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#1 2005-08-24 19:21:06

Danny
Member
From: Croatia
Registered: 2005-06-05
Posts: 64
Website

A couple of general questions...

Getting closer to making the move to Linux (have said this a million times before but eh.. ^^) but I'd like a few things solved first.

- How do I make Arch start my internet connection on boot (I'm connecting with adsl-start)?

- What is that deamon thing on startup (it throws me some errors about some snd-wave or something like that and cs4234 or so not beeing found/loaded, sorry cant boot Arch atm so pulling this out of my head)?

- Is hwd recommended for a xorg.conf? Or is it better to manually make one, I'm not to experienced there (or anywhere for that matter)?

- How can I move my e-mails from Windows to Linux (using Thunderbird on both)?

- Whats a good RSS feeds reader?

- How can I get a graphical boot thing, for example after booting getting a screen like in windows or other distros with Username and Password fields and the ability to choose what WM to boot, instead of the command line?

- How can I change the keyboard layout to my language? It's currently set to the US thingy, and I just hate writing like that.

- I have a motherboard with a nforce chipset. Do I need to do anything else after running pacman -Sy nforce in order for Arch to use the stuff that it installs instead of the defaults?

- Is there something like MS Access for Linux? Where I could create a app and manage a database of all sorts of stuff and combine it and play around with it and so?

- What things do I need to install to be able to listen to mp3's, watch avi's and mpeg's and some dvd's?

- Whats a good CD/DVD burning program?

- How can I change the mouse to look a bit better? Install some other themes I guess (using GNOME here)?

- Where to get themes from and any good recommendations/guides on how to install them (again for GNOME please)?




I know all of this can be found in the wiki or on various other sites but I've got a very limited time atm and I can't get time to even finish my job and get enough sleep, forget about browsing around. Would appreciate some help greatly. I don't mind direct links to pages in the wiki either. Bah back to work now. :evil:


I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.

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#2 2005-08-24 19:39:30

Snowman
Developer/Forum Fellow
From: Montreal, Canada
Registered: 2004-08-20
Posts: 5,212

Re: A couple of general questions...

That's a lot of questions smile

- How do I make Arch start my internet connection on boot (I'm connecting with adsl-start)?

Put adsl in the daemons array of rc.conf

- What is that deamon thing on startup (it throws me some errors about some snd-wave or something like that and cs4234 or so not beeing found/loaded, sorry cant boot Arch atm so pulling this out of my head)?

I'll need more info (exact error message) could be hotplug related

- Is hwd recommended for a xorg.conf? Or is it better to manually make one, I'm not to experienced there (or anywhere for that matter)?

If you're not experienced, use hwd. You'll get a working (hopefully) xorg.conf that you can after tweak to your desire.

- How can I get a graphical boot thing, for example after booting getting a screen like in windows or other distros with Username and Password fields and the ability to choose what WM to boot, instead of the command line?

You'll need to use gdm. Search the wiki for info how to set it up. http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Add … on_startup

- How can I change the keyboard layout to my language? It's currently set to the US thingy, and I just hate writing like that.

I'm not sure but I think you'll probably need to change the KEYMAP in rc.conf. I've always kept it at us.

- What things do I need to install to be able to listen to mp3's, watch avi's and mpeg's and some dvd's?

There's a lot of player's out there. Try mplayer. It can do all of the above.

- Whats a good CD/DVD burning program?

I usually use k3b. It's a KDE apps (has KDE depends).  graveman is popular but I don't know if it burns DVD

- Where to get themes from and any good recommendations/guides on how to install them (again for GNOME please)?

http://www.gnome-look.org

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#3 2005-08-24 19:53:44

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

Re: A couple of general questions...

/me cracks his knuckles

Lord Death wrote:

How do I make Arch start my internet connection on boot (I'm connecting with adsl-start)?

Assuming you have it properly setup (adsl-setup) and can connect manually (by running adsl-setup), you can simply add "adsl" to the DAEMONS=() array in /etc/rc.conf - everything in that array is in the /etc/rc.d/ directory and is run on startup.

Lord Death wrote:

What is that deamon thing on startup (it throws me some errors about some snd-wave or something like that and cs4234 or so not beeing found/loaded, sorry cant boot Arch atm so pulling this out of my head)?

Sounds like hotplug errors.  You have a few options here.  One is to replace hotplug with lshwd, another (my favorite) is to list all the modules you need in the MODULES=() array in /etc/rc.conf and remove hotplug altogether, and the final is to blacklist (add to /etc/hotplug/blacklist) the modules that are causing problems.

Lord Death wrote:

Is hwd recommended for a xorg.conf? Or is it better to manually make one, I'm not to experienced there (or anywhere for that matter)?

It's probably better to make a manual configuration, but it's complex, and if you don't have time for it, jut run hwd and let it do it's thing.  Even if you want to manually change things, I'd probably suggest running hwd first and then changing the generated file.  NOTE: You can always do this stuff later once you have a working xorg.conf.

