Posts Tagged 'review'

Are Anti virus and Windows not flawed???

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Category: Software

Published on Sunday, 17 August 2008 00:00

Written by Administrator

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It can't be that my anti virus want to scan my disk every  day (default settings) and take 23 hours to do so.

• Either windows stop and sandbox all applications using an hypervisor...and KNOW what
  applications are doing or what is written down to disk so the anti virus scan can be optimized
• Or disks must be a lot faster! my 3 eclipse version and 10 workspaces (1'500'000 java files) are clearly
  showing the limit of actual hard disks. Defrag is done on a weekly basis...

At the end, these anti virus are just sucking my CPU brute power (peak 20%) and worst of all a good part of IO
power, and trust me windows IO are just hilarious compared to Linux, try eclipse under Linux it just fly!

Pictured is AVG but this post is not targeted against it. They are ALL ridiculously slow.

Windows just can't protect itself from Internet and mitigate attacks that it need a range of 3rd
party software...sucking power and my time. We are far away from the Internet OS

Other reviews links

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Category: SuSE 9.0 reviews

Published on Thursday, 26 August 2004 00:00

Written by Administrator

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www.newsforge.com SuSE Linux 9 November 13 2003 SuSE Linux 9, the latest release from Nuremberg, Germany-based SuSE Linux, was released at the end of last month. I put SuSE Linux Professional through its paces, and found it to be the most user-friendly Linux distribution on the market. It's not a "must" update for users of previous versions, but it does have some nice perks. more

http://www.linuxpipeline.com SUSE 9.0: A Distro Worth Paying For By Ross M. Greenberg Europeans are different from North Americans. They have all this cool, colorful money with lots of zeroes. They can smoke where they want to. And they are trendsetters, listening to strange new music and buying cars with heated seats. more

http://www.linuxbeginner.org A Week with SuSE 9 January 25 by Gotroot Welcome to the second installment of a new series. As mentioned in the last installment, during this project, I'll be installing several Linux distributions, running them each for a 5 day week, and keeping a daily journal. more

http://www.open-mag.com OPTED TO THE NINES SUSE unwraps a must-have desktop distribution for power-hungry power users wanting more than the latest and greatest in 32 bits. more

http://www.osnews.com/ SuSE Linux 9.0 Professional Review by Steve Barnhart 2003-11-18 "I recently picked up a copy of SuSE 9.0 Professional. I have never used or been familiar with a SuSE product before as I've only used Mandrake, Red Hat, and a bit of Debian. After using Red Hat for a while I decided to evaluate SuSE and I am now sorry for not having tried it sooner." more

http://www.a1-electronics.net/ SuSE Linux Professional version 9.0 Review 2003-12-30 "A1-Electronics reviews the latest version 9.0 from SuSE of their Linux operating system." more

http://www.itreviews.co.uk SuSe - Linux 9.0 review 18/01/2004 "The subtitle of this review could so easily be 'a tale of two operating systems.' That one of them is good and the other bad should not be surprising; that they are both the same operating system might raise more of an eyebrow." more

http://www.linuxelectrons.com/ Suse 9.0 Professional Review "This is a review of SUSE Linux 9.0 Professional Edition." more

http://www.pcmag.com SuSE Linux Professional 9.0 By Oliver Kaven November 25, 2003 "With an attractive interface and a unique, comprehensive configuration tool, SuSE Linux Professional 9.0 offers rich features and simplicity for mainstream users and small businesses alike." more

http://www.suse.com Review Corner more

Other reviews links

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Category: SuSE 9.1 reviews

Published on Thursday, 26 August 2004 00:00

Written by Administrator

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http://www.suse.com/ Novell Releases First Commercial Linux Featuring 2.6 Kernel SuSE LINUX 9.1 Personal and SuSE LINUX 9.1 Professional

http://www.pl-berichte.de/berichte/suse91.html (German)

http://www.madpenguin.org/ First Look at SUSE LINUX 9.1 Professional "With the upcoming release of SUSE Linux 9.1, I thought we'd take a few moments out of the day to look at their Personal release, including the Live CD that comes in the box, which will allow users to take their SUSE Linux desktop anywhere they go and be able to feel right at home on any PC with a CDROM drive. Is it worth the lowered $29.95 price tag? SUSE is a great desktop distro, but will the features stack up? We'll see..." review 1 and review 2

An In-Depth Look at SUSE 9.1 RC2 by Joe Barr "Here is our promised in-depth look at the latest SUSE 9.1 beta. I found a little more flakiness than I would be comfortable with long-term, but I have been using this near-final version in my day-to-day work for nearly a week now and see no reason to go back to my previous installation."

http://www.neolinkcomputers.com/linux/suse_9.1_beta.html

SuSE 9.3 reviews

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Category: SuSE 9.3

Published on Friday, 01 July 2005 00:00

Written by Administrator

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• Mad Penguin review
• Newsforge review
• Linux.com
• LinuxPlanet 
• QuebecOS 
• eWEEK 
• The Inquirer
• linux-noob 
• Geektime Linux

Quick review of SuSE 10.0

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Category: SuSE 10.0

Published on Tuesday, 11 October 2005 00:00

Written by Administrator

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Suse 10 linux I've done right now the migration to Suse linux 10 on 2 computer

Novell has killed the SUSE pro version and now offer:

• A box version, for 59€
  
• An Eval version (identical content as the box version but without printed manual or support) this one can be download using http, ftp mirror or better bittorent.
  
