take my word, I haven't downloaded a copy since 4.51 came out.
AC
Excellent point! There's a classic design rule-of-thumb: "Be strict in sending and tolerant in receiving". The problem (to some degree) is that the 'strict in sending' part of the bargain has been dropped on the floor by various WYSIWYG HTML editors, and well-intentioned authors. Given user expectations, this forces a parser/layout engine to be extremely (even perversely) tolerant. Hence, not as easy as it seems.
It's those pesky users. If nobody used the product, then nobody would expect it to work ;).
For anyone wondering what's changed in NS 4.6:
http://home.netscap e.com/eng/mozilla/4.6/relnotes/unix-4.6.html
For what it's worth, it does seem to render a little faster, but then I'm an impressionable litte sprite.
slashdot broke my sig
FWIW, if you poke around you might notice that the "export" version is no longer 40 bit encryption.
It's now 56bit...
I want to die peacefully in my sleep as my grandfather did...
My Solution: I create a 2nd account just for browsing. That way when my browser crashes it does not interfere with the messenger email client.
I started using kmail (version 1.0.17 is stabe enough to use) so that when Netscape crashes it doesn't trash my email. I also wrote a shell script that cleans things up after a crash to make things easier.
You're right about MS -- credit where credit is due, IE is a better browser. It has some annoying features, but at least it works.
TedC
It sounds like they're doing it right, which is a good thing. Netscape got so caught up in competing with MS that their product suffered. This is the main reson that I think Linus should just ignore MS/Mindcraft for the time being.
Pardon my ignorance, but I can't see what's so difficult about writing a browser. It's basically a TCP/IP client with an HTML parser and an image renderer. What's the hard part that takes so long? I know the people working on it are all good programmers, so there must be some hidden "tarpit" that I don't know about.
TedC
Add this to your .bash_profile
/usr/doc/netscape-common-4.xx, also with instructions for tcsh etc.
/etc/resolv.conf, which is kinda what I wanted in the first place. :-)
:-)
MOZILLA_NO_ASYNC_DNS=True
export MOZILLA_NO_ASYNC_DNS
More info in the readme in
This stops the dns helper from starting. When I did it, Netscape got a LOT faster at dns lookups. Now I guess it just uses the nameservers I specified in
If you still think Netscape sucks, try the latest KFM which is not too shabby and renders pages very quickly. Look at Freshmeat on Netscape then try it with KFM. All those bloody tables render faster in KFM. Gawd, I can't wait for Mozilla.
Groucho
heh...
what we need is browser makers to stop trying to make HTML do exactly the same stuff as you can do with DTP programs (ie get pixel perfect layout control).
HTML isnt meant to look exactly the same on every computer. it is meant to lay content out in the best way for your system.
makes me laugh... sites that set their sites up for 640x480 screens.. then running them in 1280x1024 or so...
smash
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
A couple weeks ago just for kicks I downloaded Netscape 2.0x. WOW. It was so fast. Unfortunately, /. and freshmeat rendered horribly. So I tried 3.04 and have been using it ever since. Some pages don't render completely right, but I am more than happy with the speed and memory usage improvements that I've gotten.
If you have a Redhat 5.x system, or another Linux distribution that has glibc, use that version!
the glibc2 version will be much more stable on these systems than the libc5 version.
I'm not sure why it's still in the unsupported section - it works better than the libc5 version.
First of all, Netscape has contractual (customer) obligations to continue to fix bugs in the 4.x series, so Netscape will continue to put out new 4.x releases on a regular basis with more and more bugfixes. Secondly, the team that works on 4.x is a TOTALLY different team than the Mozilla/5.0 team. The Mozilla team is NOT distracted by 4.x work.
No - not in 4.6, MAYBE 4.7. And yes, that's an official response :) - I worked on 4.5 and currently work on 5.0
It is considered one of the biggest mistakes of Netscape to have released version 4.5 of their browser instead of concentrating on Mozilla. So what do they do? They release a 4.6 version of their browser. Mozilla has a lot more potential than their current browsers so AOL/Netscape should be concentrating on getting Mozilla usable. Although 4.5 isn't perfect it's OK and is certainly usable (I don't know how people say it crashes every 5 minutes) can they not leave it alone now and put all their efforts into Mozilla and only work on the old browsers if they have to plug a security hole or something as urgent. Mozilla will never get released if they are keeping their developers on the 4.x series.
Also why 4.6? I can't see anything different to 4.5 so it should have been version 4.52
--
In the release notes, I see a new feature is the G2 player... I am now running netscape 4.6 but did not figure out what this means. Anyone?
