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Linux Distro Noob thread of Linux noobs

Massa

Member
OH SNAP WHERE IS ANDREX?!?!?!

OMG Ubuntu

Debian, the foundation upon which many Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, are based, is to switch to Xfce as its default desktop environment.

Dropping the zero, Gnome 3, and getting with the hero, Xfce!

Hah, that's just Joey Hess trying to stir up shit again. He failed once, he will fail again.
 

phoenixyz

Member
Xfce is great, but I don't really get the fuss about default desktop environments. With all the big distributions (Debian, Arch, Gentoo, Fedora/Red Hat and those based on them) you can install whichever one you want anyway.
 

Onemic

Member
Anyone know how to display all of the lines of a given file where the last field is one digit long?

I've been trying to figure out how to do this in terminal for over an hour, still have no clue how to do it.
 

peakish

Member
Anyone know how to display all of the lines of a given file where the last field is one digit long?

I've been trying to figure out how to do this in terminal for over an hour, still have no clue how to do it.
Some AWK shenanigans usually work great when working with fields. My attempt:

Code:
awk '{
if(length($NF) == 1) # controls if the length of the last field in a line is 1
  print $0 # prints entire line
}' FILE
 

Onemic

Member
Some AWK shenanigans usually work great when working with fields. My attempt:

Code:
awk '{
if(length($NF) == 1) # controls if the length of the last field in a line is 1
  print $0 # prints entire line
}' FILE

That can't be it because it's supposed to use grep
 
So I am using Universal Media Server to stream stuff in my network (TV, mobile phone, PS3). For transcoding purposes (speed, quality, etc.) I need mencoder which is part of mplayer as far as I know. Now on my Debian unstable I can't install mencoder because it relies on libx264-123. However on my system (probably a update I didn't check) I only have -124, -133, -138, -140. Is there a simple way to install the one I need or at least force mencoder to use one of the files I have installed?

Edit: Found libx264-123 here: http://packages.debian.org/de/wheezy/libx264-123 that works for me until someone updates mencoder/mplayer

Now I guess I just have to bring UMS 3.1.0 to work like 2.6.5 and I am good to go.
 
openSUSE 13.1 is out!
http://software.opensuse.org/131/en

I'm trying it for it being a stable release with Gnome 3.10.

When I've tried Gnome 3.10 before, with a pre-release Fedora 20 and with Ubuntu Gnome 13.10 with Gnome 3.10 PPAs, my Windows Live account wouldn't connect in Empathy. Actually, I had that same issue with Kubuntu 13.10 as well. It works with Ubuntu Gnome 13.10 without 3.10. I'm hoping Empathy works with openSUSE 13.1.

13.1, 3.10, 13.10. It's getting confusing. :)
 

Young Magus

Junior Member
So I manage to have the infamous Banshee error with the whole "Cant find the album even thought the music site has it" I thought it was a software problem so I tried to see if there was an update for it and I came across this error.

Code:
An unresolvable problem occurred while initializing the package information.

Please report this bug against the 'update-manager' package and include the following error message:

'E:Encountered a section with no Package: header, E:Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/security.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_precise-security_multiverse_binary-i386_Packages, E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.'

What does this mean and is this a huge issue?

Also, I`ve been thinking of upgrading from 12.04 LTS Ubuntu to something else, seeing the two new releases above has gotten me interested in both. Should I go back to Mint or see what this Opensuse is about?
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
https://www.system76.com/desktops/model/sabt1

Haswell based all-in-one System76 FINALLY announced!
LtNDbKz.png


Been waiting like a year for this!
AU7Amsc.gif
 

Milchmann

Member
Are there any cheap tablets that can run linux (not android)? I'm looking for a cheap device to tinker around with.
Otherwise I would probably buy a Raspberry Pi.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
OH SNAP WHERE IS ANDREX?!?!?!

OMG Ubuntu

Debian, the foundation upon which many Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, are based, is to switch to Xfce as its default desktop environment.

Dropping the zero, Gnome 3, and getting with the hero, Xfce!

If this accelerates development of Gnome OS I'm all for it.
 

swecide

Banned
Are there any cheap tablets that can run linux (not android)? I'm looking for a cheap device to tinker around with.
Otherwise I would probably buy a Raspberry Pi.

Depending on what you mean by "tinker" a Raspberry Pi could either be perfect or the complete opposite. What do you plan to do with it?
 

Young Magus

Junior Member
Man Chromium is tripping on the flash support, how do I add flash on chromium? If this is impossible how can I transfer content over to other browsers? Preferably opera?

I'm on mint 16 if that helps solve my situation.
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Man Chromium is tripping on the flash support, how do I add flash on chromium? If this is impossible how can I transfer content over to other browsers? Preferably opera?

