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A few newb questions about Linux.
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Junior Member
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10. March 2008 @ 00:28 |
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I was begining to wonder if anybody was still listening to me. LOL I plan on getting a more up to date PC through pricewatch.com You can get a pretty good PC for like 250-300 bucks. I am going to save up some moola! Oh and I did think of an .exe I use a lot..Guitar Pro!! That is the only thing I would miss but I did find something called Kguitar which will probably solve that problem.
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varnull
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10. March 2008 @ 00:29 |
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Oldest comp running linux.. commodore64 from 1985.
Oldest desktop pc connected to internet. Phoenix bios 486sx (think it was originally a true-blue IBM) 16mhz with 4mb of ram and a 120MB HDD. Even the sound works ;)
You can turn ubuntu to kubuntu after installing.. it's only a desktop manager/window manager after all.. The kubuntu dev stream is lagging behind the full ubuntu push. When you get running ask and we can tell you how to change your desktop very easily. I prefer gnome, but KDE is fine too.. a little heavy on the graphics I find.
I saw guitar pro runs without problems using wine.. your mileage may vary.
lol @ insomniacs. I only woke up at midnight.. what are you doing up?? no work in the morning.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 10. March 2008 @ 00:33
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Junior Member
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10. March 2008 @ 00:38 |
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Oh and speaking of being an insomniac. I usually don't go to bed until about 12:30 and it is 11:30. But I want to thank you guys for the conversation and the advice. I guess you guys can talk if you want but I'm out. When I have questions I'll ask you guys again. You guys are some cool cats. I am glad I joined afterdawn although I can't remember how I ended up here. LOL Talk to you guys later!
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Moderator
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10. March 2008 @ 00:43 |
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Nope, not at work, but can't sleep even when i am; just knocking up a desktop for thelinux desktop thread, though my P3 1GHz might seem extravagant :P
The storms have started so no chance of sleep anywho, sounds like the windows are going to explode
Main PC ~ Intel C2Q Q6600 (G0 Stepping)/Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3/2GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500/Zalman CNPS9700/Antec 900/Corsair HX 620W
Network ~ DD-WRT ~ 2node WDS-WPA2/AES ~ Buffalo WHR-G54S. 3node WPA2/AES ~ WRT54GS v6 (inc. WEP BSSID), WRT54G v2, WRT54G2 v1. *** Forum Rules ***This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 10. March 2008 @ 00:45
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OzMick
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10. March 2008 @ 00:48 |
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Will post my machines in that thread when I get home from work. 2:47pm here, almost knock off time, yay.
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tripplite
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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10. March 2008 @ 06:48 |
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Quote:
I was begining to wonder if anybody was still listening to me. LOL I plan on getting a more up to date PC through pricewatch.com You can get a pretty good PC for like 250-300 bucks. I am going to save up some moola! Oh and I did think of an .exe I use a lot..Guitar Pro!! That is the only thing I would miss but I did find something called Kguitar which will probably solve that problem.
i agree a p2 is little...well a lot behind!
Quote:
.exe I use a lot..Guitar Pro
am telling you dual booting it is a piece of cake!
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Junior Member
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10. March 2008 @ 10:50 |
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Hey tripplite don't worry I am going to dual boot first! Before I started using XP on this computer I had 2000 Pro and XP on two different HDs. So what I am going to do is keep XP on the C: Drive and install Linux on the other if that is possible. You know I have tried to bet Ubuntu 3 times and it seems like Internet Explorer doesn't want me to have it! It always stops at about 97%! I'm downloading it now with Free Download Manager. If that doesn't work I am just going to get if off Amazon or something.
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varnull
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10. March 2008 @ 13:13 |
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Don't you use firefox??.. The ubuntu site says to not use download managers
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Junior Member
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10. March 2008 @ 15:57 |
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Should I use firefox? I started to download Xubuntu because it is lightweight but should I do that?
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Member
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10. March 2008 @ 16:16 |
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Yes you should use Firefox, by far and away 10 times better than that crap from Redmond. Remember, Firefox is a browser, just download your file as you would normally do and forget about download managers.
Xubuntu is just another variant of Ubuntu using the XFCE window manager rather than Gnome or KDE (i tried to install it once but it wouldn't for some reason).
I also used to dual boot with XP, up until3 months ago. I then realised that i never used XP so why have it? If i really feel the need for XP i will nick one of the daughters lappy's, and even then i have installed a *nix distro onto one of them (still trying to get teh wireless sorted though).
