Come on, its easier to build a _small_ and _compact_ 1 GhZ celeron with a better config for about $400-500 with off the shelf components than shell out that kinda money for this thing.
I don't doubt it. And as I pointed out in my first post - I have been looking at a way to do it myself... and as I pointed out in my second post, I have not yet been able to get to the site to see the price. I wasn't aware that it was "$1395 or something"
Even one of those el-cheapo $199 things from Walmart or an old Celeron or P3 would give this thing a run for its money.
Understandable. And at $1,150 (I couldn't get to the site to the see the price) - it's not worth it. But the small size interests me. I don't want to have another Desktop case or Mid Tower in my house. I have enough of them already.
Sounds like it might be what I've been looking for. I've been wanting to "build" (or buy) a small e-mail server. I just don't like the idea of running a complete PC based Linux Server just for e-mail for myself. Waste of power consumption, big foot print, etc.. I'd like something about the size of my cable modem that uses very little power. I have been look at these. Anyone know of any other ideas?
Realistically, only about 0.1% of *nix users ever even think about touching kernel source.
I know your 0.1% number is just something you pulled out of the air, but do you really think it's that low? I wouldn't consider myself a Linux "guru" but I've been compiling my own kernels almost from day 1. (Started playing with Linux in 96.) (Realistically it probably took 2 or 3 months before I understood Linux well enough to compile my own kernel.)
THIS, more than the command line,.... is what keeps most folks from using linux. Its the too damned rude, holier than thou, attitude of the vocal Linux advocate.
I have to agree with you on that. A while back I threw in the proverbial towel with Linux due to all the "I am GOD" attitudes I was running into. I'm back though. (Back with Linux that is.) But I'm wiser. I've learned to just tune out the zealots and I'm much happier now.
- not being able to open that complex word attachment that your coworker mailed you
Hmm... Is that really a big problem? In my experience with Open Office I've been able to view Word Documents without any problem. But admittedly I'm not a big Document person... I usually prefer gEdit (Wordpad) so my formatting is pretty simple.
- not being able to browse every site online (some are definitely IE specific, others require plugins not available on linux)
I'm sure that's true but I haven't ran into any IE-only sites in a long time. But I'm relatively sure they exist. Regardless if I'm using Windows or Linux though, I think it's the web developers fault. In most cases (i.e. any one but microsoft.com) if you e-mailed the webmaster and told them their site was "broken", they would probably be interested in fixing the problem.
- figure out how users, accounts, software installations etc. work (click on a link and the program installs automatically? yeah, right), not to mention the joys of the command line
User accounts - mixed blessing. On the one hand it is kind of annoying going from Windows 95/98 where you are always root to a *nix world where you are highly pressured into using a non root account. Personally I think the security bennefits of using a non root account far outweigh the so-called inconveniences. Once you get use to it, it's second nature.
Software installations - Agreed. It's not "there yet" in my opinion. But I think it has more to do with a lack of being able to find quality pre-packaged software for a given distro than it does with the technology. When packages are done well, they "just work". Click it, the installer fires up, 0%, 10%... 100% complete, done. I'm totally confident that this will become a non issue very soon.
Joys of the command line - Umm... agreed I guess. I'm a power user. I like that the command line is there. *However*, I would prefer it to be an *optional* way of doing things. I've never used Mac OSX but as I understand it, you can do everything from the GUI. But the command line is still there for people who care to indulge themselves with it. I think that is ideal.
- become confused by some desktop environments where settings are spread around 3 different menus
I use to have a problem with that when I was trying to make Gnome work with Window Maker. Or make KDE work with some other Window Manager. But now I'm using straight Gnome and I don't think it's an issue.
and where sometimes they inexplicably don't stick etc. etc. in general using software developed by developers with sometimes not much thought given to user friendliness and good UI guidelines.
I'll agree with that sentiment as well. I think there is still some work to be done regarding the overall "polish". But if you compare things to where they were a couple of years ago, you can really appreciate how much has been done and can envision how much better it's going to be in another year or two.