I'm on mint 16 if that helps solve my situation.

Just use actual Chrome vs Chromium.
 

Massa

Member
Man Chromium is tripping on the flash support, how do I add flash on chromium? If this is impossible how can I transfer content over to other browsers? Preferably opera?

I'm on mint 16 if that helps solve my situation.

There are two versions of Flash, one that works with pretty much every Linux browser and uses the nsplugin API and is no longer developed (11.2), and there's the new one that works with Chrome/Chromium only and is only distributed with Chrome, and it's called PepperFlash. You can find Pepper Flash packages on the internet to get it working with Chromium, if Mint is based on Ubuntu that should be pretty easy.

Other browsers should offer to import your data from Chromium when you first launch them. Don't know about Opera but Firefox definitely does that.
 

Onemic

Member
How would you go about making a script that adds numbers in a list and displays the total?

i.e. add 4 -3 12 9

produces 22 as output

I know you have to use a for loop, but that's about it.
 

peakish

Member
How would you go about making a script that adds numbers in a list and displays the total?

i.e. add 4 -3 12 9

produces 22 as output

I know you have to use a for loop, but that's about it.
In bash, $@ contains all input arguments to a script. I always need to look up the parentheses needed for addition, but produced this script.

Code:
#!/bin/bash

SUM=0
for VAL in $@; do
    SUM=$((${SUM}+${VAL}))
done

echo ${SUM}

Code:
$ ./add.sh 4 -3 12 9
22
 

Onemic

Member
In bash, $@ contains all input arguments to a script. I always need to look up the parentheses needed for addition, but produced this script.

Code:
#!/bin/bash

SUM=0
for VAL in $@; do
    SUM=$((${SUM}+${VAL}))
done

echo ${SUM}

Code:
$ ./add.sh 4 -3 12 9
22

thanks, it worked.

Is there a good freely available resource for teaching terminal?
 

peakish

Member
thanks, it worked.

Is there a good freely available resource for teaching terminal?
bash tutorials are readily available, I'm not sure if there's any one in particular I'd recommend. I too want to become proficient at it since I can only produce basic scripts atm.
 

jvm

Gamasutra.
Ok, I finally have some time to upgrade.

Is Ubuntu GNOME still the best choice if I want a GNOME desktop? What's Fedora doing nowadays? Last time I tried Fedora, there were some difficulties (can't recall what exactly...)
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Ok, I finally have some time to upgrade.

Is Ubuntu GNOME still the best choice if I want a GNOME desktop? What's Fedora doing nowadays? Last time I tried Fedora, there were some difficulties (can't recall what exactly...)

Skip Fedora. Just to many hassles.

Now that Ubuntu has an officially recognized Gnome version it's sort of become the defacto best.
 

Massa

Member
Ok, I finally have some time to upgrade.

Is Ubuntu GNOME still the best choice if I want a GNOME desktop? What's Fedora doing nowadays? Last time I tried Fedora, there were some difficulties (can't recall what exactly...)

I use Fedora 20 and I love it. It's definitely the best distribution as far as GNOME integration goes, since that's what most GNOME developers use now. For example the new "Software" app from GNOME will be in Fedora 20, and that's the first distribution to properly integrate it. Same with Wayland support.

That said, it's not perfect for everyone. If your hardware uses proprietary drivers, for instance, you'll have to install them manually since they have a 100% open source software policy. Immediately after installing Fedora you should add rpmfusion.org to your system.

I'd recommend giving it a try if you're interested.
 

jvm

Gamasutra.
Running Fedora 19 at the moment, hoping there's a smooth upgrade to 20 in the near future.

Installed RPM Fusion access, seems OK. The fonts are a bit different and some things didn't go as expected at first, but now fine.
 

injurai

Banned
Oh man Xfce looks really nice, I don't know why I never gave it a look before.

I think I'm going to take my first dive into Arch with Xfce.
 

Massa

Member
Running Fedora 19 at the moment, hoping there's a smooth upgrade to 20 in the near future.

Installed RPM Fusion access, seems OK. The fonts are a bit different and some things didn't go as expected at first, but now fine.

If you need anything let me know! You can easily change the font rendering to look like Ubuntu's if you want to.
 

jvm

Gamasutra.
If you need anything let me know! You can easily change the font rendering to look like Ubuntu's if you want to.
Thanks!

I followed this guide:
http://chasethedevil.blogspot.com/2013/08/better-fonts-in-fedora-than-in-ubuntu.html

Looks beautiful now, especially since I switched back to the Liberation family of fonts.

Can I easily upgrade now that 20 is out?

