#  >  > Computers Can Be Fun >  >  > Computer News >  >  Linux Ubuntu going over to the dark side

## dirtydog

I have finally decided to have a try of linux, obviously with all the differant flavours linux has I spent a couple of minutes surfing to decide which was best for someone with my lack of abilities, not being able to quickly and easily understand ones like fedora, whats that about downloading 5 cds? I decided on Ubunta

I am gonna stick in a dual boot thingy once I got the download finished and burnt, anyway 2 and half hours to go till the download is finished then I got to burn the poxy thing.

----------


## TizMe

I thought about trying out Ubunta. Downloaded and burnt a live CD.

Then tried to boot from it on my Acer Laptop.

I got a few graphics on the screen then a bit of music while it booted.

Then nothing, just a blank screen. Couldn't be arsed if its going to cause problems from the first minute or so.

----------


## mrsquirrel

I had problems with Ubuntu DD.

SuSE is the only one that I haven't had any problems with as an initial setup.

However if you want a live DVD you will need to DL it separately to the install DVD.

----------


## lom

Good choice DD, that's also the distro I'm gonna install.
Later we should be able to give Frankie some good advices, the poor guy seems very confused right now and is dissing almost every distro there is.

----------


## mrsquirrel

If you can get the wireless netowrorking going give me a shout.

Drove me to distraction trying to get it to connect. Fucking thing could see my interface but it wouldn't bloody access the internet. Nothing worked.

----------


## El Gibbon

Picked up Linux for dummies in Bangers this weekend. Interesting start to linux it seems. Comes with a DVD that has Fedora and several others including SUSE and Ubuntu or whatever its called. 

The target audience is for the desktop user, not the server side widget guys. It is meant to be an introduction for desktop users to kinda cut their teeth on.

Fedora can be installed straight from the DVD, as can some of the others. Read the first 50 or so pages and there are a couple of things that pop out at me. 

Linux on laptops can be very dicey it appears. Main problem is that laptops have embedded WIN hardware. WIN hardware is designed specifically to run on Windows operating systems and thusly saves components/space, a prime concern with laptops. 

Primary culprits are the modem and network interface (NIC). Can be gone around by buying a PCMCIA card if you've got slots available.

After reading the initial sections I think I've found what I was looking for, a simple install that includes a GUI ( yeah, FF I'm a pussy) to help in the transition from Windows.

I also am not about to fool with partitions etc. so will buy a plain vanilla box when I'm ready to go.

E. G.

----------


## mrsquirrel

I have a huge collection of PDF's for Linux.

A DVD's worth or more.

----------


## dirtydog

> If you can get the wireless netowrorking going give me a shout.


I haven't got wireless.




> Linux on laptops can be very dicey it appears


I onlt spent about 30 seconds on each site, each one mentioned for desk tops, laptops weren't mentioned at all.




> I also am not about to fool with partitions etc.


All my hard drives I partition anyway, thats the easy bit  :Smile:

----------


## friscofrankie

> Good choice DD, that's also the distro I'm gonna install.


you gonna turn in all your blue shirts?

I've never installed ubuntu, Seems like linux lite. Only one CD; it comes with Open office and few other software packages.  Almost all common distros, even Slackware, are now a 3+ GB DVD image (was two CDs) I wonder (what's missing?)  they have two versions server and desktop, guess they just leave off all the options like DB server web server... 2.5 GB?  Nothing wrong with simple, though.  better to have an OS you can add to than one you need to remove a ton of crap from.

SuSE is a smooth transition for Windoze users.  Proprietary packaging and disabled features in OS software?   Out of the four distros I've tried recently Slack has been the easiest and most straight forward install.  A bit more text file editing to get it running smooth (server-wise) no Open Office bundled. no pretty pictures to keep my amused during the install.

----------


## mrsquirrel

FF

You can DL Ubuntu and Kbuntu DVD's as well

----------


## lom

> you gonna turn in all your blue shirts?


No, but I have finally found a use for linux  :Smile:  , linuxmce.
(thanks MrsQ for the link in another thread)

You know, I'm not the guy who believe that one get a higher computing satisfaction just by changing the opsys.
After all, the application is king and the opsys is only it's servant.
Linux shines in server applications, but I see no merit in changing from windows into "just another  windows look-alike" with "almost" 100&#37; compatible alternative programs, just for the sake of changing.

You mentioned in another thread that MS at least ought to have some killer application. They don't need it - they have the bread and butter programs that has become standard, and they have the userbase.
It is linux, if it wants to compete with MS Win, that needs the killer app.

So Linuxmce is a good reason for me to install ubuntu.
I'm a bit disappointed though that it only runs under (k)ubuntu, I was never given the possibility to choose from the wide flora of distros :Smile:

----------


## mrsquirrel

What is Linuxmce?

----------


## El Gibbon

> You know, I'm not the guy who believe that one get a higher computing satisfaction just by changing the opsys.
> After all, the application is king and the opsys is only it's servant.
> Linux shines in server applications, but I see no merit in changing from windows into "just another  windows look-alike" with "almost" 100% compatible alternative programs, just for the sake of changing.


lom

I tend to agree, with that said I was cleaning up a little the other day and noted the number of 'auto' updates for security patches from MS.  I've always believed that MS sold half built products because the could. No other company in the world could get away with it. Can you imagine buying a Volvo and they send you one wheel in a month, another in the second month and 2 more several months later? Oh, yeah that new whiz bang anti-lock braking system that is guaranteed for life will be delayed two years.

My XP is so bloated its almost unmanageable. At least when and if I install Linux at least it will be my problem and not someone in Redmond. I am not too bad at sorting out my problems, puts the pressure in so-to-speak.

The Fedora 7 looks like its fairly simple and is the test bed, I understand, for some of the Red Hat development so it should be very stable.

Will be fun to try it after a little study so I actually know what I want.

E. G.

----------


## lom

> What is Linuxmce?


Sorry, kudos to butterfly and not to you  :Smile: 

https://teakdoor.com/computer-news/14349-mediabox-winmce-vs-linuxmce.html?highlight=linuxmce

----------


## friscofrankie

> You know, I'm not the guy who believe that one get a higher computing satisfaction just by changing the opsys. After all, the application is king and the opsys is only it's servant. Linux shines in server applications, but I see no merit in changing from windows into "just another windows look-alike" with "almost" 100&#37; compatible alternative programs, just for the sake of changing


You pay for your software?  Or has MS's business practices forced you to become a thief?  There are many reasons to change.  Security,  MS is just plain unsafe out of the box.  Intheir infinite wisdom, MS decided to add a nagging "firewall"  Patches every oteh week no release has been worth a fuck out of the box since WinNT 3.1 3.51 was out a few months later right?  They release expensive software that is unstable and full of holes.  Only their team can work on fixing it.

I use a computer to get work done.  after years of spendig my time hacking install and management routines for larger corporation I tend to want to install it and forget it.  I have absolutely no real reason to use any windows specific application so why should I have to put up with it?

I agree with you, I think getting an OS and sticking with it is a good idea until the OS becomes either too expensive or the upgrades so unwieldy it no longer is viable. (guess you also discovered the expense factor when trying to locate a cracked version of MCE, eh?)  IBM was big on proprietary software & hardware (good ol' "Big Blue") until they become no longer economically viable.  

MS has fostered the whole new idea of 'win' hardware this actually has brought prices for some items down, until you realize it has strengthened microsoft's choke hold on the desk top is that really economical?  To be reliant on one vendor for all your desktop needs?.  The so-called win-modem is a prime example, much less efficient and adaptable to a real old time Hayes compatible modem. Even in windows, it hardly works at the efficiency it should (there are libraries that will allow you run these on Linux, BTW).

99% of the folks on this forum and in the world can get by with any OS out there.  Watch a movie, listen to some music while surfing the net write an e-mail to aunt matilda,  maybe crunch some spreadsheet data, manage personal data or photo albums, write a book.  any of the major OSes support software that will handle these tasks.  OSS does this on less hardware, with no intrusion of licensing call-back and it does it for FREE,  No need to find the latest cracked key code or hope MS doesn't crack the crack and cripple your system, no more paying $$$ for a simple office suite. 

For home users and many (most) office users the old "support" argument is out the window,  You spend good money on software and then MS thumbs its nose at you when you need help, unless you buy into their super premium licensing scheme. Linux help is out there, appllication help is out there.  Go to MS's support website, lord knows I've spent years going over it.  The information is there, some good but too much "cover our ass type" of half information that is less than helpful.

As EG said, Windows has become so bloated, maintenance intensive and *intrusive* as be a royal pain in the ass.  The MS fellas have developed this "I am king see me roar" kind of attitude and are getting bolder and bolder and acting counter to specifications charge more adn more outlandish prices providing more obese and semi fucntional products.  

It might be time to change your OS just to get legal, stop worrying about every PFY with a macro editor, and having your computer report to base every fucking day whether you want it to or not.  Microsoft has shot itself in the foot with all the above crap and I believe there is now a very good and viable reason to switch OS, unless you absolutely need some Windoze specific app, and for the life of me, I can't think of one.

