KDE3
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| nikkels Feb 23, 2012 10:12 PM EDT |
I am running Pardus Kurumsal 2 ( 32 bit version ) on a 64 bit machine. It runs extremely fast and without a glitch. I keep it there till " some people " manage to fix the 52 bugs related to file management in KDE4. Probably never fix and keep Pardus for ever :-) |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 24, 2012 9:42 AM EDT |
I'm happily using TrinityDE, better known as the reanimated mummy of KDE3.5 |
| cr Feb 24, 2012 1:16 PM EDT |
Quoting: I'm happily using TrinityDE, better known as the reanimated mummy of KDE3.5 @bob: on what distro? I'm looking for a current Trinity platform suitable to run on a 1GHz P3Coppermine with 512M DRAM max. This is the same box that has comfortably run Mepis6.5/KDE3.5.3, and would still except that even security updates have ended for the Ubuntu Dapper on which it's based. I'm also looking towards a standard rollout, but the P3 is the initial target. (It's the net-cruiser and net-monitor here, up 24/7 and always running etherape and a browser on 42 watts. I'd spring for a CULV nettop for this if I had the cash.) So far, I've found that: - Arch's rolling release breaks things like Trinity 3.5.12 without warning - Debian Squeeze is podgy in that amount of RAM, and Trinity is crashy; Kq or FF, a web browser's only good for a few pages before it's locked up and taken X with it, probably from being short-sheeted on RAM Next on the hitlist are Slack 13.1 (Trinity's not ready for 13.37) and the Kubuntu 10.10 Trinity remix CD, but I'll take any hints I can get. I'm a hardware / small-embedded-systems asm/C guy, not a C++ dev, so hacking Trinity myself is out. |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 24, 2012 2:05 PM EDT |
Well, you can't install Trinity with Debian Sid (which I use) because with the "gs" package and at least one other I can't remember no longer in Sid, some of Trinity's dependencies don't work as of about two months ago. What I did was install Trinity on Sid about a year ago, and merely let the meta-packages fail and be removed as "gs" ceased to exist. All the Trinity application packages continue to work just fine. I realize that doing an in-place dist-upgrade to Sid is not a normal suggestion, but it's working for me. TDE is rock stable. |
| cr Feb 24, 2012 2:21 PM EDT |
Hm. You might want to copy all of /var/cache/apt/archives off to CDR, then, as a hedge against HD failure, since Sid has effectively pulled up the ladder on you, making it impossible for you to reinstall that setup if something breaks. Thank you for the response. I'll keep plugging. |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 24, 2012 5:11 PM EDT |
CR, With the recent argumenta that KDE4 can, in fact, be recovered to at least act like KDE3, I will actually try that if/when a dump happens. I will do a dump of installed packages, though, just in case. The only really important thing, and even that is recoverable, is my kwalletmanager files. |
| olefowdie Feb 24, 2012 5:34 PM EDT |
Well, you can use the source and build on Slackware. Pardus Kurumsal 2 gives you KDE3. Porteus has a KDE3 version. RHEL distributions usually have KDE3 on their DVDs. |
| tracyanne Feb 24, 2012 5:46 PM EDT |
wrong thread. :) |
| Ridcully Feb 24, 2012 5:55 PM EDT |
@Bob_Robertson......Yes, KDE4 can be more or less persuaded to act like KDE3.5......Been there, done that and published the series of articles on the topic here on LXer if you go looking. There are traps however, in the recent versions of KDE4, and I am now referring especially to KMail which for about 8 years has been my only email client. If you don't use KMail as your client, no worries; but if you do, then there are very real problems in KDE4.7 and I found KMail to be unusable - the linking of a previously excellent (well, in my opinion anyway) email client to Akonadi and Nepomuk has seriously upset its operation in 4.7 and additionally, the developers did the dirty as far as I can ascertain and altered the file structures that KMail uses to store its data. At the moment, I have no idea where KMail (in these latest versions) is storing all its material and that makes it very hard to transfer all those messages in a system upgrade. Whether or not this has been fixed in 4.8 I have no idea.....I am waiting until openSUSE 12.2 before I take another look. In the mean time, I have returned happily to openSUSE 11.3 and KDE4.4.4 which runs beautifully in KDE3.5 mode and in addition KMail runs perfectly. Even though 11.3 is no longer supported by openSUSE, I think it remains one of the best versions they have put out in recent years and as long as it runs the way I want, here I shall stay. And before I bring the wrath of Fettoosh down upon me, I really like KDE4.4.......and would happily stay in the KDE4 series if the blankety blank thing worked. But the very fact that I am refusing to move to the latest versions says everything. I want something that "just works", not a botched up mess and KDE4.7 did just that for KMail. If this continues, Trinity KDE becomes very attractive, but I would like to see a major distro package it as an alternative so it can be tried properly. One always gets the feeling (especially if you really are *not* a programmer/developer) that if things go upside down, then it's your fault, not the fact that part of the software being installed is missing or defective...... |
| dinotrac Feb 25, 2012 11:44 AM EDT |
@ridcully -- Hmmmm. Sounds like my reticence to give KDE 4 a whirl because I don't trust the developers isn't so dumb after all. |
| Khamul Feb 25, 2012 2:29 PM EDT |