Also, my fans seem to get into a situation where they run all the time at audible levels, even though nothing appears to be pushing CPU usage over 20% or so. This is a Toshiba L855-S5210 laptop. Any idea what's up there?
 

Massa

Member
Thanks!

I followed this guide:
http://chasethedevil.blogspot.com/2013/08/better-fonts-in-fedora-than-in-ubuntu.html

Looks beautiful now, especially since I switched back to the Liberation family of fonts.

Can I easily upgrade now that 20 is out?

Also, my fans seem to get into a situation where they run all the time at audible levels, even though nothing appears to be pushing CPU usage over 20% or so. This is a Toshiba L855-S5210 laptop. Any idea what's up there?

You can easily upgrade. Only note is that due to a bug you should run 'yum update --enablerepo=updates-testing fedup' to get a newer version of fedup, the upgrade utility. So basically:

$ sudo yum update --enablerepo=updates-testing fedup

You should have fedup 0.8, not 0.7. Next:

$ sudo fedup --network 20 --nogpgcheck --debuglog fedupdebug.log

Then reboot the system, select the newly created "System Upgrade" option on Grub, and voila.

As for your CPU running hot it could be tracker indexing your files. Try upgrading the system and using it for a while, if you still have the problem then we can look at other things.
 

zoku88

Member
Is it possible to use Elementary's Pantheon Terminal whilst running Xfce as my WM/shell?

Without having tried it, I would think so. I doubt it would actually have runtime dependencies on anything pantheon has.

For example, I use pantheon-notify as my notify server. (I'm actually not sure what this class of applications is called? I think servers is right?)

Anyway, there's nothing lost by just trying it out.
 

jvm

Gamasutra.
$ sudo yum update --enablerepo=updates-testing fedup

You should have fedup 0.8, not 0.7. Next:

$ sudo fedup --network 20 --nogpgcheck --debuglog fedupdebug.log

Then reboot the system, select the newly created "System Upgrade" option on Grub, and voila.
Edit: Ok, I guess the idea is to install fedup first (version 0.7) and then the standard update works. That's what I did, and I now have fedup-0.8.0-3.fc19 installed.

I just want to be sure. The first line does what? When I run it, I see this:

Package(s) fedup available, but not installed.
No packages marked for update

So basically, it sees the package but doesn't bother to install it...was I also supposed to execute some sort of yum install command there?
 

Massa

Member
You're right, you need to install fedup first. Sorry about that. :)

updates-testing is a staging repository for updates before they're pushed to all users. fedup had some issues that were fixed there, but it looks like the update was fast tracked from updates-testing to updates so that line is kind of redundant now. Either way, if you have fedup 0.8 you're good to go.
 
My Debian installation (especially Chrome) feels a bit sluggish. Boot time, starting of apps seems to take longer than a few weeks before. Is there a easy way to measure performance so I could compare it with a new installation? Or maybe find out what is taking the system so damn long - maybe a unnecessary IO operation.

Some technical stuff: eg. Chrome runs from a SSD but creates its cache in the local RAM which is gone after I close it but that should speed up things not slow them down during the start.
 

Massa

Member
My Debian installation (especially Chrome) feels a bit sluggish. Boot time, starting of apps seems to take longer than a few weeks before. Is there a easy way to measure performance so I could compare it with a new installation? Or maybe find out what is taking the system so damn long - maybe a unnecessary IO operation.

Some technical stuff: eg. Chrome runs from a SSD but creates its cache in the local RAM which is gone after I close it but that should speed up things not slow them down during the start.

Try bootchart. As for Chrome, try using a clean profile temporarily to see if that changes anything.
 

jvm

Gamasutra.
You're right, you need to install fedup first. Sorry about that. :)

updates-testing is a staging repository for updates before they're pushed to all users. fedup had some issues that were fixed there, but it looks like the update was fast tracked from updates-testing to updates so that line is kind of redundant now. Either way, if you have fedup 0.8 you're good to go.
Trying the upgrade now. Wish me luck!

Edit: At 50%...
 
I signed into Steam to find Dust: An Elysian Tail is on Linux.

A year ago, I was considering buying a 360 for cheap after the next Xbox was released just for the few XBLA games that interested me (or maybe buying the next Xbox if it somehow turned out to be backwards compatible), but now they are all on Linux.

Super Meat Boy
Dust: An Elysian Tail
Bastion
Fez
Mark of the Ninja

(I had Super Meat Boy from a Humble Bundle a couple of years ago but had technical issues that don't exist on the Steam version.)
 

jvm

Gamasutra.
w00t!

I came through the other side. Somehow gnome-shell threw an error upon first login, but it's working OK now.

FC20, dude.
 
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