- not being able to play commercial games (unless you shell out for winex and even then some things don't work)
I agree 100%, no questions asked. With very few exceptions (Quake 3, UT2K3, America's Army), *real* games and Linux don't mix. I'm confident it will get better but in the mean time I have a dedicated hard-drive with Windows installed on it for my gaming needs.
I could go on and on, I've been using linux on my desktop primarily for more than 10 years now and there's no way that I'd give it to somebody not extremely computer literate...
You're frustrated. I understand completely. I've been there myself. I wanted to run Linux on the Desktop so bad it made my head hurt just thinking about it. But I was always running into insurmountable obstacles and it infuriated me. Finally the day came and I haven't looked back since. Give it time. Your day will come.
but unfortunately it seems that the application's (Mozilla Firebird) speed/ responsive under linux is quite slower than on windows... quite noticable...
I had to quit using Firebird under Linux because every time I would click a link, my CPU usage would spike to 100% for about a second or two and my system would be totally unusable during that time. You may think "big deal - what's 1 or 2 seconds"... well it's a huge deal when you're surfing the web and every time you click a link (1 or 2 or 10 per minute) your entire system comes to a screaching halt. Under Windows this doesn't happen. And when I use plain Mozilla, Galleon, or Epiphany under Linux, it's not a problem either.
I'm running 2.4.20 on a dual PPro mobo with an OHCI-compliant card and my system locks hard if there is more than one Firewire drive attached
Bah... my bad. My external drives are Firewire/USB 2.0 and are plugged in via the USB cable. Sorry. If I remember correctly, when I tried plugging them in via the firewire cable/port, I would just get a bunch of incomprehensible (to me) device error messages.
I do have an iPod though that mounts without any problem via firewire.
I was running RedHat 9 with the stock kernel but a couple of weeks ago I decided to install Fedora Core 1. I'm currently using the stock Fedora kernel (version 2.4.22-1.2115.nptl).
How did people get around this issue before Read/Write access to NTFS? Did they have a FAT32 partition or something that both of the OS installations shared?
Linux is my primary O/S. I only use Windows to uhh... well... I'm not sure what I use it for since I haven't booted to it in a couple of months. But I still have it on another partition.
Anyway - I have my external Firewire drives formatted as EXT3 and I use Mount Everything to read/write to them under Windows. Not a free program though.
This is another solution you can try for reading/writing to Linux partitions under Windows. This one IS free.
And one final idea, also not free - and probably rendered obsolete by today's announcement of this Captive project - but it's another source never the less. This is for reading/writing to NTFS partitions under Linux.
I'd like to give credit to the people who pointed out these links to me but it was a long time ago and I don't remember who they were.
Only because Microsoft uses "innovative" in every other word in their marketing speak.
Hahah... I'm not the only one who has noticed that. Here's a snippet from a conversation I had with a friend not that long ago.
----- (14:38:55) Chris: I dunno, anymore, ANY white collar person at MS really needs to think before they come out and say something. They should know that 80% of what they say ends up as the butt of a joke. (14:39:20) David: I'm just amazed that he didn't fit the word "innovate" into that particular article. Has to be the single most abused word by Microsoft execs. (14:40:04) Chris: Haha, yes, let's please untie poor Bill's hands so that he has the freedom to innovate. (14:43:59) David: I bet you could come up with at least an hour worth of sound clips where Bill Gates and/or Steve Balmer are talking about innovation. "We are going to innovate", "Innovation is our goal", "Companies have to innovate to achieve...", "We think innovation is...", "If we don't innovate...", "In years past, innovation came in small doses..", "Innovation is no longer an option...", and on, and on, and on.
this expocity seems like somebody saw a (cool) usability feature(expose from macosx) he would like to see on his desktop and then rolled out his own,
I'll second that. I think expose' is much more than eye-candy. In fact the only part of it that is eye-candy is the effect where the windows part slowly and drift to open areas. Like fading menus, or rolling menus as opposed to "instant on" menus. But the ability to show all windows currently open as "thumbnails" on the Desktop is tremendously useful. I think it has the potential to all but completely replace alt+tab for most people.
