Linux Questions

[Goober]

I have had more then my share of Microsoft. For a good long time. Everything usually works fine, but i am getting sick and tired of the little things, like programs randomly crashing, instability, etc.

So, I think that I want to try linux. I have Mandrake Linux 10.0, copied for me by a friend, on 3 CDs, one being a Boot disk. I have been told that it is easy to install, just pop in the disk, and folow the instructions. However, i have about a billion and a half questions. Now, instead of asking them here, i wasn wondering is there is like a Forum, or a "How to" guide for Linux os something like that somewhere that somebody knows of?

Or does Linux come with a program that gives you like a tour of it, and how it works? Either way, i am going to need help with this, but i do think that it will be worth the hassle by not having to constantly wait for Windows to work again, those error messages, spyware, etc.

So, can anybody help me? It would be much appreciated!

 

[DaEezT]

The best place to look is the official page of your distro. They usually have step by step install guides, FAQs etc and some also have an official forum where you can ask questions.

I personally run gentoo and they have an excellent board and a very good install guide, but it's still a bit too much for your first taste of linux unless you are into computer sience

 

[t92300]

ok
for a book thats quite in depth try reading RUTE can be found at http://berty.dyndns.org/rute/ or brought online through amazon.

I also sugget reading Linux for windows addicts b Michael Joseph Miller, not only just for the linux info but for the humor as well. You can probably get this of amazon

for mandrake setup urpmi. to find mirrors and instructions go to http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ it has a configuration instrucions

Make sure your mouse has 3 buttons, the middle button can be used for pasting, highlight the text to copy it then click the middle mouse button to paste

other advice
be prepared to make mistakes
expect to not know every thing straight away you need to unlearn the windows way of doing things and learn the linux way of doing things
find a lug or linux mailing list. I am a member of the local mailing list and this has proved to be an extremely helpful thiing. ask questions on it.
google, need i say more

cant think of any thing else at the moment

hope the above helps


t932300

 

[Padma]

First, a few links:

LinuxQuestions.org
Mandrake Users Board
MUB Easy Urpmi Mirror (The zarb site has had some hardware problems recently. )

What the above posters have said all holds true. I have a few more specific things to mention. First, you said you have MDK 10.0. Do you know if it is the Community Edition or the Official Edition? (Both are free downloads.) If Community, you will want to upgrade to Official as soon as you can, because the Community Editions are essentially final public beta releases. The Official Edition has a boatload of bugfixes, and is the *supported* version of that release. We can help you with the upgrade process.

Are you prepared to do away with your Windows partition? If not, you will really need to get the Mdk 10.1 Official CDs. (Or get your friend to burn you a copy of Knoppix 3.7 to use as a partitioning aid.) All distros released around this time last year, that used the Linux 2.6 kernel, had problems with the partition table. Everything would appear to work, and you could boot into Linux fine, but you Windows partition(s) would be unbootable. (You could still *read* them fine from Linux.) The problem was corrected in later versions of software, like Knoppix 3.7, Mdk 10.1, etc.

In any case, if you want to keep your WIndows partition, run a defrag before you install Linux. And maybe run it again, just to be sure. When you boot the install disk, it will give you the opportunity to select where to put Linux. If you don't have existing spare partitions, you can tell it to use free space at the end of the WIndows partition, or you can make them yourself. You will need, at a minimum, one "swap" partition (rule of thumb: twice as large as your RAM, unless you have 512M or more, in which case 512M is sufficient), and a "/" (root) partition of 2 - 5 GB. If you have Mandrake auto-parition, it will create a "swap", a "/", and a "/home" partition by default.

"/home" is where user data is kept. Loosely analogous to "My Documents" in Windows. If you follow the instructions during the installation you will create a personal user ("RealGoober" ? ) to use as your login. (It is advisable to *never* log in directly as "root", for security reasons. There are tools (notably "su") to allow you to access root functions as a normal user.) So you should end up with a directory named "/home/RealGoober", which will be where all your personal config files and documents, and everything else will be.

As has been said, be ready to make mistakes. One beautiful thing is, you almost *never* have to reinstall if you muck something up. Just visit LQ or the MUB and ask questions, and we can walk you through fixes that you can do directly And no more rebooting just because you installed new software!

 

[Chairman Meow]

First, a few links:

LinuxQuestions.org
Mandrake Users Board
MUB Easy Urpmi Mirror (The zarb site has had some hardware problems recently. )

What the above posters have said all holds true. I have a few more specific things to mention. First, you said you have MDK 10.0. Do you know if it is the Community Edition or the Official Edition? (Both are free downloads.) If Community, you will want to upgrade to Official as soon as you can, because the Community Editions are essentially final public beta releases. The Official Edition has a boatload of bugfixes, and is the *supported* version of that release. We can help you with the upgrade process.