----------


## DrB0b

> If you can get the wireless netowrorking going give me a shout.
> 
> Drove me to distraction trying to get it to connect. Fucking thing could see my interface but it wouldn't bloody access the internet. Nothing worked.


I'd bet your wireless interface is a windows only one, biggest culprit is Belkin, it's possible to get them to work under linux but you need to get your hands on a proprietary firmware image. What's the output from typing "iwconfig"  and "iwlist scanning" at a root prompt?

----------


## mrsquirrel

> I'd bet your wireless interface is a windows only one, biggest culprit is Belkin, it's possible to get them to work under linux but you need to get your hands on a proprietary firmware image. What's the output from typing "iwconfig" and "iwlist scanning" at a root prompt?


Nah Intel one built into my Thinkpad.

Works great under SuSE just not under Ubuntu/KUbuntu.

----------


## Marmite the Dog

> OS, unless you absolutely need some Windoze specific app, and for the life of me, I can't think of one.


Adobe Illustrator (Windoze and Mac, admittedly).

----------


## friscofrankie

Three vector drawing programs for Linux:
I rarely use the stuff  have no Idea on how any of them compare.
Inkscape. Draw Freely.
Skencil, a vector drawing program
The KOffice Project - Karbon14
Open Office has one and there is one other under development, think it's still kind of rough though
Open Source Xara Xtreme - Open-source graphics software

----------


## Marmite the Dog

But all the files I have are Photoshop or Illustrator. Would I be able to open them in the Linux apps?

----------


## friscofrankie

Uh, that's kinda why I gave you the links?  
I know at least one of them open .ai files  and I opened a .psd in the gimp the other day 
snippet from Xara:
 * JPG, GIF and PNG import and export
* Import/export of many ImageMagick supported types inclduing TIFF, BMP, PICT, XPM and others.
* Bitmap export dialog includes image previews
* Early version of SVG import (work in progress)
* Working Adobe Illustrator import (to same level as Windows Xtreme version)
* Drag and drop file import

From Inkscape:
Inkscape natively supports opening only SVG and SVGZ (gzipped SVG) formats.   
Inkscape can natively save as SVG, SVGZ, Postscript/EPS/EPSi,  Adobe Illustrator (*.ai), LaTeX (*.tex), and POVRay (*.pov). 
With the help of extensions, Inkscape can open/save as PDF, EPS, AI, Dia, Sketch and some others.  
Inkscape can natively import most raster formats (JPG, PNG, GIF, etc.) as bitmap images, but it can only export PNG bitmaps. 
See FileTypes for discussion about file formats that people would like to see supported, and third-party tools that can be used to convert files to or from SVG.

----------


## Marmite the Dog

> I know at least one of them open .ai files and I opened a .psd in the gimp the other day snippet from Xara:


Thanks Dad.

----------


## mrsquirrel

> Adobe Illustrator (Windoze and Mac, admittedly).


Photoshop CS and Illustrator can be ran in Linux

I told you that a week or so ago you ignored it cause you likt to repeat yourself and try and be funny. :kma:

----------


## Marmite the Dog

> I told you that a week or so ago you ignored it cause you likt to repeat yourself and try and be funny.


I thought you said you needed to run an emulator?

----------


## mrsquirrel

true

still work thar

----------


## Butterfly

not sure if mentioned before, but it's Unbuntu

----------


## NickA

3rd time lucky, it's *Ubuntu* (Gnome), Kubuntu (KDE) or Xubuntu (XFCE)

----------


## dirtydog

Right, if I can get a word in edge ways here, so you downloaded your linux and you got to burn an ISO image, now I really have no idea what that is but nero has the ISO image option so click that, drag the file over and burn away, now this is where things might go a bit wrong  :Sad: 

I got out an old 40gb drive, I stuck windows 98 on it just to see if it works and it is all ok, trouble is I forgot to partition the drive, not sure if 98 gives you that option, anyway chuck the burnt cd in one of your drives, boot her up and whack the "F11" key a few times while in BIOS, choose to boot up from whatever drive the cd is in and away you go, it's all installing now and it looks pretty good, recognises my mouse and keyboard which is more than I can say for poxy windows and xp.

----------


## dirtydog

Ahhh, halfway thru the install I now have the option to partition the Hard drive it is on  :Smile:  also you have to decide on a password  :Sad:

----------


## dirtydog

Well it aint as interesting as installing windows, aint no different screens telling you how great it is and how soon you will be able to connect to the internet and other really _important_ stuff like that, it just seems to install its self and seems quite happy not telling you how great it is, not sure I like the color though.

----------


## dirtydog

Nearly there I think, what is suprising is that unlike windows it doesn't need to reboot itself 20 times during installation, it's just come up for its first reboot and says to take the cd out so it can boot from the hard drive, foking cd wont open though and I aint got a paper clip handy, yet the other dvd drive opens and closes all right, oh well see what happens, okay got the cd out while it is booting up, probably not a smart move, still it might be installing the drivers and that takes a bit of time so I will leave it for a few minutes and if nothing happens do a restart.

----------


## dirtydog

Well some how the bugger has connected to the internet without me configuring anything, 92 poxy updates of a total of 160mb to download, although you get to choose which ones you want to download, yeah obviously I spent about 10 seconds going thru all them and just set it to download the whole lot.

On boot up you have to go into the bios and set it to boot from the hard drive, I don't think it takes the old settings of booting from the cd drive into account but doesn't want to boot if you don't do that, although the odds are if you set up linux you will also keep windows so need the dual boot switcher thingy anyway, also it has formatted that drive I think as I couldn't find windows on it, but didn't bother looking that hard cos I was wondering where my router cd was and was gonna set that up first, little did I know I wouldn't need it.

----------


## dirtydog

Well I have downloaded about 200mb of stuff for ubunta, including skype etc, it all seems to work really great, need to find another browser to use on it though aswell as firefox, think opera does one for linux, or is it safari? foked if I remember, well tomorrow I shall start connecting more hardware to it including more hard drives, got 3 in there at the moment but only the one connected just incase, on booting up it recognises my ps2 keyboard in the bios and then my usb keyboard once ubunta gets going, always seem to have problems with usb keyboards on that pc being seen during the bios boot up, still once its all set up the old ps2 keyboard can go back in its box.

Maybe a dumb question, any anti virus software or trojan software etc needed for linux?

----------


## dirtydog

One more thing, every time you download something and then go to install it, you will have to enter your password, so probably best to keep this one real short and simple, also it's opera that works with linux so I got that installed now  :Smile:

----------


## NickA

^Which version of Ubuntu have you got? Are you using gnome or kde?

here's a guide for edgy eft Ubuntu:Edgy -

----------


## ChiangMai noon

^
If Frankie wakes up at some point today I should finally have Fedora installed tonight.

----------


## dirtydog

^^feisty fawn? How would I know? It just said Ubunta on the box, Does it matter?

----------


## friscofrankie

> If Frankie wakes up at some point today I should finally have Fedora installed tonight.


Tomorrow night OK?  I just started a batch of tom saap het.  Good day for soup ain't it?

----------


## Agent_Smith

Just had Ubuntu installed.  Now for some reason it won't recognize my password when I want to do something like download a package or install the firewall (gksudo gnome-lokkit).  The password works fine when I login on the administrators part but won't accept when I try to do something meaningful.  Would wiping the hardrive and reinstalling the OS be the only answer here?  I hate to do that as I've spent a fair amount of time uploading CD's.

----------


## dirtydog

Cant you just move the stuff to another hard drive and then reinstall? I got 3 hard drives in ready to be connected and another I am burning everything from in another pc which this one will share.

----------


## dirtydog

So I got firefox and opera browsers all loaded up, opera is pretty damn good but it draws a bit too much info from your cache, ie if you have just read a thread on a forum and then go back to the main forum it will show that you haven't read that thread unless you go thru a couple of other pages or do a hard refresh, ie ctrl F5, but, drawing from your cache does make it pretty damn fast.

Firefox, hmmm, for website owners firefox is a nightmare, the adblock plugin is just too damn good, from blocking google to blocking GIF ads it blocks them all thoroughly and speeds up page loading so thats why we are going to start charging new members, only kidding on the hidden bit.

Right lets get back to unbunta, top left of the screen you got a button called "applications", click that and scroll to the bottom to "add remove", click that and you get a window opening up which lists several hundred programmes, check a load of those boxes and click "OK" it will then download all those you have checked at lightening speeds, first time I downloaded 112 packages, I got to admit I didn't bother reading most of them.

Now you got to install the poxy things but obviously you have no idea which ones you have downloaded etc, just check a few more boxes and then click "OK" "OK" and those are then installed, you really got to go with an easy password though cos that window comes up each time, this one wasn't such a good idea &*bdhH1I&#37;&jj3548bdkiar%#
Anyway next I got to learn "Terminal", its a thingy to help install the software, think you have to copy and paste funny run commands into that one to get the thing moving along, although I have used it several times already successfully I can't remember what I actually did.