We dont want Aragorn doubting if he wants to be king or not.
We dont want any more Dwarf-tossing jokes
We dont want Faramir to be cruel and aloof.
I could have done without the Tony Hawk shield slide sceen. I personally felt like it was put in the movie for no better reason than an attempt to appeal to the kiddies. Stuff like that is like having a bucket of cold water dumped over your head. If you had been drawn into the movie, a sceen like that is a quick slap in the face - IMHO.
I bought 2 PCI Linksys WMP11 cards last week at Walmart. While I was standing in the store looking at them I was relatively sure that I remembered that that card had Linux support. (Both cards had the same model # but appeared to be two slightly different cards.) I thought that was strange and since I wasn't 100% sure if they would work with Linux I decided I better do some research before opening the packages. I found out that only certain variations of the Linksys WMP11 card is supported with Linux. (Depends on the chipset) So I called Linksys to find out which chipset my cards had but they couldn't tell me. "Either card will work with Windows and that's all we can tell you." (Must have been a call center.) So I decided to just leave the boxes sealed and take the cards back rather than deal with figuring out which revision of the model I had.
In my searching I found this page which has a pretty good list of wireless cards and their support status. On that list I found a Netgear card that interested me since I've *personally* always had good luck with Netgear equipment.
So I just bought a Negear PCI MA311 and it works just fine. I didn't even have to look for a driver. I shutdown, put the card in, booted, and Fedora detected the hardware change and set it up automatically.
I also have an Orinoco Lucent Gold PC Card that works just fine with Linux.
I downloaded Mandrake 9.2 over night, md5sum'd the ISO's this morning (checked out OK), burned the CD's and proceeded to install it on my spare machine.
Installation was pretty simply. I think RedHat 9 and Fedora Core have a more polished installation system and are *slightly* easier to install. Just my opinion.
All my hardware was detected but I expected nothing less since the system is relatively old. AMD 1.33GHz Thunderbird, 512MB RAM, NVidia GeForce2 video, HP SCSI CDRW, Netgear FA11 NIC, Orinoco PCMCIA-PCI bridge, Orinoco Gold PC Card* (More on this later)
Once the installation was complete, I rebooted and the first thing I noticed was that Mandrake did not include a boot option for Fedora which was also installed on that machine. Not a major problem but I thought it was very strange that Mandrake didn't probe my partitions and make a boot option for it. (And after the install, I didn't see an option in the Boot Configurator that would let me easily add Fedora to lilo. So "vi/etc/lilo.conf" it is then.)
Upon the first boot I noticed it was taking a very long time to start so I hit ESC to see what was taking so long. It was waiting for eth0 to come up, finally eth0 timed out and *then* it started the PCMICA services right after. Apparently Mandrake had chosen my Orinoc PC Card as eth0 and my Netgear NIC as eth1. Fine. But in order to start eth0 it would need to bring up PCMCIA services first. Putting the cart in front of the horse otherwise.
As soon as the system finished booting for the first time I set off to get the eth0/eth1/pcmcia thing squared away. In Redhat 9 or Fedora there is a Network Configuration editor. Key word there is editor. As in you can edit the options. I couldn't find any such thing in Mandrake. All I could find was a LAN / Internet Wizard that wanted to go through the entire NIC setup process for both of my cards each time I ran it. I couldn't just simply edit an option and be done. (Probably just my inexperience with Mandrake.) After fiddling with the wizard for 20 minutes or so, going around in circles and getting nowhere - I decided it was easier to just drop to a terminal and edit/etc/modules.conf so that eth1 was aliased as my orinoco card, and eth0 was aliased as my netgear card. Then I renamed/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 to ifcfg-eth1, and ifcfg-eth1 to ifcfg-eth0. Modified both scripts as I saw fit. An rmmod here, a modprobe there. Then ran/etc/init.d/network restart. Bada-bing. Up and running.
