Dear Rinse-- Thank you for your kind assistance. I'll try to straight things out. The biggest problem, I think, will be to determine what I did wrong with the kernel installations and to fix them.
I'm using Mandrake. I'm not sure what you mean by distribution; the computer itself is a Dell machine, but they have nothing to do with the software, which I bought separately. There aren't any KDE viruses that I am aware; that was the point of buying into this, despite my novice status. But in any case, I do want to thank you with very much for the help you have given me. And I will certainly write to KDE about the Find mechanism; it's one of the things I used most heavily on Windows, and when my indexing system was hijacked I was screwed. Lost 2.5 months of work, and God knows how much on computer "experts" whose only expertise was to run standard screens I could have done myself, which all came up with zip. Except that I had extended hard drives that overshot every single boot mechanism, corrupted the system Bios and kept reinfecting the machine every time I reinstalled the Windows XP system. My biggest problem is that I learned too much about a system I was forced to dump, and now have to start all over again. Many gracious thanks for your kind help. Best always-- Alyssa On Wednesday 01 September 2004 05:26 pm, Rinse de Vries wrote: > Op woensdag 1 september 2004 22:49, schreef Alyssa A. Lappen: > > Dear Sirs-- > > > > First I am thoroughly confused about how to make my system request a > > password and user name upon boot, without also losing the ability to have > > three options at logoff (those being 1) only end session 2) shut down, 3) > > whatever the third option is, which I forget). > > Is simple, go in kcontrol to 'system administration->login manager' (or > similar, I use Dutch version :) > Open tabpage 'convenience' (last one) > Remove the checkbox of the option "activate autologin" > > Save your settings. > Now, next time you boot linux, the login manager will ask for your username > and password. > > > I have tried using the desktop wizard, but this does nothing to resolve > > this question. > > Correct, this is a system administrator option, not a user option :) > > > Neither do any of the instruction manuals I have seen so far > > give nearly enough detail about these options. > > kdm has documentation, can't imagine that this part is not described in it. > But if not, the new version will, i noticed that a complete new > kdm-handbook is in cvs :) > > . > > > But I don't want to install a password at boot at the expense of losing > > the ooption to shut down completely; that was what happened the last time > > I changed password settings in the login manager section. > > You can tell in the login manager section of kcontrol who is allowed to > shutdown the computer. > > > Additionally, I have been unable to resolve issues that have arisen from > > the upgrade of the kernel I did this week. I now seem to have several > > kernels on the system, > > more then one kernel on your system is no problem :) > > > and I have received an error when attempting to > > access the "User Account" item from the KDE menu; it says "There was an > > error loading the module; An error occured during your last KDE upgrade > > leaving an orphaned control module" or "You have old third party modules > > lying around." > > I guess you screwed up your installation. > > > It's possible I loaded more items than I should have, since kernels > > cannot (horribly) be updated automatically, > > They can be updated automatically, depending on your distro :) > > > and those of us who are not computer > > geeks are lost and out of luck. > > Again, depending on your distro > I updated my kernel about 4 times nou on SuSE, just by a few mouseclicks on > a system tray icon :) > > > I felt great that I managed to upgrade the > > kernel. Wow! But Lord, I have no idea how to fix "orphan modules" or > > "third party" modules much less find them. > > The modules kcontrol speaks about are not releated to your kernel, they are > configuration modules of kde. > kde is no part of Linux itself. > > > I have no idea what they are! Simply > > instructing me to "check these points carefully," as the details of the > > error message note, is about as useless an instruction as they come. Like > > HOW?????? (Especially since my "find" program also does not work. > > that is correct, 'kfind' in mandrake is broken. Please contact mandrake > about this. > > > Another question is why "Dr web" has come up as a user? It's a virus > > program, isn't it? Not a user? But after I installed that program, Dr. > > Web appeared as a user, and I can't get rid of it. > > Dunno which program you installed, but Linux often has more then 20 users, > although youre the only one using the machine :) > The other users are used to give certain systemapplications permissions to > do something, and to avoid that they can do harm to your system. > > > Other than that, I'd like to thing that KDE might be better than > > suffering virus attacks every five minutes on Windows. > > Name one kde-virus :) > > > But trying to figure of "Geek" > > instructions is taking up way too much time at this point, and > > distracting me from the work I got this computer to do--WRITE (not about > > technology, but journalism.) > > Like with all systems, you should read the manual to be able to use it. > Please check the manuals of your distribution. If it is too geeky, please > try another distribution with better handbooks. > > > And finally, there are the questions of how to make multi-media run, > > check the manual > i make multi-media run by clicking on it :) > But again, that depends on your linux distribution. > > > and > > how to extract a tar ball, whatever that is. > > Click on it :) > a tar ball is an archive: you can roughly compare it with WinZip. > > > Downloading new upgrades to my > > desktop is proving fairly useless since I have no idea how to extract or > > execute files, or where in the tree they are supposed to go. > > On mandrake: to install for example the mozilla browser, type: > urmpi mozilla > > You don't have to bother about anything, urpmi installs mozilla for you on > the right place, and creates start menu entries. > > Other distributions have similar mechanisms. > > Again, check the manual of your distribution. > > > Many thanks in advance for any assistance you can offer. I am slightly > > desperate. > > Well, this is the wrong mailinglists for those kind of questions. > Please checkout the website of the Linux distribution youre using for > mailinglists and fora that can help you with your questions. > > Kind regards, Rinse
