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Linux Distro Noob thread of Linux noobs

S

Smurf Yetti

Neo Member
Hey guys,

I have an interesting problem.

One of my keys (a pointless web button) on my laptop is sending tons and tons of commands over and over again without being pressed (I never even noticed this button until this problem started). The fix on my Windows partition was to modify the registry.

My temporary fix on Ubuntu was to write a quick bash statement to run at boot:

xmodmap -e 'keycode 180 = NoSymbol'

However, this doesn't stop the requests, it just makes them do nothing.

Is there a way to make Ubuntu just not recognize the key because otherwise, my laptop's fan kicks on because commands just keep being sent.

Thanks!
 
SailorCosmos

SailorCosmos

Member
Hi guys,

I am having a problem with my mysql installation.

I recently added a new partition with a new filesystem. I shutdown the mysql service and relocated and resynced the mysql folder to the new partition using the 'rysnc' commands and made sure the permissions and ownership of the files were correct. I then went to the my.cnf file and changed the [datadir] line to the new path. Now whenever I go to start mysql I get this error:
"ERROR 2002 (HY000):
Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2)"

If I go back to the my.cnf file and change the [datadir] back to the path where my original installation was, and still is, it works just fine.

Does anyone know why I could be having this problem and how I could fix it? I googled the error message but haven't been able to find a solution that works. I am using CentOS5.
 
E

Elfforkusu

Member
Massa said:
There are two different set of packages for AMD drivers in the Ubuntu repositories, fglrx which follows the standard stability rules, and fglrx-updates which is always updated as AMD releases new drivers.
Click to expand...
Right. Already had fglrx (no updates) selected since fglrx-updates had already exploded in the past (thanks AMD).

Kaboom. Thanks Canonical.

Also reinstaled fglrx. No dice. Switched to a random dude's "fglrx-legacy" ppa once I figured out wtf was going on. Problem solved.
 
E

Elfforkusu

Member
Piercedveil said:
Any recommendations for a C++ IDE? Is Code Blocks the best?
Click to expand...
Visual Studio (on windows, newer the better) or QtCreator (the Qt is misleading, it does generic C++ things very well). Accept no substitutes.

For Linux, since we are in the linux thread, it's QtCreator and a bunch of puny pretenders. code::blocks is almost passable, I guess, but it's not good enough IMO.
 
V

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Elfforkusu said:
Right. Already had fglrx (no updates) selected since fglrx-updates had already exploded in the past (thanks AMD).

Kaboom. Thanks Canonical.

Also reinstaled fglrx. No dice. Switched to a random dude's "fglrx-legacy" ppa once I figured out wtf was going on. Problem solved.
Click to expand...

The point is you shouldn't have selected the updates version on the system in the 1st place.
 
E

Elfforkusu

Member
Vanillalite said:
The point is you shouldn't have selected the updates version on the system in the 1st place.
Click to expand...
I didn't have updates selected.

There is no longer a version of fglrx in the ubuntu 12.04 repos that supports my graphics card. (FWIW, force version doesn't work either, they deleted it and/or just don't have a functional versioning scheme for third party drivers)
 
V

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Elfforkusu said:
I didn't have updates selected.

There is no longer a version of fglrx in the ubuntu 12.04 repos that supports my graphics card. (FWIW, force version doesn't work either, they deleted it and/or just don't have a functional versioning scheme for third party drivers)
Click to expand...

Oh we know. That's why someone on the last page immediately said AMD. LOL

Plus I share your pain in that I also have an AMD graphics card that isn't really supported anymore That being said all the blame lies purely on AMD on this one.
 
E

Elfforkusu

Member
Vanillalite said:
Oh we know. That's why someone on the last page immediately said AMD. LOL

Plus I share your pain in that I also have an AMD graphics card that isn't really supported anymore That being said all the blame lies purely on AMD on this one.
Click to expand...
How? AMD being nitwits got us into this mess, but a point release should not be dropping support for (previously) supported hardware out of the blue.

If I wanted my graphics card to not work, I could've upgraded to 13.04 or 13.10.