• A 3rd version, which is open source only (understand without any commercial or closed source apps) can also be downloaded from www.opensuse.org
  

Note that all 3 versions above share the same source code base (open source kernel and extension developped at www.opensuse.org)

As usual, if You want to try for the first time a linux distribution, I recommend You to try the live DVD version (both 32 bits and 64 bits cpu version is available).

{mosgoogle center}

My experience with Update

1. HP nx7000 has been migrated succesffuly from suse 9.3 to 10 without any pain (reboot ladtop with dvd inside and choose installation then update) Note that before updating I was forced to remove all major (and for me vital application): Videolan, mplayer, amule among others... The wireless and bluetooth card are working perfectly without any intervention (was not the case under 9.3 pro)
   
2. My destop during update always hang after 54 minutes (during install of rpm mms (a winamp like) install) I was force to do a fresh install. I am convince it can not be a SUSE fault.

Quick review:

• a lot more polished in KDE control center (thanks to KDE 3.4.2)

• blazing fast during boot time, for sure 5 times faster with my setup (same hardware) - responsiveness desktop as ever, the NVIDIA driver installed after "online update" allow 3D acceleration right out the box

• Superkaramba has been integrated into KDE, it has never been so easy to locate new themes (so call desktop widget), thanks to an integrated search engine, install or administrate them.
  
• The "search box" in start menu is so great that I do not understand why microsoft has not done it before. this "search box" act like a search engine which allow You to queries the start menu with keywords. Example? searching a browser program by "internet", or "browser" highlight matching entries

A detailled review will follow soon....

Links to reviews

1. Mad penguin http://madpenguin.org/cms/index.php/?m=show&id=5382&page=1

{mosgoogle center}

Mobile Action i-gotU GT-200E GPS Data logger review

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Category: GPS tomtom

Published on Friday, 25 September 2009 00:00

Written by Administrator

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i-gotU is a GPS Device that can record the trace of your journey, auto-add GPS information on the photos taken on your journey, present it in 3rd dimension and export in multiple sharable file formats. i-gotU not only is compatible with all digital cameras & camera phones available in the market, providing you the coolest GPS tracking gadget while saving you extra expenses on other equipments

Forewords

I was greatly surprised to be contacted by Mobile Action.I would like to thank them for having send me a free sample for that review and of course, I encourage all companies around the world to do the same ;-))

Read more: Mobile Action i-gotU GT-200E GPS Data logger review

XDepend: static analysis tool for JAVA empower Code Query Language

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Category: JAVA tools

Published on Tuesday, 20 October 2009 00:00

Written by Administrator

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I’ve been  granted a free professional license of XDepend, thanks to Mat Huston, XDepend lead developer.

XDepend is a static analysis tool for JAVA developers that provides 82 code metrics, several real-time code visualization panels, code base snapshots comparison, architectural and quality rules (edition and real-time validation). The tool is a frontend to support the Code Query Language (CQL) to query a code base the same way you would query a relational database. You can using CQL, write and design your own rules and conventions for your code base.

XDepend

• Analyses your java byte code, your test reports and your source files to extract structural information and 82 base metrics via static analysis.
• Provides complementary and interactive views on the same information. A Tree-Map view helps you easily identify the big one from the small one. The dependency matrix, the graph view and the detailed view help you gain insight in your code base.
• Has a Code Query Language (CQL) is a specific XDepend language, very similar to SQL, that helps you dynamically find what you are looking for.

What is also interesting me a lot is the possibility to make XDepend part of the Maven lifecycle, but that will be part of a new post. For now I am trying to understand the added value on our company software solution Innoveo Skye®

Watch the screen cast

Spring analyzed by XDepend

More to come later

Note: .Net is also having a similar tools NDepend, build on the same engine developed by Patrick Smacchia.

Seagate Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive 500GB review

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Category: Storage

Published on Saturday, 28 August 2010 12:30

Written by Administrator

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The Seagate® Momentus® XT drive enables laptop PC users to enjoy solid state-like performance without sacrificing storage capacity and affordability. The Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive utilizes Adaptive Memory™ technology to dynamically optimize performance by aligning to user needs. This perfect balance of SSD and HDD delivers low heat, noise and vibration, and is available in capacities up to 500GB.