@dinotrac: I recommend giving it a whirl on a liveCD just to check it out; that way you're not committing to it. In fact, this is probably good advice for any distro or DE. If you don't use KMail (I don't), I think the newest versions (4.74+) work quite well these days. If you do use Kmail, then exercise caution before making any changes. @Ridcully: "At the moment, I have no idea where KMail (in these latest versions) is storing all its material and that makes it very hard to transfer all those messages in a system upgrade." Actually, I think, by using Akonadi as its backend, Kmail is now storing your email in a database (probably MySQL or PostgreSQL). Here's a link that talks about Akonadi's database backends. In theory, this makes some sense; databases are generally good places to store small chunks of data and access them. The problem, of course, is saving and transferring your data in a system upgrade, as you mention; it's not hard to back up your /home directory (or better yet, just keep it on a separate partition altogether), and when upgrading or migrating to a different distro, just wipe out everything else but keep your /home (and maybe also a general shared storage area, I keep mine in /stor) on a separate partition or drive and leave that alone, and remount it on the new system. But databases aren't so easy: they usually live in /var somewhere, and worse if the database version changes during the upgrade (or worse, one distro uses MySQL and another uses PostgreSQL; the binary files are not compatible), then you're looking at having to do a database dump and restore, which most users probably don't know how to do. |
| Ridcully Feb 25, 2012 5:24 PM EDT |
@Khamul........thanks. I strongly suspected this might be the case. One of the many problems of KMail in KDE4.7 was that its menu options said that you could import your previous emails "as a single file".........but in the earlier versions of KMail, they don't exist as a "single file".......talk about Catch22.......and set up by the developers no less. Like I said, I gave up in sheer dismay and returned to an old tried and true version of KMail which actually does what I want. And on that subject, permit me to have a serious "bitch" about trying out other email clients like Thunderbird or Evolution.......Okay, they work and work well. Now try getting your emails out of KMail into these other clients. Apart from sending them all to yourself again via your ISP servers, the area of getting emails out of other clients seems to be seriously neglected by the developers. They seem to assume that you are using their software and have never used anybody elses. KMail just doesn't exist usually as far as other email packages are concerned. |
| alc Feb 25, 2012 6:07 PM EDT |
Maybe something to help @ https://brunocornec.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/migrating-from-... |
| Khamul Feb 25, 2012 6:49 PM EDT |
@alc: Unfortunately, I don't believe that'll work. That script was probably written for Ridcully's KDE4.4 version of Kmail, which he says works fine; if they've changed it in more recent versions to use a database to store email, then that script won't work at all is it's made for migrating email from a "maildir"-based system to and "mbox"-based system. IIRC, the difference here is that maildir stores all your emails in separate files in a directory structure, whereas mbox stores them all in one giant concatenated text file. mbox is the old Unix way of storing emails, and maildir is a slightly newer way, but neither uses a database at all, which is probably a very recent development. |
| Ridcully Feb 25, 2012 8:57 PM EDT |
@Khamul........and this is precisely what is beginning to anger me over KDE4: this increasing complexity so that the user is losing control over what he/she wants to do. It seems almost as if the developers have in mind that you will be forced to use something that is totally foreign and far more complex from what you are used to using - and there is no way back to simplicity. I haven't yet looked at KMail in KDE4.8, but when KMail used the "maildir" system you could readily manage your email files if you really needed to get at them individually or copy them across to an OS upgrade. I can understand why KMail developers may want to put the files in a database..but that rather arrogantly assumes that you actually NEED such a database. I don't, and I wonder how many others using KMail also opt for simplicity rather than the Akonadi complexity of what is probably an SQL system. As far as I am concerned, if you need a database, then let there be an option that allows the user to COPY (not transfer) all email files over to the database system, but leave the standard email structure intact and usable. To me that gives power back to the user and is not a "You will do it this way because I, as the developer, know what is best for you !". There probably are some users who need the database format, but I don't and if KMail continues the way it is going, as experienced in KDE4.7, I will regretfully dump the software package as unusable. Look....this is sounding off before I have seen the latest version of KMail and I may have to eat my old battered straw hat without salt and pepper.....But at least I have thrown my tuppence worth into the ring about something that concerns me deeply and is really, really pinging me off. |
| telanoc Feb 25, 2012 11:08 PM EDT |
@Ridcully: I guess I'll have to keep the KDE 4.5 version of kmail around, if they're really going to a database format. When I'm logged in locally (both at home and work) I use kmail, but when I'm logged in via ssh (from home or from work) I use mutt. I'd gladly give up any feature a new kmail might have to keep that ability. No straw hat here, but I do have my old battered Slackware baseball cap. |
| telanoc Feb 25, 2012 11:42 PM EDT |
@me and anyone interested: Okay, after reading the KDE "Kontact and PIM" forum it appears that you can store your mail in maildir format. I found a message titled "Kmail2: configuring local mail path." which discusses this very thing. |
| Ridcully Feb 26, 2012 1:00 AM EDT |
@telanoc......If so, it alters everything and the "powers that be" have actually done what I would like which is to allow one to still use the maildir format......However, again I stress I am in no hurry. My current OS and KMail are humming away perfectly and I shall quietly wait for the next issue of openSUSE and look at KDE4.8 before making any further moves......But you have certainly given me cause for hoping there will be a good outcome. Many thanks. I've never used mutt, but apparently it is quite good as long as you enjoy absolute simplicity. Is it still actively developed ? I shall have to go look it up. |