It seems to me that if Netscape wanted to fit the "UNIX Mentality" well enough, they would include autocompletion, bash style. It would be nice to hit tab once to fill in the name, and if it doesn't have a match, you can hit tab again and get a drop down menu of choices. It would be similar to the IE5 version, with a bit of a UNIX twist.
Ah well, we can hope that future browsers (cough, cough, Mozilla or Gzilla developers) will do something similar to this.
Evan Jones http://evanjones.ca/
Starting with 4.0, we strongly suggest setting the MOZILLA_HOME environment variable to point to the Communicator installation directory. Many Netscape Client components now look at MOZILLA_HOME as a fallback or default mechanism in addition to the existing mechanisms from previous releases.
csh, tcsh: /path/to/install-directory
setenv MOZILLA_HOME
sh, bash, ksh:
MOZILLA_HOME=/path/to/install-directory
export MOZILLA_HOME
Hope this helps.
----------
mphall@cstone.nospam.net
----------
mphall@cstone.nospam.net
"A horse laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms"
You're hitting the nail on the head - NT stability is highly dependant on what hardware you are using. So your "sysadmin" skills really need to be to know what hardware to requisition.
Note that this is similar to Linux's hardware support problem, except that the linux community is more honest about what hardware is "supported" (although much of that supported hardware has beta level drivers). Microsoft is totally willing to hand out hardware certifications and the "Designed for Windows NT" sticker to unstable platforms.
I was under the impression that you shouldn't hot plug PS/2 mice under any OS...
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Another way to avoid having NS block on DNS lookups is to use the Junkbuster proxy, and you get to filter out banner ads as a bonus.
One word of caution, though, manually bind Junkbuster to 127.0.0.1 - this may have changed, but previously the default setup you get by following README binds junkbuster to any IP address, resulting in an open proxy invitation to script kiddies.
Well folks, I would say this is not completely unwelcome--4.6 does seem a little more stable than 4.51 was, although even so, I still can't get it to run more than a few minutes without crashing. And worst of all, unlike the current Mozilla SeaMonkey project, 4.6 is still proprietary, so don't even think about trying to go into the code and trying to fix the bugs yourself... If you don't like the bugs, tough--you'll have to live with them. Personally, I think Netscape has got to be the most unstable, bloated piece of software I've seen for Linux yet. I think the Linux platform is desperately in need of a better browser. I say, while 4.6 is a nice interim measure, at the same time, I hope Netscape isn't spending too much in the way of resources on the 4.x line still, for as Jamie Zawinski said, Netscape sunk a huge amount of engineering effort into the 4.5 release in 1998, and that was a huge blow to Mozilla.
.XUL files. These are really cool.
And on this front, I would say that Mozilla SeaMonkey is currently our best (and maybe our only) hope of getting a better browser for Linux... And what could be better? It is even open source! I therefore would like to call to all of you to help with the Mozilla project. Let us prove to Jamie Zawinski that all Mozilla needed was a little time.
I am one of the people who is contributing. Admittedly, I am not much of a coder--I only just completed some introductory C/C++ courses. But you do not even have to know C/C++ to do things like file bug reports, or even just give tips. For example, check this out. These open source tools were suggested to them by me.
Or, check out bug reports, like this. I submitted the patch that fixed that bug.
My point is, you don't have to know much about programming to help. And I think Mozilla deserves all the help it can get right now. So please, let us help Mozilla.
In case you people want to know what Mozilla is like... Let me say:
1) It is a radical departure from the old Netscape, and about time, too.
2) It is STANDARDS based. Example: ALL CSS1 properties are now supported.
3) It is truly cross-platform, unlike IE. Cross-platform UIs are built using a form of XML, in
4) It will support Skins (or Chrome), much like WinAmp. Skins anyone??
5) Also please check out MozillaZine. They have some chrome available there.
I don't understand why this is a problem...?
It allows them to run Linux desktops/laptops instead of being slaves to MS's operating systems, paying fees for something they don't need.
We should be happy about that, not upset.
I don't know if it will work with this new 4.6 version, but I'm going to try it. I'm sure they'll add official support for it soon enough.
----------
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
So, if autocomplete guesses correctly, you're golden and hit RETURN. If it doesn't guess correctly, you just ignore it and keep on typing the URL, i.e., it's exactly as if it weren't enabled. So what's the problem?
Anyway, yes, I'd love to see it. I think removing it from the UNIX versions is STUPID. Didn't it occur to anyone to make it an option in the Preferences, perhaps disabled by default if indeed it didn't make the UNIX "mentality"?
