El Jue 07 Nov 2002 13:17, Gary Armstrong escribi�: > Couple of questions from a true newbie: > > 1) How do you figure out the names of applications available to solve a > particular need? >
Well, you can always search google, and if that fails.. you ask here ;o) > 2) In particular, I'm looking for the best FREE case tool. I'm trying to > demo argo(is there a better one?). The home page didn't appear to have > an rpm. How do I know if there is one out there in the ether? It also > requires jre which doesn't seem to be installed on my mdk9.0 machine. > Tried urpmi java and it doesn't appear to be on the CDs either, but not > knowing what it's called, this could all be a newbie problem. It is a newbie problem, but you'll learn everything as you go. Soon enough, you will know where JRE and anything else you might need can be downloaded. for JRE, (Actually the name you are looking for is J2EE, remember that) go to http://java.sun.com JRE is not distributed under a Free Software license -as far as i know-, and that's why you don't see it included in Mandrake CD's. to find RPMs you can always search in www.rpmfind.net Oh, and also, you may want to browse a Mandrake FTP mirror, the "contrib" directory may have useful stuff, too. (Contribs are packages that are not included in the CD's either... ) And there's more interesting stuff at http://plf.zarb.org (yet more stuff that can't be included for license reasons) Oh, and last but not least, there's this guy called texstar, who makes excellent packages for Mandrake and other distros as well. In his site you will find themes for KDE, improved Mozilla versions (improved font rendering), media players, and more. ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/linux/distributions/mandrake/9.0/ > > 3) I've been using the Mozilla browser. Its download manager doesn't > appear capable of restarting. That has already been painful. Can I get > it to use a different download manager and what would that be? Is there > some better way? i don't think there's a way to tell Mozilla which Download manager to use, but if you want a RELIABLE download manager (which retries automatically when a download is failed, etc) you can use wget. wget is a commandline tool. so when you want to download a big file, open up a terminal window, type "wget" and paste the URL to the file, then hit enter. Also, there are many graphical download managers, i think the best is called "Downloader for X", you can get it here: www.krasu.ru/soft/chuchelo/ > > 4) I've the seen the command to find rpms on the net go by several > times, didn't think I'd need it soon. Sorry for the assumption, but > what's the command to find rpms on the net? to "find RPMS on the net" you are better off using rpmfind.net, however you can use Mandrake's softwaremanager to add package sources ( the default is the three CD's, but you can add some websites as well ) so once you add them, just by calling "urpmi <packagename>" urpmi will download the package from wherever is needed, and install it at once. Two of the sites i mentioned earlier can be added to the softwaremanager. plf.zarb.org (look in the site for instrucions on doing this ) and ftp.ibiblio.org. > > 5) How much difference is there between linux distributions? Depends which distributions.... but for safety reasons, it's better to assume there's a lot of difference. Normally, the "only" differences between Linux distros are the programs you use to install/update packages, the OS's installation itself, hardware detection routines, general config and maintenance tools, and so on. There are also diferences in the way distros handle the directory structure. so in one distro you get some programs inside /opt, while in others you find them in /usr .... > As in, does > the doc for one release apply to all? If the doc refers to specific tools (like shell commands, or generic programs that do not change among distributions, like web browsers, etc) then it's probably OK to think it applies to you too. As for the administration of the OS itself (managing services, compiling programs, and the config tools i mentioned as being different among distros) you should only go by your own distro's book. >Is there some kind of enormous > organized FAQ out there? nah. The bad thing about the fastest evolving OS in the world is that it's very hard to write up-to-date docs for it.. however there are web sites that try to accomplish that, including a lot of Mandrakesoft websites. You could start with www.mandrakeuser.org --you'll find links to all the others from there. > TIA > Gary HTH Damian
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