[kde-doc-english] lots of questions

[Rinse de Vries]

Op woensdag 1 september 2004 22:49, schreef Alyssa A. Lappen:
> Dear Sirs--
>
> First I am thoroughly confused about how to make my system request a
> password and user name upon boot, without also losing the ability to have
> three options at logoff (those being 1) only end session 2) shut down, 3)
> whatever the third option is, which I forget).

Is simple, go in kcontrol to 'system administration->login manager' (or 
similar, I use Dutch version :)
Open tabpage 'convenience' (last one)
Remove the checkbox of the option "activate autologin"

Save your settings.
Now, next time you boot linux, the login manager will ask for your username 
and password.


>
> I have tried using the desktop wizard, but this does nothing to resolve
> this question. 
Correct, this is a system administrator option, not a user option :)


> Neither do any of the instruction manuals I have seen so far 
> give nearly enough detail about these options.
kdm has documentation, can't imagine that this part is not described in it.
But if not, the new version will, i noticed that a complete new kdm-handbook 
is in cvs :)

.
>
> But I don't want to install a password at boot at the expense of losing the
> ooption to shut down completely; that was what happened the last time I
> changed password settings in the login manager section.
You can tell in the login manager section of kcontrol who is allowed to 
shutdown the computer.


>
> Additionally, I have been unable to resolve issues that have arisen from
> the upgrade of the kernel I did this week. I now seem to have several
> kernels on the system,
more then one kernel on your system is no problem :)

> and I have received an error when attempting to 
> access the "User Account" item from the KDE menu; it says "There was an
> error loading the module; An error occured during your last KDE upgrade
> leaving an orphaned control module" or "You have old third party modules
> lying around."
I guess you screwed up your installation.


>
> It's possible I loaded more items than I should have, since kernels cannot
> (horribly) be updated automatically,
They can be updated automatically, depending on your distro :)

> and those of us who are not computer 
> geeks are lost and out of luck.
Again, depending on your distro
I updated my kernel about 4 times nou on SuSE, just by a few mouseclicks on a 
system tray icon :)

> I felt great that I managed to upgrade the 
> kernel. Wow! But Lord, I have no idea how to fix "orphan modules" or "third
> party" modules much less find them.
The modules kcontrol speaks about are not releated to your kernel, they are 
configuration modules of kde.
kde is no part of Linux itself.


> I have no idea what they are! Simply 
> instructing me to "check these points carefully," as the details of the
> error message note, is about as useless an instruction as they come. Like
> HOW?????? (Especially since my "find" program also does not work.

that is correct, 'kfind' in mandrake is broken. Please contact mandrake about 
this.

>
> Another question is why "Dr web" has come up as a user? It's a virus
> program, isn't it? Not a user? But after I installed that program, Dr. Web
> appeared as a user, and I can't get rid of it.
Dunno which program you installed, but Linux often has more then 20 users, 
although youre the only one using the machine :)
The other users are used to give certain systemapplications permissions to do 
something, and to avoid that they can do harm to your system.

>
>  Other than that, I'd like to thing that KDE might be better than suffering
> virus attacks every five minutes on Windows. 
Name one kde-virus :)



> But trying to figure of "Geek" 
> instructions is taking up way too much time at this point, and distracting
> me from the work I got this computer to do--WRITE (not about technology,
> but journalism.)

Like with all systems, you should read the manual to be able to use it.
Please check the manuals of your distribution. If it is too geeky, please try 
another distribution with better handbooks.

>
> And finally, there are the questions of how to make multi-media run,
check the manual
i make multi-media run by clicking on it :)
But again, that depends on your linux distribution.

> and 
> how to extract a tar ball, whatever that is.
Click on it :)
a tar ball is an archive: you can roughly compare it with WinZip.

> Downloading new upgrades to my 
> desktop is proving fairly useless since I have no idea how to extract or
> execute files, or where in the tree they are supposed to go.

On mandrake: to install for example the mozilla browser, type:
urmpi mozilla

You don't have to bother about anything, urpmi installs mozilla for you on the 
right place, and creates start menu entries.

Other distributions have similar mechanisms.

Again, check the manual of your distribution.


>
> Many thanks in advance for any assistance you can offer. I am slightly
> desperate.

Well, this is the wrong mailinglists for those kind of questions.
Please checkout the website of the Linux distribution youre using for 
mailinglists and fora that can help you with your questions.

Kind regards, Rinse