[Gllug] frustrated with Linux

Steve Nicholson yahoogroups at yoursolutions.com
Sun Mar 2 00:17:30 UTC 2003


Hi Guys 
Thanks for all your replies, it's really great to get all your
support. I'll reply here rather than to individual posts.  I spent this
morning fsck'ing my box as it crashed again when I first started it up
so going to bite the bullet and buy some faster hardware and try
Mandrake 9.  I'll join the Mandrake club so I'm giving something back,
might help keep them afloat as I read in Linux User they are in financial
trouble. Hopefully I'm not backing a dead horse, I'll try out an install
first to make sure it will be ok. I agree the software I'd chosen are
more time consuming to learn but it was with the aim of more speed,
hopefully a faster PC will help.

Yes I have thought of professional help, that's how I got started with
Debian on the server.  Unfortunately at the moment I don't really have
the money to spend on new hardware, need to pull finger out and get some
more work in. I'm not really sure where the problem lies with the box,
I've change motherboard and power supply, not sure if I change the RAM. 
This morning twice while running fsck I got the following kernel panic. 

-------
Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 000010000 |
28%
pinting eip:
--list of stack, trace etc. <- didn't write it all down.
Kernel panic : Attempted to kill the idle task!
In idle task - not syncing.
-------

First time I have seen this error, maybe it's the AMD 500 K2 that's
giving problems, I did a google and found some AMD's give trouble.

I know there is work being done on the desktop to improve it's
usability (for the server I've found Debian great it's just on my
desktop I've been frustrated). I find it's the little things that cause
the problems and I'm aware of the issues caused by proprietary systems
which is why I don't want to support MS and hope that joining the
Mandrake Club will help a little.  I'm also very aware that if I move
back to the DarkSide I'll be bitching even more about not being able to
do the things the way I want, which is why I really want to stick with
Linux.  I do think Windows is a good choice for some and I do think it
does provide a good service, I don't agree with their tactics or
business practises so I choose not to support them. I set up a PC for a
friend with winXP (needed it for his work) and bitched the whole time
about the way things worked on it so I can't see me loving it either!

The consistency I'm looking for in apps is really keybindings. I know
some I can change, then they all have different ways of changing them
and some only seam to work for the session.  I also realise that in
another five years this will all be academic because a lot of the
applications are still really in their first development phase.  I have
played with both KDE and Gnome, I just found them too slow and cluttered
with a lot of the desktop taken up with panels etc, which is why I like
ION. It's the same with anything new you try there is the learning
time/curve to find out how it works, if it will do what you want and how
to configure it so it works exactly like I want.  I'm sure either of KDE
or Gnome can be configured as I want it's just putting time in to it and
a faster PC would help:).

There is a couple of Linux SIP clients but it's the Windows one I'm
after to put on my dads PC.  I know phone calls to NZ are cheap but it's
the time difference which is the real issue and the fact that my dad is
82 and still thinks international calls are expensive so always wants to
get off the phone as quick as possible.  I'm on ADSL and with yahoo IM
it's easy to see when he pops on the net and have a quick voice chat, he
will happily talk for ages even though it's crap compared with using the
phone.  Anyway thanks for your ideas on this, I've found some stuff on
Google that Yahoo IM and voice (well a faster clone) will work with Wine
so I will have a play with that.  My reason for wanting SIP is for
better quality, I agree that using the phone would be better.

Thanks again for your support, I'll post again on my feeling with new
system.  Will post gain on hardware next.

Steve.
P.S thanks for the milk and cookies:).

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