The default Mandrake color scheme is attractive. (For Gnome anyway - I haven't taken a look at KDE since I don't really care for KDE.) But the Mandrake color scheme was kind of glassy looking, polished. I like it. The default menus are also good looking. Better looking than Redhat 9 and Fedora in my opinion. Prettier icons anyway.:)
And similar to RedHat 9 and Fedora, the menu system doesn't (does not) have a bunch of redudant links and redundant menu items that are redundantly scattered throughout the main menu. And there aren't a bunch of useless links to things like xmag, xeyes, xclock, xman, xload, etc... And there aren't a bunch of broken links to things like [insert name of 20 things that aren't installed on this system] Past experiences with other distributions (including older distributions of Mandrake and RedHat) have always had deplorable default menus.
My impression was pretty positive overall. I doubt I'll be jumping ship on Fedora though on my main system. I prefer Redhat's config system editing tools to Mandrake's wizard style start-over-from-scratch-every-time config tools. Though MP3 and Video out of the box would be a welcomed addition for any Desktop system.
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Q3 ran fine on my oldskool radeon with no accelerated drivers through wine with no problem at all.
Why the hell would you run Q3 through wine on Linux? Just download the Q3 Linux binary.
Come on, its easier to build a _small_ and _compact_ 1 GhZ celeron with a better config for about $400-500 with off the shelf components than shell out that kinda money for this thing.
... and as I pointed out in my second post, I have not yet been able to get to the site to see the price. I wasn't aware that it was "$1395 or something"
I don't doubt it. And as I pointed out in my first post - I have been looking at a way to do it myself
Not really.
Not really what?
Even one of those el-cheapo $199 things from Walmart or an old Celeron or P3 would give this thing a run for its money.
Understandable. And at $1,150 (I couldn't get to the site to the see the price) - it's not worth it. But the small size interests me. I don't want to have another Desktop case or Mid Tower in my house. I have enough of them already.
Sounds like it might be what I've been looking for. I've been wanting to "build" (or buy) a small e-mail server. I just don't like the idea of running a complete PC based Linux Server just for e-mail for myself. Waste of power consumption, big foot print, etc.. I'd like something about the size of my cable modem that uses very little power. I have been look at these. Anyone know of any other ideas?
Realistically, only about 0.1% of *nix users ever even think about touching kernel source.
I know your 0.1% number is just something you pulled out of the air, but do you really think it's that low? I wouldn't consider myself a Linux "guru" but I've been compiling my own kernels almost from day 1. (Started playing with Linux in 96.) (Realistically it probably took 2 or 3 months before I understood Linux well enough to compile my own kernel.)
THIS, more than the command line, .... is what keeps most folks from using linux. Its the too damned rude, holier than thou, attitude of the vocal Linux advocate.
I have to agree with you on that. A while back I threw in the proverbial towel with Linux due to all the "I am GOD" attitudes I was running into. I'm back though. (Back with Linux that is.) But I'm wiser. I've learned to just tune out the zealots and I'm much happier now.
- not being able to open that complex word attachment that your coworker mailed you
Hmm... Is that really a big problem? In my experience with Open Office I've been able to view Word Documents without any problem. But admittedly I'm not a big Document person... I usually prefer gEdit (Wordpad) so my formatting is pretty simple.
- not being able to browse every site online (some are definitely IE specific, others require plugins not available on linux)
I'm sure that's true but I haven't ran into any IE-only sites in a long time. But I'm relatively sure they exist. Regardless if I'm using Windows or Linux though, I think it's the web developers fault. In most cases (i.e. any one but microsoft.com) if you e-mailed the webmaster and told them their site was "broken", they would probably be interested in fixing the problem.