Lord Death wrote:

How can I move my e-mails from Windows to Linux (using Thunderbird on both)?

Hmmm.... complicated.  The data files should be the same (I hope) on both, so I would just back your windows files up... to a CD or online or something... depending on the size of it all.  Then try to open then from thunderbird in linux.... if it doesn't work, at least you have the windows versions backed up and can migrate somehow (NOTE: this should work flawlessly)

Lord Death wrote:

Whats a good RSS feeds reader?

Depends on usage... I run "feed-on-feeds" on my web server, because it runs a cron job to pickup news items... I can log in from, seeing that it's php based.  Snownews is a good one for console based rss... other than that, I'm rather partial to using RSS plugins via firefox.

Lord Death wrote:

How can I get a graphical boot thing, for example after booting getting a screen like in windows or other distros with Username and Password fields and the ability to choose what WM to boot, instead of the command line?

If we're talking about the same thing, that's called a "Display Manager", or DM for short - there are many options here... xdm (standard with X), gdm (Gnome), kdm (KDE), slim (stand alone).  You should be able to add the name into the daemons array in /etc/rc.conf, assuming it's installed.

There are more graphical boot tricks you can do, but they get complicated and are "beyond the scope of this response"

Lord Death wrote:

How can I change the keyboard layout to my language? It's currently set to the US thingy, and I just hate writing like that.

There is a KEYMAP setting in /etc/rc.conf you'll want to change... in addition, you'll probably want to set your locale (in your ~/.bashrc... mine is: export LANG="en_US").  As for graphical stuff, that depends on quite alot of factors... gnome and KDE have their own settings for this somewhere...

Lord Death wrote:

I have a motherboard with a nforce chipset. Do I need to do anything else after running pacman -Sy nforce in order for Arch to use the stuff that it installs instead of the defaults?

Hmmm... no idea...

Lord Death wrote:

Is there something like MS Access for Linux? Where I could create a app and manage a database of all sorts of stuff and combine it and play around with it and so?

Of course wink
http://www.rekallrevealed.org/
http://www.mysqlfront.de/
http://www.knoda.org/
... many more ...

Lord Death wrote:

What things do I need to install to be able to listen to mp3's, watch avi's and mpeg's and some dvd's?

linux gives you so many options, this can't really be answered.... for movies I'd say either mplayer or xine (xine is slightly better with dvd menus), both of these will play mp3s, but you'll probably want something fancy like mpd+gmpc or something... there's seriously about 50 media players (check the multimedia forum)

Lord Death wrote:

Whats a good CD/DVD burning program?

Hmmm k3b (KDE) is good, as well as gnomebaker (Gnome, obviously) - there's also about 30 others which are unrelated to specific desktop environments - bashburn, graveman, etc

Lord Death wrote:

How can I change the mouse to look a bit better? Install some other themes I guess (using GNOME here)?

Try gnome-look.org.... there's also a wiki page on changing X's cursors

Lord Death wrote:

Where to get themes from and any good recommendations/guides on how to install them (again for GNOME please)?

gnome-look.org is pretty standard... others might have better links...
art.gnome.org is pretty good too (I think)


PS I'm feeling frisky today... responding to all these questions in such a nice manner suprises even me... most of this stuff a quick google could have produced.... if you're unable to search and find information on your own, you'll have a very tough time with linux

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#4 2005-08-24 19:55:07

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

Re: A couple of general questions...

Holy crap Snowman... compare our answers....
/me high-fives snowman

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#5 2005-08-24 20:40:43

T-Dawg
Forum Fellow
From: Charlotte, NC
Registered: 2005-01-29
Posts: 2,736

Re: A couple of general questions...

Yikes! Thirteen questions in one.  :shock:
Snowman, phrakture, you each get a cookie.

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#6 2005-08-24 21:40:15

citral
Member
Registered: 2005-05-07
Posts: 87

Re: A couple of general questions...

I'll throw in for two of the questions.


- Whats a good RSS feeds reader?
-->I personally like liferea.

- Whats a good CD/DVD burning program?
-->The command line. tongue Seriously, it's not difficult to grasp. However, you can use k3b and gcombust for a GUI. Xcdroast is also an option, but I advice against it.


One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero,
they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs.

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#7 2005-08-24 22:59:05

dtw
Forum Fellow
From: UK
Registered: 2004-08-03
Posts: 4,439
Website

Re: A couple of general questions...

cd-burner : graveman has been highly recommended for a small footprint system

rss reader : thunderbird has a really good RSS reader IMHO - it only just started working in Arch

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#8 2005-08-24 23:02:41

Snowman
Developer/Forum Fellow
From: Montreal, Canada
Registered: 2004-08-20
Posts: 5,212

Re: A couple of general questions...

phrakture wrote:

Holy crap Snowman... compare our answers....
/me high-fives snowman

Yes... the similarity is strikening.
/me high-fives phrakture

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#9 2005-08-25 05:09:31

Danny
Member
From: Croatia
Registered: 2005-06-05
Posts: 64
Website

Re: A couple of general questions...