Just did a fresh Linux Mint install for my desktop. Looks like they do their own driver management! Hell yeah!
 
P

phoenixyz

Member
Elfforkusu said:
How? AMD being nitwits got us into this mess, but a point release should not be dropping support for (previously) supported hardware out of the blue.
Click to expand...
What are the maintainers supposed to do? Never ever update the package (of a proprietary software!) in the repos again because the company behind it drops support for certain graphics cards?
 
P

peakish

Member
phoenixyz said:
What are the maintainers supposed to do? Never ever update the package (of a proprietary software!) in the repos again because the company behind it drops support for certain graphics cards?
Click to expand...
Imo since Ubuntu is branding itself as the Everyman's Linux they should ensure that installs don't break after security updates, especially on LTS systems. Some years ago Mark Shuttleworth was talking about bulletproof X backups in case anything went wrong with the graphics driver, now I'm not sure if this system wouldn't launch X at all after the upgrade or if everything was just borked, but my point is that stability has been a mayor selling point for them.'

Maintainers could either hold on updates that break compatibility with previously working hardware, give notices of hardware going out of support, maintain legacy drivers such as the PPA that solved this issue... it's likely more difficult than I make it sound but hardware support should not regress. That's exactly what casual users talk about when they think of Linux, stuff breaking.
 
M

Massa

Member
Vanillalite said:
Got bored and updated my Xubuntu install to the latest 14.04 Daily. So far so good here. Beta is only a week away anyways so not like I jumped in pre alpha.

PS: It's great to still see itxaka and Massa posting in this thread after all these years! :D
Click to expand...

Heh, it's been years already? :)

Elfforkusu said:
I didn't have updates selected.

There is no longer a version of fglrx in the ubuntu 12.04 repos that supports my graphics card. (FWIW, force version doesn't work either, they deleted it and/or just don't have a functional versioning scheme for third party drivers)
Click to expand...

Just curious but which is your graphics card? I just checked the Ubuntu repos and it seems like both lucid and lucid-updates are running the same version of the driver, 8.723.1 ("12.2").
 
P

Piercedveil

Member
NotBacon said:
If you're comfortable with the Terminal, I find the vim/gcc toolchain to be very efficient. I've also heard good things about CodeLite.
Click to expand...

I really don't know very much about terminal, but it's something I'd like to look into later on. I will definitely check out CodeLite.

SteveWinwood said:
Hey I'm dumb at all this stuff but maybe this video will be helpful to you as he talks a lot about qt creator and whatnot.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTmAknUbpB0&list=PLckFgM6dUP2hc4iy-IdKFtqR9TeZWMPjm&index=12
Click to expand...

Hey, thanks. This is actually pretty interesting. Qt Creator seems pretty good.
 
E

Elfforkusu

Member
phoenixyz said:
What are the maintainers supposed to do? Never ever update the package (of a proprietary software!) in the repos again because the company behind it drops support for certain graphics cards?
Click to expand...
That would be the idea of having a "fglrx" vs "fglrx-updates", yes.

New releases of the distro (e.g. 13.04 or 13.10 or 14.04) would continue to move forward, since some breakage is unavoidable when the driver maintainers eff off.

Massa said:
Just curious but which is your graphics card? I just checked the Ubuntu repos and it seems like both lucid and lucid-updates are running the same version of the driver, 8.723.1 ("12.2").
Click to expand...
Mobility Radeon HD 4530/4570/545v
 
P

Piercedveil

Member
Vanillalite said:
Eclipse still is a thing even though I know there is a strong hate of it.
Click to expand...

I used to love using it when I was mostly working with Java. I dread using it now after spending so much time with Visual Studio lately. IDE choice really is such a personal thing :p

So I'm trying to set up a dark theme for Qt Creator on Lubuntu and my issue right now is that I am not really able to find the directory.. lol. I tried searching around on Google for a bit but no luck. Any help?
 
Z

zoku88

Member
systemfehler said:
I always wonder why people do that. Why not let software help you with code completion, tracking function names, debugging.
Click to expand...

