My contribution

[Marcel Rieux]

Maybe you'll remember I had problems opening files in Firefox from
TBird. If I clicked a link, it wouldn't automatically open in Firefox.
Here's the solution.

Under Edit => Preferences => Advanced => General, you have "System
defaults" which says "Always check to see if Firefox is the default
browser on startup". This option should be checked under all
circumstances if you plan to use Firefox by default. Here's why I
didn't check it.

While checking other options a while back, I saw this one and thought
I didn't need this as I only use Firefox to view html files. If ever
any application made Konqueror the default, I'd just have to come back
and remake a check mark to the option. But this never happened.

What happened is that when Firefox was upgraded from 3.5.6 to 3.5.8,
Firefox just stopped opening when I clicked a link in TBird. That's
when Evolution, where links didn't open either, was kind enough to
provide the following message:

"Failed to execute child process "/usr/lib64/firefox-3.5.6/firefox"
(No such file or directory). Of course, I have 3.5.8 installed."

So, somehow, Firefox wasn't pointing to the right version. Of course,
I didn't know that this had anything to do with selecting the default
browser. Yet, it did!!! When I clicked the "Check now" button,
everything came back to normal.

May I ask why you have to check the "default browser" option to update
to a new *version* of Firefox?

Need I add that, before finding the solution, I wandered the Web for
hours examining options like adding:

user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.http","mozilla-firefox");
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.https","mozilla-firefox");

to prefs.js ?

&&&

Same goes for my "pdf files not opening in Evince from Firefox"
problem: mozplugger wasn't enabled. In Plugins, under Mozplugger, one
can read "handles Quick Time and Windows Media Player plugin" Not a
word about Evinve.

A few months ago, I had problems with opening WMV files and somebody
told me that gstreamer or gMplayer or something in the paraphernalia
could handle this correctly and that MozPlugger could prove a
hinderance. So, I believe I disabled it... and, strangely, had no
problem with pdf files until Firefox -- and maybe Evince too? -- was
updated.

&&&

While I was searching to solve the Firefox problem, I thought I'd take
a break an see how things worked with SeaMonkey. Everything was fine.
So I thought I'd test it further and I imported "Everything" from
Thunderbird. I checked a few newsgroups and, I suppose that it's after
rebooting that all the data disappeared both from Thunderbird and
SeaMonkey. Lost! All the messages I had saved! (Of course, I had a
recent back-up. Still...)

I went into .thunderbird and saw all files were there in
".foo.default/Mail/Local Folder". But a "Local Folder-1" had been
created which was empty and apparently the only one available to use.
Anyways, I finally recovered all the data from a back-up but, once
again, what a pain!

Is it just me who has this kind of problems? Sometimes I believe that
I don't have a single application that works 100% correctly or for
which the information is correct.

&&&

When I search "alsa" in Dolphin, the best file browser I found so far, I get:

nepomuksearch:/?sparql=select distinct ?r  where { { { ?r ?v1 ?v2 .
?v2 bif:contains "'alsa*'" . } UNION { ?r ?v1 ?v3 . ?v3 ?v4 ?v2 . ?v4
<http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#subPropertyOf>
<http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#label> . ?v2 bif:contains
"'alsa*'" . } . { ?r a ?v5 . ?v5
<http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#subClassOf>
<http://www.semanticdesktop.org/ontologies/2007/03/22/nfo#FileDataObject>
. } UNION { ?r a ?v6 . ?v6
<http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#subClassOf>
<http://www.semanticdesktop.org/ontologies/2007/03/22/nfo#Folder> . }
. } .    }

&&&

Klipper is the best clipboard manager I have found. Still, sometimes I
select something in a web page and it doesn't enter the clipboard; I
have to select it twice. At other times, the selection enters the
clipboard but doesn't paste, even though it's on top of the clipboard
entries. I must reselect it in the clipboard before it pastes.