----------


## dirtydog

Ok there is 3 ways to add software to ubuntu, makes it a bit confusing don't it, anyway add remove is the easiest.

What is a package manager?

A package manager is a program that installs and uninstalls software, and keeps track of all the components each piece of software needs.

To add or remove applications in Ubuntu, you need to use a package manager. It will automatically download the software required from the Internet and install it.

There are three main package managers you can use in Ubuntu:

    *

      Add/Remove Programs - The easiest way to install and uninstall programs.
    *

      Synaptic - Advanced control of software and other system components.
    *

      Apt - If you prefer using the Terminal.

----------


## Marmite the Dog

This is a great thread. It has really helped me with William's brand spanking new PC that he bought today.

We got them to install a dodgy copy of XP Pro.  :Smile:

----------


## dirtydog

You will regret it when Bill Gates clicks the "KILL" button for pirate windows and millions of pcs across the world burst into flames  :Smile:

----------


## Marmite the Dog

> You will regret it when Bill Gates clicks the "KILL" button for pirate windows and millions of pcs across the world burst into flames


Prolly not.

----------


## El Gibbon

> ^
> If Frankie wakes up at some point today I should finally have Fedora installed tonight.


According to Dummies, Fedora is supposedly 'easy' to install. It is one of the five that come with the book.... 

Will be interested in hearing how it goes, in your opinion, as FF will prolly think its kiddy shit.

 :nerner: 

E. G.

----------


## NickA

Dog, it sounds like you are running Gnome...try installing KDE, don't worry you can install as many window managers as you want and choose which one to use.

Then try and get beryl working for some nice 3d effect...

----------


## NickA

Here's the Feisty guide Ubuntu:Feisty -

this tells you how to do most things... if you can't find help on here there are plenty of forums or you can search with the Google Linux search engine in firefox.

----------


## mrsquirrel

> Dog, it sounds like you are running Gnome...try installing KDE, don't worry you can install as many window managers as you want and choose which one to use. Then try and get beryl working for some nice 3d effect...


It's nice but pointless.I had it on for a few days then dumped it.

There was a nice Beryl, Compiz something else manager to switch between them easily

----------


## NickA

^How can you say wobbly windows are useless? :Smile: 

There are some useful features like "live" window previews on the taskbar and transparency etc.... I find it very strange without it now.

----------


## dirtydog

> There are some useful features like "live" window previews on the taskbar and transparency etc.


I assume you mean that if you hover the mouse over one of the buttons/tabs that you mean you get a preview of the page, this is an opera browser feature not just a linux feature, as for 3d rotating screens,hmmm, I use 2 browsers all the time and have a minimum of 10 windows open, so it may look pretty and all that but not a feature I would use.

Anyway tomorrow is time to see what Ubunta can do with pictures and movies, I shall try there software first to see if it is useable for what I need, also gonna connect up the rest of my hardware and see if it recognises everything.

----------


## dirtydog

Hmmm, well the shared hard drive on the other pc all works, also my linux has a jpg viewer, trouble is it has no editing tools apart from being able to rotate the picture, also it still cant view Avi files although I haven't installed 90 percent of programmes I downloaded for it, also still got to sort out burner software for both my burners on this pc, seems to be a lot of cd burning software for linux but I aint noticed any dvd burning software, although I have burners on the windows machine anyway which is the one I download to.

Got to admit though I am quite impressed with Ubunta, it's just as easy to use and install as windows, its quicker than windows which would probably benifit anyone on an older pc, I shall probably keep this pc as linux only and the older pc set up windows and linux with a dual boot option thingy on it.

----------


## Agent_Smith

> Cant you just move the stuff to another hard drive and then reinstall? I got 3 hard drives in ready to be connected and another I am burning everything from in another pc which this one will share.


That's what I did.  Put the lot on a thumb drive and installed Ubuntu again.  I thought it would write over the old one but it partioned itself instead on the hard drive.  Now I've 2 Ubuntus eating memory.  Any ideas how to delete the first one?

----------


## Marmite the Dog

Frankie says to reformat the drive partition.  :Smile:

----------


## friscofrankie

> Frankie says to reformat the drive partition.


I never!
BUT...
Depends on what else is installed is there a windoze partition?  What boot loader do you use? (probably Grub) You need to remove the old distro from the boot loader config.  Then, you can delete the partition.  Most distros include some sort of GUI interface to edit the GRUB config.  if there isn't one (or you can't find it) GNU GRUB Manual - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)  This might help.  

if you use LiLO LILO mini-HOWTO Might help.

Once the menu choice is gone you can then remove the files, keeping the partitions, or delete the partitions and create new one(s). Use what ever partition manager your distro offers. To delete the files you need to able to mount them to your new file system.  the command "rm -rf  /mount-point/*" cleans things out very nicely.  It is absolutely ruthless and practically unrecoverable; if you're unsure of command line navigation and issuing commands, avoid using it; it can wipe your system out right quick if issued on the wrong directory.

Another choice is to reinstall and PAY attention!  During the install it will ask you where to put things and should offer a choice to delete the partitions and start fresh, I think you missed this part last time.  If your not experienced (or lack the desire to becomes so) with partitioning and configuring mount points this is probably the simplest & cleanest way to go.  If you have Windows on your PC be careful to leave the win partition(s) intact, eh?

There is so much information on the net n running, configuring and installing Linux entering a detailed search in google will get you enough info to get you started on becoming expert, should you desire.  If that is your goal, remember, if you don;t break it a few times, you learn nothing.

----------


## NickA

DD, have you even looked at that link I gave you? Tells you how to do everything.... there are about 10 movie players.. best ones are VLC, mplayer and kaffeine. KB3 does everything in terms of burning.

You'll need to install all the codecs to view avi's ...again see the link or use automatix.

You shouldn't need to "install" anything.. the package manager should download and install all in one go.

----------


## friscofrankie

*Essential Codecs:*
http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/rel...061022.tar.bz2
This isn't a "package manager" type package but you extract it to the directory listed in the readme and you should be able to play any of the media formats in MPlayer based applications (almost every one out there).

----------


## mrsquirrel

I use the packman repository. Was shown it in a SuSE forum. Gives you access to all the codecs etc.

----------


## dirtydog

> DD, have you even looked at that link I gave you?


Ok I admit I didn't, it's probably full of complicated words that you need a degree in computer programming to understand, then again you understood it didn't you  :Smile: 
Ok tomorrow I shall have a read of it, been working with my other pc most of the afternoon and evening so a bit windozed out at the moment, although I want to try and get opera to do WYSIWYG copy and pastes first.

----------


## dirtydog

Another nice little feature of UNBUNTU is the "Switch between workspaces" thing, the default you get 2 work spaces, ie 2 little tiny buttons on the bottom right, these you just click on if you want to use a different window or workspace or whatever, you can also right click it and add more workspaces, with windows I always just used different browsers so I had half an idea of what I was actually doing, this takes away the need for that.

----------


## Thetyim

I have just installed Ubuntu Gnome on to an old laptop.
I can't get anywhere with it.
Screen resolution gives me the max choice of 600 x 800 but my screen is 1024 x 768.

I am sure it was connected to the net during installation but now I have no connection.

----------


## dirtydog

system, preferences, screen resolution, maybe you got to do the updates first, although thats probably a bit hard without the internet connection.

----------


## Thetyim

^ Yep I found that.
Gives me a choice of 640x480 or 800x600

The Lan connection is OK because I can see my other computers but I cannot access the net.
How do I set up the connection ?
I am going through an ADSL router

----------


## dirtydog

I really have no idea, mine just connected all by itself I think, I probably went into network and network tools and made it look for stuff connected to it, but that was as much as I did, don't even understand how it got the password etc as the hdd was last used on a dial up connection and since has been formatted etc, I assume my other pc keeps the connection open.

----------


## mrsquirrel

have you set all the bits and pieces?

----------


## El Gibbon

TT  what is the modem you are using, is it external?  If not it is most likely a problem as laptops 'generally' use some kind of 'WINmodem' which is just a software modem. It will cause all sorts of problems with Linux.

Same for network cards (NICs).

to save space and weight they are not "standardized" bits and pieces.


This is from Linux for Dummies.... and I are one..  :Smile: 

E. G.

----------


## Thetyim

> TT what is the modem you are using, is it external?


Yes.  It's a ADSL wifi router AX200W
The LAn connection is OK and the internet is working for the other computers.   If I try the Ubuntu updater  it says I am up to date.

So why can't I access anything through FireFox ?

----------


## mrsquirrel

I had a **** of a time with Ubuntu and my wireless.

Ihaven't tried it yet but the madwifi drivers are meant to fix a lot of problems.

search in the package managerfor madwifi should be in there.

