On Thu, 26 Oct 2006 08:36, you wrote: > > Novice Linux users still cannot install Samba shares, printers or sound > > without assistance. > > Having looked at that yesterday, it seems trivial to do with yast, both > in and out, though I'm not in a position to check whether it totally > works (no Redmond box here, fortunately). Obviously if there is a > problem, a novice will be stumped. I've MS boxes refuse my connection to > their shares in the past, even though their security level was lowered > through the floorboards. Never found out why. > > KDE has further methods to integrated with a "linneighbourhood". All > very novice friendly.
I just set up Mepis 6.0 on a friend's laptop (IBM ThinkPad 600E). The hard drive died, so I bought a new one (I asked out this recently and chose a Samsung MP0402H 40Gb 2.5" 5400rpm 8Mb cache). Mepis 6.0 is Ubuntu-based, and in general the installation was smooth. The only non-novice stuff was a) Setting up the internal softmodem This is supported by the mwavem package. I had to boot to DOS and run the IBM ps2 utility to remap interrupts and memory addresses as for some reason these had changed (possibly due to a CMOS battery failure 6 months ago). b) Setting up sound This is *always* funky, but fairly easy, on this model of ThinkPad. The install scripts incorrectly identify the sound as CS46xx, whereas it is either a CS4232 or CS4236. I found some good instructions on the Ubuntu forums (since Mepis is now derived from Ubuntu). They are in message number 12 on this thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?s=0563dd511ce68250864a2a2d07c536fb&t=141605&page=2 I will admit that this ThinkPad is a bit slow- but... everything works. My friend wants to surf the web and read email. I am still impressed at how well the latest OS offering works, and it's ideal for this, not to mention cheap. Oh, and to keep on-topic, Mepis uses KDE as its default desktop. Andrew