- figure out how users, accounts, software installations etc. work (click on a link and the program installs automatically? yeah, right), not to mention the joys of the command line
User accounts - mixed blessing. On the one hand it is kind of annoying going from Windows 95/98 where you are always root to a *nix world where you are highly pressured into using a non root account. Personally I think the security bennefits of using a non root account far outweigh the so-called inconveniences. Once you get use to it, it's second nature.
Software installations - Agreed. It's not "there yet" in my opinion. But I think it has more to do with a lack of being able to find quality pre-packaged software for a given distro than it does with the technology. When packages are done well, they "just work". Click it, the installer fires up, 0%, 10%... 100% complete, done. I'm totally confident that this will become a non issue very soon.
Joys of the command line - Umm... agreed I guess. I'm a power user. I like that the command line is there. *However*, I would prefer it to be an *optional* way of doing things. I've never used Mac OSX but as I understand it, you can do everything from the GUI. But the command line is still there for people who care to indulge themselves with it. I think that is ideal.
- become confused by some desktop environments where settings are spread around 3 different menus
I use to have a problem with that when I was trying to make Gnome work with Window Maker. Or make KDE work with some other Window Manager. But now I'm using straight Gnome and I don't think it's an issue.
and where sometimes they inexplicably don't stick etc. etc. in general using software developed by developers with sometimes not much thought given to user friendliness and good UI guidelines.
I'll agree with that sentiment as well. I think there is still some work to be done regarding the overall "polish". But if you compare things to where they were a couple of years ago, you can really appreciate how much has been done and can envision how much better it's going to be in another year or two.
- not being able to play commercial games (unless you shell out for winex and even then some things don't work)
I agree 100%, no questions asked. With very few exceptions (Quake 3, UT2K3, America's Army), *real* games and Linux don't mix. I'm confident it will get better but in the mean time I have a dedicated hard-drive with Windows installed on it for my gaming needs.
I could go on and on, I've been using linux on my desktop primarily for more than 10 years now and there's no way that I'd give it to somebody not extremely computer literate...
You're frustrated. I understand completely. I've been there myself. I wanted to run Linux on the Desktop so bad it made my head hurt just thinking about it. But I was always running into insurmountable obstacles and it infuriated me. Finally the day came and I haven't looked back since. Give it time. Your day will come.
but unfortunately it seems that the application's (Mozilla Firebird) speed/ responsive under linux is quite slower than on windows... quite noticable...
... well it's a huge deal when you're surfing the web and every time you click a link (1 or 2 or 10 per minute) your entire system comes to a screaching halt. Under Windows this doesn't happen. And when I use plain Mozilla, Galleon, or Epiphany under Linux, it's not a problem either.
I had to quit using Firebird under Linux because every time I would click a link, my CPU usage would spike to 100% for about a second or two and my system would be totally unusable during that time. You may think "big deal - what's 1 or 2 seconds"
I'm surprised someone modded you up, as you are definitely wrong about this.
Let me be the first to welcome you to Slashdot.
I'm running 2.4.20 on a dual PPro mobo with an OHCI-compliant card and my system locks hard if there is more than one Firewire drive attached
Bah... my bad. My external drives are Firewire/USB 2.0 and are plugged in via the USB cable. Sorry. If I remember correctly, when I tried plugging them in via the firewire cable/port, I would just get a bunch of incomprehensible (to me) device error messages.
I do have an iPod though that mounts without any problem via firewire.
I was running RedHat 9 with the stock kernel but a couple of weeks ago I decided to install Fedora Core 1. I'm currently using the stock Fedora kernel (version 2.4.22-1.2115.nptl).
How did people get around this issue before Read/Write access to NTFS? Did they have a FAT32 partition or something that both of the OS installations shared?
Linux is my primary O/S. I only use Windows to uhh... well... I'm not sure what I use it for since I haven't booted to it in a couple of months. But I still have it on another partition.
Anyway - I have my external Firewire drives formatted as EXT3 and I use Mount Everything to read/write to them under Windows. Not a free program though.