Are you prepared to do away with your Windows partition? If not, you will really need to get the Mdk 10.1 Official CDs. (Or get your friend to burn you a copy of Knoppix 3.7 to use as a partitioning aid.) All distros released around this time last year, that used the Linux 2.6 kernel, had problems with the partition table. Everything would appear to work, and you could boot into Linux fine, but you Windows partition(s) would be unbootable. (You could still *read* them fine from Linux.) The problem was corrected in later versions of software, like Knoppix 3.7, Mdk 10.1, etc.

In any case, if you want to keep your WIndows partition, run a defrag before you install Linux. And maybe run it again, just to be sure. When you boot the install disk, it will give you the opportunity to select where to put Linux. If you don't have existing spare partitions, you can tell it to use free space at the end of the WIndows partition, or you can make them yourself. You will need, at a minimum, one "swap" partition (rule of thumb: twice as large as your RAM, unless you have 512M or more, in which case 512M is sufficient), and a "/" (root) partition of 2 - 5 GB. If you have Mandrake auto-parition, it will create a "swap", a "/", and a "/home" partition by default.

"/home" is where user data is kept. Loosely analogous to "My Documents" in Windows. If you follow the instructions during the installation you will create a personal user ("RealGoober" ? ) to use as your login. (It is advisable to *never* log in directly as "root", for security reasons. There are tools (notably "su") to allow you to access root functions as a normal user.) So you should end up with a directory named "/home/RealGoober", which will be where all your personal config files and documents, and everything else will be.

As has been said, be ready to make mistakes. One beautiful thing is, you almost *never* have to reinstall if you muck something up. Just visit LQ or the MUB and ask questions, and we can walk you through fixes that you can do directly And no more rebooting just because you installed new software!

I can definitely attest to the bugginess of Mdk 10.0 Community Edition. If that's what you have, then get a newer version. Shortly after 10.0 CE was released, I upgraded my copy of Mandrake 9.2 to that, and it introduced about 7 boatloads of bugs... most programs wouldn't even run at all. To make it worse, the partition table got messed up so I couldn't run Windows. (Hey, I need my Civ fix...) So, I ended up starting over and reinstalling Mandrake 9.2, which I still have on my computer, because I'm too lazy to bother upgrading to 10.1. Basically, 10.0 Community is a beta edition, and it's generally not a good idea to run a beta edition unless you want to do some debugging...

If you currently have Windows XP, then you'll probably end up having to completely reformat, since XP has an annoying habit of placing system files at the end of the disk, making non-destructive repartitioning impossible, regardless of how many times you defrag (since defrag doesn't move system files)

Also, probably a better analogy for /home would be "Documents and Settings" in Windows: it holds, along with your documents (in Mandrake your documents are placed in a folder called Documents in your home directory), configuration files for programs and things like that, though those are usually kept hidden by default.

 

[AceChilla]

I have one question: Do you have to be a computer geek to operate Linux succesfully?

 

[Chairman Meow]

I have one question: Do you have to be a computer geek to operate Linux succesfully?

No. It all depends on which distribution you use. If you use an easy-to-use one like Mandrake, Mepis, or Suse, then you probably won't have much difficulty.

All three of the Linux distributions I mentioned above use KDE for the desktop, which is very similar in appearance to Windows, and should be easy for anyone who has used Windows to pick up.

Now, there are also distributions that you do have to be to be a geek to understand, like Gentoo, and, to some extent, Slackware, but still, once they're installed, assuming you have it go straight to the graphical interface and you use something like KDE, they're also simple to use once installed.

 

[Padma]

I have one question: Do you have to be a computer geek to operate Linux succesfully?

Certainly not. Some distros (Linux From Scratch, Gentoo, Slackware, etc.) require more "geekiness", but there are a lot of good, easy-to-install/easy-to-use distros out there, like Mandrake, Ubuntu, Knoppix, etc.

I actually find my Mandrake *easier* to use/maintain than Windows! And I can do it all from the KDE GUI (window interface vs. command line).

 

[phoenix_night]

Is there a decent Linux newsreader? (I use Newsbin Pro in Windows).

By decent, I mean has to support .nzb files (download lists).

 

[Goober]

Thanks a lot for the advice and such guys, I have been reading through some articles, and such, I just still need to figure out how to partition this HD.

You can partition slave HDs, right? Wait, no, sorry, wrong word, I meant "secondary" HDs.

 

[Chairman Meow]

Thanks a lot for the advice and such guys, I have been reading through some articles, and such, I just still need to figure out how to partition this HD.

You can partition slave HDs, right? Wait, no, sorry, wrong word, I meant "secondary" HDs.

Yes, you can partition any hard drive, including a slave drive (Down with political correctness!) Just remember that if you're going to dual-boot with Windows, to install Windows first and then Linux.

 

[Goober]

Dual-boot?

Er, I was told, that, when i cranking this dinosaur of a computer up (over 2 years old!!!), it would give me an option of Linux or Windows.