I personally don't know anyone who uses IDEs. Everyone at my workplaces just uses vim (or emacs. I have someone I know who's boss uses notepad apparently, working on compilers... :-/ .)

Since most people type a whole lot faster than they think, I'd assume, the spead gains of using an IDE for autocomplete or for function tracking probably go down, especially as you get more or more familiar with whatever code-base you are working with.

That, and depending on your work conditions, you might be (network) bandwidth limited (for example, if all of your work is on remote servers.)

Or, I could be completely wrong. I'm really a hardware person, so I haven't used an IDE since like, freshman year of college...
 
E

Elfforkusu

Member
Um... yeah. IDEs are an essential part of modern software development. Code completion, refactoring, debugging, just plain old code browsing... these are things that simply can't be done as quickly in a text editor like vim.

That's not to say productive developers with an entrenched vim workflow should leave their comfort zone. But if you have < 5 years of experience or are just starting, I'd recommend at least thinking about it.

There are cases (government) where coding is done in very restrictive environments, so vim still has its place. It's just ... inferior, frankly.
 
C

charlemagne

Member
zoku88 said:
Since most people type a whole lot faster than they think, I'd assume, the spead gains of using an IDE for autocomplete or for function tracking probably go down, especially as you get more or more familiar with whatever code-base you are working with.
Click to expand...

That might be true, but I think the real benefit of autocomplete is that you don't have to remember exactly what the syntax is. Reducing the mental load wherever possible helps more than just typing speed.
 
Z

zoku88

Member
Elfforkusu said:
Um... yeah. IDEs are an essential part of modern software development. Code completion, refactoring, debugging, just plain old code browsing... these are things that simply can't be done as quickly in a text editor like vim.

That's not to say productive developers with an entrenched vim workflow should leave their comfort zone. But if you have < 5 years of experience or are just starting, I'd recommend at least thinking about it.

There are cases (government) where coding is done in very restrictive environments, so vim still has its place. It's just ... inferior, frankly.
Click to expand...

That depends on the software environment, I guess (as i guess you said). It's not like our environment is really restrictive, it's just so vast (multiple C++ environments, perl, verilog) that an IDE probably wouldn't be well suited. Though, even our pure software people don't seem to use IDEs...

Not sure, I haven't used one in a very long time. And I personally don't even know anyone who uses them (not even the pure software people.)

Though, maybe it's because everything is based on something older (compilers, software implementation of some spec.) Not really sure.

EDIT: Also, please don't misunderstand my original comments. I'm not even saying IDEs are bad/inferior. I was attempting to answer why someone would choose to use a text editor over an IDE.

EDIT2: As a sidenote, I literally just remembered. The last time I used an IDE was for some Java work for a government intelligence agency, haha...
 
S

Slavik81

Member
systemfehler said:
I always wonder why people do that. Why not let software help you with code completion, tracking function names, debugging.
Click to expand...
You can get those things in tools like Vim and Emacs. Seeing the plug-ins, macros and scripts some of my co-workers used quite impressed me. Visual Studio was still better for most of those things, but on the other hand, their computers never froze up for a round of intellisense parsing.

I'm still not as productive in Vim as VS, but I think I need to jump ship. Not sure yet if it's going to be to Qt Creator, Vim or Sublime Text.
 
P

peakish

Member
If you're into video editing you might be interested in the fundraiser that just went up for Pitivi. The goal is to ensure full time contributions from part of their team, stabilise the software and reach 1.0, followed by backers voting on new features to implement. I don't edit but it seems like a neat way to try to fund free software development so I'll throw some dollars to it. I hope it succeeds.

http://fundraiser.pitivi.org
 
N

NotBacon

Member
systemfehler said:
I always wonder why people do that. Why not let software help you with code completion, tracking function names, debugging.
Click to expand...

Elfforkusu said:
Um... yeah. IDEs are an essential part of modern software development. Code completion, refactoring, debugging, just plain old code browsing... these are things that simply can't be done as quickly in a text editor like vim.

That's not to say productive developers with an entrenched vim workflow should leave their comfort zone. But if you have < 5 years of experience or are just starting, I'd recommend at least thinking about it.