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Junior Member
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10. March 2008 @ 16:26 |
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Now I am using Firefox. I used to use Firefox anyway I don't know why I haven't been using it. You couldn't get Xubuntu to install? Well I hope it does for me. I looked at a lot of the Linux distros require 256MB RAM I have 256MB but I thought if I got a lightweight distro it might work better on my old computer. What can a normal distro do that a lightweight one cannot?
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Junior Member
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10. March 2008 @ 16:33 |
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What I really want to know is which distro should I use? Should I even bother with Xubuntu or should I just get Ubuntu? Or should I got with Debian or PCLinux? It is like being at a candy store and not knowing what to get!
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Member
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10. March 2008 @ 17:06 |
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best thing is to try those distros which come as a live CD. This way you can see whether your hardware will work with it or not. You shud be alright with 256Ram, just don't try to do too much at the same time. Beauty with Linux is that you have to set up a SWAP partition, basically gives you more memory for the OS but is based on your HDD.rough rule of thumb is set your SWAP at twice the amount of RAM installed (but you are not limited by that equation). Just try Ubuntu first and see how you get on. Once you have played with it a while then start thinking about trying other distros should the mood take you.
n.b. i think the install disk of Xbuntu was fooked, probably why it never worked right for me. I started on Ubuntu and have now progressed to Debian "Lenny" (full testing distro) on an AMD64 cpu based system. Only real benefit is when doing video encoding TBH.
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Junior Member
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10. March 2008 @ 19:56 |
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Speaking of Live! Boot i am trying out Kubuntu which I got from a friend just a little while ago. So far it seems it works well. But do actually installing it make it a little better? I would say that it runs fine from booting from a CD so I think I am just going to install Kubuntu!
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Junior Member
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10. March 2008 @ 21:50 |
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Ok I have Kubuntu installed on my PC and it runs faster than Windows and being faster than Windows it runs SMOOTH! There is just one problem. My Externel HD is detected but I can't acess any of the files. It's format is NTFS do I need a driver for that or what?
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loood
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11. March 2008 @ 08:37 |
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I was installing once ubuntu 7.10 on computer vith 128 MB RAM and i saw that minimum requirement for it was 64 MB of RAM awesome :S. i usually use centOS now beacuse i felt more convenient with it. i found some trouble on ubuntu with a lot dependencies so i thought why should i bother and reinstall centOS xD. but its ok i guess no linux is the same also :D
oh yeah and about that external HDD of yours chain87. you need to format it to some file system that linux can read. linux uses ext i think, but you can format it to fat and fat32 also so windows can read it too and also a few more file systems if im not wrong.
i think there are few programs that allows you to change file system of your HDD without losing data on it. dont take my word try google :D.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 11. March 2008 @ 08:45
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varnull
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11. March 2008 @ 10:34 |
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Junior Member
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11. March 2008 @ 11:11 |
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Will firefox render things faster than Konqueror? I sure hope it does because Konqueror is extremely slow! I am still trying to figure out how to install thing but I'll read other forums to find out.
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varnull
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11. March 2008 @ 11:59 |
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I can't stand konq.. it renders very badly on my system (I tried it to see if flashplayer sound would work with it, but all the popups and ads did my head in)
You may find that installing adblock plus firefox plugin improves page loading times. It just stops all those annoying (and cpu sucking) flashing garbage things from arriving and making everything wait.
FF and opera are the linux standard browsers these days, if you want lean and fast you can try galeon epiphany and kazehakase
Now about installing software..
Here are the main ways to install software in order of ease (easiest to hardest):
1. apt-get/Synaptic/Adept
Ubuntu/kubuntu/all_debian_based_distros have something called apt-get, which allows you to draw from a set of online repositories (stored in the /etc/apt/sources.list file) that house packages (i.e., programs/software). You can enable extra Ubuntu repositories by following these instructions?extra repositories means more software available to install. The aptitude command does several things at once?it downloads the appropriate files, downloads all their dependencies, and installs all of them. A single command installs the software. You don't have to download a separate installer file or unzip or go through a wizard or reboot. For example, if I wanted to install Thunderbird, I'd type these commands in a terminal:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mozilla-thunderbird
The first command looks both at what I have installed and what's available in the repositories. The second command downloads the packages needed for Thunderbird and installs them.
