[ILUG] misc. Linux problems

[Kevin Philp]

Virus protection...
Its probably wise to scan your mail as it comes in. Bitdefender does a free 
version that you can run from amavis that will scan your mail. The free 
version doesn't have a virus scanner that sits in the background and scans 
every file you open but with reasonable user awareness and some mail 
filtering you don't need it. We don't use background scanners in our office 
on the linux desktops and have never had a problem. The other option is 
clamav clamscan. Its fiddly to get the background scanning working but its 
works very nicely as a mail scanner with amavis. We use it with freshclam to 
update the signatures database everynight. If you were paranoid you could run 
a cron job to virus scan your files each night and email yourself a report.

Screens...
Check to see what fonts your browser is using. Helvetica doesn't antialias on 
the screen and looks awful, switch to something like Nimbus sans which 
renders better. Check you have antialiasing switched on, it should be on by 
default in Mandrake 10.0. Also in Control Centre -> System you will find 
drakfont which will help you import your Windows fonts so you can use Arial 
as well.

Browser...
How long is very long? I just tried it here and it took 4 seconds with the 
proxy and cache disabled. Check your connection settings on the browser, 
check your DNS settings on the dial up account, check your proxy settings, 
check your cache settings. The one time I saw something similar was when 
using pppd. Internet connections worked but were very, very slow and that was 
on an ISDN line. It was fixed by adding 

ipcp-accept-remote
ipcp-accept-local

to /etc/ppp/options

I think kppp has some similar options.

Kevin.

===========================================================





 I´m having some success, having installed Mandrake beside WindowsXP.

I still having some small problems which could use eventual sorting.  If
anyone has suggestions they would be welcome:

Virus protection... Is it necessary?  someone recommended Bitdefender
but seems a bit expensive.

My screen definition seems a bit problematic in my browser (Mozilla)and
when I increased the font size it lost a bit of clarity.

For some reason the browser take a very very long time to access some
sites, like Google (which it seems to go to directly when I type another
address )  The browser in general seems to be slower than Windows and
occasionally hangs up.

When I shut down now the Linux system hangs up just befor the end of the
process ( something to do with  the hotplug deactivation process, I
think) so I just have to press the off button and all is well, but I
would like to correct whatever I have mis-configured, creating the problem.

My DVD player is not working (Totem Media Player) and I have to switch
to Windows....again, perhaps something is misconfigured.

I have a Nokia 6600 mobile with bluetooth and infrared.  Previously I
was synchronizing Outlook Contacts and Calendar and using the phone as a
modem.  Any ideas about whether this will be possible in Linux?

I also have an older SonyEricsson T68i which I use for the same purpose
at times and I seem to remember reading somewhere that it can be
configured for Linux.

In general how do I activate the infrared port on my laptop?  It has not
as yet been recognized by Harddrake?

Enough questions for now.

I will be very appreciative of any responses.


Sean