There are cases (government) where coding is done in very restrictive environments, so vim still has its place. It's just ... inferior, frankly.
Click to expand...

I actually go back and forth frequently :p

I'm really comfortable with vim and use it almost every day, but I also use Visual Studio, IntelliJ, Android Studio, Eclipse, and Sublime Text almost every day.

Piercedveil said:
I really don't know very much about terminal, but it's something I'd like to look into later on. I will definitely check out CodeLite.
Click to expand...

It's an awesome tool if you take the time to learn it and makes Linux so much more fun. I can fire up vim and start coding in like 2 seconds.

Good resource: http://cli.learncodethehardway.org/book/
 
I

injurai

Banned
I only tough vim out of necessity, and stray away from most all command line work. Occasionally using nano for quick jobs.

Everything else I use winSCP with Sublime Text, seriously the greatest syntax highlighting I've ever encountered. Just great to use.

When it comes to C code, I also stray away from IDE's. Maybe there is an IDE that could help, but C is such a tight language I feel it's more important to rely on what the code itself describes.

For everything else I tend to use IDE's. Definitely in the VS and JetBrains camps.
 
T

Tamanon

Banned
So, I'm in a Red Hat class right now, and want to get some practical experience(programming and scripting) by installing Linux, probably Ubuntu, on my laptop as a dual-boot.

I've been wrestling for a week or so with it because it seems the UEFI won't let me even get to my installation without having the Live USB and booting from there. I had set up a separate partition specifically for it, but nothing I've done has worked.

I've read a bit about Legacy Boot for Win 8, but can't seem to see if it'll give me issues with my Windows 8 installation at all, or if I should just bite the bullet, switch, and get to work. I need Win 8 for school and certain apps, but want Linux for practice and experimentation. I have Ubuntu already on my desktop, but want this for school also.

Anyone know of any negative consequences for switching my laptop to Legacy Boot? Or if that would even help me install.

-edit-

Looks like it's my specific type of HP Pavilion laptop that's to blame, going to have to do a lot of work under the hood to get it up and running.
 
P

phoenixyz

Member
Tamanon said:
So, I'm in a Red Hat class right now, and want to get some practical experience(programming and scripting) by installing Linux, probably Ubuntu, on my laptop as a dual-boot.

I've been wrestling for a week or so with it because it seems the UEFI won't let me even get to my installation without having the Live USB and booting from there. I had set up a separate partition specifically for it, but nothing I've done has worked.

I've read a bit about Legacy Boot for Win 8, but can't seem to see if it'll give me issues with my Windows 8 installation at all, or if I should just bite the bullet, switch, and get to work. I need Win 8 for school and certain apps, but want Linux for practice and experimentation. I have Ubuntu already on my desktop, but want this for school also.

Anyone know of any negative consequences for switching my laptop to Legacy Boot? Or if that would even help me install.

-edit-

Looks like it's my specific type of HP Pavilion laptop that's to blame, going to have to do a lot of work under the hood to get it up and running.
Click to expand...
Installing in a VM might be the more comfortable solution.
 
T

Tamanon

Banned
phoenixyz said:
Installing in a VM might be the more comfortable solution.
Click to expand...

Yeah, once I get Windows re-installed, that'll be what I end up doing.

Had a fatal error on an installation last night, and then tried again from the Live USB. Selected the same partitions and to "delete Ubuntu and reinstall" and somehow it instead wrote over every partition, including my recovery and Windows partitions. So now I have a full Ubuntu laptop which just won't work for school, and all my stuff gone. Luckily I had the important stuff backed up I think.

Learning pains!
 
M

Massa

Member
Tamanon said:
Yeah, once I get Windows re-installed, that'll be what I end up doing.

Had a fatal error on an installation last night, and then tried again from the Live USB. Selected the same partitions and to "delete Ubuntu and reinstall" and somehow it instead wrote over every partition, including my recovery and Windows partitions. So now I have a full Ubuntu laptop which just won't work for school, and all my stuff gone. Luckily I had the important stuff backed up I think.

