[64studio-devel] Many Questions

[Daniel James]

Hi Susan,

> 1. I can't figure out how to get flash working, which packages to 
> install, etc. I've tried Gnash and swf-player, not sure what else.

Gnash is the best bet at the moment. It doesn't support Flash video though.

 > Trying to install directly from
> Adobe's site: http://tinyurl.com/zgkz2 gives an error, "Your 
> architecture, \'x86_64\', is not supported by the Adobe Flash Player 
> installer."

That's right Adobe doesn't support 64-bit Linux. No native Adobe Reader 
either, last time I checked.

> 2. Do I need to pin anything to use the Debian archives for other 
> programs? How about security updates?

If you install or upgrade to 64 Studio 1.3.0 you should be able to mix 
and match with Debian stable (etch) sources. (It's best to comment these 
  Debian sources out before running the 64studio-upgrade script though).

> 3. Do you know about this bug in Firefox/Iceweasel and Thunderbird? 
> Cursor artifacts are left all over the place when you use your arrow keys.

I've never run into that myself, but I'll watch out for it.

> 4. Are there any issues with installing Konqueror, Kmail and K3B?

Not especially. For KDE programs in general, you have to check that the 
arts sound server isn't hogging the soundcard.

 > I
> tried using SoundJuicer, but got the following error when I tried to 
> "extract" a CD to my hard drive: "SoundJuicer could not extract this CD. 
> Reason: Could not link pipeline." I have no idea what that means.

Probably a gstreamer error. Which output format are you trying to rip 
to? (It's under Preferences).

> 6. Which is better for audio? ext3 or reiserfs?

I would stick with ext3, it's tried and tested. ReiserFS is 
theoretically still under development by Namesys, but we'll have to see 
what happens after Hans Reiser's trial, which begins next week:
  http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/23/BAGIROQKMB38.DTL

 > Also, how much should I
> allow for swap? I have a 100 GB IDE drive and a 300 GB SATA drive, and 2 
> GB DDR2 RAM.

2GB swap should be plenty.

> 7. Is there a package that utilizes the writemaster capabilities of my
> CD/DVD drive? I'm sure that will be prettier than my handwriting!

There is some proprietary Lightscribe software for Linux available for 
download, but we haven't tested it:

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10803

It may not support 64-bit Linux either. I'd be keen to find out if there 
are any free software applications that support this feature. Otherwise, 
you can print onto inkjet-compatible CD-Rs with Gutenprint I believe.

> I've been taking bass lessons for the past year, so I'm really 
> excited about 64 Studio!

hehe - the bass players are taking over :-)

Cheers!

Daniel