Without Windows (segment 3)

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In my last article, I complained about a number of items that weren't going well in my transition to Linux. I'm very happy to say that a few of those complaints have been resolved. (not really happy because it brings my pleasure to say it, but because it's working and I can use them!)

- Adobe Reader

    As I mentioned last time was causing some screw ups, but thankfully it was easy to hose it and replace it with the preinstalled "KPDF"; so now even Firefox opens PDF's properly in this. 

- Movies

    Although I failed to mention it, just WATCHING dvd's and movies was an important thing missing for me from the setup. This was solved by using the LIVNA install of Xine. Now I can watch everything from WMV files to anything in my small (but growing) dvd collection.

- Camera

   So I backed up the images on my camera onto a Windozzze machine and plugged it in. While it doesn't quite seem to work the first time I push the "On" button on my camera, it does eventually prompt me to open a folder or perform some other action with the new device. One oddity is that after about 45 seconds, the device is "disconnected" from the system. For the most part, this is enough time for me to copy pictures off and be done. 

    As for the USB drive, I haven't tried plugging it in yet, but I'm betting that it will work fine. This actually matches with my Palm Lifedrive as it has a "USB Drive mode" to access the data. Now my only challenge with this is actually trying to setup the Hot sync-similar software thats on the system

 So how about some COOL stuff that I'm enjoying? First is the auto -mounting and unmounting that FC6 does. I put a cd or dvd in the drive and it shows up as a folder on my desktop. If I remove the disc a , the folder is removed too.

A few lingering items on my complaint list"

- XMMS usually complains at least once every 6 hours about not being able to access the sound device for mp3 playback. This seems to happen randomly and goes away in about 2 minutes, but the only sound my computer makes during those two minutes is the consistent rat-a-tat of keytaps for my compiler's class program.

-  Random Application crashes

    This is mostly Kooldock I think, and I'm not really sure why. I've also seen firefox and a few java applications exhibit the same behaviour. In a way this just reminds me of Windoze I suppose.

- Configuration issues

    The biggest one is that I can't use any of the other terminals (Alt-F5 for example) It just black screens and intead of the usual prompt the monitor turns off.

- SMB-Network Drive

    Ok so maybe this really is the biggest issue. I can't listen to my music on the network. GRR!