MEPIS is great, and has finally convinced me that Linux is ready for my desktop use. There are several issues I must resolve before I'll totally abandon my main Windows PC, but I'm excited to dump Microsoft altogether.

I'm studying for the Linux+ exam, learning the KDE GUI, along with Linux apps like OpenOffice, Scribus, K-apps like KUser & Desktop Sharing, etc. Most of my issues probably aren't MEPIS-specific, but I'll post them here in case some of them are.

1. In KDE, how can I map my keyboard's Windows key to the K menu, so it works like the Windows Start menu?
2. In MEPIS, why do AudioCDs and dataCDs mount to different locations? How can I change this so that all media in my only DVD/CD drive mounts to a static location (as it would in Windows)?
3. GIMP's interface is terrible. Is there a powerful image editing software for Linux that is more Photoshop-esque?
4. What are some great sites for the best (biggest?) Linux games?
5. I don't like any media players that come with MEPIS. I'll try VLC for video (I use the Debian GNU/Linux install, right?). Is there an audio player for Linux that comes with a good media library and interface like Winamp or foobar2000? Or maybe I just need to tweak xmms skins & prefs and find plugins for a media library.
6. Is there any way to have MEPIS automatically unmount media when I physically remove it (for example, when I hit the EJECT button on my DVD drive)? Right now I have to unmount it first and then hit EJECT, or the EJECT button doesn't work.
7. Spaces in my fillenames make them look pretty. :-) How do I manipulate filenames with spaces in bash? For example, I tried cat > test document.txt and that didn't work, and of course cat > test%20document.txt created a file named test%20document.txt. If I'm using spaces, do I have to limit myself to GUI tool manipulation?

My biggest issue with MEPIS, though, is that I can't get SAMBA to communicate with my WinXP machine, which is connected to my WinXP machine (which has the dialup connection) through a hub. The physical connections are fine, but neither PC recognizes the other. SAMBA and WinXP are using workgroup MSHOME. How do I set this up? Ideally, I'd like to not only browse shares but use WinXP's dialup connection on MEPIS through the home network.

Anyhoo, thanks for everyone willing to help, and for those who spend so much time supporting and propagating Linux!

1. couldnt tell you, dont use kde
2. In Linux an AudioCD, because of its format doesnt get mounted at all
3. no, you do learn to love gimp after a while but you just gotta play with it.
4. http://happypenguin.org
5. try amarok or rythmbox, neither are like foobar/winamp but you do get used to them. (amarok looks kinda like itunes)
6. no, this is to prevent "stupid user errors" of unmounting a device that is in use by some application
7. most special characters (including spaces) require you to put a slash \ before the character, so your command would be cat > test\ document.txt

Thanks, mos. Where might I read more about why an AudioCD isn't mounted the same, and what the ramifications of that is for system use? And... can't I search by category or rating at happypenguin?

I couldnt tell you about the AudioCD mounting, however (and I dont know if MEPIS supports this or not) you can use cdfs in your fstab to allow it to mount where you want it to, and browse it.

As for happypenguin, go up to the top left corner and in that little box click on advanced search.

#6:

phobozad: before I type that as root, um... what exactly does it do?

if you use that command, it will tell eject to attempt to unmount first. if you have applications accessing it it still will not unmount though.

Nice, that's cool!

Anybody got any suggestions re: SAMBA? Or should I post that to a SAMBA forum somewhere?

samba is a horrible PITA and honestly I dont entirely know what im doing with samba since I dont have any windows comps and just run a local ftp server. Someone will come along who knows more about it.

i think that for file names with spaces you can put a single set of 'apostrophies' around the name:

cd /home/user/'test directory'
will move you into that directory. works for file names too.

i like juk for audio and mplayer for video, although kaffiene for vid is OK. juk is very similar to amarok but i feel that it is much less prone to database-type errors.

welcome.

1. I don't think you can, because KDE seems to treat the Win (logo) key as a pure modifier key. "Winders", on the other hand, uses it as both a modifier (Win+<some_key>) & an action key -- press it & on release your main menu appears.

If you, like me, want to make your Win key useful in KDE, open the Control Center & go to "Regional & Accessibility" > "Keyboard Shortcuts". Change the "Current Scheme" to "KDE Default for 4 Modifier Keys". "Win+Menu" should now open the K menu. If not, go down the list of shortcuts to "Panel, Popup Launch Menu" & customize away.


3. The GIMP is different, not worse; to paraphrase a line from someone else's sig block, "You don't love Photoshop, you're just suffering from Stockholm Syndrome."

Here are some articles a friend wrote:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%...od&btnG=Search


4. Frozen Bubble & KMahjongg are all you need .


6. It's the Linux way, granted it can be a PITA at times, but on the whole it protects your mounted writable filesystems from getting trashed. Note that "Winders" is making you unmount USB flash drives before removing them -- for the same reasons.


7. The quotes trick should solve your space problem; however you might want to try to adopt Unix/Linux habits and use underscores instead. I even have a little script that will "clean up" a whole directory at once. Very convenient when importing files named on an M$ box.