| Ridcully Feb 26, 2012 1:02 AM EDT |
@ telanoc and me........yep, still being developed and uses maildir as well. I may seriously take a peek. |
| cr Feb 26, 2012 2:04 AM EDT |
Mutt is a great little console mail client; I use it on my qmail server. You can set it up to work with Maildir storage easily. Just remember to ^C out of it when you're done if you don't want the mails you've read to move from /new to /cur (a distinction which makes scripted mail-handling harder to write and manage) at exit. |
| dinotrac Feb 26, 2012 10:00 AM EDT |
@khamul - A livecd, I'm afraid, tells you nothing about the quality of the developers beyond their ability to package up some code you can live with. As you gain some experience in the world of computing you will (I hope) learn the difference between code and software. Code is code, but software is done for a purpose. Trusting the developers not to scew up your life, which happens when the environment you rely on to make a living gets hosed, is part of the difference between code and software. |
| Fettoosh Feb 26, 2012 12:25 PM EDT |
Quoting:And before I bring the wrath of Fettoosh down upon me, I really like KDE4.4... @Ridcully, I never intended to do that and I am sincerely sorry if I was harsh in any way. I always knew that you seriously liked KDE, otherwise, you wouldn't have gone the extra effort writing couple articles on lxer to make it work they way you want it to. Others just took the easy way out and jumped to Gnome. I promise I will try to be more careful and not to be too assertive next time. :-) Quoting:Okay, after reading the KDE "Kontact and PIM" forum it appears that you can store your mail in maildir format. That is what I thought was the plan from the beginning, especially for small devices, but couldn't find any information. I didn't pursued it since I am not using KMail for a long while now. Thanks for the info. @telanoc |
| tuxchick Feb 26, 2012 3:16 PM EDT |
Since we're talking about KDE4...I've been running it on a laptop and desktop. Both are multi-core machines with gobs of RAM, because that's what KDE4 needs. It has its good points and bad points. The bad: the disease of useless configuration dialogs, and spreading configs over multiple tabs and locations for no good reason other than to waste user's time is endemic in KDE4. If you elect to use the Strigi indexer, which indexes filenames, metadata, and file contents, the first run can take a couple of days. If you don't use Strigi then you have no search in Kmail. I have come to like the desktop widgets. They're akin to the dockapps in Fluxbox, only prettier and more to choose from. Activities are similar to Fluxbox's Workspaces, where you can group arbitrary documents together. Notifications drive me insane. They are configurable, but they're still annoying and mostly unhelpful. Seriously, devs, get a grip. I don't need everything shouting at me like a proud child going poopoo. It seems that devs still have not grasped the concept of making window or form contents readable; they open small and cut off whatever text you're supposed to read. The notifications are especially annoying in this regard. For example when I'm copying files to a different directory the filepaths are truncated, and there is no way to expand them. Excuse me to hell and I know we lusers are supposed to be frightened by actual information. My biggest wish is that all distros and desktop environments would get their acts together with networking and removable media. They're all over the map; some work without a hassle, some act like they're still in 1995 and only know about floppy disks. KDE4 handles removable media well. There are numerous little glitchy things, like there are squillions of fine-tunings for a touchpad, but no easy way to turn it off. The graphical services configurator does not allow adding new services to run at startup. Configs in general are not all that well-organized and it's hard to find things. I am quite ready for the standard procedure of rip, discard, disrupt, and slowly painfully replace userland stuff with something that may or may not be better to die for good, and be replace with a focus on stability and useful design. Oh I know, it won't happen, but I can dream. |
| dinotrac Feb 26, 2012 4:14 PM EDT |
@tc -- Sorry, kiddo, but you can't dream. That is inconsistent with the current understanding of what makes for a cool life user experience, so the developers have removed access to dreaming. In the meantime, have a nice day -- while you still can. |
| Fettoosh Feb 26, 2012 5:50 PM EDT |
Quoting:The bad: the disease of useless configuration dialogs, and spreading configs over multiple tabs and locations for no good reason other than to waste user's time is endemic in KDE4. @TC, If you don't like the multiple tabs, you can change it from icon view to hierarchical view. You do that by selecting "Configure" in "System Settings" top main menu. Under "General" in left pane, select "Classic Tree View" and It become similar to the classic main Kmenu. If you don't like the default grouping, that can be changed too by right click on Kmenu and select edit applications. |
| tuxchick Feb 26, 2012 6:01 PM EDT |
Fettoosh, I was not talking about the system menu. |
| Ridcully Feb 26, 2012 6:44 PM EDT |
@ Fettoosh.........mea culpa. When I wrote "bring down the wrath of Fettoosh", I had a dirty big grin on my face, so you may rest assured that it was absolutely, positively, certainly and undoubtedly tongue in cheek and written in the spirit of stirring a friend with an enormous 20 foot long handled spoon. You've certainly never upset me and I knew that you knew I liked KDE4 very much indeed.....especially the 4.4 version. Hope that clears it up :-) |
| tracyanne Feb 26, 2012 6:47 PM EDT |