Here is the drive I am testing,  information you can easily found with drivedetect.exe (http://support.seagate.com/kbimg/utils/drivedetect.exe)

Model: ST95005620AS, Serial: 5YX03VW9, Firmware: SD23    

this is by the way the latest firmware as for today 28.10.2010

 

Due to the nature of the SSD that is monitoring your usage, you wont get the maximum of performances at first run. Here is 3 run using CrystalDiskMark 3.0 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo (Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/)

 

In order to try to try to reveal the real performance of the disk without the SSD, I di made a run with bigger chunk of data 4GB, the size of the internal cache, good but not stellar.

As a reference here is my old drive, a Western Digital blue WD3200BJKT from August 2008. Again not a lot of differences. 

And the Intel SSD flagship SSDSA2M160G2GC (160GB) . This Intel X25-M SSD 160GB was paid 400€, so 3.5 times more expensive (400€/114€) for 2.3 (240.1/104) more performances:

Conclusions

	Seagate Momentus XT	Intel X25-M SSD 160GB
Sequential Read Sequential Write Random Read 512KB Random Write 512KB    Random Read 4KB (QD=1)  Random Write 4KB (QD=1)   Random Read 4KB (QD=32)   Random Write 4KB (QD=32) Test : 1000 MB	104.513 MB/s 79.800 MB/s 37.805 MB/s 48.630 MB/s 0.466 MB/s [   113.7 IOPS] 0.928 MB/s [   226.5 IOPS] 1.052 MB/s [   256.8 IOPS] 0.833 MB/s [   203.5 IOPS] [C: 39.5% (48.5/123.0 GB)] (x5) Date : 2010/08/28 14:17:07	240.086 MB/s 107.052 MB/s 163.351 MB/s 76.210 MB/s 22.328 MB/s [  5451.2 IOPS] 45.021 MB/s [ 10991.4 IOPS] 23.918 MB/s [  5839.3 IOPS] 50.876 MB/s [ 12420.9 IOPS] [C: 69.7% (103.9/149.0 GB)] (x5) Date : 2010/08/28 14:03:54
OS : Windows 7	Ultimate Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)	[6.1 Build 7600] (x64)

 

* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

All in all still a very good 7200rpm at a good prize (114€) for a cost effective solution (speed and storage). But don’t expect SSD like performances! Until SSD drives comes down in price, it's an excellent alternative for someone who needs the storage space or just a new drive :-)
I am seeing faster boot, faster common app loading, and an overall boost in performance, but is it not because I was upgrading from an old slower drive?

Note: I did clone my old Western Digital blue WD3200BJKT to the new Seagate XT using Acronis True Image 2010 Home.

Canon Speedlight 580ExII vs Nikon Speedlight SB-910

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Category: DSLR camera

Published on Friday, 30 December 2011 14:29

Written by Administrator

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Engineered for both FX and DX-format D-SLRs, the SB-910 offers unparalleled lighting performance in the field and in the studio. Featuring Nikon’s versatile i-TTL (intelligent through-the-lens) metering for on camera or wireless flash control, the SB-910 can operate as a hot shoe mounted Speedlight, remote unit or wireless Commander. And with refined operability including illuminated buttons for use in low light and improved thermal cut out protection, the SB-910 is the perfect partner to your Nikon camera.

Since I am not a professional photographer, I just want to show you the difference in size and layout, for an in-depth reviews, you should already know that dpreview.com is the place to go ;-) 

Read more: Canon Speedlight 580ExII vs Nikon Speedlight SB-910

Migration to linux

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Category: SuSE 9.0 reviews

Published on Thursday, 26 August 2004 00:00

Written by Administrator

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What a windows users do need to install or use in SUSE 9 to complete the same tasks he get use to in Windows?.
What were the difficulties encountered and what are the potential weakness of SuSE 9 distribution?

Migration to linux

Round 2

Purpose
What a windows users do need to install or use in SUSE 9 to complete the same tasks he get use to in Windows?. What were the difficulties encountered and what are the potential weakness of SuSE 9 distribution?.

Background
I am using Windows since 10 years now, what decide me to switch all my personal PC (2) to Linux is here. I decide to try a completely free and open source Operating System to do my everyday private job....or better said some tasks....This small review has been done during evenings while watching TV, chatting on MSN, , I have only taking notes on my notebook while playing with SUSE. I hope that the quality will be good enough and that it may convince You to give SUSE or Linux in general a try.

New 21.01.2003, my anti virus AVG (free edition) was running under Windows 2000 SP5, I encounter an electricity problem, Pc reboot, since this event I can not start my system anymore! safe mode, last good configuration, scandisk, nothing work. The anti virus may have let some file open, since I get a blue screen with an error message saying: can not get exclusive access to the disk....an opportunities to kill my multi boot and only use Linux SuSE, I do not regret the switch since..

