No need to delete 'old' ones immediately. As I said, take some time to switch back and forth. IceWM is indeed quite nice - very slim, speedy, practical and also not as ugly as many WMs these days. For configuration, try IcePref. Haven't tried it myself to be honest, but the description sounds as if it's what you're looking for. There is also IceCC (download the .deb package).

Eh? 0.8.11 is available as Debian package and that's the current version according to the official homepage. Hardly anything wrong there, unless you want CVS

Try the 'deborphan' package. It lists all the packages which no other application depends on.

Nope, I meant ten minutes of inactivity.
It's practical, but ten minutes is far too short for it to do that, IMO.
There's also the possibility that the BIOS has some power-saving feature I haven't disabled yet.
Odds for that are pretty slim, though-I've had to do quite a lot of tinkering there before it more or less worked as it should(like, only one dead IDE-controller instead of two )

XFCE is gone again-I've moved on to fluxbox, then IceWm, then sawfish, blackbox, and a few others. So far, IceWm is my favourite, not because it looks like windows, but because of the in-built multiple desktops and activity gauges.
Too bad I can't find a pre-compiled control panel for it, but that won't take that much more time.



Yep, but the bleeding edge one isn't in the servers yet, and it's got quite a few new things...quite nice to check out, btw

I assume there isn't a way to check for packages that were installed alongside others, but are no longer in use?
A type of clean-up?

Not really. Running the reconfigure command I quoted earlier does exactly the same, without the need to copy over the base system again and again.

Glad you're trying different user interfaces out. That's something I really like, too. Quite a comprehensive list of different desktop environments and window managers can be found here: http://www.xwinman.org/. If you have a graphical login manager other than XDM installed (WDM, GDM or KDM), you can choose your WM 'per session' which is quite convenient.

What for? apt-get install wesnoth (or clicking it on the Synaptic GUI) works flawlessly. That's essentially the biggest difference between software installation on Windows and Linux: You don't go to the website of the program and download it there, but get it from your distribution's servers (usually).

Sorry, no idea. It's quite practical to have the screen go black after a certain amount of inactivity, isn't it? Or are you saying it's turning black in spite of being used?

I'm a bit further along now.
As it turns out, I needed the s3virge driver, not the s3 one. I got my first bogus error there: cannot find any screens.
I reinstalled a few times(This is still the easiest way to fix some things ) switched to a ps2 mouse and installed the XFCE desktop.
I'm currently compiling Wesnoth.
There's still one thing that keeps on nagging me: after about 10 minutes, the screen goes black(screensaver-type thingy, I think).
I really dislike that. How do I get rid of it?

We're not talking about any 3D accelleration, but regular 2D. If your chip is S3, use the s3 driver. Simple as that. If it still doesn't work, do reduce default screen resolution and colour depth in the config file for testing.

By the way - colour depth settings for 5 and 15 Bit are common in Debian. Debconf creates those by default, so you haven't done anything wrong there.

Thanks for the reply!

My keyboard has a US layout (with " above the two), so that should be okay.

Those mice are wacky. I only have one mouse working on that system now, and that's a USB mouse!
I probably messed that one up in configuring. What driver should I give the mouse in setting it up?
The previous 2 times I messed it up, I just did a reinstall.

The pc only has an on-board display adapter which steals its memory from the normal memory.
No fancy 3d display card, I'm afraid.
I think it's an s3 or some similar contraption.

5 or 15 color depth? where did that one come from?

[unconstructive]
Hihi!
Yes, Linux can become a hobby itself...
[/unconstructive]

The monitor settings are probably okay -- they are exactly what I use for a 17" Viewsonic M70 monitor which is now about three years old, so this isn't really pushing the tecnhology.

What I wonder about is the size and and number of those display modes. A Color Depth of 4 bits? A depth of 15 bits? Stick to 8, 16, and 24 is my recommendation, and you might want to reduce the maximum size on the 24 bit color mode from 1280 x 1024 down to 1024 x 768 -- you're doing all the display handling work in main memory with your setup, rather than delegating it to a fancy video card, so you might be asking a bit much of a 300 MHz computer.

Also, yes, eliminate that second mouse.

--ming

Don't be that sure - on AmigaOS, that's perfectly possible

Anyway, back to the topic: Your configuration has a few strange things in it. Of course, it all depends on your hardware, so you should recheck the following things.

-Your keyboard layout is set to US (not related to the display problem, of course) which, unless your keyboard does use US layout, could get confusing.

-You have two mice configured to the PS/2 port. One with a mouse wheel, one without. Both are in use by the standard profile at the same time. Unless there is a very good reason for that, I'd advise you to delete one.

-You're using the VESA driver for your video card. Probably not the best choice - no chance of choosing anything more specific from that long list?

-The monitor settings look odd. A vertical refresh rate of 160 seems insanely high to me (my flatscreen only goes up to 76).

Per default, you've set it to display as 1280x1024 with a colour depth of 24 Bit. Are you sure your hardware can handle this? Especially the monitor with such frequency settings. If Gnome only shows one single available screen mode, something in these basic settings must be wrong, so it falls back to the lowest possible resolution. As I said, I'd suspect the monitor settings first, and get rid off Vesa unless absolutely needed.