Quoting:some act like they're still in 1995 and only know about floppy disks. Most act like Floppy disks don't exist. Trty as I might I cannot get any version of Ubuntu/Linux Mint to mount either an internal Floppy Disk or an external USB Floppy Disk. There seem to be plenty of tools for formatting floppy disks, deleteing them, but mounting them forget it. |
| Khamul Feb 26, 2012 7:24 PM EDT |
@ta: Floppy disks? I don't think I've used one of those since around the time I used dot-matrix printers. I'd say they're about as useful these days as punch cards. |
| tracyanne Feb 26, 2012 7:46 PM EDT |
@Khamul Not to one of my clients, infact they are important enough to him that he went and bought a new USB Floppy Drive. The problem is I can't mount the d@mn filesystem on the floppys. He's a musician, who has hundreds of Floppys with MIDI files on them. |
| nikkels Feb 26, 2012 9:54 PM EDT |
Floppy disks? I don't think I've used one of those since around the time I used dot-matrix printers. I'd say they're about as useful these days as punch cards. Please try not to be so narrow minded. Less than 3 weeks ago, I brought a Belta Notebook, model 2008T s/n bn450900180 back to live with the help of several floppies. This netbook has been " collecting dust " for years because, most technicians told the owner that " it could not be done" ....you know, because of "" the floppy is dead "" stupid mentality. note: the only thing wrong here was a corrupt HD. note 2: I am not saying ' you " are stupid. I was referring to the mentality. It's the same as " KDE3 is dead ": stupid and narrow minded. |
| tuxchick Feb 26, 2012 10:01 PM EDT |
My Mint 12 installation had a /etc/fstab line for floppy disks. I deleted it. TA, does he have any idea what the filesystem is? There were a lot of weird ones back in the day, FAT12 and FAT16 and a number of proprietary ones, including Apple. My Mint installation does not support all filesystems:
$ cat /proc/filesystems
ext3
ext2
ext4
fuseblk
iso9660
vfat
This listing of filesystems that Linux supports comes from fdisk: 0 Empty 24 NEC DOS 81 Minix / old Lin bf Solaris 1 FAT12 27 Hidden NTFS Win 82 Linux swap / So c1 DRDOS/sec (FAT- 2 XENIX root 39 Plan 9 83 Linux c4 DRDOS/sec (FAT- 3 XENIX usr 3c PartitionMagic 84 OS/2 hidden C: c6 DRDOS/sec (FAT- 4 FAT16 <32M 40 Venix 80286 85 Linux extended c7 Syrinx 5 Extended 41 PPC PReP Boot 86 NTFS volume set da Non-FS data 6 FAT16 42 SFS 87 NTFS volume set db CP/M / CTOS / . 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT 4d QNX4.x 88 Linux plaintext de Dell Utility 8 AIX 4e QNX4.x 2nd part 8e Linux LVM df BootIt 9 AIX bootable 4f QNX4.x 3rd part 93 Amoeba e1 DOS access a OS/2 Boot Manag 50 OnTrack DM 94 Amoeba BBT e3 DOS R/O b W95 FAT32 51 OnTrack DM6 Aux 9f BSD/OS e4 SpeedStor c W95 FAT32 (LBA) 52 CP/M a0 IBM Thinkpad hi eb BeOS fs e W95 FAT16 (LBA) 53 OnTrack DM6 Aux a5 FreeBSD ee GPT f W95 Ext'd (LBA) 54 OnTrackDM6 a6 OpenBSD ef EFI (FAT-12/16/ 10 OPUS 55 EZ-Drive a7 NeXTSTEP f0 Linux/PA-RISC b 11 Hidden FAT12 56 Golden Bow a8 Darwin UFS f1 SpeedStor 12 Compaq diagnost 5c Priam Edisk a9 NetBSD f4 SpeedStor 14 Hidden FAT16 <3 61 SpeedStor ab Darwin boot f2 DOS secondary 16 Hidden FAT16 63 GNU HURD or Sys af HFS / HFS+ fb VMware VMFS 17 Hidden HPFS/NTF 64 Novell Netware b7 BSDI fs fc VMware VMKCORE 18 AST SmartSleep 65 Novell Netware b8 BSDI swap fd Linux raid auto 1b Hidden W95 FAT3 70 DiskSecure Mult bb Boot Wizard hid fe LANstep 1c Hidden W95 FAT3 75 PC/IX be Solaris boot ff BBT 1e Hidden W95 FAT1 80 Old Minix vfat should read all FAT filesystems, so I'm thinking the floppys use something else. |
| tracyanne Feb 26, 2012 10:08 PM EDT |
When I attempt to mount a known good disk I get "Can't read superblock". To the best of my knowledge they should be some sort of FAT, and they do mount on Windows. |
| gus3 Feb 26, 2012 10:10 PM EDT |
That sounds like a hardware issue, i.e. out of alignment or R/W head gone south. |
| tracyanne Feb 26, 2012 10:12 PM EDT |
brand new USB Floppy drive? |
| jdixon Feb 26, 2012 10:27 PM EDT |
TA, I don't have my Ubuntu machine available at the moment. Does Ubuntu/Mint include the mtools package by default? If so, try using the mdir command in a console and see if it can read the floppy. The floppy shouldn't be mounted. I have a USB floppy at work. I'll try to do some testing tomorrow. |
| gus3 Feb 26, 2012 11:00 PM EDT |
Or simply try:cat if=/dev/floppydev0 | head | file - Also, if there's a light on the device, does it flash or flicker during the mount attempt? That could indicate that the drive detects an error condition. |
| cr Feb 26, 2012 11:51 PM EDT |
@ta: If you manage to get one floppy drive working, probably the best thing to do with all those floppies is batch-copy them to a tree in HD for a burn to CDR. That's what I did with my old WinDOS ones that mattered to me -- bit-rot is bad enough on oxide and worse on high-coercivity media such as in 1.44MB disks. A script I wrote quite some time ago to automate the process is here, in case it's of use: http://www.stormbringer.org/pers/crb3/cli/dosxfr.gz (One of these days I have *got* to update that subsite.) |
| Khamul Feb 27, 2012 1:57 AM EDT |
@nikkels: "Less than 3 weeks ago, I brought a Belta Notebook, model 2008T s/n bn450900180 back to live with the help of several floppies." Isn't that what Linux rescue CDs, such as Knoppix, are for? Or USB drives? There really shouldn't be anything anyone needs a floppy drive for, except to support legacy hardware that still uses them (like old oscilloscopes that came with floppy drives), or to read old disks (and hopefully migrate the data to a better and newer medium right away). |
| nikkels Feb 27, 2012 3:54 AM EDT |
Khamul
None of the rescue CD's I had wanted to be booted up with this computer.
Not Gparted, not Parted magic, .not knoppix 5 05 6 and not "puppy "...short...none that I had
My guess is that it has to do with either the old bios or the corruption on the HD--which I eventuel changed a week later for a "used" one ( 20Gb)
But yes, you have a point. That's why we have rescueCD's.