New 12.04.2004 My corporate ladtop running under M$ XP sp1, was defragmenting my Maxtor 250Gb external harddisk (FAT32) when the system hang. Rebooting windows has destruct the filesystem and leave me with a 'disk I/O error' and a blank disk! (Real men dont do backup but they often cry.....I was really pissed of at that time, lossing 180Gb of data is really a bad experience), I've tried to recover the data with scandisk, and Norton Disk Doctor 2004 (report error 'no filesystem' ) without any success :-( Last chance was my second PC running Suse Linux, MIRACLE, I've recover most of the data (95%) since Linux has mount and read all data from the damaged disk. Conclusions: defragmenting is dangerous! I consider now windows as a joke and I won't ever install a non journalised and transactionnal filesystem....Reiserfs 4 will be my next filesystem and I will replace my PC2 (w2k) with Linux SuSE 9.1 when it will be available.

Test system:

One more time, here is my system, The Linux experience you will have is very depending on hardware (and also drivers).....

Evening 1

Note all these screenshot has been done with KSnapshot, finding this application was quite easy even if the menu contains a lot of entries, you can locate it under Utilities - Desktop - KSnapshot. I must admit that due to the huge number of shipped applications, SUSE has done a good sorting job in this menu. Of course you must know what you want to start or which task you want to acomplish

Regret I browse thee documentation of KSnapshot and did not find any shortcuts/hotkey to trigger the screenshot....Naivement, I 've try the magic windows key combination, ALT-PRTSC or PRTSC, but it does not work....so I decide then to search on google...."ksnapshot shortcut" give me the answer, CTRL-SHIFT-S which is documented in a "KDE-cvs-digest" as a "backdoor". I see here a documentation potential :-)

Setting the resolution of screen

YAST require to switch to root mode, I was quite impressed by the list of available monitor driver (I have a Syncmaster Samsung 191N) but sad when I saw, it was not in the list (the 181 is), I decide to browse through the list of available brand searching for a generic driver like in windows advance control panel, Bingo there is a "->LCD" monitor section, restart the desktop engine (X server) by logging out and I am done. It seem that there is till now always a solution, all you have to do is to search a little bit which is also good too because you can only be a better user...

Since I have installed SUSE in a multi boot system, in Kexplorer (both a browser and a file manager and...see section below) all windows drive are not visible in the /mount directory like on any linux system but grouped in a /windows/ This disturb me 10s but I find it.

As default you can not write on NTFS drive (Note kernel 2.6 should support full read/write operation on NTFS), so I decide to activate this feature since everywhere on internet, you can read that SUSE 9.0 support it (SUSE bring some new features from kernel 2.6 back to 2.4.21 like 64-bit support, journaling file system, improve security, low latence of scheduling, power management for notebook and improvment in the sound-system architecture. Trying to be a good user, I start the SUSE helpCenter and search for an article which speak of NTFS..

I have found only recommendation for resizing or formatting the system during the installation of SUSE. One solution among others is to move all data from NTFS drive (full NTFS read support) to a Linux space then format back to FAT32....Operation done with Konqueror, the file manager. I already mention that I prefer to have a clone of Norton Commander.

Java support

Konqueror the default internet browser fully support Java, but it was not the case of the third party browser Opera I've installed or better said, Opera did not locate correctly the default JRE (Java Runtime Environment), so I need the feel to install the latest Java VM manually. Checking Konqueror settings shows that java is installed in /usr/lib/java2/bin/java

Go to www.java.com and download the self installer (2 links are provided a .bin and a .rpm and both are self extracting, confusing....), I choose the .bin file and that force me to set attribute of file to executable (right click on file then properties) to uncompress the .bin

You get a file with an extension .rpm, many alternatives, choose one of the 3 below you prefer.

1. Open a Terminal, log a root (type # su ) then type # rpm -iv filename
2. You can use Konqueror and right click open with...Kpackage, a small utilities, then enter root password.
3. You can use Konqueror and click directly on the rmp and YaST wll start up.

Anyway, I choose one and continue my tour....In opera I set in preferences - Multimedia- Java Path to /usr/lib/SunJava2-1.4.2/jre/lib/i386 and then my java appear on my homepage, done

 

Online Update

are done through ....YaST of course,(YaST I am know getting used to that name), software - online update to get the latest recommended patches and security fixes from one of the available SUSE server. 15 servers are installed: 13 are located in Europe and 1 in USA. The latest server is a free choice, you can also define Your own server. I choose 3 differents servers (primary in Germany) and all were working.

Another way to be always informed about the status of possible update is to look at the SuseWatcher icon in the system tray, identic to the windows update icon. The icon color can change if something is available on the server.

