YDL Switcher questions

[David Chart]

Christopher Brown wrote:

> 
> 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.

It really does sound like something isn't installed right, but if you've 
done the obvious you need to be more specific about your problems if 
we're going to be able to pin it down. (Well, other people on this list, 
anyway. It's fairly likely that the problem won't be in one of the bits 
I personally know about.) Gnome generally works fine for me. Evolution's 
address books are a little flaky, but I plan to upgrade to YDL 4.0, so I 
haven't bothered to dig into that problem yet.

> 
> 
> 
>>> 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?
> 

In *theory* they should work equally well, because launching a KDE app 
under Gnome launches all the bits of KDE that the app needs. Obviously, 
if your system resources are at all limited, this can produce problems, 
massive use of swap, and generally lousy performance. Mind you, that 
should be symmetrical. I use Gnome almost exclusively, in part because I 
tend to agree with you about the look of KDE, and in part because the 
applications I use a lot (AbiWord, Gnumeric, Gnucash) are all basically 
Gnome applications, and I simply haven't seen the sorts of problems 
you're talking about.

> 
> 
>>
>>> 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!
> 

Sounds like you have a timezone problem. The Apple system clock is UTC, 
and you need to set your local timezone. If you don't, it will reset 
everytime you restart. Hmmm. Seven hours ahead. If you're in the 
timezone east of California, I'm pretty sure that's your problem.


> 
> 
> 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?
> 
> 

To add to the information about kill from Derick Centano.

If you own the process, you don't need to become superuser to kill it. 
This is good, because it means you can't accidentally kill root 
processes, which restricts the damage you can do with a typo.

Further, if the app locks X, so that you can't get a terminal, try 
ctrl-option-f2, which should get you a commandline window. (f1 may work, 
depending on how you launch the system.) You can then log in as 
yourself, and run the commands in that window.


> 
> 
> So that's all there is to porting an app? Download source and compile?

Usually, yes.

> 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.

I think this is one of those "If you need to ask, you can't do it" 
questions. Seriously; if the code doesn't compile on PPC, the problems 
tend to be fairly low-level hardware interface problems, and if you 
don't already know how to approach them, you almost certainly need to do 
a lot of study before you can.

Hope this helps,
David

-- 
David Chart
http://www.davidchart.com/
PGP Key: 1786 15B1 53A3 7ED0 CBD4 AFBE 9B61 6D10 46C9 1CBE