Yay!! I can now play my wma files! Small but important

As su created /usr/local/firefox in which to install my browser of choice and then ran firefox-installer.

Post install I searched in vain for a Gnome equivalent to kappfinder as an easy way of adding apps to the menu. I couldn’t find anything like it so I added Firefox manually using menudrake - the icon is in firefox’s icon folder.

It appears that some of my wma files are encrypted rendering Totem unable to play them. Instead of googling for ages and risking breaking the 95% correct audio thus far I’ll re-rip them from the original CDs.

I’ve only got a few contacts to migrate from kontact into evolution but I should have maybe done some looking before deciding to shun KDE altogether as I only made a .csv backup.
Luckily I found http://jdshelp.org/howtos/evolution/outlook-to-evolution.php with a Perl file included for download (http://jdshelp.org/howtos/evolution/01-csv2vcard.pl)
Oh dear! The .csv that Kmail spits out is clearly different to Outlook version that the Perl file was expecting. I’d like to think that it’s worthwhile hacking the Perl but
1. I haven’t started the “Teach Yourself Perl in 24Hours” book yet.
2. Opening the .csv in OO.org reveals that I’ve only got eight friends anyway!
It also appears to be impossible to import Kmail messages into Evolution if the maildir format is used - bummer. My cunning plan to get round this is to copy my ~/.Mail folder over to the KDE laptop and create a few new folders using the mbox format. Then I’ll copy the messages from the old folders to the new before sending them back over for import

Gnome observations:-
I don’t like the Gnome CD player but RhythmBox integrates nicely with Nautilus (Gnome’s file manager/browser)

One of the most frustrating aspects of my last installation was the determined inability to rip CDs. Having installed both RhythmBox and SoundJuicer I’m attempting to rip as I type -exciting! Previously I only managed to get files which were either hopelessly corrupted with noise or were about 5% of their predicted witgh play lengths to match.
Nope! Sound Juicer took at least an hour to produce a 60 odd Mb ogg file but it stuttered and skipped so much as to be unplayable.
Frustrating indeed as I can rip music using Windo$e on this very same machine. When I’ve got time I’ll investigate I/O matters.
*Just realised that I was trying to rip directly to my lacie pocket drive which is only hooked up with plain old USB. On retrying a much smaller file direct to the HD i get about the same result so I’ll try later when I’m not working on the machine at the same time.

Real Player 10 doesn’t want to play ball. When I run realplay it spawns a realplay.bin or two and sits in the background only visible in top - no sign of anything in the taskbar. I’ve tried a few switches revealed by realplay –help but they make no difference. I’ve also tried running as root with no joy.

Mandrake’s rpmdrake logs activity to /var/log/messages so I can find out whether I installed Real Player from an rpm or the bin file. Maybe I’m not a newbie any more if I can use
# cat /var/log/messages |grep 885 > /home/matt/rpm.log
without having to think too hard about it. Better still
# cat /var/log/messages |grep "[885]: Installing" > /home/matt/rpm.log

The solution/hack is found at the Helix forums
https://helixcommunity.org/forum/forum.php?thread_id=906&forum_id=7
and involves (as root) removing two files
swfformat.so
swfrender.so
As soon as they are moved or renamed realplayer fires up just fine (and all those background realplay.bin processes suddenly display their GUIs)
I’d installed Real Player from RealPlayer10GOLD.rpm found at www.real.com/linux

I was hoping that Real Player would play my CDs just like the W$ version but it doesn’t want to so I’m loading up my catapult with a stone that’ll hopefully kill two birds. IOW I’m installing grip to see if it’s a better player and ripper.
Annoyance #1 the gnome volume control doesn’t have any effect on grip so you have to use the internal one.
Success #1 grip plays one of Mr Hollands home baked CD mixes :)))))
Failure #1 grip makes a convincing looking 2.8Mb test wav that contains complete silence

How do I disable specific system sounds within Gnome?
Quick answer: Make a new document, call it empty.wav, bung it (or a link to it) into /usr/share/sounds/ and select it as the sound for the event that you’d like to disable.
Long CLI answer:

# mkdir ~/.sounds
# touch ~/.sounds/empty.wav
# su
# ln -s ~/.sounds/empty.wav /usr/share/sounds/

First you make a hidden folder in your home account so the wav gets backed up and retained when you install a new distro.
Then you make an empty wav file called empty.wav in your newly made and hidden sounds folder.
Then you substitute user to root as you don’t have permission to rummage in the /usr/share/sounds/ folder.
Finally you make a soft link (shortcut, alias, symlink whatever) from the new file to the sounds folder.
The last two stages just make the next bit a lazy clickers dream.
From the Gnome Control Centre (Desktop Preferences) choose Sound and pick your empty alias for any event that you’d like to disable.

Inkscape is a program I really like as it pretty much alleviates my need to dive into FreeHand on Windows. I’ve previously installed it using autopackage without problems but I just can’t get it work with my current config. Complaints of a lack of GTK2 C++ stop the process and the instructions point to using urpm to install gtkmm. I duly did as I was told and opted for the most up to date version but that didn’t do it. I regressed to an earlier version with the same non result. I’m really keen to get the latest version of inkscape as it’s developing fast but I can only get .3.9 through rpmdrake and the latest is .4.1.1
Maybe it’s time I learnt to hand roll?

Inkscape up and working but I’m missing a few items to ensure complete happiness which I’ll rectify when time allows:
Extension "AI Output" failed to load because a dependency was not met.
Extension "Postscript Input" failed to load because a dependency was not met.
Extension "Sketch Input" failed to load because a dependency was not met.
Extension"EPS Input" failed to load because a dependency was not met.
I’ll be needing illustrator (AI) output for blender.

While I mention blender it’s worth noting that it’s still ghastly on this machine - it really doesn’t like my graphics card (MGA 400 DH) and the price of a comparable (but compatible) card these days is in the low 10’s of £s so I should swap.

The Gnome Control Centre thingy doesn’t seem to allow access to all sound events so I’m twanging and swooshing when changing Terminal tabs for instance.

Good Gnome thing: the terminal understands hyperlinks.