Ahh thanks alot guys. I figured throwing all questions into one topic would be better than to make 20 topics about it. And then someone says you Arch guys arent friendly, I'll point those to this topic next time. :twisted:

/hugs Snowman and phrakture wink


I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.

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#10 2005-08-25 06:28:47

Danny
Member
From: Croatia
Registered: 2005-06-05
Posts: 64
Website

Re: A couple of general questions...

phrakture wrote:

/me cracks his knuckles
Sounds like hotplug errors.  You have a few options here.  One is to replace hotplug with lshwd, another (my favorite) is to list all the modules you need in the MODULES=() array in /etc/rc.conf and remove hotplug altogether, and the final is to blacklist (add to /etc/hotplug/blacklist) the modules that are causing problems.

The exact errors are this:

... cant load module snd-cs4232
missing kernel or user mode driver snd-cs4323
... cant load module snd-cs4232
missing kernel or user mode driver snd-cs4323
... cant load module snd-wavefront
missing kernel or user mode driver snd-wavefront
... cant load module snd-wavefront
missing kernel or user mode driver snd-wavefront

And yeh both come twice. Its under Starting Hotplug Daemon. If i were to follow your advice, what exactly are all the modules i have to add to rc.conf, and how do i remove hotplug alltogether then?


--

When i add a user with addusr (or something like that) do i need to add him to any special groups so he can listen to music/videos and access the internet?

--

Could not look up internet address for myhost.
This will prevent GNOME from operating correctly.
It may be possible to correct the problem by adding
myhost to the file /etc/hosts.

I get that each time i start GNOME or Xfce. Any way to turn it off?


I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.

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#11 2005-08-25 15:01:50

murkus
Member
From: Europe/Helsinki
Registered: 2004-03-19
Posts: 254

Re: A couple of general questions...

Lord Death wrote:

- How can I move my e-mails from Windows to Linux (using Thunderbird on both)?

If you have recent version of thunderbird that has global inbox thingy then just copy your profile directory's content in windows to the profile directory in linux.

Has worked flawlessly for me.

Lord Death wrote:

- What things do I need to install to be able to listen to mp3's, watch avi's and mpeg's and some dvd's?

For mp3's, ogg's etc I heartily recommend amarok. It's in repos.

For movies I'd recommend mplayer. For some obscure reason I just hate xine. Don't ask me why..

Lord Death wrote:

- Whats a good CD/DVD burning program?

k3b

Lord Death wrote:

- Where to get themes from and any good recommendations/guides on how to install them (again for GNOME please)?

http://art.gnome.org
http://gnome-look.org



.murkus

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#12 2005-08-25 15:04:18

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

Re: A couple of general questions...

Lord Death wrote:

... cant load module snd-cs4232
missing kernel or user mode driver snd-cs4323
... cant load module snd-cs4232
missing kernel or user mode driver snd-cs4323
... cant load module snd-wavefront
missing kernel or user mode driver snd-wavefront
... cant load module snd-wavefront
missing kernel or user mode driver snd-wavefront

And yeh both come twice. Its under Starting Hotplug Daemon. If i were to follow your advice, what exactly are all the modules i have to add to rc.conf, and how do i remove hotplug alltogether then?

Add "snd-cs4323" and "snd-wavefront" to /etc/hotplug/blacklist
As for removing hotplug altogether... I wouldn't really recommend it if you're just starting out.  But you basically take every module that your system needs (and that you know you need) and add them to the MODULES=() array in rc.conf.  Then you don't need hotplug on boot (as the hotplug startup script does the same thing, but it detects your hardware every time, whereas your hardware probably doesn't change that often)

Lord Death wrote:

When i add a user with addusr (or something like that) do i need to add him to any special groups so he can listen to music/videos and access the internet?

Sound - add to "audio" group
CD Burning - add to "optical" group
3D Acceleration - add to "video" group

Lord Death wrote:

Could not look up internet address for myhost.
This will prevent GNOME from operating correctly.
It may be possible to correct the problem by adding
myhost to the file /etc/hosts.

I get that each time i start GNOME or Xfce. Any way to turn it off?

Add your hostname into /etc/hosts next to "localhost".  Mine looks like:

$ cat /etc/hosts
#
# /etc/hosts: static lookup table for host names
#

#<ip-address>   <hostname.domain.org>   <hostname>
127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain   localhost animus

# End of file

where "animus" is my hostname.  For the record, this is a harmless error, but causes a few second lag when starting X.  Bascially, X starts up and goes "hmmm host name is 'blah', let's get the ip address"... when something looks for an ip address, it checks /etc/hosts first... if it's not found, it queries DNS (which fails, but it still has to wait for it to fail to know it's local).  So if you hostname is in /etc/hosts, it speeds this process up.

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#13 2005-08-25 16:12:15

Danny
Member
From: Croatia
Registered: 2005-06-05
Posts: 64
Website

Re: A couple of general questions...

Thanks guys, I'll give all that a try and report back. wink


I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.

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