But, sometimes........?
And in this country, you will find an amazingly big abount of comps fitted with floppy drives.
Hey, even the shops are still selling new ones ( 400 Baht or just over $10 ) @cr thanks for the script. I may use it soon ( as I am doing some spring cleaning ) |
| cr Feb 27, 2012 8:15 AM EDT |
Quoting: vfat should read all FAT filesystems, so I'm thinking the floppys use something else. Or they're infected with a boot-sector virus. @nikkels: y/w. That's why I put stuff out there -- so somebody other than me can get some use out if it. |
| jdixon Feb 27, 2012 9:31 AM EDT |
OK, TA. When I connect the Sony USB floppy drive to my Ubuntu 10.04 netbook, it shows up in dmesg as /dev/sdb. Mtools seems to be installed, as mdir is present. Mdir doesn't recognize it as a floppy though, so that doesn't work. It says it can't initialize A:. However, if I issue the command sudo mount /dev/sdb /mnt and give my password, it mounts the floppy. If I then cd to the /mnt directory an ls command returns a directory listing for the floppy. I suspect mtools only recognizes floppies connected via the floppy drive connector, and not usb floppies. However, it looks like I can mount floppies with no problems, so I have no idea why it's not working for you. :( |
| Fettoosh Feb 27, 2012 10:33 AM EDT |
Quoting:mea culpa. When I wrote "bring down the wrath of Fettoosh", I had a dirty big grin on my face, ... @Ridcully, I knew that but wanted to make sure. :-) |
| tuxchick Feb 27, 2012 12:29 PM EDT |
"The Wrath of Fettoosh"-- that is a wonderful name for a series about a heroic computer nerd and his wacky sidekicks. Adventures! Suspense! If we can figure out a way to make people sitting at computers adventuresome and suspenseful :) |
| gus3 Feb 27, 2012 12:34 PM EDT |
@tc: Already tried. Remember "VR5"? |
| tuxchick Feb 27, 2012 2:23 PM EDT |
Never heard of it, gus3. It must have been memorable :) |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 27, 2012 4:59 PM EDT |
I realize I dropped out for nearly a year, but sheesh! The arguments over KDE4 never change. It's like someone moved in to KDE at 3.5, and decided to simply piss everyone off by making everything as complicated as possible. |
| cr Feb 27, 2012 5:00 PM EDT |
"Welcome to the game, Sydney Bloom." Jeez, Carla, I'm supposed to be the disacculturated antique around here. Think back to '94. |
| tracyanne Feb 27, 2012 5:02 PM EDT |
Sorry I'll get onto the problem today and let people knowe my results |
| dinotrac Feb 27, 2012 5:07 PM EDT |
@BR -- Things seem to have changed some,though. By all accounts, KDE4 is much better than it used to be -- if still a bit sketchy to rely on as your workaday desktop when you include fun and games by the developers. More important than that, though, is that my Transformer got the Ice Cream Sandwich update this weekend and it is SWEEEEET! The Transformer was already a sweet tablet, but didn't seem as smooth and responsive as the HP Touchpad we picked up for my mother-in-law. Not any more. ICS (at least on tablets -- haven't tried it on a phone) makes android a much more serious player. |
| tracyanne Feb 27, 2012 5:43 PM EDT |
Ok here's what I get tracy@annie:~$ sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdb /mnt/floppy mount: /dev/sdb: can't read superblock |
| gus3 Feb 27, 2012 5:52 PM EDT |
Are you sure it's /dev/sdb? If you disconnect and reconnect the drive, is /dev/sdb what shows up in dmesg? |
| jdixon Feb 27, 2012 8:06 PM EDT |
Assuming it is /dev/sdb, TA, what happens if you add the -t vfat option. If that still gives you the same error, then there's something more going on that I don't understand. |
| tracyanne Feb 27, 2012 11:03 PM EDT |
Yes it is sdb. I can even see an icon for the device, So I'm begining to think ther problem is the floppys themselves. It's definately not mounting the filesystem |
| cr Feb 27, 2012 11:36 PM EDT |
Maybe you can use dd to suck in a binary image of the disk so you can inspect the boot sector with a hex editor. Sucking in the whole disk like that means you don't have to go do it again to see if something moved the partition table up a sector like an LBA boot-manager would to make room for itself. Can FreeDOS, sitting in DosBox or such, see the floppy drive? If anybody local's got a known-good DOS floppy, or can create one, seems to me it's time to test the read-channel with something other than device-under-test floppies. |
| jdixon Feb 28, 2012 7:00 AM EDT |
> Yes it is sdb. I can even see an icon for the device, Then the device is being recognized and either it['s not working properly or it's something about the floppies. I agree that you need a known good floppy to test with. And you said Windows could read these floppies with no problems. Was that using the same device? |
| tracyanne Feb 28, 2012 8:04 AM EDT |
@JD, I'm not sure now. Until I get my hands on a floppy I know is good. I've tried dd and fdisk, they all report a problem with the filesystem. dump2fs gives me this dumpe2fs 1.41.11 (14-Mar-2010) dumpe2fs: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open /dev/sdb Couldn't find valid filesystem superblock. |
| Ridcully Feb 28, 2012 8:06 AM EDT |
Try this for an archive of floppies........ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/27/microbee_buzz_back/ I might add, that this little "bee" was just about my first computer. |
| Fettoosh Feb 28, 2012 8:56 AM EDT |
Quoting:"The Wrath of Fettoosh"-- that is a wonderful name for a series about a heroic computer nerd and his wacky sidekicks. You sound you already have a plan and you are the writer, I say go for. But first, you have to check with @Ridcully as he might have it copyrighted already. :-) |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 28, 2012 10:03 AM EDT |
"you have to check with @Ridcully as he might have it copyrighted already." Too late. Copyright is automatic in the US since Sonny Bono decided to reimburse his paymasters at the RIAA for making him a congressman. So just writing it means it's copyrighted. |
| dinotrac Feb 28, 2012 10:17 AM EDT |
@br - Shame on you for parroting such tripe. The change in copyright law protects original authors and composers much more than publishers. Publishers have always had the werewithal to secure copyrights -- and the knowledge (not to mention the morals) to steal from artists. |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 28, 2012 10:28 AM EDT |
Dino, thank you, it's good to be back. Ah, like putting on comfortable old shoes, with the rocks still inside them. |