For testing, you can also run no WM/DE at all, just the plain X server. That could probably help tracking the problem down.

Also, where did you install your Firefox from? The Mozilla website, or the Debian repository?

I know programs can't use different resolutions.
It just looks that way, based on text/image size.
Last time I used firefox, it looked like it was running in a huge resolution, with really tiny letters and those lines. Now it looks more like 640*480,without lines.

here's the file:


# XF86Config-4 (XFree86 X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the XF86Config-4 manual page.
# (Type "man XF86Config-4" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xfree86 package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xfree86
# package.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following commands as root:
#
# cp /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.custom
# md5sum /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 >/var/lib/xfree86/XF86Config-4.md5sum
# dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86

Section "Files"
FontPath "unix/:7100" # local font server
# if the local font server has problems, we can fall back on these
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/CID"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "GLcore"
Load "bitmap"
Load "dbe"
Load "ddc"
Load "dri"
Load "extmod"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
Load "int10"
Load "record"
Load "speedo"
Load "type1"
Load "vbe"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "keyboard"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xfree86"
Option "XkbModel" "pc104"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "PS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Generic Video Card"
Driver "vesa"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
HorizSync 30-70
VertRefresh 50-160
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "Generic Video Card"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen"
InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
InputDevice "Generic Mouse"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection


edit: I just found a resolution setting option in Gnome(I'm just trying different packages to see which I like best) and I couldn't set it on anything but 640*480 with 86 Hz

Edited by Johann67 at 20:40 on April, 01st 2005

Different programs can't use different resolutions. The screen resolution is handled by the X server which you must have configured when you installed it. Your description of Firefox sounds as if you've done something fundamentally wrong, like tell X to use an ATI driver even though you have an Nvidia (or whatever the correct name is) card or something like that. It would probably help if you attached your configuration file (can be found at /etc/X11/XF86Config-4) or run dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 (as root) to make a completely new configuration. As for making screenshots, it depends on your DE/WM. If anything else fails, there's always GIMP.

I've been offline for a while, due to
a. a malfunctioning router
b. The system I'm typing this message on.
It's a p2 300/128 meg ram on which I installed Debian.I've still got a huge amount of stuff to figure out, but the system seems to run, at least.
Resolution/screen colors are my biggest problem.
Some programs look like they use 1280/1024 resolution, others like 640*480 and others just look weird. Firefox, for instance, has lines running through it and displays...well...a weird page is the best description I can come up with.
I don't know how to make a screenshot yet, but I'm sure I'll figure it out sometime.

If you're looking for a stand-alone router/firewall solution, better go for fli4l.

If you are looking for a seperate firewall (Ie run on a diffrent computer), then take a look at http://www.smoothwall.org it's an excelent firewall, proxy kind of thing. But it needs a seperate computer to run on.

I don't intend to run Linux as root when it's not necessary, don't worry
ClamAv sounds good, so does IPtables. Thanks!

It's pretty easy to avoid spyware on Windows, and it's even a lot easier on Linux, so there's no need to be paranoid, Johann.

As Mr Creosote said, you normally don't run Linux as root (other than Windows), so the OS itself can't be damaged.

Antivirus: I have yet to come across a virus written for Linux, but from what I've heard, ClamAV should be pretty reliable.

Spyware: Although the 'scientific' possibility of such software exists, of course, it's incredibly easy to avoid. For example, if you stick to the official Debian package repository, you'll have at least 15000 spyware-free programs. Actually, apart from 'Real Player', I can't think of any program which might contain spyware (and why would you want to install Real Player?). All you have to do is be careful with closed-source software - and that's less than 0.1% of all programs. So, no, I don't think a 'spyware removal tool' exists.

Seriously - you have to free yourself from the assumption that simple webbrowsing or reading e-mail can destroy your system! No Internet Explorer - no remote access to your file system. It's simple as that. And even if you opened a Linux virus which came for example via e-mail, its effect would be restricted to your home directory, unless you're running as root by default - and Satan help you if you do. That means the worst case imaginable would be a virus (which you actively ran) wiping your personal data. The OS itself will remain unaffected.

Even that is only another theoretical possibility, though.

Firewall: iptables

Edited by Mr Creosote at 14:22 on March, 25th 2004

Time for a short resurrection

I have most things figured out now (I hope)

However, one big thing still remains: Security.

Has anyone had any experience with F-prot antivirus?

Is there a spyware remover for Linux at all?
Iis possible to make spyware, and Realplayer runs on Linux, so...
(http://www.linuxforum.com/forums/index.php?s=8485d382ba80fca7dd06ebab093e4370&showtopic=3483&st=15)
(Yes, I'm paranoid. VERY. )

Also, what firewall would you advise?

My head ripped of, hmmm. If you do I'll use an Overly Strong Fist, /1 time should be enough... to DECk you

Failing that I will stick a sharpened pencil in your IRIX, sorry, Iris. Doh! Silly me

Edited by fretz at 01:41 on March, 13th 2004

Next, you'll probably say 'if you want System V, use RedHat' - I can already imaging your head being ripped off witin seconds after clicking 'Submit'