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Linux Distro Noob thread of Linux noobs

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
panda21 said:
if you reinstall (and maybe set your home folder to a separate partition to save losing stuff if you ever decide to change) and don't set your sources.list to a previous ubuntu release i would be amazed it if didnt work :p if the live cd works the install should work

Eh I've reinstalled it like four times by now so I'm kinda burnt out. :lol
 

itxaka

Defeatist
Flying_Phoenix said:
CentOS is out-of-date?


Not in the meaning that is "old" but the packages are much more older than any other distro due to stability issues, as they prefer to go with older less bugged packages.

That means that a lot of functionality in newer packages and in the kernel is not available.

For example, the ath9k module used on a lot of wireless cards today (especially laptops I think) is not available on CentOS while in any other distro is already stable and on the kernel. Same with noveau (nvidia open-source driver) and a lot of other modules.

I think that the kernel is the easiest way of seeing it, as new kernels supports much more hardware.


Another example is php. Im not a web developer so I don't really care about it but I heard about problems with the different php versions and CentOS only ships php 5.1.6 (Ubuntu hardy had a higher version and it was launched on March 6th, 2009)

Another one is as I said NetworkManager. Is the default network manger for almost all distros out there but on CentOS it doesn't even come by default. You have to make sure that is installed so you can manage your networks easily.

Thanksfully we are not far away for the launch of Red Hat 6 (and consequently CentOS 6) which if the betas are any indications, is gonna be a sweet upgrade with a lot of functionality.
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Okay Linux GAF we are to one of the problems I've had with Linux before, but never quite new what to do to really get things working like "normal".

Basically Firefox in Ubuntu 10.04 is currently 3.6.3, and Mozilla finally pushed out 3.6.4 earlier this week. Now I CAN go to Mozilla and download the tar of the new version, but that's not really what I want to do.

I mean sure that gives me the new version, but the old version is still installed and stuff. What I'd LIKE to do is upgrade the already prepackaged Firefox to 3.6.4. In windows this is easy as fuck because there is a check for updates option under help. For some dumb reason this isn't in the Ubuntu version because I guess they want to keep everything running through their own update system or some dumbass shit.

Well it's Friday and it hasn't been pushed to the update channel yet. I mean what if this was a much needed security flaw fix? This just seems redonkulous IMO. What can I do Linux GAF?
 

itxaka

Defeatist
Brettison said:
Okay Linux GAF we are to one of the problems I've had with Linux before, but never quite new what to do to really get things working like "normal".

Basically Firefox in Ubuntu 10.04 is currently 3.6.3, and Mozilla finally pushed out 3.6.4 earlier this week. Now I CAN go to Mozilla and download the tar of the new version, but that's not really what I want to do.

I mean sure that gives me the new version, but the old version is still installed and stuff. What I'd LIKE to do is upgrade the already prepackaged Firefox to 3.6.4. In windows this is easy as fuck because there is a check for updates option under help. For some dumb reason this isn't in the Ubuntu version because I guess they want to keep everything running through their own update system or some dumbass shit.

Well it's Friday and it hasn't been pushed to the update channel yet. I mean what if this was a much needed security flaw fix? This just seems redonkulous IMO. What can I do Linux GAF?
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FirefoxNewVersion
:D
 

itxaka

Defeatist
Brettison said:
Thanks though I still don't get why it takes them forever to get it out. Seriously "some delay till it can be downloaded and run". I mean the program is already done. How hard is it to get out an update in your update channel. :lol

Yep, I don't know why. It's kind of strange because I already got 3.6.4 on 10.10 alpha, updated a few hours ago so it should be already available for 10.04 :lol

Edit: also if you use a 386 installation you can upgrade your packages from http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ubuntuzilla/index.php?title=Main_Page

I don't know about how it works but I can see they already have 3.6.4 in there.
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Sadly I'm using the 64bit version. I mean I guess I understand why they do it this way, but it seems like it takes them forever to get updates out. Maybe I'm over simplifying things, but it seems like it should be quicker than this.
 
Yep, I agree with you Brettison. Ubuntu's update system is pretty awesome, but the problem is that right now it's only used for fixing of severe bugs and security issues. In order words, regular apps don't get updated.

Ubuntu devs are looking into that right now, mainly because of Firefox, because it's such an important app for Ubuntu and its release schedule doesn't align with Ubuntu's. They want app devs to be able to push updates to current Ubuntu releases and are trying to get this working for either 10.10 or 11.04 (I believe, haven't checked lately). Obviously, besides the big technical/logistical side of things there's also the huge security issues with this, so it might be some time before we can use it.

But alas, right now there isn't a great option to update apps besides ppa's (there's the daily ppa for Firefox which has alpha/beta/testing versions and the security ppa which contains 3.6.4).

Like you said, the Firefox .tar from the Mozilla website isn't exactly the greatest option. You'd have to replace launchers and everything (although I believe all settings/bookmarks/history is saved already). The security ppa seems like a good option though, I didn't know about it before myself, anyway. :)

(Sorry if I'm explaining basic info to you, this is just a general explanation also for people new to Ubuntu)


//Edit: here's the related blueprint
 

panda21

Member
i think it takes so long because for like 90% of the stuff in the ubuntu repositories you really wouldn't want it instantly updating to the latest version without it being tested first, because otherwise it could very well end up breaking everything or having horrible bugs.

stuff like firefox it doesnt matter so much but it still takes time just for someone to check if it will work with the versions of all the libraries currently in ubuntu etc, which i guess is why they dont do it.
 