| tuxchick Feb 28, 2012 1:33 PM EDT |
Or dentures with grits under them. |
| tuxchick Feb 28, 2012 8:29 PM EDT |
I hope. I hope I hope there is a special hell for software developers. Oh yes I do. Let's start with KMail. Email-- boy howdy, there's a bleeding-edge application that's had only 40 years to work the basic kinks out. So I must excuse it for being a buggy piece of dung and serving up tasty features like a mail importer-- isn't it funny how KDE has to import a KDE mail store via devious and tricksy means instead of just opening the darned things-- and the mail store filepicker doesn't display dotfiles. Hahahahaha, that's way funny! I bet they're laughing their butts off at KDE World Conquest HQ. Then when you finally finagle it into seeing the maildirs, it imports empty folders. You have to click an 'update folder' button to see your actual mails. How do you know you have to hunt this down and click it? Telepathy! Don't even get me started on the special hell that is the required Akonadi integration with Kmail. I wonder how Mac OS X looks these days. |
| gus3 Feb 28, 2012 9:49 PM EDT |
@tc: How does it look? Gee, I dunno, it's proprietary. It looks the way Apple makes it look. If you want choice, you need to grovel before the altar with Steve Jobs' icon over it. Same goes for bugfixes. And if you want source code, write a check. |
| dinotrac Feb 28, 2012 11:02 PM EDT |
@gus3 -- If, on the other hand, you want it to work -- not so bad. |
| Ridcully Feb 29, 2012 4:48 AM EDT |
You know what tc ? "Ah jes lurves ya when ya gets all riled up !!!!!! Your entry blinks on and off in bright indignant crimson !!" And then you said so nicely all the things I'd have loved to have said about the utter muck that KMail has now become. Only one thing I'd like to ask. It is obvious you tried the mess of KMail......which version of KDE4 were you using in the trial ? As far as I know, KDE4.5 still had a KMail that worked.....from then on, it went to pieces. There is one small trick I pass on with respect to KMail which will at least work before the version where the KMail "so-called developers" mangled it properly with Akonadi........To bring my emails into a brand new installation upgrade, all I did was copy the "kmail" directory (inside .kde3 in your home directory usually) across from the old installation to the new one.......that contained everything including all folders, emails, settings, etc. etc. etc. But, there is a nasty little trick that I learnt: you absolutely must ensure that after it is copied across, it's permissions are set in place for the new installation. Otherwise I found that you got into horrible messes with disappearing emails, etc. etc. etc. So, what I always do after copying "kmail" across is open the properties of the folder. I then open the permissions tab and change the Group permission to "can read and write etc.", plus tick the box at the bottom which says to apply the change to all subfolders and files. Then select Apply. Once it has finished, open the properties box again, change the permissions back to the default settings, again tick the box at the bottom to apply to all subfolders and files and again Apply. This ensures that all folders and files are now firmly the property of the owner of the new home directory. And it works. |
| tuxchick Feb 29, 2012 11:53 AM EDT |
Ridcully, this is Kmail 4.7.3. That open-the-mail-store-directly trick doesn't work anymore. Email on Linux is a pile of muck. Mutt and Kmail are the only mail clients that can handle anything more complex than a single mail account with minimal filtering. Mutt has its own special hells-- it took forever to get IMAP and decent MIME support. Kmail spoiled me with mass useful features, for example easy creation of complex filters, automatic mailing list recognition, multiple identities, customized settings for each and every folder in your Inbox like reply-to, identity, and different colors for read and unread messages. It handles multiple accounts, encryption keys, and spam filtering better than any other. Having a central PIM data store makes sense. Now if it all worked reliably, and if it wasn't dog-slow over an SSH tunnel, life would be good. (No I don't want IMAP. Been there. Done that.) I figure by the time the kinks are worked out and it's pretty decent they'll chuck it and skitter off to The Next Cool Thing. |
| cr Feb 29, 2012 12:07 PM EDT |
@tc: opinion on Sylpheed / Claws? |
| tuxchick Feb 29, 2012 1:00 PM EDT |
cr, I used Claws for about a year and liked it. It's clumsier to create filters, and it does not separate identities from mail accounts. KMail keeps identities separate, so you can use any identity with any account by picking one from a drop-down menu. Kmail also has an option to 'keep replies inside folder' that Claws does not have. I may still go back to Claws one of these days. |
| Khamul Feb 29, 2012 3:22 PM EDT |
Considering SMTP email is positively ancient, and was used on Unix systems for decades before it ever came to MS systems, it's really shameful that Linux email systems are so far behind and so unreliable. Personally, I just use Gmail because I don't have time to mess around with something that's broken. Does Kmail do conversation grouping the way Gmail does? This is honestly the best new feature in email I've seen since, well, since I started using email back around 1992. The only problem with Gmail's implementation is that it's buggy and doesn't have any manual override ability; it frequently doesn't put replies with their original messages, and it doesn't let me break apart messages into separate conversations (such as when I get several automated emails (receipts) from the same place but want to tag them differently). And oh, the tagging thing is the other great feature it has. I have mine set up to work like nested folders, but there's frequently emails (or conversations) where multiple tags apply, so not being confined to having to put them in only one folder is really helpful. |
| Fettoosh Feb 29, 2012 4:50 PM EDT |
Quoting:Does Kmail do ... The whole idea behind using a DB to store e-mails is to be able to do all sorts of things a DB enables you to do. Adding modules to do grouping, Semantic search, and all sorts of such nice features is a matter of adding tables, fields and code. The problem is, they need to get the darn basics working first. |
| Khamul Feb 29, 2012 4:57 PM EDT |
