Ok, I'll give it a try... On Tue, 2003-01-21 at 23:56, Jason Louie wrote:
> Problem: > > I find that the machine is quite slow with things like applications > running in kde, (java VM is unbearable to use). Now I've been able to > upgrade some things like EveryBuddy chat application without any hassle, > however, other things seem to be quite difficult to mold to the system > settings. A hardware upgrade would go a long way to making your system faster. Adding some RAM is probably the best way to go about it. That said there are some other things you can do such as running a light weight window manager instead of KDE, making sure you turn off services that don't need to be running, not using java or wine applications, making sure that your kenel is not loaded with modules that you are not using. Mandrake 8.2 is not a very old system, so it should not be much of a problem to upgrade many of your apps. Hopefully I can give you a few pointers. > For example, I've updated Mozilla but I needed to manually remove the > old version, (installed via installation disk,) to prevent two separate > versions running. That depends on where they are installed. You can install two versions in two different directories. I have two versions of Mozilla running on my RedHat 8.0 system, and I have run both Mozilla and Netscape 7.0 on a Mandrake system. Getting rid of the old version of Mozilla should not be too much of a problem though. Mandrake does provide a GUI for removing software, it can be found in the control-center. Here are some other ways: If you have new RPMs you can update the old ones with the command: # rpm -Uvh *.rpm The -U will upgrade the packages as opposed to -i which will install the packages. You can also remove the old packages before installing the new ones by typing: # rpm -e mozilla This will remove (-e) the Mozilla package. You should be able to get a list of all the mozzila related packages on your system by typing: $ rpm -qa | grep mozilla Then you can go and remove them all and then install the new version. > It seems that many of the applications that come with the installation > is not in the same directory paths as with the application install. This is done intentionally some of the time. So for example you could have a /usr/lib/mozilla-1.1 directory and a /usr/lib/mozilla-1.2 directory each containing a different version of Mozilla. Other times you will not want two versions on your system, so it is probably best to uninstall the old version. You could also install the new version over the old one. Most GUI installers let you chose your installation directory. If you were compiling from source you can use the --prefix flag to chose where to install the program. For example: $ ./configure --prefix=/opt/gnome2 > Mandrake update is not up to date with version and doesn't seem to have > all the applications I want. I've had some problems with dependencies > installing with RPM and have had the best results with installing from > source... is this the way to go? What am I missing? Mandrake will not give you the latest version of a program through Mandrake update. It is used mainly for security and bug fixes. That being said, using urpmi or gurpmi you can install most applications and it will take care of all the deps. for you. Make sure that you have sources for contribs, and plf in order to get more programs than just the ones that Mandrake ships. You can add a source within gurpmi or from the command line. Type: $ man urpmi.addmedia to get more information. After that you can just type urpmi progname to install many applications. For example: # urpmi transcode will get the latest version of Transcode from the PLF ftp site as well as all the dependencies and install it. If you do want the latest and greatest of every application, then you should update your OS to Mandrake 9.0 or Cooker. The Mandrake installer makes it quite easy to upgrade the OS. Another tip for installing RPMs is to use http://rpmfind.net/ You will be able to search for any dependencies that rpm says you need. You will find that rpmfind will be your best friend. Compiling from source is another way to go. There are many advantages/disadvantages to using source over RPMs. However you will not get away from dependency issues by compiling from source. > On a side note I am running KDE 2.2.2 with limited HDD space. Would > KDE 3.0 be faster. Should I switch to Gnome, (keep in mind I have > limited HDD space.) I think KDE 3.0 is faster, but probably takes more HD space. Both Gnome and KDE will slow you down on older systems. I would recommend going with a light weight window manager or desktop environment. Here of some of the ones that I like: Window Maker: http://www.windowmaker.org/ Enlightenment: http://www.enlightenment.org/pages/main.html IceWM: http://www.icewm.org/ XFCE: http://www.xfce.org/ Just pick the one that you feel the most comfortable with and use it. > Hopefully someone can shed some light on these issues. I hope I helped :-) Jesse
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