Also, when i start installing linux, will there be easy, step-by-step instructions, or will I need to figure a lot of stuff out on my own? Its Mandrake, like I previously said.

And how do you partition HDs anyway?

 

[IbnSina]

If you have a dedicated hard drive for your linux (sounds like you do), most distros will partition it for you if you ask them to. Then you don't have to worry about it. Typically when you install there will be detailed step-by-step instructions on the screen as you go. When it comes time to partition, just make sure you tell it to do its thing on the unformatted HD - not your existing windows drive. The installation program will make it clear which is which. After that, the next time you boot, you'll be offered a choice of operating systems.

 

[Chairman Meow]

Dual-boot?

Er, I was told, that, when i cranking this dinosaur of a computer up (over 2 years old!!!), it would give me an option of Linux or Windows.

Also, when i start installing linux, will there be easy, step-by-step instructions, or will I need to figure a lot of stuff out on my own? Its Mandrake, like I previously said.

And how do you partition HDs anyway?

Yes, if you set it up as dual-boot, you'll have a choice when you start the computer of whether you want to use Windows or Linux. If the computer is only two years old, then it probably would work fine with dual-booting. Of course, that's up to you if you want to keep Windows around.
Basically, when you start the installer, it will give you instructions for what to do on each screen. Mandrake is pretty good about explaining things well, instead of making you figure them out yourself (if you want a challenge, try installing Slackware!)

Partitioning with Mandrake is pretty easy... here's a screenshot of the manual partitioning screen:

Basically, what you'll want to do is delete the existing partitions (note that before you start the install, you should have anything imporant from those partitions backed up), then add new partitions... you'll tell it the size and type of the partition, and it will prompt you for a mount point for each partition. Generally, you'll want a swap, / and /home partition, assuming you don't dual boot. If you don't dual-boot with Windows, then probably a good scheme would be to put / at the beginning of the drive with around 5 GB, a swap partition of about 500MB, and a /home partition taking up the rest of the drive. As for the types of the partitions, Mandrake will want to make them "Linux Native," or ext2. I'd recommend using "Journalized ext3" instead, so you don't have to wait for a file system check if the power goes out or for some reason the computer isn't shut down properly.

By the way, what's the size of your hard drive? That'll affect whether you could dual-boot or not.

 

[Goober]

Hmm, interesting.

And I have 2 Hardrives, a 40 Gig, and a 160 Gig.

i could do it on either, does size matter? And of course I am keeping windows around, I will just use Linux for the things I usually do, like Internet, E-mail, word processing, etc. Windows will be for Games, etc.

 

[Padma]

And the Mandrake installation is even easier tha WIndows (IMO). You *do* have to know a few things about your PC, like what drives you have, but it is very clear. You just answer a few questions as it progresses, and *voila*, it's done.

 

[Chairman Meow]

Hmm, interesting.

And I have 2 Hardrives, a 40 Gig, and a 160 Gig.

i could do it on either, does size matter? And of course I am keeping windows around, I will just use Linux for the things I usually do, like Internet, E-mail, word processing, etc. Windows will be for Games, etc.

Ah, ok... you'll have plenty of space. You could put a 10-15GB partition on the 40GB drive for Windows, a 5-10GB / partition, a 500MB swap partition, and the rest of the first drive for /home, then format the entire second drive as FAT32 (the type used by earlier versions of Windows), and then use that for storing files so you can access it from both Windows and Linux.

 

[Goober]

Hmm, i think, in fact, im fairly confident of what i need to do, but i am having a problem with the install for the Mandrake linux. I stick in the disk, and it comes up with a series of options. One of them is "Install". I click that, and it tells me that i need to restart my compter. I do that, and, well, nothing happens. Like, I open up the CD again, go to that menu, click on install, and it tells me to reboot my computer. I assume that some sort of auto-run program should come up after that, but it doesn't.

So, what am i doing wrong? Or is the disk corrupt?

Thanks for all the help, btw, you guys rule! And yes, i filled that little 40 quite fast, so i went for the 160. 200 Gigs should be enough for anybody! (Watch me eat those words in like 2 years)

 

[Chairman Meow]

Sounds like it's not booting from the CD. You'll need to add your CD drive to your BIOS boot list. When your computer starts up, there is a key that you can press to enter your BIOS setup, it's usually something like F1 or Delete. When the computer starts (before Windows starts loading), repeatedly press that key until the BIOS setup comes up. There should be a menu at the top of the screen, and one of the options is probably something like "boot". Go to that menu, and there should be an option "Boot order." In that, make sure your CD drive is in that list, before your hard drive. Save the settings, then reboot your computer with the CD in, and it should work.

Sorry I can't be more specific, but it's very different depending on the computer.

 

[Goober]

Hmm, ok, so in the like 1 second before the Windows things comes up, randomly press buttons. Ok, got it.

Thanks, i hope this works. My computer is fast to start up, but, once it gets going, then the Adware and crap thats on it kicks in *sigh*