This seems to be a recurring problem in FOSS-land these days. It used to be they had a "stable" track, and a "testing" or "experimental" track, and people who needed stable software to do their real work with would stick with the former and not have to deal with all the bugs and problems seen with brand-new experimental software. Now, maybe because they think too few people were testing out their experimental releases, they want to force everyone to use the latest stuff, no matter how broken it is. |
| Ridcully Feb 29, 2012 5:58 PM EDT |
Thanks Tuxchick......I rather suspected that particular version was the case. It was the brick wall that I also hit, and again, like you, I am compelled to ask: What are these fools of developers playing at ? Why deliberately break, sabotage and turn a very useful, practical and well understood piece of software into a complete shambles and at the same time destroy their user base ? I simply do not understand their motives. Surely it would have been possible for them to set up a system where the standard KMail files were copied by the Akonadi "mess" and transferred over to form the database for other packages that actually needed the said database......But no, "everything", KMail included, has to run from this database, and in so doing the lot has been broken. I'll second the motion for a special hell for these particular developers. I strongly resent the fact that they have deliberately destroyed a software package that not only satisfies my needs, but also will become essential in a month or two for network communications in a new piece of contract work that is flying my way. I am NOT a happy little vegemite. Lend me a pitchfork someone, I need to go prod some bits of roasting developers. PS...I hope you weren't offended at my attempts at harmless fun. Couldn't resist it. |
| Fettoosh Feb 29, 2012 6:01 PM EDT |
Quoting:This seems to be a recurring problem in FOSS-land these days.... I am not too sure about that, FOSS developers mostly adopted the RERO "Release early, Release Often" But in specific cases, like the Kernel & Debian, had to make sure their software releases were stable and reliable since they were providing business level software. Commercial entities like Red Hat, Suse/Novell, and to a certain level Canonical, they had to make sure their products had to be reliable and dependable otherwise they would lose their customers' business. On the other hand, looking at it in a positive respective, my personal take is different than yours. I believe that The recent flux in FOSS software was caused by the need to take FOSS software to a higher level of competitions with commercial software. FOSS software was getting stagnant and wasn't making the desired fast proliferation in the market, MS, using its monopoly power, was able to stop Linux pre-installed Netbooks in their track. Something had to be done about that. With tablet hardware was starting to come out and becoming the latest trend, the developers foresaw its potential and had to make a move as fast a possible. That really changed the whole game of competition. Given their limited resources, they didn't have the luxury to work on a "stable" track, and a "testing" or "experimental" track. And consequently, we had to suffer through this period of FOSS software flux. |
| Ridcully Feb 29, 2012 6:15 PM EDT |
@Fettoosh.........I understand that, but the problem is then that your files are submerged in what appears to be an SQL database filing system with no way of getting at individual messages using a file manager. Admittedly, I don't do that very often, but I have been known to require that facility. The point I continue to make is that the "modus operandi" of these utter twits of developers appears to have been to trash the lot and destroy an understood and well operating structure for something that not only doesn't work, you have no idea as to how it was supposed to work even if it did. In KMail 4.4, setting up an incoming mail account required you to put settings on a **single** user name selection panel for password, mail server location and simple additionals such as whether it was POP or encrypted etc. But when setting up your incoming mail account in KMail 4.7 you are faced with a series of three, count them THREE, alternative "things" (some with glowing green radio buttons on them) which all have links to file structures and mail locations within your client, and you had no idea what the wretched things did, which of them had to be filled out, which could be ignored, etc. etc.. Simplicity was hurled out for complexity. I even went to that wonderful situation of RTFM......and that brings me to the next bit. Just try reading the flamin' manual when it doesn't make sense, does not seem to apply to what you have in front of you and is so garbled that eventually you throw your hands up in despair and refuse to go any further. Like Tuxchick, I have absolutely had it with this insane madness of increasing complexity while destroying a useful, well understood software package - that previously worked. @Fettoosh again....the above comment was in reply to your comment about two or three above which included the quotation, not the one directly above this response......you got it in before I could get mine onto the site. |
| Fettoosh Feb 29, 2012 6:18 PM EDT |
Quoting:I simply do not understand their motives. @Ridcully, I don't think they had any devious motives, they simply made a big mistake. Quoting:Surely it would have been possible for them to set up a system where the standard KMail files were copied by the Akonadi "mess" and transferred over to form the database for other packages that actually needed the said database...... That or something similar would have been a much better approach. The bottom line is, they made a big mistake and they should have kept KMail-1 alone as long as necessary while working on and until KMail-2 is ready. |
| Ridcully Feb 29, 2012 6:23 PM EDT |
@Fettoosh......I suppose I can accept your hypothesis.....It just helped to be able to get rid of some of the utter frustration with the mess that has been produced. And thanks for agreeing with my suggested approach. One would think that the KDE4 developers in general would have learnt from the original dreadful appearance of the KDE4 series a couple of years or so ago; but this KMail mess seems to be playing to the same role model with a single software package. What is it now: The only thing men learn from history is that men never learn from history. |
| Khamul Feb 29, 2012 6:24 PM EDT |