----------


## friscofrankie

you've got to set your screen refresh rate and resolution in the X config file.  There may be a guis managment console to allow this or you can run xorgconfig to set it up get on the net and find the information from your LT manufacturer before you set this some newer monitors have safety valves in place to disallow invlid settings but those that don;t can get toasted by wrong settings  you need horizontal and vertical refresh rates.
Make sure you've got your video card set right.  when the screen refresh rates are properly configured you will have more choices under screen resolution.

https://help.ubuntu.com/7.04/interne...asic-procedure
This might help you with your network issues  do you have a netowrk card/dsl router-modem setup or is it usb/dsl  modem-router?   at teh command prompt enter the command "/sbin/ifconfig" this should show your current network card config.  
you should see something like this:


```
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 06:D1:2A:66:19:00
          inet addr:192.168.1.54  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:3044290 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:3112608 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:1398120779 (1333.3 Mb)  TX bytes:1512033763 (1441.9 Mb)
          Interrupt:225

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:2826 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:2826 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
```

lo is my internal local network  
eth0 is my ethernet card and it shows I have a proper ip address
if you don;t have this or somethng like it you may not have a card setup, the only sure way I know to set this up I won;t go into here.  The Ubuntu site should have some documentation on adding a card.  If not you can do it manually (once you fidn the driver :Wink:  )
Configuring Linux to talk to your network card
this page might be help if you really have to manually add your card

----------


## Thetyim

It's a  network card/dsl router-modem setup 

"/sbin/ifconfig"   doesn't display anything

----------


## Thetyim

eth0 is enabled and configured

----------


## dirtydog

Enough of your problems lets talk about my pc  :Smile: 
ok I just connected another hard drive, web cam, speakers, mike, all works, the sound didn't but it just come up with a screen with a choice of 3 downloads, 1 had 5 stars next to it and the other 2 had 1 star each, 5 star works ok and I now got music playing from the newly connected hard drive, may stick another one on later to see how it likes windows on a hard drive  :Smile:

----------


## friscofrankie

the link on ubuntus site has soe information on wireless connections  but you can see your network just fine any rule set on the router?  does the gateway ip address match the actual address of the router?

----------


## Thetyim

^ It is a wifi router but I have it connected via a Lan card to make life simpler.  The address and MAC match on the card and on the router and it is communicating because on the network I can veiw the other computers

----------


## mrsquirrel

Thetyim you are having the same problems I had.

I could connect to the router but not to the net.

Drove me around the bend. I just couldn't find out what the problems was. As I said in the other post i was recommended to try the madwifi drivers/repositiory.

----------


## dirtydog

Well here is what the ubuntu desk top looks like.



Bit basic aint it, but it's easy enough to clutter it up with crap you will probably never use.

And this is my main pc at the moment, aint got enough room to fit 3 hard drives in there so one is gently resting on the floor, tell a lie, I just had a look and I got a spare slot, although its gonna get a bit cramped in there and might create heat problems, might chuck some more fans in there before I close it up again.

----------


## NickA

^I didn't like Gnome, as I said before - try out KDE

----------


## friscofrankie

I agree, a much more finished and mature product.  I prefer Xfce, just a personal preference or habit, though.

----------


## Thetyim

Well I have had enough.
I've been fucking around for ages and I cannot even get connected to the internet.

I found this but I hvae no idea what it means or where to input the command. All the instructions I find on the net don't work even the ones from Ubuntu.com 

$ #sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/bad_list

Add this line
alias net-pf-10 off

Save and Restart

Reason for this is the system looks to IPV6 before IPV4 on the router; Hence the eternal Fire fox circle. Some routers support this and most right now don't

----------


## NickA

Just to explain dd, you can install as many window managers as you want and change between them on the log in screen... the 3 main ones are Gnome, KDE and XFCE, but there are more to choose from. 

You can use the same apps on each window manager, but certain apps are designed for certain managers and so look better on them... so generally apps beginning with a k, such as Konqueror or Konsole are for use with KDE and those beginning with a G are for use with Gnome, such as Gparted etc...

----------


## NickA

^^You need to lauch the console type the first line which will bring up an editor, then add the second line to the end of the file.

----------


## Thetyim

^ Thanks Nick.

When you say console do you mean 'run application' because thats what I have been trying to use for ages and it don't do anything

----------


## friscofrankie

look for an app called "terminal" in the menu

----------


## Thetyim

Thanks FF.  Just says  'Cannot display location'

Is the blank between $ and # correct ?

----------


## Marmite the Dog

Piece of piss this Linux stuff, isn't it?  :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic):

----------


## Thetyim

> Piece of piss this Linux stuff, isn't it?


This is my fourth time of installing it and trying to get it to do something.

I think it is just 700MB of error messages

----------


## ChiangMai noon

it's fine for me.
I don't really use a computer for much more than browsing and downloading torrents.

can you get real player for Linux?
the bbc won't work in any other media player

----------


## Thetyim

Which version have you loaded Nooners ?

----------


## ChiangMai noon

Fedeora 7.

Frankie stuck it on my computer even though he doesn't like it.
will have to wait till i get a new machine to stick Suse on it.

----------


## lom

> Frankie stuck it on my computer even though he doesn't like it.


That's the reason why yours is working - it came with support staff  :Smile:

----------


## friscofrankie

:Very Happy:   the $ # are just to indicte the prompt try this:  without all the gobbledygook
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/bad_list

----------


## El Gibbon

> can you get real player for Linux?
> the bbc won't work in any other media player



Didn't realize that Linux made you lazy toooooo...  :kma: 

RealPlayer for Linux - the best audio and video player - Real.com

E. G.

----------


## dirtydog

The BBC Trust met with the Open Source Consortium (OSC) yesterday to discuss the controversy raised by the BBC's iPlayer, which will only work on Windows XP.

The Trust expressed surprise at the strength of feeling raised by the issue and promised to take it up with senior BBC management. The BBC Trust oversees the BBC and: "ensures the BBC provides high quality output and good value for all UK citizens ".

OSC president Mark Taylor told The Register: "We are very pleased with what was a very positive meeting. The trust was keen to remind us of the BBC's commitment to platform neutrality in general and its commitment to making the iPlayer equally platform neutral. But they were unable to explain how this was going to happen."

A meeting between the OSC, the trust, and senior BBC management is being arranged to discuss this.

A spokeswoman for the BBC Trust gave us the following statement:

The BBC Trust had a useful and constructive meeting with the Open Source Consortium. The meeting provided an opportunity to hear the OSC's concerns and explain what action the trust has taken to ensure that the new BBC iPlayer becomes platform neutral as soon as possible.

Officials reiterated that the BBC Trust is fully committed to users of both the Linux and Mac operating systems having full use of the BBC iPlayer. However, the trust is aware that achieving this is dependent on the actions of third parties outside the BBC's control. It was a condition of approval for the BBC's on-demand services that platform neutrality be achieved within a reasonable period.

The Trust will audit the BBC's progress against this objective every six months and publish its findings. The trust welcomed the OSC's offer of help to establish an open-source, cross-platform solution, and offered to facilitate a meeting between the OSC and BBC management. The trust will meet the OSC again after the first six-monthly review of progress.

The iPlayer is due to launch on 27 July. &#174;

Link

I have noticed that since all this about the player blew up that BBC Vid feeds now work in Debian 64, using VLC

Link

----------


## Thetyim

^ Yep  Tried that about 900 times
Command not found

----------


## friscofrankie

doesn't ubuntu have a GUI management console?  It should.  See if you can find it (Ubuntu Home Page | Ubuntu is your friend although I find it light in the documentation dept)  If you can find it then remove IPv6 services and support. 




> That's the reason why yours is working - it came with support staff


Had a hell of a time getting the USB ADSL modem working and the PPPoE client?   :33:  network cars are 250 baht, I had the free modem/router/switch...  Now what is my time worth?  I gave Cmn a card and router, we connected them setup the connection parameters in the modem/router booted into fedora, the thing just connected, no message, no config.  almost disappointing. nothing to do but download a few patches and go home.

----------


## friscofrankie

> ^ Yep Tried that about 900 times Command not found


ok try another editor  try pico instead of gedit
or try to find gedit by typing "whereis gedit"
gedit may not be in your path or it may not be on your machine, but you have gnome so gedit is most likely _somewhere_ on the machine and there will be a menu link to it somewhere in your menus.  it might be titled "text editor" something like that.  I haven;t used gnome in over five years, even though Cmn's Fedora setup uses gnome by default and I did edit text files, I can't help you navigate the menus, sorry.  it's not hidden.

Once you do find it, just click file, open then paste in the name of the file "/etc/modprobe.d/bad_list" into the space provided or nvigate to it and open it.

it really doesn't have to be gedit, any text editor will do

----------


## Butterfly

> I've been fucking around for ages and I cannot even get connected to the internet.


looks a local firewall issue, always fuck up your connection, remove it, your router will be the firewall

----------


## lom

^ I would look at DNS and gateway settings.
It is a DNS problem if he can ping IP adresses on the internet.