Internet browsing

I like Opera so much that I have acquire a licence (previously for Windows and now for Linux), I have also choose Opera under Linux and I do not regret it, even if it is not open source.

Instant messaging

Under internet - Chat You can find a lot of tools installed as default like:

• Gaim,Kopete, gnomeICU which are multi protocol instant messaging, (I decide to choose Kopete, but I will try all others in the future)
• Or some specifics application related to specific protocol:
  • KVIrc, KSirc, XChat IRC (IRC)
  • KXicq2 (ICQ)
  • others Kinkatta, Kit, Konversation

With Kopete, I was able to define ICQ, MSN, Jabber in less than 5 minutes without knowing the GUI at all! really impressive (If you can do it in windows, you can do it in Suse is now my new motto!), I am still trying to customize the GUI (like in my windows IM www.miranda-im.org) because I find that Kopete take too much desktop space.

A set of interesting plugin is provided as default: encryption, emoticons, history of messages, web presence (upload your IM status to a homepage or a server)...A lot of features, but Webcam and Whiteboard capabilities are still missing. For sure there will be a plugin soon or at least a GNU tool for this somewhere in SUSE

For me, Instant Messaging is ok and I can live with Kopete.

Mp3 and audio content.

Using Konqueror, I try to locate my favorites mp3 directory in order to launch some mp3, XMMS start as default, I've heard that this player is quite good, the default skins is based on SUSE colors, mainly green with a chameleon (see pic), This skins is acceptable for a user but not for someone who has already use Winamp's MMd3 or EMP skin (but this is personal). I take google to see if there is something else to download, official homepage is here .http://www.xmms.org/skins.php but skins section is down (after a disk crash but it will reopen). Winamp skins seems to be incompatible with XMMS and there is no converter available

Viewing file using Konqueror

Konqueror is the default file manager and web browser, It is a central application in all KDE desktop. It has a lot of functionnalities (some people may say too much), and its own control panel.
Viewing pictures with it is "slow" (dir has 26 pictures, mean size is 80kb) and it took several seconds (I am not comparing to Windows thumbnails feature, but with ACDsee). Entering twice in the directory do not create additional performance loss, since images are cached (default cache size is set to 1Mb) Windows, ACDsee and others tools use the same tricks.

Hovering over pictures and files create a autozoom...this is a nice features (working with txt file, configuraton, pdf) and is fast, during the build of a directory, the auto zooming display some strange result (especially if you have different file type like pdf, txt, jpg all together in one directory), but it is working and has not crash during the past 10 days (I must be lucky some people will say)

• I still prefer a Norton Commander (because of the dual panel), so I am hunting on internet and found XNC 5.0 but no precompiled rpm for SUSE. this oblige me to compile the source code...
• Path to file is difficult to keep in mind (mainly because there is no more drive letter, I only need some practice...), but you can define favorites

XNC is also downloable for SuSe 9.0 here : xnc-5.0.4-1.i586.suse9.0.rpm

Midnight Commander is a clone of Norton Commander running in a terminal (just type mc)

 

 

USB support (Key)

I mount a USB Key brand Apacer AP-MKSRU10 (impossible to find a picture on internet, very cheap version 8â?¬) which use Sony Memory Stick , after a beep, the drive was recognized and in use. An icons was created on the desktop. The beep is immediate but it take sometimes several seconds till the removable drive is recognized. No problems transfer rates seem to be exactly the same as under Windows 2000.

Evening 2

Security, password policy, settings and firewall

• Can be done in YaST, all setting are always done with th help of assistants, a meaninful documentation is always displayed on the left. No need to push a button or to hover on some part of the GUI like in Windows control panel.
• NAT (Network Adress Translation) which consist of hiding the real internet adresses of your machine by hiding it behind the firewall adress is supported and with only a checkbox
• You can block some Linux services (Webserver, Mail Server) or define your own.
• I am still searching in the YaST GUI for port forwarding capabilities and firewall rules (TCP-UDP and direction). It seems that you must deal with the config file of the firewall directly. (/etc/sysconfig/SuSEfirewall2)

Even if the first part of the setting is done with an assistant, I think that SuSE need to enhance the configuration of it's firewall. I do not want to dedicate a machine for running my firewall even if it is does not give the same security. My router is a Netgear 614 without firewall, but my other PC use a Netgear 634g which has one...

YaST the configuration utility, but what can YaST do for You?

A lot of things, see below the table. Clicking on a subsection always start an assistant that drive the user and give him succinct but understantable explanations.

 

Screensavers

Don't laugh! a good screensaver is part of a personal computer even if it no more needed (TFT screens are good enough to not be damaged by a fix picture)

What I dislike is that it is not possible to define a list of prefered screensavers.In the End, ANY User will be satisfied with the number and diversity of screensavers.

