I've got X4 running on SuSE 6.4 on two machines, both at home and in my office. Here's what I did. After installing 6.4, I used Yast and went to the SuSE ftp site under install. The rpms are there under SuSE/X/XFree86/XFree86-4.0-SuSE/suse64. Yast recognized that these are newer packages than 3.3.6 and let me upgrade X. I selected everything except glide, xextra and xxprt. I also installed SaX2 but at first it would not work. I ran xf86config and generated the XF86Config file, and it worked fine. Later I found that Sax2 requires perl-tk and perl-gtk packages to work, and then I used it to setup a new configuration. Right now I am at 1280x1024, 32 bit, with a virtual screen size of 1600x1200, and running Gnome 1.2. It is fast and looks great!
I read the CNN article, and it is not completely clear from the article what they did. Let me explain. Deincoccus radiodurans is a microorganism which is naturally resistant to very high doses of radiation. Believe it or not, radiation is naturally found in the environment. They did not engineer the bug to be resistant to radiation! It is also NOT resistant to heat, antibiotics, most toxic chemicals, etc. The engineering was only to add a plasmid containing the genes from the mer operon, which produce enzymes to convert alkyl mercury compounds (the most toxic kind) to elemental mercury (the least toxic kind). This operon is widely found in common soil bacteria, and is naturally transferred between different species of bacteria by means of plasmids. The mer operon has been introduced in many organisms, including plants, for the purpose of treating mercury and other heavy metal (e.g., tin, lead) wastes. The bug now has the capability to degrade alkyl mercury compounds in the presence of high levels of radioactivity, such as may be found in nuclear wastes. That's all. This bug does not "eat" toxic waste, in the sense that degradation of the organic mercury compounds does not provide any energy to the cells for growth or metabolism. The degradation of the mercury compounds keeps them from killing the bug! Get off the Frankenstein crap, people. You have been watching too many Saturday morning cartoons. Robert S. Phillips, Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Georgia
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I've got X4 running on SuSE 6.4 on two machines, both at home and in my office. Here's what I did. After installing 6.4, I used Yast and went to the SuSE ftp site under install. The rpms are there under SuSE/X/XFree86/XFree86-4.0-SuSE/suse64. Yast recognized that these are newer packages than 3.3.6 and let me upgrade X. I selected everything except glide, xextra and xxprt. I also installed SaX2 but at first it would not work. I ran xf86config and generated the XF86Config file, and it worked fine. Later I found that Sax2 requires perl-tk and perl-gtk packages to work, and then I used it to setup a new configuration. Right now I am at 1280x1024, 32 bit, with a virtual screen size of 1600x1200, and running Gnome 1.2. It is fast and looks great!
I read the CNN article, and it is not completely clear from the article what they did. Let me explain. Deincoccus radiodurans is a microorganism which is naturally resistant to very high doses of radiation. Believe it or not, radiation is naturally found in the environment. They did not engineer the bug to be resistant to radiation! It is also NOT resistant to heat, antibiotics, most toxic chemicals, etc. The engineering was only to add a plasmid containing the genes from the mer operon, which produce enzymes to convert alkyl mercury compounds (the most toxic kind) to elemental mercury (the least toxic kind). This operon is widely found in common soil bacteria, and is naturally transferred between different species of bacteria by means of plasmids. The mer operon has been introduced in many organisms, including plants, for the purpose of treating mercury and other heavy metal (e.g., tin, lead) wastes. The bug now has the capability to degrade alkyl mercury compounds in the presence of high levels of radioactivity, such as may be found in nuclear wastes. That's all. This bug does not "eat" toxic waste, in the sense that degradation of the organic mercury compounds does not provide any energy to the cells for growth or metabolism. The degradation of the mercury compounds keeps them from killing the bug! Get off the Frankenstein crap, people. You have been watching too many Saturday morning cartoons. Robert S. Phillips, Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Georgia