Seeing other computers on his lan only means that the hub in the modem is working. 
But has ubuntu been able to detect his gateway out to the internet ?

----------


## mrsquirrel

Linux Mint has allowed me to connect via wireless. Appears to have solved the connectiopn problem using Ubuntu as it's base

----------


## Marmite the Dog

I'm using Ubuntu at the moment coming live from Nong Khai.

It looks quite nice actually.

----------


## dirtydog

Onto Ubuntu problems, well it seems to have problems with wifi, ie mrs q and thetyim, also the fok doesn't like the beta version of skype, the messaging tends to hang quite a lot, and for some reason my mike doesn't seem to work, I suppose it could be in the wrong hole, but apart from that it all seems pretty damn good.

----------


## friscofrankie

I think it's more a problem with e Skype beta release DD  the thing was a bitch to get workign with my sound card  on SuSE The POS packagmanger installed this version  The older version worked OK now I've got to go remove the package and install my older version that always has worked just fine.  
I've got my Slaackware machine setup, and All my data moved over (had to burn 12 DVDs and delete over 60 GB of data)  I've got Debian, Mandrivia, SuSE (64 bit but I think I'll pass)  CentOS, Gentoo and BSD Free; all amd_64 bit releases. I am going to go  through them all, Try very basic installs.  I'll save BSD for last it is NOT linux but an open source Unix  It's an OS I installed via dialup & ftp before Linux was so readily available.  I think I want to try using it.

----------


## mrsquirrel

Don't forget that Linux Mint - there is a KDE Stable being releasednext week as well.

I am rather impressed by it. ALl the niceties of Ubuntu plus it would appear that all the niggly little things that didn't work for me inUbuntu work in Mint.

Still unusre if moving from SuSE to Mint is necessary though.

----------


## buad hai

> I'm using Ubuntu at the moment coming live from Nong Khai.


I thought you were on vacation?!?

----------


## dirtydog

Well I now got 3 hard drives connected up to this beast and they are all working, but I hit a slight snag, obviously I am used to seeing everything in windows, there are thousands upon thousands of files on these drives, ie about 240 gb worth, so basically I cant find anything easily and I am not sure if Ubuntu even has a search function, so if you are thinking of going over to Ubuntu it's probably best to sort out all the shite you need first as everything looks just that tiny little bit different, also on going thru it quickly I got about 60gb of stuff I will never ever use but at the time I downloaded it I thought I would.

Its a bit strange not running any anti virus software every couple of days, adaware once per week, trojan remover every couple of days, spybot once per week, you know the usual sort of stuff you have to do with windows, although I still have the joys of that with my other pc, also this one has windows on it but I really have no idea which partition it is on.

So, to spend the day constructively? ie going thru all my drives and dumping crap and tidying up the rest, or, having a fok around with a bruteforcer I downloaded ages ago that my anti virus software didn't like  :Smile:

----------


## buad hai

Beagle? Kat? Google Desktop?

----------


## dirtydog

I don't think they will work, ie if I want to upload stuff it wont browse into my other hard drives, I have to move the stuff to desktop or the ubuntu drive, also when you start up you have to log on before ubuntu opens fully, then when you want to view other drives you have to enter your password again, I don't do many restarts on this pc as the on off button dont work so I jam a screw driver onto the circuit board to jump it, probably should get a new on off button I suppose.

----------


## friscofrankie

You should be able to mount all your drives.  There are several ways to find stuff
KDE has a search function similar to the one in windows explorer  called, kfind
it is probably a gui front end to "find"  fInd search what ever directory you tell it to for what ver you're looking for for full information on find try typing "man find" at the command prompt  
locate or slocate are good utils that search a Database of files on your computer you need to run "updatedb" as root to populate the DB  O{n many systems it is setup as a cron job to run every morning,  On my system that 's 4:30 AM  the util will search every mounted volume on your system,  running locate on the system after it's set up and give you a ton of returns,  the search is not case sensitive and if you search for "data"  it will find every instance of Data, data, DATA, dAtA and so on whether it is directory name part of a dir/file name .  locate usually returns way too many hits on simple searches so pipe it through 'less'

----------


## mrsquirrel

DD you will need ntfs-3g to get read and write support.

It was pest to install on SuSE since it gave me a massive warning saying my kernel wasn't compatible etc etc. Which actually turned out to be complete overkill and it did work

----------


## dirtydog

> You should be able to mount all your drives


Ahhh, ok that option has come up a few times but I didn't know what it meant, thought maybe it had sussed that the main drive was laying on the floor or something  :Smile: 

Seems I got a lot more work to get it all nice and clean and tidy  :Sad:

----------


## Gerbil

> Ahhh, ok that option has come up a few times but I didn't know what it meant, thought maybe it had sussed that the main drive was laying on the floor or something


This is all going to end in tears....  :Smile: 




> Seems I got a lot more work to get it all nice and clean and tidy


So, remind us. You started this because Windows was too complex?  :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic):   :bunny3:

----------


## dirtydog

Well what do you expect when it asks you if you want to mount your drive and you look down at it by your foot  :Smile:

----------


## friscofrankie

:Very Happy:  THanks DD, My Belly -laugh for the day!!

----------


## NickA

> also when you start up you have to log on before ubuntu opens fully, then when you want to view other drives you have to enter your password again,


Still not read that link yet DD?  :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic):

----------


## dirtydog

ermmm, I have thought about it quite often, but I have been a bit busy, I mean you know its lent and all that so visiting temples and all that sort of stuff, but I will look at it tomorrow  :Smile:

----------


## Marmite the Dog

> Originally Posted by Marmite the Dog
> 
> I'm using Ubuntu at the moment coming live from Nong Khai.
> 
> 
> I thought you were on vacation?!?


I was/am. The hotel has PCs in the rooms. Cool!

----------


## mrsquirrel

You are at the Pantawee (Katoey) hotel near the bridge aren't you.

Have you tried the spa/jacuzzi thing outside yet?

----------


## Marmite the Dog

> You are at the Pantawee (Katoey) hotel near the bridge aren't you.


Pantawee Bungalows actually.

Btw, GoW didn't think the boss was a geezer. She was sussed in about 3 seconds.

----------


## dirtydog

Well it's been several weeks of using both windows and linux, linux does seem to have one problem, it doesn't seem to have the, "Windows has encountered a problem and needs to close down" screen, the poxy thing just keeps on working, with windows I generally have to do a reboot every couple or 3 days as it gets cloggy and works like shite, last reboot on this linux pc was about 5 days ago I think, never ever got anywhere near that long with windows.

Also don't seem to have the screen that says, "Internet explorer is totally foked and needs to close down" either, funny that aint it.

Still got a couple of bad points though that I haven't got round to sorting out and I reckon they maybe in NickA's link which I shall have a look at tomorrow, yep the old picture resizing and all that sort of thing, I do take a lot of pictures so I really shouldn't be such a lazy git and I should look for linux software that does all the stuff that ACDSee does, pretty sure it is out there if I spent about 60 seconds looking for it.]

So given the choice of paying 200baht for windows or having linux for free, got to admit it is a hard decision, at those prices the money don't really come into it, but to use software where you are not continually updating your anti virus stuff, your adaware stuff, your spybot stuff, your anti trojan stuff, now that sort of thing counts for a lot of time, if it was a choice between a legal version of windows and linux then Bill Gates can kiss my arse, cos that aint worth no 7,000baht, at 200baht I would have second thoughts but would probably buy it just to test it.

----------


## NickA

try digikam for downloading, storing and messing about with photos... it does a pretty good job, there's plenty others, but it's the best all round that I've found

----------


## friscofrankie

Gthumb great for browsing a directory with images or page through each image rotate, crop contrast, brightness, color balance  This is what I have been using for quick crop and resize before posting pics on TD for a couple years. I even used to to rotate all my sideways pics in one go.  I nvere tried resizing in bulk (prefer to crop first) so not sure if it'll do that.

The Gimp does everything Photoshop does and is just as easy to learn  :Wink: 

There are a few others Gthumb is a Gnome app.  But it can be installed and set to run in KDE or any other window manager

DigiKam if your cam is supported is OK  There are literally dozens of lightweight apps oth there for simple resize  

If the setupo is right your camera should be autmatically detected as a storage divice and most likel mounted under /media/some_dir With SuSe the thing just popped up a filemanager tothe root of the cam-card root.
The system I have no I have deafeated al lthat but hav quick scripts to mount my devices when I want.

----------


## Agent_Smith

OK, Ubuntu says my harddrive is full and now I'm getting error messages left and right when I want to do something, even just trying to access my package manager throws up all kinds of little red signs.  It says I have 4.3 G available and I'm using 4.1 G and I know damn well that I've got a 120 G hard drive.  So what gives?

----------


## dirtydog

Accidently made the partition too small?