Learning pains!
Click to expand...

That's a shame, sorry to hear. :(

I'd recommend setting that legacy mode setting *before* reinstalling Windows. And if you feel adventurous give Fedora a try, they have the best UEFI support and it should just work.
 
Y

Young Magus

Junior Member
I came across an error with it using Fedora 20, A few of the files that I have are repeats and have different time stamps in them. Meaning that my library looks something like this:

file1.flac 3:30
file1.flac 0:18
file1.flac 2:00

etc.

Is this a problem that can be fixed and if so how? I got the 0.6.1 download from here

Thanks in Advance
 
S

Slavik81

Member
Massa said:
That's a shame, sorry to hear. :(

I'd recommend setting that legacy mode setting *before* reinstalling Windows. And if you feel adventurous give Fedora a try, they have the best UEFI support and it should just work.
Click to expand...
Fedora is pretty closely related to Red Hat, so it's probably a good choice from that perspective as well.
 
L

L034

Member
systemfehler said:
I always wonder why people do that. Why not let software help you with code completion, tracking function names, debugging.
Click to expand...

With a good vimrc, vim will look for completions in include files in C for instance.
I haven't found how to do this with sublime yet, but I haven't looked that hard
 
T

tuffy

Member
L034 said:
With a good vimrc, vim will look for completions in include files in C for instance.
Click to expand...
This is yanked right out of the vim wiki, as I recall:
Code: 
function! Mosh_Tab_Or_Complete()
    if col('.')>1 && strpart( getline('.'), col('.')-2, 3) =~ '^\w'
        return "\<C-N>"
    else
        return "\<Tab>"
endfunction

inoremap <Tab> <C-R>=Mosh_Tab_Or_Complete()<CR>
The tab key conditionally performs indent or autocompletion based on the cursor's position while in insert mode.
 
L

lmpaler

Member
Hey Linux GAF, been a long time since I've posted here. Been using Sabayon KDE and it's great.

Anything new in the Linux world?
 
S

sdijoseph

Member
I am trying to dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 on my computer, and I already have Windows 7 installed. I am running into a problem where when I try to shrink my c volume in disk management, the message "querying volume for available shrink" hangs there. I also tried using a partition assistant program to create a new partition and that didn't work either. Does anyone know of a way to fix this issue with disk management?
 
L

LaneDS

Member
What's the proper way to troubleshoot X11 forwarding issues? Having an issue where once DISPLAY is exported, things like xterm hang and I'm unable to find logs that point to what's going on. Seems to be user specific too.
 
V

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
lmpaler said:
Hey Linux GAF, been a long time since I've posted here. Been using Sabayon KDE and it's great.

Anything new in the Linux world?
Click to expand...

Biggest news has to be the whole Cent OS and RHEL teams getting buddy buddy and announcing a partner ship.

I know it won't effect much of us personally as it doesn't really matter for dekstop stuff, but this is potentially rather massive for the enterprise market.
 
S

systemfehler

Member
Slavik81 said:
Well, there was quite a stir when Mark Shuttleworth posted about losing graciously.

I only ever wrote one upstart script, but I found it really easy. I hope this is actually for the better.
Click to expand...

Time will tell. I hang around at the OFTC IRC network a lot and many people there actually are happy with the switch to systemd. I can see the issues with systemd (portability for example) but so far upstart has the same issue. Depending too much on Ubuntu is never an option for me - it should be the other way around with Debian leading and if Ubuntu wants a great code base they have to "cave". I followed the CTTR discussion and to be honest same of those TC members are really, really childish and just protecting their own interestes instead of the Debian projects.
 
G

GameplayWhore

Member
lmpaler said:
Hey Linux GAF, been a long time since I've posted here. Been using Sabayon KDE and it's great.
Click to expand...

Ooh. I'm suddenly ready to shift distros again. How is Sabayan? I never really got a chance to throw myself properly into Gentoo (a shame, since I cut my teeth on FreeBSD), and it looks to be related. Is there anything I should know about it specifically, any quirks compared to stuff like arch, opensuse, or mint?
 
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