hi all -

i've switched to SuSe 9.0 on my laptop, and it's been awesome - battery monitor works well, all hardware is automatically set.

some problems however - i'm having difficulty getting my dell optical usb wheel mouse to work, i twiddled in YaST and got it partially working - it only scrolls down, not up. can't figure out what's wrong with the mouse setup. another problem is finding the codecs to play dvd movies and such - did a search at vivisimo.com (i like it better than google - more organized results), couldnt find what i needed.

biggest problem i currently have is getting samba set up. i have a 4 computer network, 2 computers run windows XP, one runs win enterprise server 2003. i need to be able to access 2 computers and transfer all my files onto this laptop before i can switch my other desktop to suse. i've tried some things with samba in yast, but whenever i go to smb:\ i keep getting an error that says:

"Internal Error
Please send a full bug report at http://bugs.kde.org
libsmbclient reported an error, but didn't specify what the problem is. This might indicate a severe problem with your network - but also might indicate a problem with libsmbclient.
If you want to help us, please provide a tcpdump of the network interface while you try to browse (be aware that it might contain private data, so don't post it if you're unsure about that - you can send it privately to the developers if they ask for it)"


also, would i be able to run microsoft visual .NET or C++ under wine, or should i go ahead and buy Win4Lin? i need to run either .NET or C++ for my class, and AutoCAD 2004.

thanks

i'm not a coder, but gonna go out on a limb here... C++ is absolutely supported natively in Linux. Check this app: "gcc 3.2" .... IF i were a programmer THEN i would make this my C/C++ compiler of choice ELSE i would use anything but MS products ;-)

yeah, well this is for class - prof requires we use either programs i stated... and, i know i installed the c++ compiler, but i cant just find the program where i do the codes... i mean, i found a coder program but it doesnt have console features (like ms-dos based) it's a GUI designer... i'm new to c++ so i dont know where to get started with it in linux

ahh, well if you want the slickest, get vmware. for $99.00 you can get vmware for Linux, then you can run any OS from linux ($99.00 is for upgrade version, so you gotta buy an old version on ebay or something. the retail is around $300.00 so you definitely want to do the upgrade). not sure if vmware supports DirectX, but it supports everything else pretty cool. It's very awesome for development, because you can test your apps on as many different OS's as you wish, simultaneously. I have a friend who's a programmer who regularly has 5 OS's running simultaneously for testing (Like Win98, Win2k, XP Home & Pro, Linux Couple Distros...thats at least 6). It is the most stable IMHO.

I'm considering VMWare because i'm going to try to help the SQL-Ledger dev team (accounting program) because we would like to transition all our accounting over to Linux (its the only app we have to have Windows for). Its a bit too risky to switch to a new system cold-turkey, so we'll probably run both simultaneously for this year. Then next year we'll just drop our current accounting prog. If i get a chance in the next week or two, i'll post how its working back here. try to check back every week or so, and i'll do the same to see how your compiler projects are coming.

GL

PS maybe some of the guru's here could suggest a compiler for Linux that has a nice GUI if you're interested. that would be ideal?

hey cool,

just noticed that you can download VMWare 4, and they will email you a 30day reg. no. for evaluation purposes. i'm dl'ing it right now. here's the URL:

http://www.vmware.com/products/desktop/ws_features.html

sweet, thanks, present! got a question tho - i'm runnin suse 9.0, should i follow the install instructions for 8.2?
and i'm not sure if i understand this correctly, but i need to install suse 9.0, (like, a fresh new install??) and then install vmware without going in the x windows system? i dont think i've ever done this... could you clarify the instructions for me?

meanwhile, i'm gonna fiddle and see what i can figure out...

again, thanks!

aight,

i think it will run fine with SUSE 9.0 Pro (i have it and it seems to be running fine).

just download the RPM from VMWare website. Extract it if it is archiveded. Open the RPM with Konqueror. There should be a tab or something which says "Install RPM using Yast." Click that.

then open a terminal and type "vmware." remember you have to open vmware client from a client terminal, if you try to open in su (super user) mode, you will get an error message.

when you type "vmware" from normal terminal, you will get an error message saying the RPM was not compiled for your kernel. it will tell you to have your "administrator" run some command like "vmware-config.pl".

at the prompt type "su" and enter password for superuser, to enter super user mode. type whatever they entered (i'm pretty sure it's "vmware-config.pl") and you will be prompted to answer a bunch of questions. after you finish you should have a fully functioning vmware.

open a normal user terminal and type /usr/bin/vmware (during the config it will give you the right directory). if it works fine, then you can make a nice pretty desktop icon for it:

Right Click Desktop -- Create New -- Link to Application -- (tab) Execute -- Browse

navigate to the directory and file you were given (/usr/bin/vmware) here and click it.