----------


## Gerbil

> The Gimp does everything Photoshop does and is just as easy to learn


The Gimp is useless for professionals working with CMYK though. There are a number of other drawbacks, but it's generally fine for most uses.

----------


## Agent_Smith

> Accidently made the partition too small?


Yeah, this mysterious partition thingy I've heard about.  Know the theory about it:  separates your hard drive so multiple OS can work on it but I haven't the foggiest how to tinker with it.  I've got a partition program in my administrative files but the machine won't let me access it, says it cannot copy Xauthorization File or some such thing when I go about it.  Anyway to do this from a terminal window?

----------


## dirtydog

Got to admit I am not sure that you can alter the size of a partition once it is in, ok I know you can add more partitions if you want to but that aint gonna do you any good, maybe a reformat and reinstall of Ubunta? probably best to wait till frankie see'e this.

----------


## friscofrankie

Menu driven - cfdisk  But you better know what you're doing  also specify the drive you are working on on the command line if you have multiple hard drives

----------


## Agent_Smith

^Thanks, only have the one hard drive but I'll back up my stuff and give it a whirl anyways.  Do I have to do a wipe and reinstall or can I just enlarge the current partition?

----------


## friscofrankie

I'd wipe the thing start over set a partition up for "/" then one for "/usr/local"  one for "/home"  Home is where the data goes  /usr/local is where althe extras you install go "/" will contain things like /bin /sbin /opt & /var   "/usr" and all it's sub dirs except "/usr/local" Give your self some room, more than just the install of the OS  as these dir shrink and grow.  You'll need a swap partition too.

My system as it sits now:

Filesystem                     1K-blocks      Used           Available Use&#37; Mounted on
/dev/sda1                    11535344             3808216    7141160  35% /
/dev/sda3                    24027656              891212    21915908   4% /usr/local  <-(What's up on the math here?)
/dev/mapper/home_vg-lvhome      442211584  61547160 358201348  15% /home

This is inaccurate as I have about 1 Gb on /usr/local  it was empty two when I started a couple weeks ago 

the /home partition is a logical volume made up of all the left over room on my primary drive and all the space on my other 250GB drive  I can add another drive or two as needed.

as you can see I have plenty of room to grow on my root partition but I never install stuff there.  I removed a lot of packages during the installation and added the versions I preferred to /usr/local part.  This is where I install All my software  I do not use a package manager so have this option.  I am not sure where the various package mangers install added software packages if they go for places like /usr" or "/opt" you may want to allocate more space  depending on what you want to do. 

If you;re up for downloading source and compiling your own you can set your own destination they usually default to "/usr/local"  This is the sys-admns playground  :Very Happy:   where he will install anything not bundled with the OS.  I gave myself way too much room but I tend to fuck around with a lot of different apps.

I set this up manually at the command line but there are GUIs that allow you to do the same thing,  Not so sure abut them though...

I am not sure of where the package manager installs shit it may go for "/opt" or directly under "/usr"  this would indicate a need for a much larger root("/") partition if you like to play with software installs.

Now that you're totally confused try an install and let the install program recommend a setup for you.  it will typically include a logical volume group and logical volume this wil allow for future growth.  most distros I've seen want a "/boot" partition  You'll notice I don't have one.  

The "/" partition needs to be a primary partition it must mount before any drivers or kernel modules can load.  plan for the install size then add a bit (double would be good) for future growth, temp files, proc files mail spooler, print spooler, etc.  

I previously made /var a separate partition and for a print/mail server It's a good idea, as this is where those spoolers go as well as system logs.  For a single workstation don;t worry too much about it, but if the install says "This is install requires a minimum of 4.3 GB on "/" or something like that, give it 10 or 12 or 15 depending how precious disk space is.

So much has been written on partitioning schemes you can look and find a hundred different ideas on it.  I could chase my tail for hours with all the different scenarios available and there appropriate-ness to different OSs and usages.  I am shit at writing instructions or documentation.  

Just remember to leave your self room for expansion and additional applications and, of course, data.  Separate your core OS/basic apps, optional-addon applications, and data. Give each one the room to grow  set your data area up as a logical volume so you can add more space as needed and you should be OK.

----------


## dirtydog

Here's a quick question that needs to be explained in very simplistic terms so I understand it, how comes I can't delete stuff from my other hard drives on this pc? Pretty sure I could a few days ago. I got 3 hard drives on here, the ubunta one I can delete stuff on, the other 2 I can't.

----------


## friscofrankie

I assume you're asking about ntfs (WINDOZE) drives?
There was driver that allowed you write access to ntfs drives (deleting is just another form of writing but I read they discontinued it).  Not sure where that is right now in development but if you actually deleted from ntfs partitions while they were mounted under ubuntu then you were logged in as root most likely.  I am pretty sure you need to be the superuser to make changes to the windows partitions make sure you're logged in as root
or type "su" at the command line and then the root password.
This will only be good for the session you are in type exit to log out of hte superuser mode

If not then I wonder if the NTFS driver got automatically updated to a newer version that does not support write.  or if the fstab file got updated for you  :Very Happy:  
There are two drivers available you can read but them at the links below
www.linux-ntfs.org - Home


The standard driver is explained here: NTFS FAQ (en)

In particular, sections 4 & 6 might be of interest.

----------


## dirtydog

Ok how bout this idea, I do remember reading about the write delete stuff, and now I also remember I just copied files to another pc and didn't delete them, I also remember it asking me about mounting my drives, not sure if I did or didn't, suppose I must have done as it hasn't asked me since, anyway back to my great idea  :Smile:  turn off pc, disconnect extra hard drives, boot etc, turn off reconnect hard drives, not agree to mounting, then I would have write delete access etc?

----------


## friscofrankie

HUH???  :Very Happy: 
If the drive weren't mounted you would'nt have ANY access  :Wink:

----------


## friscofrankie

go to the command prompt and type "df" hit enter paste what you get here.

----------


## dirtydog

Now I am assuming command prompt=Konsole.


Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use&#37; Mounted on
/dev/hda1             36985736   3382720  31724216  10% /
varrun                  257992       220    257772   1% /var/run
varlock                 257992         0    257992   0% /var/lock
procbususb              257992       148    257844   1% /proc/bus/usb
udev                    257992       148    257844   1% /dev
devshm                  257992         0    257992   0% /dev/shm
lrm                     257992     33788    224204  14% /lib/modules/2.6.20-16-generic/volatile
/dev/hdd               4571552   4571552         0 100% /media/cdrom0
/dev/sda5             96237348  94598264   1639084  99% /media/D Drive

----------


## friscofrankie

> Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use&#37; Mounted on /dev/hda1 36985736 3382720 31724216 10% /


OK that's you're root partition

But this stuff  Notice anything strange?




> varrun *257992* 220 257772 1% /var/run 
> varlock *257992* 0 257992 0% /var/lock 
> procbususb *257992* 148 257844 1% /proc/bus/usb 
> udev *257992* 148 257844 1% /dev 
> devshm *257992* 0 257992 0% /dev/shm 
> lrm *257992* 33788 224204 14% /lib/modules/2.6.20-16-generic/volatile


I'm thinking this is one external drive might be mistaken but why there is a mount for the shared memory (/dev/shm)  /var/run and /var/lock is beyonbd me  if this is three different hard drives all exactly the same size you're wasting space bu tthey look like virtual drives to me and as fucked up as that looks I'm not gonna worry about it.

I think read abut a bug in ubuntu regarding something along these lines 

Ok your CD rom:



> /dev/hdd 4571552 4571552 0 100% /media/cdrom0


and this I ssume is the wiondoze drive?



> /dev/sda5 96237348 94598264 1639084 99% /media/D Drive


There is only one windows partition mounted don;t know about all that stuff up near the top though seems kinda weird to me. looks like a usb device with 256 Mb ram or mayb three of 'em  or ramdisks? That's just  a plain weird setup.

Windows drive Looks kinda full.  :Very Happy: 
So the drive is mounted you should be able to cd  to "/mnt/D Drive"  (spaces in unix file names jesus!)
first at teh console type "whoami" if it says root OK if not 'su' to root
now type "touch test.touch"  This should create an empty file in the root of your drive "D Drive" called test.touch  if that file already exists it will have a new time stamp.  If it cannot be created or altered you cannot write to the dir and shoul probably read up on those sites I gave you.  becasue it would take me hours to write up every littel thing you need to do and It would not be as clear.
But if that works cd to the directory you want to delete files from
type "ls -l" see if there is an owner  and group
first col is attribs s\2nd is amount of links or dir in the dir  the cols that say root root here are owner and group respectively.