Emule, a P2P network under Linux

Who is using emule under windows? hum? not You? so jump to the next section

OVERNET another P2P network under Linux

Go to www.overnet.com and download the core (an executable file running in command line mode)

You need a GUI, this one is available at http://ed2k-gtk-gui.sourceforge.net/download.shtml it is a rpm

Start the gui by typing /usr/bin/ed2k_gui in konqueror

The tool ask you to locate the core, here I save it under /home/elta68/.overnet/core/overnet0.51.2

Choose a user name, a password and click "spawn core" then "go", you are now connected, share some files and here we go, download!!!!!!

Evening 3

Burning CD

Burning CD tools can be found under Multimedia - CD/DVD Burning. 2 software are installed as default: K3b and cdbakeoven. The about K3b display the release number 0.10! this is disturbing me, is it stable when you ship anything with 0.10?

1. Starting K3b	2. use the assistant, here I select Create a Data CD	3. Use the file explorer to locate file you want to burn Windows drive (NTFS - FAT32) are located in /windows/ You can give a name to your compilation, right click rename on the root.. The space left and consume on CD disk is displayed like in any burning software. The GUI is very similar to EasyCD creator	4 click burn and choose burning options Speed (I have a 16X) but only 14X is available Writing mode: DAO, TAO, RAW Type of session Volume CD-Test and filesystems and misc options. I do not see any options missing, except an assistant for some protections schemes....(Securoom, Safedisk)
Burning took 4:30 minutes for 594MB and mean speed was 12X	If you want to create an audio CD You can not directly use mp3 files but need to convert them back to wav with winamp for example. You can also right click on a file and play it.	In the menu tools: CD-RW are supported (with Erase support of course) Copy CD or Clone CD Burn image ISO, BIN and CUE: CCD are missing. Copy DVD, format DVD-RW, Burn ISO image...	Control panel It support plugins, only 3 are installed: mainly Audio Decoder and Audio Encoder and external programs to work properly. Highly extensible design is always good. The control panel follow the same clarity guidelines as the whole KDE, which are good..

• Following CD projects are possible: Audio CD, Data CD, Mixed mode CD, Video cd, eMovix CD, Data DVD, eMovix DVD. As you see everything is also present.
• What is unknow is the abilty of K3b to handle protected CD....Of course nobody of us are using CloneCD, AlcoholSoft, NeroBurning to copy protected CD.....so it is not really an issue or?
• Of course I need to burn more than 2 CD to be able to give an opinion on K3b, and I am convince that it is easy to find some better reviews on internet. What I can say is that K3b will cover my personal use
• Creating CD is as simple as with EasyCD Creator or Nero
• For resuming, whaouuuh so much functionnality for a release 0.10 ...

DVD, multimedia, Divx, Xvid

 

Windows network connectivity

It seems that connecting SuSE to another remote windows desktop is not as easy as in the windows world...I have found the iconse "Local Network" but nothing was found. There is an interesting documentation in the help center "Linux in the network" speaking about Samba (a layer on top of TCPIP) which help to connect heterogenous computer (MAC, Windows, Linux, others which have this layer). Microsoft implements this layer after pressure of IBM....:-) A good documentation but what I want is 3 uses cases::

• 1. How Linux can access to a Windows machine on the network/shares/printer/internet?
• 2. How Windows can access to Linux machine on the network/shares/printer/internet?

You must use Samba for all above.

1. How Linux can access to a Windows machine on the network/shares/printer/internet?

A lot of FAQ and Howto can be found with google, use the keywords: "linux windows smb howto"

If these steps are working, you can add definitively in /etc/samba/smb.conf the remote windows share, either with the YaST gui or with a text editor.

2. How Windows can access to Linux machine on the network/shares/printer/internet?

Remarqs

• XMMS was not able to open remotely a mp3 using a samba share, copying the same mp3 locally work...strange.

 Links
http://www.art-events.de/systeme/texte/000621samba.htm A tutorial in German
http://www.bnro.de/~schmidjo/index.html LinNeighborhood is a tool to display the network neighbourhood like in windows explorer.

Publishing, deploying web content

http://www.suse.de/en/private/support/online_help/howto/webeditor/ A very good review.

A friendly task manager

Since I was a windows user, I've been looking for a graphical program to allow process monitoring and manipulation. For chance, there is a default "task manager" coming from the base installation of KDE, it is located in System - Monitor - Kde System Guard

• It is a more user friendly way to monitor (and kill!) process or watch memory, cpu than in a terminal.(with command top or ps -ef | grep username)
• Only regret it can not reside in the system tray and wait there when yu really need it.
• You must filter in the process table, otherwise you will see a lot of process running in the background (KDE has a lot of process alone).
• Option 1) Ctrl+Alt+Esc gives you a nice mouse cursor to kill whatever you point and click at. try it.
• Option 2) Ctrl+Esc brings you a nice TasK List(Procees Table) to select and kill whatever process you like to.