This is another solution you can try for reading/writing to Linux partitions under Windows. This one IS free.
And one final idea, also not free - and probably rendered obsolete by today's announcement of this Captive project - but it's another source never the less. This is for reading/writing to NTFS partitions under Linux.
I'd like to give credit to the people who pointed out these links to me but it was a long time ago and I don't remember who they were.
Anyone else read that as "The opening of Bieotch?"
According to this article, I'm probably not alone.
The part about this story that gets to me is that the researcher didn't alert Microsoft before posting to a public mailing list.
... "Microsoft is holding up compensation claims from a quarter of million Californians in order to punish Lindows.com"
In other news
No word on a resolution for the problem with pre-empt, at least none that can be seen with a search for "preempt" in the page. :-P
I just compiled test10!
Slacker. I've been running test10 for several day now.
No, it's to setup the fact that elves possess super-human abilities.
Oh come on. There are much better ways to portray elven abilities without stupid "sk8r boi" tricks.
Only because Microsoft uses "innovative" in every other word in their marketing speak.
Hahah... I'm not the only one who has noticed that. Here's a snippet from a conversation I had with a friend not that long ago.
-----
(14:38:55) Chris: I dunno, anymore, ANY white collar person at MS really needs to think before they come out and say something. They should know that 80% of what they say ends up as the butt of a joke.
(14:39:20) David: I'm just amazed that he didn't fit the word "innovate" into that particular article. Has to be the single most abused word by Microsoft execs.
(14:40:04) Chris: Haha, yes, let's please untie poor Bill's hands so that he has the freedom to innovate.
(14:43:59) David: I bet you could come up with at least an hour worth of sound clips where Bill Gates and/or Steve Balmer are talking about innovation. "We are going to innovate", "Innovation is our goal", "Companies have to innovate to achieve...", "We think innovation is...", "If we don't innovate...", "In years past, innovation came in small doses..", "Innovation is no longer an option...", and on, and on, and on.
this expocity seems like somebody saw a (cool) usability feature(expose from macosx) he would like to see on his desktop and then rolled out his own,
I'll second that. I think expose' is much more than eye-candy. In fact the only part of it that is eye-candy is the effect where the windows part slowly and drift to open areas. Like fading menus, or rolling menus as opposed to "instant on" menus. But the ability to show all windows currently open as "thumbnails" on the Desktop is tremendously useful. I think it has the potential to all but completely replace alt+tab for most people.
We dont want Aragorn doubting if he wants to be king or not.
We dont want any more Dwarf-tossing jokes
We dont want Faramir to be cruel and aloof.
I could have done without the Tony Hawk shield slide sceen. I personally felt like it was put in the movie for no better reason than an attempt to appeal to the kiddies. Stuff like that is like having a bucket of cold water dumped over your head. If you had been drawn into the movie, a sceen like that is a quick slap in the face - IMHO.
At yet you're oblivious the Wranger jeans you wear?
Wow - how did I screw that up so bad? So much for that joke.
Should have read "And yet you're oblivious to the Wrangler jeans you wear?"
Although perhaps the logo can be sandblasted off so that users won't die of embarassment.
At yet you're oblivious the Wranger jeans you wear?
I bought 2 PCI Linksys WMP11 cards last week at Walmart. While I was standing in the store looking at them I was relatively sure that I remembered that that card had Linux support. (Both cards had the same model # but appeared to be two slightly different cards.) I thought that was strange and since I wasn't 100% sure if they would work with Linux I decided I better do some research before opening the packages. I found out that only certain variations of the Linksys WMP11 card is supported with Linux. (Depends on the chipset) So I called Linksys to find out which chipset my cards had but they couldn't tell me. "Either card will work with Windows and that's all we can tell you." (Must have been a call center.) So I decided to just leave the boxes sealed and take the cards back rather than deal with figuring out which revision of the model I had.
In my searching I found this page which has a pretty good list of wireless cards and their support status. On that list I found a Netgear card that interested me since I've *personally* always had good luck with Netgear equipment.