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 44790270 2007-08-13 21:52 copy.log
-rw-r----- 1 root root        0 2007-08-12 04:40 cron
-rw-r----- 1 root root        0 2002-04-07 06:13 cron.1
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root     4096 2007-08-09 23:26 cups
Who owns these files?  can you chmod them?  
pick a file any file and type chmod 666 file.name
then the ls -l again
the attribs should be -rw-rw-rw-
now try rm file.name
should go
if it does chmod the whole lot of 'em chmod 666 *
and delete the whole lot of 'em rm * if that's what you want.

if you are root and cannot change attributes or touch a file your partition is mounted read only.  You should read the above links about enabling Read-write  and go at it again.  It may involve editing your /etc/fstab file and there are tutorials on that Now I'm off for a beer hope you've still got a running machine when I get back...
 :Very Happy:

----------


## dirtydog

Ah, I got more  :Smile:  hadn't bothered accessing the other drives since my last boot, ok I think the 3 usb are my mouse,cam and keyboard.
Got seperate cd burner, and a dvd burner.
D is my windows and has no space, F is full  :Sad:  I got a small empty partition somewhere, and another full one and I think a half full one somewhere, I will try a reboot and disconnecting and that, if that don't work then I will read up on it  :Sad: 

Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use&#37; Mounted on
/dev/hda1             36985736   3383616  31723320  10% /
varrun                  257992       228    257764   1% /var/run
varlock                 257992         0    257992   0% /var/lock
procbususb              257992       148    257844   1% /proc/bus/usb
udev                    257992       148    257844   1% /dev
devshm                  257992         0    257992   0% /dev/shm
lrm                     257992     33788    224204  14% /lib/modules/2.6.20-16-generic/volatile
/dev/hdd               4571552   4571552         0 100% /media/cdrom0
/dev/sda5             96237348  94598264   1639084  99% /media/D Drive
/dev/sdb1            117218240 116435588    782652 100% /media/F Drive
/dev/sda1             20972824  17379116   3593708  83% /media/disk
/dev/sda3                 8008         0      8008   0% /media/disk-1

----------


## Marmite the Dog

^ Too late mate. Frankie will be out until dawn.

----------


## Gerbil

> Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use&#37; Mounted on /dev/hda1 36985736 3383616 31723320 10% / varrun 257992 228 257764 1% /var/run varlock 257992 0 257992 0% /var/lock procbususb 257992 148 257844 1% /proc/bus/usb udev 257992 148 257844 1% /dev devshm 257992 0 257992 0% /dev/shm lrm 257992 33788 224204 14% /lib/modules/2.6.20-16-generic/volatile /dev/hdd 4571552 4571552 0 100% /media/cdrom0 /dev/sda5 96237348 94598264 1639084 99% /media/D Drive /dev/sdb1 117218240 116435588 782652 100% /media/F Drive /dev/sda1 20972824 17379116 3593708 83% /media/disk /dev/sda3 8008 0 8008 0% /media/disk-1


piece of piss this Linux stuff  :bunny3:

----------


## friscofrankie

Goojn down.

went out ast night with Elsie nd 'is pal athey pised n themnsleves left me alone drinking tequila beers and fcuk-al what-else alone with beautiful wo\immen adn big pooltables OK thet're kiwism We know that basiclly they're all big pussies So I was left all to me self til cali kid showed up arund 5;00 am.  Left for home 'bout; fuck, dunno half hour/hour ago?
Is your computer as fucked up as I am???  Should ai give a fuck?  I lost more skin off my body & face thn I think ain't fucked up.  Te bikes ok broke clutch handle and it's good to go,  But FUCK ME! All I can say is you bought into that "we can do it for you" fickin, indows and wannabe womdows OS's  with them ":don;t worry we know best" 
 :Very Happy: 
i stil love my slackware  OK Any way,
I got no fuckin skin and I'm fucked up on all kind's-a shit don't worry thoug the bike's in pretty goo docon\dition ad I might heal in a week or two.

Fuck me everything hurts.

Found a bar that stay open til .. Well, now.

----------


## Thetyim

^ Good Lord.  He posts in machine code now.  :Smile: 
Sorry mate, I didn't understand a word/byte of that

----------


## ChiangMai noon

> Fuck me everything hurts.
> 
> Found a bar that stay open til .. Well, now.


go and see a fukking doctor or I'll tell my wife to come round to nag you.

----------


## friscofrankie

> go and see a fukking doctor or I'll tell my wife to come round to nag you.


Doesn't she havde to go hoe to fuckin; vote? mine does I told her to fuckin leave or I would.

Just wonder why  i got road rash on both sides of my face....

Back on subject.  If you want real,m coherent answer to them read write issues?  Gonna have to wait a day or three,  My body's pretty fucked up right now and ..  Think the best way to deal with it is get mind even more fucked up..  Fuck I didn't thinik  a fucker could lose this mach skin a remain human...
OK.  Let's not derail a very good thred on getting MS off yer desktop Think I'll start one called "Goin' Down" Butterfly oughta like that...

----------


## lom

Why make a simple task so difficult?
Boot up Windows and run one of umpteen programs available to resize partitions while keeping the data there untouched.

----------


## friscofrankie

^fuckin MS weenie  It ain;t that fuckin easy
  but these new Linu distros are damn near as bad as Windoze I gotta tell ya.
Don't start with me I'm fuckin injured  :Very Happy:  *and* fucked up

----------


## ChiangMai noon

> Doesn't she havde to go hoe to fuckin; vote? mine does I told her to fuckin leave or I would.


No, she's registered in Chiangmai now.

----------


## lom

> ^fuckin MS weenie It ain;t that fuckin easy but these new Linu distros are damn near as bad as Windoze I gotta tell ya.


Ok, so boot Linux then and run the equivalent program. :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic): 
If Windoze has umpteens of them (4 or 5 really good and reliable ones), then there is of course at least one available for Linux? :Smile: 
Aah, but it may not be compatible with that certain distro..




> Don't start with me I'm fuckin injured and fucked up


Cheers! Go take care of your body now.

----------


## NickA

> Ok, so boot Linux then and run the equivalent program.


Yep, Gparted should do the job.

DD and FF arre doing a good job of making linux look difficult, never come across any of these problems myself and there are plenty of apps that show the disk partitions graphically on Ubuntu - Gparted, Control Centre-System Admin-Disk & Filesystem, Kwikdisk, Kdiskfree, Kinfocentre...etc.....etc.....

----------


## NickA



----------


## friscofrankie

Windoze Linus BSD unix can all be difficult when they fuck up.  I do not like GUI utils end of story.  Always have and this is my biggest problem with windoze and most Linux distros.  Gieve me a command line ad THAT is user freieldy to me.  I don;t use GUIs I don;t like GUIs
What the fuck about folks that don;t use KDE or Guh Nome?  There is a command line interface to all of the above much unlike WINDOZE....
AND each distro has some kind of different fuckin GUI.  They are going after the windoze market, losing hte flexibility that Linux once had; get the fuck out of the GUI and learn the system.  I setup my logical volume grou then the lo\gical volume with nothing more than command line commands,   Each fuckin GUI interface I worked with fucked things up,

i recently went through the install of debian, gentoo (again), CentOS, Mandrivia, And a coupole of others.  I installed in dumy  mode, accept defaults, click OK.  Esch one of the fuckers failed in some way mostly with Bringing up windoze.  ALL failed the SATA rsid test These were asl 64 bit relases.  Gentoo failed, after a full install with a message "Install failed" end of story 9with or without Raid setup)

The Only OS to have decent install and usuablility was Suse but it was so much like windoze n limiting options and with autmatic updates I fuckin hted it.  When an update or package corrupted my ability to generate encrypted passwrod or encrypt any other data Iinstead of trouble shootin I just moved my data to my otehr machine formatted and went back to slackware
In My opinion the ONLY OS to really challenge Windoze for the common user is SuSe.  I have not tried ubuntu So no comment onthat  one but I tried allthe 64 bit distros I could find inthe main stream.  The advances made in the last two years are amazing but they just ain't there yet.

SuSE is a finished product limited in some features but that's fixable if you choose to circumvent YAST on some packages  one you've done that...  Much like WinNT 3.51 & 4.0.

Unless you're willing to take the time to learn a bt about systems My advice don't fuck with 'em. I do advise larnig enugh to do a text menu driven install much like you did for DOS 4+^   Slackware is still teh simplest and most reliable install in the Linux world, it is not designed to be 100&#37; linux compliantThe init and file structure is more BSD like (real unix) But supports full 100% linux init as well.  Although stil in 32 bit form it is miles above any other OS I have found for my needs.

AL Operating systems are complcated adn ALL Opertaing systems will be a bitch when they don't work.  Fuckin computers are comp-licated pieces of machinery and eh fuckin cioce to run them???  I doubt there are more than 5 people on the forum that could look at debug or maintain the shit that goes into a kewrnel and OS  If that.
SuSE has as many years of experience behind it as ms if NOT MORE  Novell has years and a very nice campus in Utah, They feed very well.  It fuckin works for a corporate desktop I would not hesitate to recommend it.  My first choice for coporate desktop wuld remain windoze and I HATE WINDOZE!!!!
For the comon user at home fedora or SuSE are very good choices.  For developers I would recommend slackware or BSD.  They require some twaeking but all deve Worksations do.  These will fillteh bill nicely.