@Fettoosh: By making users suffer through any kind of flux, they're basically saying that "if you use FOSS, you're going to be constantly suffering with broken experimental software, any time we wish to try out some new pet theory". Users who actually need to get work done are going to avoid it like the plague. Users trying to get work done don't care about tablet marketshare, they care about getting their work done on their business PC (or home PC they're using for business work). No one does work on tablets; they're toys, meant for media consumption only. |
| ComputerBob Feb 29, 2012 6:27 PM EDT |
@Fettoosh, the problem with your hypothesis is that stable, functioning FOSS software will always compete against commercial software better than unstable, broken FOSS software. |
| Ridcully Feb 29, 2012 6:30 PM EDT |
@Khamul......I am not sure I could put it better myself. It's what I was trying to get across in an earlier post about my needs for an operating KMail package becoming critical in a couple of months. My impression is always that tablets and smartphones are designed for data consumers, not data creators....The classic keyboard and mouse PC (whether desktop or laptop) remains as far as I am concerned, the only valid method of data creation. Destroy that user base with defective software and you have no data for the tablets and smartphones to "feed on"...rather a self-destructive methodology. |
| Fettoosh Feb 29, 2012 7:07 PM EDT |
Quoting: the problem with your hypothesis is ... @CB I wasn't, or at least, I didn't intended to making any hypothesis or defending which model competes better against commercial software. All what I was saying is that FOSS development cycle mostly follows RERO. That makes FOSS more dynamic and progresses much faster and better than commercial software. I agree with the developers that something had to be done, but I don't agree with the approach as I stated in the case of KMail. Having stable and reliable software as demonstrated by the kernel and Debian models is still the best way to compete against commercial software. Roses have thorns. I guess the loosely connected development cycle and the freedom that comes with volunteering do have their thorns. |
| ComputerBob Feb 29, 2012 7:18 PM EDT |
@Fettoosh, I called your post a "hypothesis," because, unless you prove that your opinions are facts, they're only hypotheses, just like mine and everyone else's here. |
| Khamul Feb 29, 2012 7:23 PM EDT |
The people who work for Canonical and Red Hat aren't volunteers, and many other distros have paid employees as well. They're supposed to be making releases of stable software, even when the upstream developers go off on tangents. Instead, they haven't bothered; they just package up the latest-and-greatest (and full of bugs, or worse, terrible UI design) and throw it out there. The only exception to this, and this is a very recent exception, is Linux Mint, where they've seen that users are angry about the garbage being fed to them by the Gnome and Unity devs, and are working to provide their own modified environment that suits the users who actually need to get work done. |
| Fettoosh Feb 29, 2012 7:35 PM EDT |
Quoting:Users trying to get work done don't care about tablet marketshare, they care about getting their work done on their business PC (or home PC they're using for business work). No one does work on tablets; they're toys, meant for media consumption only. @Khamul, First off, tablets are not toys and lots of work can be done on them, especially when used for data consumption. I am not saying tablets are going to replace desktops. What I am saying is that they do have their areas of usage. All along, I always said tablets are supplementary to desktops. Just remember that there are far too many more people who use computers simply to read e-mail, browse the Internet, chat, view pictures & videos, analyze data, compose a small documents, maintain a spreadsheet, etc.... Such and many more trivial tasks don't need a full fledged desktop computer. A tablet would be more practical, convenient and more than enough. |
| Khamul Feb 29, 2012 7:54 PM EDT |
Just remember that there are far too many more people who use computers simply to read e-mail, browse the Internet, chat, view pictures & videos, analyze data, compose a small documents, maintain a spreadsheet, etc.... Such and many more trivial tasks don't need a full fledged desktop computer. A tablet would be more practical, convenient and more than enough. You've got to be kidding. You can't read email, analyze data, compose documents, or maintain a spreadsheet on a tablet. There's no keyboard! You can't do these tasks without a keyboard. Well, you can if you want to screw around with the cr@ppy touchscreen "keyboard", but unless all you're doing is writing a line or two of text, it isn't worth the aggravation. Tablets are consumption-only devices: you can use them to play simple games, watch videos or movies, and maybe surf the web (as long as it doesn't involve a lot of typing), and that's about it. What I'm doing right now, typing this message, would be mostly impossible on a tablet. I've used smartphones for tying before, and it's a giant PITA; I end up just not bothering, and going and playing a game instead. |
| dinotrac Feb 29, 2012 11:05 PM EDT |
Quoting: No one does work on tablets; they're toys, meant for media consumption only. Quoting: There's no keyboard! My Asus Transformer would disagree with you on both counts, and I think some number of people with bluetooth keyboards are close enough to count. I picked up my Transformer to do -- work!. I have a client who uses software of mine (web based) via an android tablet and a significant part of the market is heading that way ( I have software to support field technicians). Not only are tablets a handy way to do form-driven work, but I use mine for many of the tasks I had used my netbook for earlier. Most of my development work takes place on my workstation at home, so opening an ssh shell into that box lets me do quite a bit (and render in the browser on the tablet -- which is what I'm optimizing for right now anyway). I can also deploy to my production servers which are in -- ya know, I don't even know any more. But -- an ssh shell, and I'm there. The silly thing even came with an app called Polaris Office which lets me do rudimentary office work, though I still retreat to another machine for heavier lifting. The point is not that a tablet can do everything well that a pc can do. It can't, but neither can a pc do everything well that a tablet can. A tablet can, however, be a serious computing device for serious work. |
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