Some news

[JF Martinez <jfm2@club-internet.fr>]

I have nearly finished the install program.  In fact I would have
finished had I not got RH 6, today.  That brought several changes:
first I spent the evening playing with it and second I noticed that X
is not started automatically like I thought and this is one of the
things I don't 0.2 without it.  Features include PPP config (yes I am
a maniac on this), automatic config of the LILO keyboard, homestation
category of install and dropping people using workstation or
homestation installs to level 2 instead of level 3 (less servers).
There is athing I will left out due to holidays not being that far and
it is allowing alternative server sets (you cannot just drop them in
the directory because they will conflictif you install both): we will
content us with placing NewsCache and friends in an "additional stuff"
directory. For the install I must say I tend to strongly disagree with
what RH thinks is the more suitable software who must be installed by
default when you select categories without going down into individual
packages.  That means we will _really_ have to hack at the comps file.


About the things I noticed: Xconfigurator is wrong for S3Virges (try
to put them in unsupported 32bpp mode), sndconfig is wrong with ALS100
cards (an SB16 clone with an MPU).  About Xconfigurator again: it
writes a config file without _any_ font, only the font serrver.  This
is stupid because it allows the user shooting in his foot: if a user
chooses not to start the font server at boot time (believing it is
unnecessary) then X does not work at all and in case he is booting at
level 5 then things get really ugly.  Solution of course is fix
Xconfigurator for including minimal font files _after_ the font server
so in case it is not there the user will have a somewhat crippled (no
TrueType fonts) but functional X.  IMPORTANT NOTE FOR DOCUMENTATION:
the redhat doc recommendd people upgrading to hand edit and let only
the font server in the fontpath, we will have to fix the docs about
this.

KDE is present but it it is a poor man's KDE.  The Gnome user gets
both the gnome, the KDE and the Anotherlevel menus while the KDE user
only gets the KDE menus, it doesn't even get like in Indy 0.1 the
plain redhat menus.  This will have to be fixed.

There is an applet for switching desktops (Gnome, KDE, AnotherLevel)
only they neglected to include it in menus so you hae to start it from
an Xterm.  :-(  To be fixed of course.

There is an 8 mmgs RPM with backgrounds but most of them are of the
psychodelic variety so we could remove it in case we need space.  On
eth other side they have managed (or msismanaged for shipping an
Enlightenment and a WindowMaker without their fantastic backgrounds).
I really want them back:  Life is too short for computing ugly

If the user chooses to run AnotherLevel then he is dropped on FVWM: I
really prefer dropping it on WindowMaker or AfterStep in afct I would
like to default him to the Night theme due to its Wow effect but on
8bpp displays it will really suck and I don't know a simple solution
to detect X is in 8bpp mode (short of writing an app for this)

They ship LinuxConf 0.14 (or is it 14?) and we could go to 0.15.
Newer is better.

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

Project Independence: Linux for the Masses
http://www.independence.seul.org