Another great thing about apt-get is the ability to install several different packages at once. For example, if I wanted to install not only Thunderbird but Firefox, GIMP, Inkscape, Juk, and Wine, I could type in these commands:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mozilla-thunderbird firefox gimp inkscape juk wine
and all of those packages would download and install themselves.
On the Ubuntu Forums and in many of the Wiki and other guides, you'll often see instructions to sudo apt-get install some package or other. People will give you commands because it's easier than describing what to click in a graphical user interface, and you can just copy and paste the command.
However, there is a graphical version of the package manager that acts similarly to apt-get. For Ubuntu, it's Synaptic Package Manager. For Kubuntu, it's Adept Package Manager. In both, you're essentially doing the same thing. There's also a nice "browsing" environment in which you can search for packages by name and/or description. You can browse by categories of software or look at what's installed versus what's not installed. It's a lot like an ecommerce model of "shopping" for software, except you don't have to pay when you "check out." The graphical equivalent of sudo apt-get update is clicking the Reload button. The sudo apt-get install command, however, is broken into different steps. Instead of listing a bunch of applications you want to install, you mark each one for installation (or removal), and then click Apply Changes or Commit Changes and then everything's downloaded and installed (or uninstalled). Here's a guide on how to use Synaptic Package Manager (complete with screenshots), in case you need pictures to see what it's all about.
2. Manual installation of a .deb
While the Ubuntu repositories are quite extensive (especially if you add extra repositories), they don't cover everything. Sometimes (for the Opera web browser, for example), you have to install a separate file. If you must do so, then try to get ahold of a .deb file. .deb is the native file format for Debian-based distributions like Ubuntu. In fact, if you actually visit the online repositories, you'll notice that the files there are mostly stored as .deb files.
The only difference between manually installing a .deb file and using apt-get to install a .deb file is that apt-get will resolve dependencies for you (if one package needs another to be installed, aptitude will install that "pre-requisite" package). If you manually install a .deb file, you will also have to manually install its dependencies. Don't worry, though?if you try to manually install a .deb file and it has dependencies, you'll soon find out what those dependencies are.
Here's what you should do.
Download the .deb file to your desktop.(or somewhere else.. your choice) For this example, let's use Opera. Now, the Opera file that's currently available for Ubuntu has a quite ugly name: opera_9.10-20061214.6-shared-qt_en_i386.deb. There are several ways to deal with this ugly name, seeing as how you have to type in the exact name of the .deb file in order to install it. You can rename it to something simpler (say, opera.deb), you can copy and paste the name, you can begin typing the name and then hit the Tab key to have the terminal autocomplete the name of the file, or you can just suck it up and retype it exactly as is. Let's assume, though, that you're going to do it the ugly way. You'd open up a terminal and type these commands:
cd Desktop
sudo dpkg -i opera_9.10-20061214.6-shared-qt_en_i386.deb
That's it... well, as long as there are no dependencies. And if you prefer pointing and clicking and if you're using Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) or newer, you can also just double-click the .deb file to install it.
3. Manual installation of a .rpm
Occasionally, for a program, you're just not able to find a .deb. There may seem to be, however, a plethora of .rpm files for the program. If you must use an .rpm (not native to Debian-based distros), then use an .rpm. It's a very similar procedure to the .deb one described above, just using a different command (one that converts the "alien" format of .rpm):
One-time deal, just to get alien:
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install alien
Now you can actually use alien:
cd Desktop
sudo alien -i opera_9.10-20061214.6-shared-qt_en_i386.rpm
Again, no dependencies will be resolved.
4. Installing from source (to be avoided unless there is no choice)
Some people prefer to install from source, but I listed it last because it's what usually scares people off from Linux and makes them think "Why is it so difficult to install software in Linux?" However, it's still an option, and unfortunately it's sometimes the only option, depending on how obscure the software is you're trying to install.
The first thing you'll have to do in Ubuntu is install a meta-package called build-essential (a meta-package isn't a real package?it's a pointer that tells Synaptic/Adept/aptitude to install a bunch of other real packages):
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install build-essential
I can't think of a program off the top of my head that I ever needed to install from source, so I'm just going to make something up?let's call it obscure-1.0. Most likely, it'll come as zipped file called obscure-1.0.tar.gz. Download this to your desktop. Then type this in a terminal:
tar -xvzf obscure-1.0.tar.gz
cd obscure-1.0
./configure
make
sudo make install
Installing from source, like the previous two methods, also does not resolve dependencies?you'll have to install those separately. The ./configure command may indeed tell you what dependencies you need but in a rather peculiar way; for example, it will often return with, say, a rather cryptic gtk not found, in spite of the fact that the user has gtk installed! In fact, what is actually missing is the gtk development files, libgtkx.y-dev. In general, when it says can't find library blah and libary blah is already installed, it usually means that it can't find the blah development files, which can almost invariably be found and installed by searching synaptic for blah dev. [Most of this paragraph was contributed by GeneralZod from the Ubuntu Forums?thanks, GeneralZod!]
