Mandrake 10

After going back and forth between Mandrake 10, Mandrake 10.1, Demudi 1.2, finally settled on (for now atleast) good old Mandrake 10. There is nothing broken here ..

Mandrake 10.1: Very nice. Has lots of cool multimedia apps (AmaroK, Kaffeine), but the download edition just does not have enough muscle. (what no gcc?).

DeMuDi: Very impressive array of audio apps. But honestly, do you even know what each do, let alone to use. Just wanting to use them is no justificaiton for using this disto. Also, the CPU usage is always high on this distro.

Now back to Mandrake 10.0: Setup ices, http, gnats (hey MIR database), all dev packages. LinNeighbourhood and drakesync are two great reasons to say with Mandrake. (apart from the rest of the the DrakConf).

Finally got a skeleton homepage up in raaga.net. Thanks to drakesync, convert (ImageMagic) , album, and ofcourse perl and shell.

Getting gnats to work (again)

After the last dist-upgrade, gnats was broken. Did another one today. That seem to have fixed the problem. Had to remove all the old links for gnats bins (send-pr, install-sid…) from /usr/local/bin/. Using the stock starge ones for now and it seem to work ok.

Also noticed the recent dist-upgraded pulled in new xprt. Checked printing from thunderbird and firefox (the stock sarge has 1.0 now) and it worked ok. Duplex seem broken. Either there is no Duplex option in the Print properties or firefox crashes.

Logitech Wireless Access Duo

Got Logitech Cordless access Duo wireless Keyboard and (ball) mouse. Got all the keybindings including vol up/dn/mute, lock screen …) work with fluxbox.

nram@woody [~]cat ~/.xmodmap

keycode 223 = logitech_user

keycode 236 = logitech_email

keycode 166 = logitech_mute

keycode 165 = logitech_voldown

keycode 158 = logitech_volup

keycode 129 = logitech_media

keycode 130 = logitech_myhome

keycode 229 = logitech_search

nram@woody [~]grep log ~/fluxbox/keys

#None logitech_sms :ExecCommand gaim &

#None logitech_webcam :ExecCommand xawtv &

None logitech_user :ExecCommand xlock -mode matrix

None logitech_mute :ExecCommand aumix -w m

None logitech_voldown :ExecCommand aumix -w -5

None logitech_volup :ExecCommand aumix -w +5

None logitech_email :ExecCommand ~/bin/launch_mail_client

None logitech_media :ExecCommand ~/bin/launch_media_player

None logitech_myhome :ExecCommand ~/bin/launch_browser

None logitech_search :ExecCommand ~/bin/launch_terminal

You can get the events with xev

Load keymaps with xmodmap ~/.xmodmap

Check with xmodmap -pk| grep log

After loading, reload keybinding with Fluxbox->Reload Config.

For a brief time, I was able to get gnome keybindings set with gnome-keybinding-properties to work along with fluxbox ones. I esp like the vol up/dn/mute that displayed on screen. Also the mute btn would toggle mute/unmute. Fluxbox just mutes and there is no one click soultion to unmute. But this (gnome bindings) does not work anylonger.

Installed KDE 3.3 from unstable

Nothing earth shaking. Back to fluxbox.

Installed amarok from unstable. Neat multimedia app.

Using kopete inplace of gaim mainly for fluxbox taskbar integration.