A powerful calculator HP48-HP49

I still have 3 HP calculator and was developing on ASM-RPL.SYSRPL (from 1993 to 2000), I use EMU48 each day under windows, see Here

• X48 seems to be the answer, even if it is not so polish and rich of functionnalities as EMU48.
• A rpm can be download from http://rpm.pbone.net and roms from www.hpcalc.org/hp48/pc/emulators/ (no more legal issues roms can be copied freely)
• Again, great difficulties to locate a rpm for SuSE on internet, Redhat and Debian are available.
• No great skins are available, but it do its job
• http://www.fen-net.de/~ea1370/pub/Hobbies/comp/HP48/
  
• www.hp.com/calculators/
  
• http://www.hpcalc.org/  and FAQ.
• www.hpmuseum.org
  
• http://www.hpcalc.org/goodbyeaco.php the end of HP calculator

Here is a binary with roms that work... just unpack and start ./run48g.sh or ./run48s.sh in a terminal

My webcam, a Philips PCV680K vesta pro

Plug and ..... wait, after some minutes (I was playing with the mount command, maybe it can shorten the process if you log as root (type su) and try to force mount of all devices mount -a)

• In google "linux webcam philips" give me this page: http://smcc.demon.nl/webcam It seems that these is now a part of the kernel since 2.4.15
• It place an icon on the desktop ""webcam" clicking on it start Gnome meeting, you have then 7 steps to complete before using this tool.
• It only allow you to use it between other gnome meetings instance, kopete, the Instant messaging has no webcam plugin, and do not recognize that a webcam was installed.

  Intall the latest nVidia driver

As you see a lot of step, is it not time to do all these steps behind the scene in an installer? Nividia? can you help us?

  Intall media player Mplayer

Official Homepage: www.mplayerhq.hu
On packman homepage ( ftp://ftp.links2linux.de/pub/packman/suse/9.0/i586/ ), download :

• Libtheora (required by Mplayer) which use libogg
• Lame (required by Mplayer)
• Mplayer itself
• Mplayer plugin
• Kplayer is one GUI which use Mplayer for KDE

so Install first libogg then Libtheora, Lame and finally Mplayer and Mplayer plugin

Conclusions:

• Dependancy (loading a packages require to install one or many another packages), conflict with packages is horrible, it is time to find a better format than rpm, (is apt-rpm from RedHat the future??? (http://apt-rpm.tuxfamily.org/)) or to restrict visibility of packages to an application instead of the whole system.
• Mplayer seems to have a better support of all windows, and show better performance on my system. Highly recomended.
  

  Wine

Winamp	Acdsee
Reflex	...

  Firewire



  read and write on NTFS !

A lot of projects are trying to read Windows NTFS drive with more or less success

http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/	"The goals of this project are: create a new Linux kernel driver for the NTFS file system (v1.2 and later 3.0), user space utilities (e.g. format, ntfs check, etc.) and a library to avoid code duplication and provide access to NTFS to other GPLed programs." -> it is existing in kernel 2.4.24 but with only read only capabilities, can cause loss of data! -> Can not write or modifying existing file (no file under 1Kb and it can not change size of file....)
http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/    http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/#download    Author    Jan Kratochvil <web_AT_jankratochvil_DOT_N.E.T>     Version    1.5    Licence    GPL    Source    Yes    Environment    Console    Status    Stable	"Captive provides full read/write access to NTFS disk drives in the WINE way by using the original Microsoft Windows ntfs.sys driver. It emulates the required subsystems of the Microsoft Windows kernel by reusing one of the original ntoskrnl.exe, ReactOS parts, or this project's own reimplementations on a case by case basis. Involvement of the original driver files was chosen to achieve the best and unprecedented filesystem compatibility and safety." As root user 1. Download tar gz here http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/dist/captive-static-1.1.5.tar.gz 2. Install, decompress and start ./install 3. Locate ntfs.sys and ntoskrnl.exe in your windows/system32/ directory and copy it to /var/lib/captive/ I recommend You to use WinXp latest drivers 4. start captive-install-acquire it search for the dll, if not found it will download them from microsoft.com 5. for each windows drive (here  the example is for my drive C:\)    type mkdir /mnt/openC    type mount -t captive-ntfs -o force  /dev/hda1 /mnt/openC    I add the switch -o force because SuSE has already mount the drive C (read only) in /windows/c OR open the file /etc/fstab and modify it: before /dev/hda1 /windows/C   ntfs  ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=iso8859-1 0 0 after /dev/hda1 /windows/C   ntfs-captive  rw,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=iso8859-1 0 0 and then type mount -a to see changes Attention, You may need to have a Windows licence!
Wine WMware	I do not want to configure wine... I do not want to install windows anymore...
http://www.ntfs-linux.com/ Publisher    Paragon Software Group    Version    1.0    Filesize    69 K    Licence    Shareware    Cost    69.95$	"Paragon NTFS for Linux is designed to mount NTFS partitions under Linux operating systems as normal logical drives with appropriate drive letter. The full version mounts NTFS partitions for read and write operations; the demo version mounts NTFS partitions in read-only mode. the driver supports NTFS 1.2, NTFS 3.0 and NTFS 3.1. Free Read-only version is distributed as a driver module or bootable CD image. Mounted NTFS partitions are accepted as â??nativeâ?? â?? browse, create/delete folder or file, run applications and other usual functions are totally available."

