YDL Switcher questions

[Derick Centeno]

On Wed, 2004-09-22 at 01:21, Christopher Brown wrote:
> 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.
> 
A lot of people agree with you which is why environments like Afterstep
and others exist.  Quite a few people want to stay as far away from
window or even Mac interfaces as possible.				

> 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.

If you have a 3 button mouse A LOT of commands appear when you
right-click or click the right side of the three button mouse.  A lot of
Unix desktop environments utilize that feature too.  For instance if you
right click in kicker you get different options than if you left click.
For instance if you left click on the desktop nothing happens, but right
click and a lot of commands such as changing the background image
appears.


> 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?
> 
Some programs like AbiWord will work in both environments better.  Of
course, not all apps are playing nice.  There's an app which tries to be
Eudora in the Linux environment and works exclusively in Gnome -- I
would recognize it's name if I saw it, but I've not used it in so long
because I use Evolution -- I no longer remember it off-hand.


> 
> 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!

Right click on the clock and use your password otherwise you cannot make
changes.  After the password has been accepted you'll see appear
Date/Time Properties.  Two tabs: 1. Date & Time  2. Time Zone
Under 1. you'll notice Enable Network Time Protocol and Server; if you
are unsure consult the System Admin. whose network you are using for
more information as to what the Server name is.  Time is 24hr based.
In 2 select your location and whether you are using or the System Clock
will use UTC.

Click OK when done and that should be it!

> 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?

One of the Unix key combinations which should work is Ctrl + .
That is the Ctrl key and the period key (the key with the period symbol)
pressed at the same time.

If that doesn't work it's time for serious business.  Let's say you know
which process is run by the offending application.  Every application in
Unix is running a process which can be viewed.  Let's say the Gimp has
run amok and I cannot close the app by clicking the x or close command;
in Unix that is highly unlikely but you asked for an alternative...

Within YDL start the Gimp.  Also within a terminal do the following:

$ ps -aux

Now note the command which generated the column and the column titles
especially USER, PID, and COMMAND.  The USER column reveals who is
running a job, the PID (process ID) is the system's way of identifying
the specific job requested by each user, and the COMMAND is that job's
name.  Caution: NOT every name is recognizeable by an application name;
in this example we are lucky because we can easily see through patient
scanning the name gimp.  Note the PID.

We are not down yet.  We are now ready to use a real powerful
command,but we have to do one more thing and become superuser.
Now that we are superuser we can use one of the more powerful no
nonsense -- stop with extreme prejudice -- commands available to
superuser.  That command is known simply as kill.

ON my system currently the PID assigned to gimp is 1315; (every app will
be assigned a unique PID everytime the app is used).  The correct use of
kill would be:
# kill 1315
If you followed my example with Gimp; you'll see that Gimp quickly
disappeared dying a quick death.

IF you use the wrong PID you could be killing something else you really
want running.  kill DOES NOT ask you ARE YOU SURE...IT JUST KILLS
WHATEVER YOU TELL IT TO.  IT COULDN"T CARE LESS.

You were warned...

> 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.

Files using intel binaries and executables are usually easy to spot look
for something like:

filename-1.20-i586.tar.gz

i refers to intel and the number is the chip name

Of course PowerPC based code whose binaries have already been built for
the PPC appear as:
filename-1.20.ppc.tar.gz

Source code is spotted as:
filename-1.20.src.tar.gz
 or if you see next to the file the term Any Architecture or Independent
Architecture it means any machine can run it because it is in C or
source code and the compiler itself on your system will make the
necessary binaries for itself.  This can be tedious but worth the time
if you really want that application and previously very few persons in
the PPC community use it.

Again the directions for compiling usually come with each application
you download; if not you can use the general guide for compiling at the
Terra Soft website or the YDL FAQ pages.

Best wishes....