Testing Out Linux. Part 1
A windows users' journey into the world of Linux
Thursday, May 19, 2005 by thedon808 | Discussion: OS Wars
I've known about GNU/Linux , and the whole open source thing, for sometime now.
About a year ago I bought the 'Dummies Guide to Fedora Rore1' book. Hoping to
get more into using Linux and also as my girl friend worked on Saturdays
(the only day I could go to visit) I spent a lot of time in the town, so
this book gave me something to do. I spent a few weeks flicking through
it reading bits and pieces I then decided to try it out. I installed it on
my test PC an old PII 350Mhz 128ram 3Gb drive. The install process of
Fedora is quite easy with a nice GUI installer guiding you through what
packages you want installed etc. After it had done its business installing,
about 45-60mins install time, I was thrown into the deep end, with a
rather dated looking desktop theme, my first mission was to connect to
my main XP PC.
'Ok, how do I do that? Ah ha network tool. Oh, no card installed! Humm ok!
Well I tried, where's my XP CD?'
After getting married and moving house I thought it would be great
to have a file server for our music etc. I had already set up a network
between my PC, my wife's, and her Mac. So adding a file server should be
easy enough. Again out comes the old PII install Fedora on it again.
This time I was more careful what I installed as I needed more space
rather than toys, after the install I checked the space left on the
3Gb drive, only 400 or so Mb. Well there goes my conception that Linux
was a smaller operating system than XP.
So now I'm on the hunt for a smaller distro, so google for 'lightweight
Linux distro' all I come up with are the tiny distros eg50Mb. What I
was after was something a little more fuller but not bloated. Then I
came across
Distrowatch.com in the packages list Ubuntu had all I needed, apache,
php, samba, etc. and its on one CD (Fedora Core 3 is 4 CD's).
So set it up downloading overnight. The next night I had planned to install
it (as long it downloaded ok, which it did). The next night I burnt it to
CD and then got carried away designing a cover to print onto the CD. That
was a week ago, last night I actually did the install. Even though it
hasn't got a fancy installer like Fedora I actually found it easier than
I thought to install. The only hard bit would have been disk partitioning
but as it had Fedora on it previously I just reformatted the partitions
that were already there. The only down side to the installation was the
time, over 2 hours later I eventually had the login screen in front of me,
(my only worry was I didn't remember putting the root password in?)
anyhow login fine.
First objective, check root password, 'Great the same as my login password,
really secure!' So promptly change it and then have a little nose around,
the GUI still isn't as nice as XP or OSX it still needs some work, I then
check the network, well the internet works so looks hopeful.
Next objective set up shared folder on the network. 'Oh, samba isn't
installed'. At that point I decided to leave it for another day, as it
was an hour later than I was expecting due to the lengthy install time.
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Reply #62 Wednesday, May 25, 2005 7:55 PM
Reply #63 Friday, May 27, 2005 10:59 AM
I'm in linux. I've setup a share on my windows partition to copy files from linux session to the windows partition, but I keep getting an error saying it can't write to it. I've given that share write access. What's up? I even did the chmod 777 /mnt/hda5 thing to give all permissions.
Also how to I start an app at bootup? I've been looking in various forums, newsgroups, linux website all over the place....my head hurts.
Reply #64 Friday, May 27, 2005 4:05 PM
As for the autostart question, go to your home directory, from the view menu select "show hidden files", then go to the .kde directory then to the Autostart directory. Drop a shortcut to any app in there and it will autostart at boot up.
Reply #65 Friday, May 27, 2005 6:40 PM
| Also how to I start an app at bootup? |
In Fedora, just keep it open when looging off/shutdown.
| I know that some distributions such as Fedora or Redhat don't ship with MP3 decoders due to patenting issues |
Open up Felix, open MP3 file, it says you need RealPlayer. Click link, and download and install.
I dont know if it plays WMAs, I only use RealPlayer on Linux.
Reply #66 Saturday, May 28, 2005 5:43 PM
Reply #68 Sunday, May 29, 2005 10:21 PM
There is no way under KDE to change the color depth on the fly, as in Windows. You have to edit a system configuration file and restart KDE. Be warned though that if you change the color depth to 32, since hardware support isn't 100% great yet, KDE may not accept 32 bits. Bette stick with 24, unless you have an AT or NVidia which are better supported.
Make sure you do a backup of the files you are going to edit, and take a few moments before you restart to make sure you know how to rename files in command line from the console. Cause if X Server fails because it won't run in 32 bits, you'll have to fix it in command line and retrieve your backup.
Nothing that can't be fixed, but I recommend knowing how to fix it before you have to.
Reply #69 Monday, May 30, 2005 6:19 PM
Reply #70 Monday, May 30, 2005 6:53 PM
Didn't load the KDE environment and I guess I don't know as much as I thought about the command line. I found the files again, but I couldn't remember how to edit a text file. I ended up booting from the live CD and fixed the files from there. LOL I love this. I'm actually quite impressed by this OS. Quite fast and reasonably easy to figure out.Reply #71 Tuesday, May 31, 2005 5:51 AM
I figured out typing poweroff (i think) started shutdown process.
Reply #72 Wednesday, June 8, 2005 8:54 AM
Reply #73 Thursday, June 9, 2005 7:59 PM
Thanks
Reply #74 Thursday, June 9, 2005 8:06 PM
You'll see a line that likely reads "default 0" meaning the first menu entry is the default. Just change the 0 to a 1 and the second menu item will be the default.
Or, if you want to change the order of the entries, just edit the order they apppear in the file.
Reply #75 Thursday, June 9, 2005 8:08 PM
Reply #76 Monday, June 13, 2005 10:30 AM
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/index.xml?catid=desktop
http://forums.gentoo.org/
http://gentoo-wiki.com/Main_Page
The wiki is not part of the actual gentoo group so you won't see a link to it on the regular Gentoo pages. The wiki is referred to often in the forums for solving common things like alsa problems or setting up an ATI video card with OpenGL.
Reply #77 Monday, June 13, 2005 10:46 AM
And always remember, Google is your friend.
Reply #78 Monday, June 13, 2005 2:40 PM
| Gentoo's installation manual is some of the best Linux documentation available |
The Redhat documentation is better, imo. It covers every command, and covers much of the basics of the OS (Redhat and Fedora). Also, the graphical install is a serious no-brainer. There's a help pane on the side of the window, covering what the options are and what they do, and what you need to do.
| And always remember, Google is your friend |
What does that have to do with this?
Reply #79 Monday, June 13, 2005 2:54 PM
| The Redhat documentation is better, imo. It covers every command, and covers much of the basics of the OS (Redhat and Fedora). |
Yes RH's documentation is good, but is very RH/Fedora specific. For general Linux configuration docs, I would still have to go Gentoo's.
| And always remember, Google is your friend What does that have to do with this? |
Don't worry about it. Either you get it, or you don't.
Reply #80 Wednesday, June 15, 2005 2:39 PM
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Reply #61 Wednesday, May 25, 2005 5:42 PM
Have fun!
BTW: when you're a little more confortable with Linux, I'll tell you about Karamba! A DesktopX-like widget program. I have a widget that links to Amarok to play my music and display on the desktop the current song with the album cover. Very nice.