FDSCo Meeting 2008-01-22 IRC log

[Karl Larsen]

Karl Larsen wrote:
> Marc Wiriadisastra wrote:
>> On Wed, 2008-01-23 at 15:07 -0700, Karl Larsen wrote:
>>  
>>> Marc Wiriadisastra wrote:
>>>     
    A big snip Marc, because I think I found your man for KDE.
He is a Prof and has classes of students that prefer KDE.

    His name is

Tim Leger
Graduate Research Assistant / Adjunct Professor
Department of Mechanical & Materials Engineering
Wright State University
Dayton, OH

And this was our last talk over email:

Hi Karl,

   I'm not what you would call a power user of KDE, but I do prefer it over
gnome.  I do a lot of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code development as
part of my research, so usually I just have two terminal windows open up
side by side. I don't get into a lot of the KDE packages, I even use vim for
editing source files (call me old fashion).  However, I also setup a
computer lab last summer for my university (to help with the Fortran 90/95
class I teach as an adjunct) and we're currently running Fedora 7 on 24 HP
d7700 desktops with nVidia FX1500 video cards.  The lab is also used for
teaching Finite Element Analysis (via Ansys), CFD (via Fluent/Gambit), and
several other classes.  The reason we went with Fedora was because it's
quickly becoming the only Linux distribution (beside Red Hat Enterprise)
which the software vendors we use support (and Red Hat Enterprise doesn't
support the latest hardware we get, like the d7700 desktops when we got
them).  As I have the most experience with Linux in the College, I've been
taking care of the lab for the university.
   As for setup of the machines in the lab, I used the Fedora 7 x86_64 DVD
and installed KDE afterwards via yum.  This way I've got gnome to fall back
on when KDE starts acting up and to help debug problems when they arise.
We're using the nVidia drivers from livna and after installation I used one
of the "tips and tricks" websites to get all the extra goodies installed
like the mp3 codes and such.
   I have noticed that at least in my class, the students prefer KDE over
gnome for the most part because it reminds them of Windows XP.  My big
complaint of late with KDE is that the Fedora update packages have been
breaking things which were working just fine before.  I won't go into all
the issues as other have already posted them here, but suffice it to say
everything with KDE and Fedora 7 was working fine for us before the updates
in November.
   Anyway, I'll talk with some of the students I know in the College who use
KDE a lot more than I do and see if they're willing to e-mail you with their
experiences.  Basically, I just try to keep things working in the lab and on
my two computers at home.  Let me know if you have any specific questions.

Regards, Tim Leger

His email address is: tleger.fedora at gmail.com and I said you will call him. I wish you the best Marc

Karl


-- 

	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
	Linux User
	#450462   http://counter.li.org.
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