I recently switched from kde to gnome and at the same time from kmail to Evolution. There is no easy way to transfer you mail if you have organized it in several mailboxes in kmail. You need to select all messages in a folder and then right-click and save them in mbox format. This step you need to repeat for every folder. Then you can use the import function of Evolution (import from single file). If you can accept that all files end up in the same folder, you can concatenate your .mbox files to save you the trouble of importing multiple files:

cat *.mbox > allmail.mbox

To mirror a disk (or a partition) into a file, you use the following command:

dd if=/dev/hda3 of=file.bin

This command writes the complete data on the hda3 partition into the file file.bin.
To mount the filesystem that is in the file, you need to create a loopback device:

losetup /dev/loop0 file.bin

Now you can mount the filesystem as usual:

mount -r -t filesystemtype /dev/loop0 /mnt/mountpoint

Apparently, one can combine the last two commands into one:

mount -t filesystemtype -o loop ./file.bin /mnt/mountpoint

Suse 9 has an inbuilt VNC server called KDE Desktop sharing (under the System -> Remote Access menu). It can be configured in the Control Center -> Internet & Network. Unlike when you start up VNC via the command line ("vncserver") this tool doesn't start a new X desktop, but connects to your already existing X desktop. It is possible to run in addition to the inbuilt KDE Desktop Sharing a normal vncserver that starts its own X sessions.

Red Hat 9 is installed and the following partitioning is present:
hdd1 /boot (ext3) 100MB
hdd2 /home (reiserfs) 7.8GB
hdd3 / (ext3) 7.8GB
hdd4 EXT
hdd5 swap 1GB
hdd6 /mnt/documents (reiserfs) 12GB
hdd7 /mnt/music (reiserfs) 90GB

At first I thought there is no way to get the GRAMPS genealogy software running on Suse 9. Apparently GNOME support by Suse sucks; the GRAMPS developers even say there are several things broken in the GNOME support of Suse. But finally there is a Suse Linux 9 RPM, that works (at least for us): http://apt.bygden.nu/SuSE/9.0-i386/RPMS.suser-rbos/gramps-0.98.0-rb1.i586.rpm.

If your samba is unreliable, there can be a number of reasons. I got the impression that YAST overwrites configuration data you have manually edited (e.g. in the password and user files) when you try to change settings via the YAST samba setup procedure. Here follows a checklist in case samba is again not responding or not visible in the network neighborhood. It could be that the unreliability is due to a PDC shutting down. Maybe I should make my Linux the PDC as it is always running.

I have bought an iPod. And it appears that the 3rd generation iPod is substantially different from the previous models. E.g. in its file system. In previous models you could convert the HFS+ file system into a FAT32 filesystem. HFS+ is the filesystem used by the new MacOS X OS. It cannot be read by Windows OS (unless you buy commerical third party software such as MacOpener or MacDrive). There are several Linux-interfaces for the iPod, but they all require that the iPod is mounted as a regular mass storage device.

I couldn't figure out how to change the host name. The host name is e.g. displayed by default (Suse 9) in the command prompt and used by several applications. If you move your computer between different networks, this name changes as the default (Suse 9) is, that the host name is assigned by the DHCP server. But you can override these setting using Yast2: Control Center -> Yast2 modules -> Networ Devices -> Network Card -> authenticate!

You can search specifically for suse 9 rpm packages under
http://rpm.pbone.net/
but there are two good sites that have specialized on Suse Linux rpm packages:

http://guru.linuxbe.org
http://packman.links2linux.de/

Finally I figured out where to set the time sync option in Suse 9. Unlike RedHat Suse doesn't ask you during installation whether and which public time server to use:

Control Center -> YAST2 modules -> Network Service -> NTP client -> Authenticate as administrator -> Delete the CMOS entry -> Add

Type the address of a public time server. I used this time fartein.ifi.uio.no, but there is a long list with server to choose from at http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/servers.html.