-- OK

now click the icon and see if it opens vmware.

if so, right-click the icon, "Properties" under "General" enter "VMWare" or any other text you would like to appear under the icon. Then directly under the word "General" you can click the little picture to change the icon image. select whatever you want.

now ya gotta start vmware, hit "help" and "enter serial number" and enter the 30day serial number they emailed you when you downloaded. then you can open "new virtual machine" and follow the prompts. you probably want to have the OS installation disks for whatever base os you want to install in the cd before you finish the prompts or you'll get an error. once you get it working you can have a win2k window for testing one app, a win98 window for another app, etc etc... and i'm pretty sure you just install apps in the OS once you install the OS, just like you would if you had booted to that OS instead of using vmware.

i'm installing win2k right now, but am hitting a bug with my USB controller. i never actually had win2k running on the comp, so it might be a win2k problem... not sure.

anyway, hope this is helpful. heh. GL

edited: haha, just looked at the post and figured based on the length of this post, you might want to have it cut and bound (hardback if you like) for easier reading :-P

haha, thats allright, i'm used to lengthy reads. well i already got that part figured out, i have vmware installed just as i think it should be installed. my only problem is it keeps freezing on me during the XP install. now XP is installed, tried to start it up, froze, i couldnt shut down vmware - xp and vmware itself both were frozen. only way out of it is to do a reboot, and do it all over again. i have 512 mb ram on this laptop, with a 40 gig hd, and i originally set 300 mb for memory (ram, i take) crash, set it to 124. crash, set it to 200. crash. wha??

on the bottom of vmware's window, it says "vmware tools not installed" does that have anything to do with this?

well, you can hit "File - Install VMWare Tools" they help with compatibility. It will tell you if you need any service packs installed before it can install VMWare Tools.... Basically, it looks like you have to load VMWare Tools for each Virtual Machine. I'm not positive about this though. I just did an NT 4.0 install which is working very well, but it says i need at least sp3 in order to install VMWare Tools.

I tried an install of Win98, and Win2k, but both of them would give me problems in different places. The accounting app i need to run will work on just about any recent Win OS, so NT will work fine (plus i always liked NT4.0, tho 3.51 seemed a bit more stable). I have not tried XP yet, so can't help much there tho. I did notice that my Win2k install always hung detecting USB devices though as i mentioned above. I've had some non-compatibility issues with Win2k before though, without VMWare, so it may be related to that. Never used win98 much, so don't know what's up there.

Please post if you find any magic for installing. It would be kinda fund to have a couple more OSs installed just to mess with. It rules to be doing all this in Linux though. No more having to dual boot, just for one stinkin Accounting app. :-D.

Have a good weekend


Edited:
Hey, just noticed that they have educational discounts. I think you can probably get a copy pretty cheap. all you gotta do is have your student ID handy.

oh yeah! thanks to you i don't have to dual-boot anymore! it's more fun running windows on top of linux... earlier today i was thinkin about the vmware setup in linux, how sweet its gonna be once i understand how to get it all set up and running correctly, and a quote from "GI Jane" came to mind...

"I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself."
- D.H. Lawrence

let's add "because it didn't use windows..."

so far i havent rebooted, and vmware is still frozen... once i finish some emails, it's time to reboot and restart. i tried powering down windows, restarting, shutting down vmware, even did a kill -l (i think i got the wrong PID or something... when i do a lookup, ps aux or something, it gives me a few lines saying "this is vmware, this is also vmware...." i tried all the PIDs, none would kill it...just says invalid PID.), it does nothing.

i'll be workin on it over the weekend, and definitely will post any more problems or some spiffy magic trick i conjectured up.

enjoy your weekend too!

i must admit... i rebooted to kill it when it hung on win98/2k, lol...

i edited above that i found some coo educational discounts. i'm going to email a sales rep and see if a valid student ID is fine if i buy an unopened one off EBay and call in my student ID. anyway... GL...

might check the forums Sat Nite...

lol ok, sweet... talk to you tomorrow if you check... if you want, you can im me on gaim, i'm rara avis maverick.

'nite

hey just found a cool way to kill vmware when it hangs

go to a terminal (any will do since you're running it as a normal user) and type at the prompt:

killall -HUP vmware
killall -HUP vmware-vmx

that should take care of it.
mine is pretty buggy with networking so far... dunno how to change it.. i'll keep messing tho... each time i access the network it freeze (like you were having).

might be a compatibility issue with the newer kernels though. i really wish vmware would release a newer version.

edited:
i'll try to get on aim too, as "hidnme" i've been trying to get kopete to work but havin probs.. so i'll just use aol's old linux app...

I just found some more processes i can't kill, even as su

vmnet-bridged
vmnet-netifup
vmnet-dhcp

if all goes well, i should have RH9 installed tomorrow, and VMWare. I'll post how stable it is on various OS's (from 9x-xp).

cheers