YDL Switcher questions

[Christopher Brown]

Thanks for the response. That's exactly the kind of info I'm looking for, 
but I could use a little more info on some matters. First of all, I would 
love to use Gnome. It looks fantastic and the actual GUI is nice and 
responsive. My problem is that MANY apps do not seem to work well. Not as 
well as they do in KDE. Which is unfortunate, because -->IN MY OPINION<-- 
KDE looks like ass or worse, windows.


>> Gee Chris:
> I'm REALLY surprised as regards what you've reported! I can only suspect
> your installations are incomplete.
>
>> 1. Is Gnome a beta or does it really have that many bugs or am I just
>> not  capable of setting it up properly? Xine locks up every I'm in
>> Gnome,  Evolutions is just a horrible experience (too bad too, it's the
>> nicest  looking app of it's kind and I really wanted to use it), and
>> generally  application features either don't work or don't exist.
>
> Although Gnome, KDE and other projects Enlightenment, etc are under
> continuous development one should choose the stable releases and utilize
> those exclusively unless one likes to be a developer and live in the
> fast lane dealing with nightly builds and updates.
>
> Regarding xine and evolution I use both nearly daily and never had
> problems.  The issue must be in regards to missing libraries and/or
> dependencies.  Did you update yum? And change yum.conf?

I have updated all the available updates from YDL and updated YUM and then 
updated everything I could from FreshRPMS. My problem is that in Gnome 
applications do not respond as well and sometimes do not work at all, but 
under KDE things are a little slower but everything works, Xine, 
KOrganizer, etc. Xine works great...under KDE. So that was my reason for 
asking that question.



>> 2. (possibly the answer to #1) Are some programs built to run ONLY under
>> Gnome or ONLY under KDE? I notice KOrganizer is missing all it icons
>> under  Gnome and doesn't work very well in Gnome either(as is the case
>> with many  things).
>>
> No. Nearly all the apps available in KDE are available in Gnome.
> OpenOffice.org is a good example.

What then is meant by "a unified KDE and GNOME desktop environment 
featuring shared menus, applications, and user interface ..." as is 
reported by YDL on their website? It seems to me that not everything works 
in both environments. I realize that most 3rd party apps work in both. Am I 
to infer that apps that are a part of the KDE standard install work better 
under KDE and apps that are part of the standard Gnome install work better 
under Gnome?



>
>> 3. Does the clock work? Ever?
>
> Which clock?
> [root@arakus aguilarojo]# whereis clock
> clock: /sbin/clock /usr/share/man/man3/clock.3.gz
> /usr/share/man/mann/clock.n.gz[root@arakus aguilarojo]# cd /sbin
> [root@arakus sbin]# ./clock
> Tue 21 Sep 2004 03:26:56 PM EDT  -0.619817 seconds
> [root@arakus sbin]#
>
> I also use a clock extension in a nifty system reporting tool gnown,
> excuse me, known as gkrellm, It has 24 hour clocks, Moon clocks, Sun
> clocks...
>

The clock I was referring to is the one that is standard in the dock panel 
in the corner. Every time I restart, the time is something different. I 
have set the clock to the Red Hat network time server (both of them) and 
still the same thing. I've even tried to not set it to a network clock and 
same thing. It just never has a consistent time. Matter of fact my clock 
says 9:56pm right now but in actuality it's 2:55pm. The date stays correct 
though!

>>
>> 4. Keyboard shortcuts. Where can I find a good guide to learn keyboard
>> shortcuts? In Mac OS I can hit the command-Tab buttons to cycle through
>> open apps, com-sft-Q logs me out, com-sft-N creates a folder or
>> directory,  etc., etc., etc... Is there a good guide for that sort of
>> thing. I already  know that replacing the com key with the ctrl key
>> works for most things,  but there has got to be more. Is it possible to
>> define those kinds of  things?
>>
> Linux is not Kansas, nor any other possibly sane place.  The keyboard
> driver is merely one more input driver for XF86Config.  Just remember
> the phrase that was reported to be above the gates of Hades,"Abandon all
> hope ye who enter here..."  It is easier to recommend that you acquire a
> reference text on Unix/Linux and find some keystrokes there.  one useful
> one is: Ctrl + d; that is pressing the Ctrl key and d at the same time.
> It exits you out of any user login and can also be used as a quick log
> out.  Very generally what worked with the Apple command key is replaced
> by the Ctrl key.  That is use the same sequence of keystrokes to cut or
> paste, etc. but use the Ctrl key instead.

What about quitting a pesky mis-behaving app. Mac OS has "Force Quit" 
(ctrl-opt-esc). Is there an equivalent in Linux? That was actually the 
impetus for that question. AS in, when Xine locks up in Gnome, how do I 
force quit without logging out?



>
>> 6. This one is a bit complicated. How does one "port" an app? I would
>> love  to be self sufficient with source code. Relying on the PPC Linux
>> community  to port an app can be a long wait. Just the sheer lack of
>> people that run  PPCLinux and the percent of that group that needs the
>> same apps I do, then  the percent of that group that can port an app...
>> it's damn a small number.
>
> OK.  Let's take xine.  It's website is www.xinehq.de
> Within the website note where Downloads appear and click that.  Follow
> instructions.  IF you find yourself lost, then it might be better to go
> to www.freshmeat.net
>
> In the Search for field type xine.
>
> As sometimes happens, yum is blind or it is not seeing the packages that
> are there.  For instance, if you run a working version of yum and use
> the yum.conf file I have yum will not see xine (and associated files)
> which are obviously at:
> http://ayo.freshrpms.net/yellowdog/3.0/ppc/freshrpms/RPMS/
>
> I don't know why this is so at this time but you know more than the
> computer so go ahead and select the files and download them.  As these
> particular files are ppc files you just install them and go.
>
> If they were instead source files you would download them and then
> compile them.  Directions for that is within the Terra Soft site and the
> YDL FAQ page.
> http://www.sharplabs.com:8668/space/start

So that's all there is to porting an app? Download source and compile? I 
was under the impression that there was code based on intel/amd 
architecture and  code that was re-written to take advantage of PPC 
architecture. If that's the case, how do I do that. There seems to be a 
fair number of apps that do not compile for PPC. Maybe that's more of a 
complicated issue, but if you could point me to a resource for doing that 
sort of thing I would appreciate it.


Thanks again for all your help. I hope you'll forgive my novice-ness.

Christopher