----------
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
128 bit version
t .cgi?PRODUCT=communicator4.6-win32-en-comp lete-128&COMPONENTS=CLIENT&TEMPLATES=NSCP
For those looking for it... For whatever reason, the link above doesn't work correctly; an extra space is inserted between the 'e' and the 'n' in the term "win32-en-complete"
https://wwwus.netscape.com/usdl-bin/pdms_dnstes
Copy the link, paste it into the correct place, delete the extra space, and grab the 128bit copy!
Found this at Ars Technica
Hopefully this doesn't get lost in the thread
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
It seems, subjectively, to be working better than 4.51 for me. (N.B. I'm using the glibc2 version)
:-)
Slashdot seems to render faster, as do other sites, and it hasn't hung yet - though 4.51 hadn't hung in a while since I setup squid as a local proxy for my machine. (most of the hangs I used to get appeared to be blocking dns lookups and the like, so by using squid locally, squid deals with the dns lookups + data download, and always gives netscape something to chew on - even if it's a page of html saying "not found").
Using the computer as its own proxy server may seem like overkill, but it's definitely upped the responsiveness of my machine. Squid is pretty good at downloading stuff
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Here's the way I get my mail. Note that fetchmail supports IMAP as well, AFAIK. This isn't any use with the remote message storage features of IMAP, though. However, it may be useful to some people, so i'll post it one more time.
.bash_profile, and putting this in my home dir:
.forward mechanism to use procmail.
.procmailrc
:0c:
.netscape.mail-recovery This happens automatically whenever mail comes in.
/var/spool/mail/myusername, and put it in the (undocumented, AFAICT) file ~/nsmail/.netscape.mail-recovery
:0c:
.fetchmailrc and .procmailrc must have restricted permissions set as documented in the fetchmail+procmail manuals.
By a little constructive work, you can get netscape's "MoveMail external program" option to use procmail.
First, I set up fetchmail to check my mail every few minutes, by calling it in
> more ~/.fetchmailrc
set postmaster "myusername"
set bouncemail
set properties ""
set daemon 600
poll my.pop3.server with proto POP3
user "mypop3username" there with password "my password" is myusername here
fetchmail loops mail from my pop server into my linux box's internal mail system (sendmail) Sendmail is set up to use procmail on my RH6.0 box, anyway, so I didn't need to use the
Procmail can accept a list of rules for what to do with your incoming mail, _in addition_ to the system wide rules. These are stored in
I added this rule ("recipe") to my ~/.procmailrc
$HOME/nsmail/.netscape.mail-recovery
This tells procmail to move a _copy_ of all my system mail (including the external mail looped in by fetchmail) to a file in the netscape mail directory called
Then, within Netscape, I went to Edit/Preferences Mail&Newsgroups/Mail servers.
I changed the server to (Using MoveMail), and changed the movemail preference to "using external application"
Now's the tricky bit - netscape calls the external movemail program with a few parameters, which are supposed to tell it to get the mail from
However - procmail's already done that bit! So, we don't need to do it again. I changed the "external movemail program" to "echo" with no parameters, as a sort of dummy command - netscape returns an error if no command at all is present.
So now, when I click on "get mail", netscape goes off and finds a copy of all my mail.
This is dead handy. note that a backup of all the mail could be kept by the procmail recipe (eg.):
$HOME/mail.backup
This rather convoluted sounding approach is the one I've found to be by far the most flexible. It allows me to use any combination of mail readers, by distributing copies of all messages between them, and allows me to use procmail's advanced filtering functions. It also neatly gets round netscape's "only one pop3 host" limitation, since fetchmail can poll as many as you like, and allows me to read all my system internal mail in the comfort of Netscape Messenger.
Note also that, for security, the
There - that wasn't so hard now....
Choice of masters is not freedom.
If you can't get NT 4 SP3 to be stable, what makes you
think you can make Linux+VMWare stable?
A VMed version of NT crashing is a lot less destructive
than the thing crashing nativly.
Crashing 3 times a day is abyssmal and that's not NT's
fault. Learn some basic sysadmin skills and then ALL of
your OSes will be stable.
This comment comes up quite often ignoreing that
a) MS specifically markets this product as not needing
a trained admin.
b) information on NT admin is not always easily available
I work for the House of Representatives and all we run is MS Office products, Exchange email servers, and NT Servers. It bites. My f'ing computer (running NT workstation 4 SP3) crashes so hard at least 3 times a day that I have to cut the power. I can't wait until I can install Linux on that puppy and vmware NT.
I would rather everybody was standardizing on Netscape than MS. At least my boss hates MS too...