[Glastonbury] Linux's latest...

[Nick Irwin]

Well, just thought I'd provoke some conversation about the latest Linux 
developments.

I installed Mandrake 10.0 today and took a plunge in the deep end with the 2.6 
Kernel! I'm also onto KDE 3.2 and ALSA sound among other things.

First things first, Kernel 2.6..... well being an average Joe of a user, it 
doesn't really make much difference to me, but I'm so glad that my CD-writer 
no longer has to be emulated as a SCSI drive, load up times seem faster in 
places and thats about it. Oh and I managed to confuse KDE to the point where 
it couldn't tell me what Kernel I was using - had to re-install to solve that 
little gem.

KDE 3.2 is as you would expect, not much different, however it has a few new 
touches which I quite like such as the ability to choose from a selection of 
splash screens (sorry but I really do like that feature).

The sound has gone very weird, I dunno if this is a 2.6, ALSA or MDK 10.0 
problem but I can listen to CD's etc but I keep getting aRTS errors and no 
system sounds will play.... ho hum.

Another niggle is that now whenever I use the scroll wheel on my mouse it 
affects the bottom scroll bar not the side one...... how this ended up being 
the case I may never know, maybe someone thought it was a good default.

MDK10 also comes with Kontact (although I thought the name was supposed to be 
Kroupware but nevermind) instead of KMail. What are peoples views on this 
rather Outlook style mail client? It seems a little bulky to me, I preferred 
the streamlined KMail myself.

Well, anyway, I just thought I'd be the first to register my approval of the 
2.6 kernel..... I'm off to play with KDevelop 3.


-- 
Nick Irwin
Term-time E-mail: nirwin at blueyonder.co.uk
Home E-mail: nirwin at pulbah.plus.com