There's also Checkinstall: Once checkinstall is installed, instead of typing
sudo make install
you type
sudo checkinstall -D
and the program creates a .deb file which is then installed. This makes removing any program compiled from source extremely easy. For more details see the Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CheckInstall. [Most of this paragraph from gingermark, ubuntu forums.. thanks)
Note: in both Ubuntu and Kubuntu, you can "un-tar" (or unzip) a .tar.gz graphically. I've never had to use the tar terminal command. To un-tar a .tar.gz graphically, just open it (double-click usually does this), then click on Extract.
Other .tar.gz
Those are the major ways to install software in Ubuntu. Please note that not all .tar.gz files contain source code. Some are precompiled binaries. If you come across these, please ask for help on the forums. You may also find on the Ubuntu forums some great self-installer scripts and other helper programs.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 11. March 2008 @ 12:21
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Moderator
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11. March 2008 @ 12:09 |
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I've never liked konq myself; i use Opera the most lately (i find it runs the leanest so i use it the most when using older machines), before that Epiphany and before that Galeon; i still use Firefox a fair bit too
Main PC ~ Intel C2Q Q6600 (G0 Stepping)/Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3/2GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500/Zalman CNPS9700/Antec 900/Corsair HX 620W
Network ~ DD-WRT ~ 2node WDS-WPA2/AES ~ Buffalo WHR-G54S. 3node WPA2/AES ~ WRT54GS v6 (inc. WEP BSSID), WRT54G v2, WRT54G2 v1. *** Forum Rules ***
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 11. March 2008 @ 12:13
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Junior Member
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11. March 2008 @ 16:15 |
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I realize that google has a lot of answers on Linux but of course with out some help from people directly at first I can't learn anything now that I have tried it myself I think that some of those forums will make sense now. But I like the way Linux works. So what software do you think I should use for adware, spyware, malware, and blah blah?
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Moderator
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11. March 2008 @ 16:23 |
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Originally posted by chain87:
what software do you think I should use for adware, spyware, malware, and blah blah?
not a lot of need for that kind of stuff, it's not Microsoft you know, where the only stuff that's free are the gazillions of bugs :P
all i use in Linux is ClamAV
Main PC ~ Intel C2Q Q6600 (G0 Stepping)/Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3/2GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500/Zalman CNPS9700/Antec 900/Corsair HX 620W
Network ~ DD-WRT ~ 2node WDS-WPA2/AES ~ Buffalo WHR-G54S. 3node WPA2/AES ~ WRT54GS v6 (inc. WEP BSSID), WRT54G v2, WRT54G2 v1. *** Forum Rules ***
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varnull
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11. March 2008 @ 16:27 |
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Different strategy here. I try to be secure like a server from setup, by never doing a stock install..
I run rkhunter and tripwire
This is about as far as a virus normally gets
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 11. March 2008 @ 16:50
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Moderator
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11. March 2008 @ 16:31 |
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thought you might :)
i'm a nub in such matters, i do the proverbial 'Shields up' test and live in blissful ignorance :)
Main PC ~ Intel C2Q Q6600 (G0 Stepping)/Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3/2GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500/Zalman CNPS9700/Antec 900/Corsair HX 620W
Network ~ DD-WRT ~ 2node WDS-WPA2/AES ~ Buffalo WHR-G54S. 3node WPA2/AES ~ WRT54GS v6 (inc. WEP BSSID), WRT54G v2, WRT54G2 v1. *** Forum Rules ***
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Junior Member
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11. March 2008 @ 16:39 |
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Yeah I remember reading about how linux does get as much crap as windows. It doesn't take long to install Kubuntu on my system (it was only 35 minutes-ish) I won't worry about it for now. Thanks now I have Firefox and wine installed on my comp next I am going to configure the NTFS thing I believe I can do that with ntfs-3g (i think that is what it is called.)
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