Arch Linux

Extreme Coder

Member

Registered: 2008-03-11

Posts: 41

Semi-beginner here, need help getting started

Hi,
I'm glad I've discovered Arch, it's truly a great distro. I had Mandriva as a no-problems-at-all distro, and Ubuntu as an in-the-middle distro, but it seems like Ubuntu will be leaving my PC pretty soon
I'm not that much of a noob to Linux, so I managed to install Arch, set up my internet connection, and install KDEmod. Man, KDEmod rocks!

But still, I have a few slight problems:

1) Being Egyptian/Saudi Arabian, I definitely need Arabic support. And unfortunately, this is one area I have no idea what to do about. I want to be able to change from US to Arabic keyboard layouts (preferably with the Alt-Shift combination). Also, I would like to get the Arabic fonts look better, as they look terrible Maybe that would be fixed if I installed an Arabic fonts package? I looked for one and couldn't find any.

2) While pacman isn't hard to use at all,on the CLI, I want to know if there's any GUI out there for it (Preferably a QT/KDE one, but I will take the best one out there )

3) Is there any danger in updating the whole system? I usually get a bit scared from them, since they make my system end up unusable

4) When running ETQW on my ATI X1200 (I already installed the drivers correctly, Catalyst 8.3), The game screen is shifted to the left, and there is a black bar on the right, why is that?

5) Last but not least, how do I enable Xv video support? (from Xorg.conf, I guess, but how exactly?) Also, are there any optimizations for the FGLRX driver?

Thanks a lot!

hacosta

Member

From: Mexico

Registered: 2006-10-22

Posts: 423

Re: Semi-beginner here, need help getting started

1) try kcontrol->Regional & Accessibility -> layouts
about the fonts, check the wiki
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fonts
you might also want to check this thread
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=41256

2)Search the forums, there are some front-ends, most of them don't work quite well yet (but they're getting closer)

3)Use common sense and follow instructions for packages that require user interaction and you should be fine. (pacman will tell you what to do).
And also, IMHO you are less likely to run into trouble if you upgrade frequently and gradually.

Extreme Coder

Member

Registered: 2008-03-11

Posts: 41

Re: Semi-beginner here, need help getting started

How do I install packages that are marked unsupported? Because Pacman doesn't find these packages. (the arabic fonts)

Also, while the Kcontrol did the trick, there are two small issues:
1) I asked in the options that Alt-Shift be used to change layouts, but it doesn't. And I tried lots of other combos too, they don't work.(this is in the Xkb options in the keyboard layout section in kcontrol)
The only way I can change layouts is with clicking on the us/ar flag in the tray.
2) Won't these options be KDE-only? Wouldn't I need to edit something in /etc/rc.conf? (it has locale and some other stuff in it)

Thanks!

Last edited by Extreme Coder (2008-03-11 21:16:31)

blu3ness

Member

From: Edmonton, Canada

Registered: 2007-12-28

Posts: 169

Re: Semi-beginner here, need help getting started

I'm not sure about arabic inputs, but for asian input methods, I use SCIM/SKIM, you might want to google that up and see if they implement arabic input methods.

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Archlinux on Compaq Presario v5000 laptop

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Semi-beginner here, need help getting started

Unsupported packages are in the AUR, and must be compiled before install. Follow the AUR link on the top right of the page, read the AUR User Guidelines, and other relevant info in the wiki.