Q's on Linux Software

[Soybomb]

I've been playing on and off with linux for sometime, but would really like to get to use it alot more and have been working closer to my goal getting licq and other goodies going. I do still need some other software so I wanted to ask the experienced users what they use. I can find lots of software on freshmeat.net but hate to have to try it all to find something good!
1.)something like motherboard monitor to watch temps and rpms of fans
2.)a nice looking browser, I'm a netscape user in windows and thats what i'm using now, and even with all my windows fonts installed, nothing looks as good as it does in windows
3.)a good pop mail notification proggie to go with the browser, i usually use nsnotify from netscape.
Thanks guys for any help, this will about round out getting me able to do everything in linux that I can in win!
Soy

 

[Sebastian]

Assuming you are using one of the new distros. The pop notification is quite easy. There are inface gnome applets that does this all from a tiny icon on the gnome task bar. In redhat this is actualy one build in.. just right click on the gnome bar and see. KDE also has one.. it's call biff.

I use staroffice for productivity and gimp and some other programs for graphics. And i still play most of my games in windows.

 

[Damaged]

Search http://www.freshmeat.net for the lmsensors package for monitoring. It's not a nice GUI package, but it works. It would be real easy to write a shell script that would email if things got out of whack.

How bad do the fonts look? I find that sometimes they don't render particularly well, but for the most part it looks pretty good. Part of the problem is probably Netscape. It's just getting long in the tooth.

 

[Michael]

How the heck do you get the sensors program to work. I used the rpm method to install (as root) and I keep getting "can't access /proc" errors?

The docs don't tell you how to run the program?

Michael

 

[Damaged]

http://www2.lm-sensors.nu/~lm78/support2.html?category=kernel

There's a couple of references in there about this issue. Goto the main page for the link to their FAQ.

 

[Michael]

I went through my installation step by step again and found out that I hadn't used the SMP driver rpm's (BP6). I did it right and it worked.

The scores do look a little off. No fan RPM's are being displayed. One fan is an intel stock fan (retail celeron) and the other is a cheap aftermarket fan.

Temp 1, 2, and 3 were high, but I changed the way my case was sitting (the front fan sucks in from the bottom of the case) and the scores are much lower now.

I might get a socket fan as well to help move air out. I run the machine 24/7 with two instances of SETI humming away.

Michael