So I just bought a Negear PCI MA311 and it works just fine. I didn't even have to look for a driver. I shutdown, put the card in, booted, and Fedora detected the hardware change and set it up automatically.
I also have an Orinoco Lucent Gold PC Card that works just fine with Linux.
I downloaded Mandrake 9.2 over night, md5sum'd the ISO's this morning (checked out OK), burned the CD's and proceeded to install it on my spare machine.
/etc/lilo.conf" it is then.)
/etc/modules.conf so that eth1 was aliased as my orinoco card, and eth0 was aliased as my netgear card. Then I renamed /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 to ifcfg-eth1, and ifcfg-eth1 to ifcfg-eth0. Modified both scripts as I saw fit. An rmmod here, a modprobe there. Then ran /etc/init.d/network restart. Bada-bing. Up and running.
:)
Installation was pretty simply. I think RedHat 9 and Fedora Core have a more polished installation system and are *slightly* easier to install. Just my opinion.
All my hardware was detected but I expected nothing less since the system is relatively old. AMD 1.33GHz Thunderbird, 512MB RAM, NVidia GeForce2 video, HP SCSI CDRW, Netgear FA11 NIC, Orinoco PCMCIA-PCI bridge, Orinoco Gold PC Card* (More on this later)
Once the installation was complete, I rebooted and the first thing I noticed was that Mandrake did not include a boot option for Fedora which was also installed on that machine. Not a major problem but I thought it was very strange that Mandrake didn't probe my partitions and make a boot option for it. (And after the install, I didn't see an option in the Boot Configurator that would let me easily add Fedora to lilo. So "vi
Upon the first boot I noticed it was taking a very long time to start so I hit ESC to see what was taking so long. It was waiting for eth0 to come up, finally eth0 timed out and *then* it started the PCMICA services right after. Apparently Mandrake had chosen my Orinoc PC Card as eth0 and my Netgear NIC as eth1. Fine. But in order to start eth0 it would need to bring up PCMCIA services first. Putting the cart in front of the horse otherwise.
As soon as the system finished booting for the first time I set off to get the eth0/eth1/pcmcia thing squared away. In Redhat 9 or Fedora there is a Network Configuration editor. Key word there is editor. As in you can edit the options. I couldn't find any such thing in Mandrake. All I could find was a LAN / Internet Wizard that wanted to go through the entire NIC setup process for both of my cards each time I ran it. I couldn't just simply edit an option and be done. (Probably just my inexperience with Mandrake.) After fiddling with the wizard for 20 minutes or so, going around in circles and getting nowhere - I decided it was easier to just drop to a terminal and edit
The default Mandrake color scheme is attractive. (For Gnome anyway - I haven't taken a look at KDE since I don't really care for KDE.) But the Mandrake color scheme was kind of glassy looking, polished. I like it. The default menus are also good looking. Better looking than Redhat 9 and Fedora in my opinion. Prettier icons anyway.
And similar to RedHat 9 and Fedora, the menu system doesn't (does not) have a bunch of redudant links and redundant menu items that are redundantly scattered throughout the main menu. And there aren't a bunch of useless links to things like xmag, xeyes, xclock, xman, xload, etc... And there aren't a bunch of broken links to things like [insert name of 20 things that aren't installed on this system] Past experiences with other distributions (including older distributions of Mandrake and RedHat) have always had deplorable default menus.
My impression was pretty positive overall. I doubt I'll be jumping ship on Fedora though on my main system. I prefer Redhat's config system editing tools to Mandrake's wizard style start-over-from-scratch-every-time config tools. Though MP3 and Video out of the box would be a welcomed addition for any Desktop system.
xine tells me that it can't play these because they're in "gif video format," something that seems unlikely. Any advice?
Do you have the right codecs?
Ah, so because the parhelia doesn't meet your extremely specific needs, then it must just be crap ehh?
At what point did I say the card was crap? I didn't even insinuate it was crap.