&&&

Oh, a really funny one. Here's what Knode looked like when I opened it today:

http://cjoint.com/?dgcNjJBH6c

What's this:

Loca...
  O...
  Sent
  Dr...

Moving the vertical bar doesn't lengthen the names and I saw no option
in the menus for this. Anyway, it doesn't make sense. Why do "Loca"
and "Sent" have 4 letters whereas "O" has only one and "Dr" -- for
drafts, I suppose -- just 2? Even if there was an option in a menu,
I'm sure it couldn't create such a mess.

&&&

Then, there is this problem with my BIOS, which leaves me the only
options of setting the user and Superuser passwords. I shorted the
CMOS and everything went back to normal. Rebooted, no more options
again. Of course, there's a sleuth of different mobos but I bought
mine 8 months ago and it was out in Asia roughly 6 months earlier.

It's really funny to learn from people here that market share isn't
important, because Linux isn't a business. Apparently, making mobos
is, though... Maybe if Linux had more market share, we'd get the
drivers more easily, open... or closed.

&&&

Some people might suggest that, since I'm far from an expert, I should
switch to Ubuntu. Well, I did try Mint in order to see if it could get
sound to my TV. It booted to a black screen. YAC! (Yet Another
Coaster!)

&&&

I could go on like this for days. It reminds me of when I began using
Linux in 2001 and it was "Next year everything will get better." So, I
can't help but to wonder: do you people, for instance, work with
clipboard managers that work flawlessly?

If I'm the only one with those problems, I suppose I'm dealing with a
skewer of very imaginative hackers. And this, despite my modem/router
being so fully stealthed at grc.com that I can't even make a
traceroute; despite not offering a single service; despite having
SELinux fully enabled and making updates as soon as they are
available. Is there a security problem with Fedora despite having all
the security options enabled?

If you indeed experience at least some of the bugs I'm facing, how
come they don't get fixed? Don't you all fill bug reports to tell the
Klipper developers that "New File" gets into the clipboard every time
you create a new file, being, of course, assured that the poor
developers all have such peculiar hardware at hand that, they never
noticed the bug that has driven everybody crazy for years?

I've heard that Red Hat 6 will be based on Fedora 12 and 13. What will
the New York Stock Exchange have to deal with: bugs or security holes?

If we all face the same non hardware related bugs -- meaning I'm not
speaking here about my mobo and sound problems --, isn't this driving
most people away from Linux? Is the way of dealing with this saying,
like some people on this group: "You don't like the way Linux doesn't
work? Well, get this: we're not McDonald. Go away!"

Isn't recognizing the problems the first step in dealing with them?
Then, maybe there should be a repository for default software, the
ones against which the least bugs have been found. Or a 1 to 5 star
system that would entice developers to do a cleaner job.

Maybe you have other solutions, but I'm afraid that, while programmers
can tune Linux into doing wonderful things, on the Desktop, the
development model just doesn't work. The problem is not that people
are not filling in enough bug reports. Some developers just don't
care.

As a matter of fact, from all the resources I saw available to Windows
Firefox and TBird users while researching my problems, it seemed that
more are available to Windows users than to Linux users. In such a
context, with Firefox, TBird, OOo, The GIMP, Apache and so much
more(1), available to Windows users, what's the incentive for them to
switch to Linux?

(1) See a list on those 2 pages:
http://www.opensourcewindows.org/

I'm sure Ballmer kicked his developers' ass until they provided a
completely flawless clipboard application. Most probably, with
Windows, I wouldn't have any problem with my mobo and sound. After
using Linux exclusively for 8 years, I almost feel as if the Linux
community was telling me I should run to the store where I bought my
computer and ask for the OEM version of Windows before my one year
guarantee period is over.

Whatever nonsense Mr White might throw at me to state that real Linux
believers never admit there's a problem, I say there is a HUUUUGE
problem.

And, like it or not, this is my contribution.