Ximian Desktop 2

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Troodon

Ximian Desktop 2

Post by Troodon »

Dan, you may wish to check this out. It really makes me want to switch to Linux 100%. ;)

http://ximian.com/products/desktop/screenshots.html
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Post by Dapper Dan »

Troodon you must be psychic!

I tried downloading and installing Ximian desktop 2 only about an hour ago! I followed the directions but then it says Ximian 2 isn't available for Mandrake 9! Why on earth do you suppose that could be? Seems like I remember it isn't avaiable for redhat 8 either which I just installed on my mothers computer! :wink:

I really like Ximian and red-carpet and all, but I would have thought for sure their desktop would have worked with Mandrake 9 by now! :?

If you decide to upgrade your 7.3, I can tell you from experience that redhat 8 is smoking! With apt-get rpm and "Synaptic" as the front end for it installed, dependency hell is becoming a thing of the past!
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Post by Troodon »

it says Ximian 2 isn't available for Mandrake 9
That's one of the reasons why I decided to dump Mandrake 8.2 -- whenever I need an RPM it's available for Redhat but not for Mandrake. If you're a Mandrake club member then maybe you have access to all of those up-to-date packages but I find it so hard to undergo this paradigm shift -- pay for Linux software, especially since others have it for free. ;)

The other reason is the hassle: before I installed RedHat 7.3, I tried upgrading Mandrake 8.2 to 9.1 and failed because it wouldn't install the bootloader and then it said my hard disk was so corrupt that it couldn't install any more packages on it. Of course, the RedHat install went smooth on the very same hard disk.
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Post by Dapper Dan »

I tried Mandrake 9.1 and it wouldn't even find a screen! I had to run XF86config! After I got X running it was all down hill from there! I went back to 9.0 after a few days! There are a lot of negative comments out there about 9.1, and I've read where a lot of folks are going back to 9 as well. 9 is good. Mandrake needs to take a cue from Slack in this regard.

I really like Redhat 8, and would run it on all my boxes except for two things. IceWM is a bitch to install properly on it, and when you finally do get it running, you can't configure it because none of the configure tools for IceWM will run. Something to do with GTK. I tried for months to find online help in this area without success. Secondly, I believe Eroaster is the best and easiest cd burner for Linux. IT won't work with 8 either also complaining about not finding GTK. I finally located a beta version of eroaster which proclaimed, "this beta release will finally work with Redhat 8.0." It didn't and won't. LOL!
If it weren't for these two things, I'd have 8 on every box. What do you hear about RedHat 9?
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Post by Troodon »

What do you hear about RedHat 9?
Well, I prefer to wait until the 9.2 release is available, bugfixes and such.. ;)
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Post by Dapper Dan »

Mandrake 9.1 was supposed to be a "fixed" version of 9.0. They fixed it alright!! :lol:
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Post by Troodon »

Dan, I have been struggling with RedHat 9 + XD2 for the last few days. Don't know which of them causes the other one to segfault but I now consider downgrading to 7.3.
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Post by Dapper Dan »

Troodon, before you go back to 7.3, PLEASE consider Redhat 8.0! I used 7.3 for a while and struggled with it. When I tried 8.0 it was like being born again! :D

8.0 is truely a masterpiece which I don't think could be improved upon, although at some point I will look at 9.0.

Plus Synaptic and apt-get RPM are a cinch to get running in just a few minutes!

Please try 8.0! If you don't love it, I'll give you a licensed version of Crossover office I've already bought for free! (I got one more than I need anyway.. :wink: )
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Post by Troodon »

Dan, the irony of the situation is that, for some reason (probably hardware-related), it's only possible to install RH 9, not 7.3 or 8, on this older computer that I'm toying with. So I reinstalled RH 9 from scratch, without XD2. Guess what -- it runs like a dream! That should be a lesson to me. "Vanilla" is the way to go.

RH 9 also has a nice package rollback feature: if you think the latest update screwed up your linux system you can always revert to the previous version/configuration. Pretty slick! :)
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Post by Dapper Dan »

How do you like it over 7.3? I understand it is a lot like 8 but I read somewhere that synaptic/apt-get was harder to get working, but of course that may have been just when it first came out. Here's the link for 9's apt-get if you want to play around with it. If you get it installed, it will save you a lot of dependancy time when installing packages! :wink:

http://apt-rpm.tuxfamily.org/
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Post by Troodon »

Well, I would say that RH 9 is remarcably self-consistent. Installing and upgrading packages is a seamless process. The items in the default menus better reflect the function of those commands. For example, they opted for an "Add/Remove Applications" command rather than "RPM Manager", or "Login Screen" rather than "GDM Configurator", or "Display" rather than "Configure X".

Don't know about RH 8 (didn't get to install it) but I like the RH 9 interface better than RH 7.3. And it's quite fast and stable (well, so far so good).

However, I mostly use it as a testing server with web-based software that I develop. And I'm impressed with its performance, although it's only a P166 w/ 128MB of RAM. I wanted a recent RH release so that I can rebuild some particular packages that are only available as source. ;)

How about your RH 8 machine? Are you satisfied with how it runs?
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Post by Dapper Dan »

Redhat 8.0 is my favorite version of Linux, but I gotta tell ya, Morphix may soon take it's place! I love Redhat 8 so much that I installed it on my Mother's computer! She never calls anymore saying, "My computer just stopped working and I can't figure out what's wrong!" That's the thing about Linux. It may take a while to configure it the way you want, but once you get it there, it just works and runs and doesn't give any problems! :D


This Morphix has really got me excited! It also comes with Synaptic. I just used it to install Abiword and Krusader on my wife's laptop. It's lineage is Debian/Knoppix/Morphix.
I haven't tried Knoppix, (yet), but the idea behind Morphix is to create different versions, (Morphix-lite, Morphix-heavy gui, Morphix-game, Morphix-server, etc..) that may better suit one's individual needs, all in a nice lean 190-340 mb package that can be run entirely from the cd, or you can install it to HD via an included installer. I keep trying to find reasons not to like it, but so far can't! :)
http://morphix.sourceforge.net
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Post by Dapper Dan »

Troodon, I just installed RH 9 on another box and have been running it for about a day. At least on the surface, I can't see any real differences between 8 and 9. So far, it appears to me that they look and operate almost exactly the same with the only differences being that Nautilus and a few other app's interface is a little cleaner and simpler, which of course is an improvement. :D
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Post by Troodon »

RH 9 runs fine as server and desktop on my box, too. The only package I haven't updated yet is the kernel but that can wait. I'm impressed not only with how fast it is on (even a) a P166 but also that I can compile/build packages that are a pain in the @# on RH 7.3 and lower. Still, XFree86-4 doesn't have OpenGL support for many VCs, that's my only complaint so far... ;)
Last edited by Troodon on Mon Sep 08, 2003 4:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Dapper Dan »

Ok, now there's a difference that was not readily apparent. RH 8 does not use XF86-4.
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