Another way is to erase all NTFS drive and use reiserfs or extfs3, since Paragon also sell a windows driver to have full access to linux drive. Why should always Linux make the first step?

  Install KDE 3.2

step by step....

in YaST, go to "Software", and then "change source of installation"
Set a new "software media source", use the button "add" and choose ftp

server name: ftp.suse.com
source directory: pub/suse/i386/supplementary/KDE/update_for_9.0/yast-source/

wait till the system accept your new source of installation, close this windows, you can now go to "install and remove software", set the select box filter to "selection", "KDE Desktop environment" has its own section, install first all KDE base package.

You will have some conflict, for me KDE pim, and PDA tools, just remove them! you can reinstall them after having installing the base package!

restart your desktop session...known issues for KDE 3.2 are: sound (but it was working for me, alsa was selected as default) and kbear (FTP tool), for Kbear the solution for me was to remove  the previous version (kbear 2.1) and install this one:
KBear 3.0alpha1b http://kbear.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=download#binaries

KDE 3.2 is as fast as my windows desktop, what a blast! I you want to have a good stability, it is preferable to wait the next official SuSE release...

  Disk Management, rescue disk, partitionning
Soon

  Anti virus
http://linux.bitdefender.com/bd/site/products.php?p_id=16 Linux Bitdefender is a freeware

  Download manager
use kget it can be start in a terminal /opt/kde3/bin/kget

  Printing, scanning
http://www.linuxprinting.org/

  Configuring KDE, themes
Soon

  Eclipse, development
Download the file Eclipse GTK from www.eclipse.org decompress and start the executable.
Jedit www.jedit.org is a jar based installer, open a terminal and type java -jar jedit42pre9.jar and you're done

  Install kernel 2.6 on suse 9.0
here's a howto in german: http://www.thomashertweck.de/kernel26.html
Compile your kernel http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=443

  Administring a Homepage
ftp tool:
KBear /opt/kde3/bin/kbear


  Remove un needed software
Soon

  Links for download

http://www.suse.de/en/private/download/index.html AND ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/9.0/suse/i586/ The official page of SuSE
http://www.rpmseek.com/index.html Search for RPM
http://rpm.pbone.net/ Search for RPM
http://packman.links2linux.de/ Packman compile source code and provide RPM ready to download ()
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/9.0/suse/i586/ FTP


To read
http://www.linux-mag.com/cgi-bin/printer.pl?issue=2002-10&article=jfs choose your filesystem

 

Securing your Suse http://www.antionline.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=260361

Conclusions

Good: The desktop is user friendly, at least for me, for example: saving some of these screenshot, under the save as windows, right clicking provide a menu to create, sorting or add directory. The responsiveness of GUI is good if you consider that the 3D and all 2D tricks are maybe not supported by the driver. Of course this depend a lot of your graphics cards. Trying to start XP on a integrated graphic VXX chipset with shared memory is the same (was using a IBX notebook 2 years before switching to a Compaq NX7000 with a Radeon 9200...). It a quite good to have the possibilities to reuse some win32 librairies (codecs) because they are stable and working. A bravo to the open source community! I have done many online security update with YaST, and have not restart the machine, which is very good, on the other side, there is even more update than in Microsoft world... Till now I have encounter no real difficulties, I must admit that www.google.com is a must, and so fast for locating a solution (on forums, tutorials, howto, personal webpage....) as long as you use the right keywords. If you are already a good user of Windows, you will have no problem to switch to SUSE 9.0 TRUST me and make a try! Bad: Having many rpm version for each distribution (even if you are on the same cpu plattform) or sometimes compile from the source code is the worst experience for me in linux. Only solution is to pray that someone or better SuSE provide you all rpm on a internet site (but you will always have to wait). Suse do not provide for legal reasons enough packages (better said packages that are a must), but it is not diffcult to locate them on other homepage (libcss for decrypting dvd for example) Installing basics fucntionnality ask by 80% of users are still too difficult Why Linux is not at the same level as Windows? my point of view is that people on the others side do their best to avoid porting of drivers and application from 3rd party compagny (and may be using economical threat to achieve this aim).

 

 

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When you finish this article, You may want to read the previous round 1 HERE

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