Sadly, most Linux distros in an effort to garner more windoze users have fogotten the beauty of linux; flexibility.  By developing more GUI interfaces to manage partitions files software installs they are actually fallin behind in forgetting the command line  NO LINUS distro requires a windows interface to run well.  This is an addon.  Most distro dev trees have fogotten this,  they are trying to appeal to Windoze users.  

So far ,except for fedora and SuSE, they are failing miserably.  From the look of DD's mounted volumes I'd say ubuntu ain't ready for prime time either. Linux is and should be THE desktop/server OS  it beats Windoze hands down, by trying to BE windoze most distros trees are losing the plot and the war.  For those of us that like a command line or text driven menu install there are distros out there that will allow you to build a mchanine that works well, reliably without the problems in herent in a windoze system.  

For you windoze users out there try SuSE it's better faster, and much more stable than windoze and truth be told you probably won't notice much differnece in mangement or interface, you just might not see that BSOD (unless you choose it as a screensaver)

In the next two years I think we will see many more Linux distros that will make the grade as far as setup, and managment now?  If you're afraid of teh "dark Place" (Command line)  forget all teh others 
Her are your choices as I see it:
WinDoze That nazi fucking orghanization 
Or
SuSE 
Or
Fedora
Or use your fuckin head for more than a fuckin hat rack and try slackware.

Are OK 
The rest either require some initiative or knowledge

----------


## Marmite the Dog

I shall be reinstalling the cracked version of XP on my work PC during the week. Thankfully it'll be a lot less hassle than this Linux malarkey.  :La:

----------


## Gerbil

> I shall be reinstalling the cracked version of XP on my work PC during the week. Thankfully it'll be a lot less hassle than this Linux malarkey.


 
Damn right.

Total load of bollux this linux on the desktop. Leave it on servers where it belongs. Uh, except mail servers where Exchange is the dogs bollux, and IIS 7 for web servers, which are cool beyond words. oh and SQL Server 2005 Servers which are just a dream to work with.

 :Smile:

----------


## mrsquirrel

ntfs-3g for read and write access to NTFS drives

----------


## Gerbil

> ntfs-3g for read and write access to NTFS drives


 
.... and drink a potion of newt eyeballs and frogs intestines at the same time. Every little helps while dealing with the dark arts.  :bunny3: 

Growing a beard and wearing sandals all the time helps I believe. Not sure about a bumbag though.  :Smile:

----------


## Mr Earl

This thread has convinced me that I want to stick with a proper OSX.
My little Mac power book is 4 years old now and due for an upgrade/backup.

I'm going to buy a new MacBook and partition the drive and load a copy of XP to run the windows apps I want. And I'll have OXS on the other side which is very stable and easy to use IME.

I was seriously considering a Lenovo Thinkpad and using OSx86. But that option seems to have almost as many technical bugs as the Linux option.
I don't remember shit about writing code and don't really want to. My poor brain is already saturated with trying to learn Thai! Jeezus fuck!

----------


## mrsquirrel

Go for the Thinkpad option

Do it. I love my thinkpad to death.

Have you seen the x61t tablet. Farking sexy sexy sexy 1.2kg full rotating screen to tablet form.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHhhhhhh sexy

----------


## Agent_Smith

OK, printed out FF's suggestions on how to partition the drive (thank you Frisco) but have to wipe out these 2 malingering OS first.  But wait!  Gotta back up some files first and the damn thing won't let me log in because the memory is filled up.  

So, I go into the text screen (main menu?) and start slashing music and game files left and right.   Thank god for _rm *.*_ command.  Now I can access the GUI and transfer some stuff to my thumbdrive.  Done.

Now I gotta wipe the hard drive.  I type in _cfdisk_ in the main menu and up pops "FATAL ERROR: Bad logical partition 7: enlarged logical partitions overlap"  How do I get around this obstacle?  Sometimes I think computers were created in Hell.

----------


## friscofrankie

Most Guis are just front ends to Command line utils
By typing lvm and enter you should get a list of various commands try reading the man pages on
lvscan
"man lvscan"
lvs
"man lvs"
 lvremove
"man lvremove"
also vgdisplay
and vgremove

here is a list of all lvm (logical volum manager) commands


```
Use 'lvm help <command>' for more information

  dumpconfig      Dump active configuration
  formats         List available metadata formats
  help            Display help for commands
  lvchange        Change the attributes of logical volume(s)
  lvconvert       Change logical volume layout
  lvcreate        Create a logical volume
  lvdisplay       Display information about a logical volume
  lvextend        Add space to a logical volume
  lvmchange       With the device mapper, this is obsolete and does nothing.
  lvmdiskscan     List devices that may be used as physical volumes
  lvmsadc         Collect activity data
  lvmsar          Create activity report
  lvreduce        Reduce the size of a logical volume
  lvremove        Remove logical volume(s) from the system
  lvrename        Rename a logical volume
  lvresize        Resize a logical volume
  lvs             Display information about logical volumes
  lvscan          List all logical volumes in all volume groups
  pvchange        Change attributes of physical volume(s)
  pvresize        Resize physical volume(s)
  pvcreate        Initialize physical volume(s) for use by LVM
  pvdata          Display the on-disk metadata for physical volume(s)
  pvdisplay       Display various attributes of physical volume(s)
  pvmove          Move extents from one physical volume to another
  pvremove        Remove LVM label(s) from physical volume(s)
  pvs             Display information about physical volumes
  pvscan          List all physical volumes
  segtypes        List available segment types
  vgcfgbackup     Backup volume group configuration(s)
  vgcfgrestore    Restore volume group configuration
  vgchange        Change volume group attributes
  vgck            Check the consistency of volume group(s)
  vgconvert       Change volume group metadata format
  vgcreate        Create a volume group
  vgdisplay       Display volume group information
  vgexport        Unregister volume group(s) from the system
  vgextend        Add physical volumes to a volume group
  vgimport        Register exported volume group with system
  vgmerge         Merge volume groups
  vgmknodes       Create the special files for volume group devices in /dev
  vgreduce        Remove physical volume(s) from a volume group
  vgremove        Remove volume group(s)
  vgrename        Rename a volume group
  vgs             Display information about volume groups
  vgscan          Search for all volume groups
  vgsplit         Move physical volumes into a new volume group
  version         Display software and driver version information
```

The top three commands ae just command line arguments  the rest are stand alone commands to be entered at the command prompt Or with in the lvm shell if it was setup that way (probably not)

Each one of these commands will have a man page 
Instead of using a menu driven logical volume manager I used the command line it took a bit longer (almost ten minutes to clear the problems I had & recreate an expandable and logical volume group and logical volume)

Once you use the utils to clean up the crap laid down by the GUI (Probably removing the bad-boy or repair it) you can then use cfdisk.

never have used ubuntu but once the data a is backed up can't you just rerty the install  and clean the shit out that way?

----------


## Agent_Smith

I like your last suggestion and I was planning to do that as a last resort but will try it first.  Can I make new partitions that will obliterate the other OS's partitions?  At any rate, you've given me some more ammo in this neverending war with technology. Thanks a million  :Smile:

----------


## Agent_Smith

I can't watch youtube.  Says I need flashplayer but when I download any of the 3 types and then type in the terminal it says that Flashplayer 9 isn't there.  I've downloaded tg.z yum and rpm and nothing happens.  Is there an easy way to fix this problem?

----------


## dirtydog

Yep, use firefox browser, I have the same problem with opera browser and I must have downloaded the poxy extension 100 times and the poxy thing wont work.

----------


## friscofrankie

> I can't watch youtube. Says I need flashplayer but when I download any of the 3 types and then type in the terminal it says that Flashplayer 9 isn't there. I've downloaded tg.z yum and rpm and nothing happens. Is there an easy way to fix this problem?


I would think these package managers should do it all correctly.  But.
I have firefox setup in /usr/local/firefox  under that directory is another called "plugins"  By creating a link to, or copying, the file 'libflashplayer.so" to this directory it should work, system wide (for all users)

You need to find out where firefox is installed on your machine.  Try "whereis firefox" at the command prompt this should give a dir if it is in your path, if this doesn't work try "slocate firefox/plugins"  if you don't have slocate try locate.  The nice thing about locate is it searches a databse and does a text match so you can narrow your hits down.  The bad thing about locate is it searches a dtabase and does a text match, so if hte DB is out of date the rsults will be inaccurate.  before running locate you may want to run updatdb as root.  This will build a snapshot of your drive at that time.

If you only want it to work for  your self create a link to (or copy) this file to ~/.firefox/plugins  (~indicates your home directory, usually /home/username).  Oncew you get the link of a copy of the file in one of these directories shut down firefox and restart.

Try youtube again should work.

----------


## Agent_Smith

^^I've got Firefox

^Frankie, that did the trick.  I got the youtube and everything works fine (except my download rate is crawling as usual).  

You've been a great help and if I ever get up to your neck of the woods then I'm buying.  Thanks man.

----------