For the one who has problems with updating Firefox, open terminal and type "gksudo firefox &". When you run Firefox as root the updating thing shows up in the top bar (under Help)
 

mackaveli

Member
can anyone help me out.

I burnt a live cd/dvd of Ubuntu 10.04.

I am running it on an iMac because the iMac's HD is dead so I just want to boot a live linux OS so i can surf the net on it.

However the ethernet connection doesn't work. If i switch to a neighbors wifi it works. But if I connect the ethernet it doesn't work. It's not the cable cause I can connect it to my laptop and it works.

Any idea?

Perhaps someone can recommend me a different linux OS to use?
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Thanks for the thoughts on this. Interesting to see I'm not the only one in the community with this thought process either judging by those last two links.

IMO it would be a welcomed change.
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Hey FF actually updated today for me to 3.6.6! Guess they just rolled with the latest patched version instead. :D
 

Bboy AJ

My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
So I installed Ubuntu on my Vaio TZ. I ended up burning my WIn7 partition. Fuck. I'm never good at partitioning. I always do that.

A few questions:

The fan is ALWAYS on, even with simple web browsing. When I check the System Monitor, at least one CPU is at 90%+. What's the deal?

The webcam isn't working. I googled a bit and found http://www.palmix.org/r5u870-en.html but I have no clue what any of that means. What I found is that Ubuntu installs a driver that isn't that great. The r5xxxx driver is best but I'm not sure how to do it.

Running Ubuntu 10.4
 

itxaka

Defeatist
Bboy AJ said:
So I installed Ubuntu on my Vaio TZ. I ended up burning my WIn7 partition. Fuck. I'm never good at partitioning. I always do that.

A few questions:

The fan is ALWAYS on, even with simple web browsing. When I check the System Monitor, at least one CPU is at 90%+. What's the deal?

The webcam isn't working. I googled a bit and found http://www.palmix.org/r5u870-en.html but I have no clue what any of that means. What I found is that Ubuntu installs a driver that isn't that great. The r5xxxx driver is best but I'm not sure how to do it.

Running Ubuntu 10.4
On the System monitor which process aré sucking the cpu? Does it shows any process taking a lot of cpu? Which one?
 

Bboy AJ

My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
itxaka said:
On the System monitor which process aré sucking the cpu? Does it shows any process taking a lot of cpu? Which one?
I restarted the computer and as of right now, no problems. Thanks for the reply, though.
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Opera for Linux finally updated. It was stuck at 10.11 because they never got a version of 10.5 out of beta. They just scrapped finishing that, and said they'd focus on making sure 10.6 was day and date for Linux to get things back in like with Win and OSX.

Opera 10.6
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
FYI 10.6 is the only "final" release of a browser to support WebM, the open video codec by Google for HTML 5 <video>. :D
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
On a side note the dude Jordan who does the "This Week in Linux" videos got enough views and attention that he's in the youtube partner program now. He also ran a faq video with just some general info about himself, how he makes his videos, stuff like will you review this distro, and how to contact him.

IDK his videos seem oddly cut and he talks fast, but he generally seems to be a descent dude so good for him!
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
panda21 said:
anyone running ubuntu 10.10? is it worth it and are there problems?

I know the alpha 2 is out, and I kinda want to upgrade as well. My line of reasoning though for not is it's an alpha for a reason. I'd wait for beta at least.
 

Bboy AJ

My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
What are a few RSS applications? What are your opinions on them?
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Bboy AJ said:
What are a few RSS applications? What are your opinions on them?

Check out Liferea or Straw for that. Of course you can always use a browser like Opera or an online app like google reader!
 
Yep, Liferea is I think one of the bigger ones.

There's also Akregator (for KDE) and Yarssr (for a tray app). I think Thunderbird also has an RSS reader, but it might not be the best option...

Personally I don't really like Google Reader-style RSS readers (though I know many other love em to death). I'm more of an iGoogle guy and currently use NetVibes(.com), which is excellent. :)
 

Bboy AJ

My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
Thanks. I checked out Liferea but it's not as clean as I was looking for. Something like Reeder for my iPad, just on my laptop. Oh well, I'll stick to Google Reader online. Works well enough.

Also, question, I want to be able to use OneNote. I've been reading Wine doing run MS Office apps all that well. Consequently, is it possible to virtualize Windows 7 and run MS Office through there? Does that sound like a good plan or will I encounter problems?

I'd rather not dual boot as Office is just about the only thing I'd use Windows for over Ubuntu. No, I don't like Open Office and there is no OneNote replacement :lol
 
Bboy AJ said:
Also, question, I want to be able to use OneNote. I've been reading Wine doing run MS Office apps all that well. Consequently, is it possible to virtualize Windows 7 and run MS Office through there? Does that sound like a good plan or will I encounter problems?
Yep, that's the best solution IMHO. As long as your machine is decent (memory- and processor-wise), virtualizing is really easy.

I always used VirtualBox, worked great and it's very simple. I used it to run Office when I needed it, but mostly CS3 apps.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
Bboy AJ said:
Thanks. I checked out Liferea but it's not as clean as I was looking for. Something like Reeder for my iPad, just on my laptop. Oh well, I'll stick to Google Reader online. Works well enough.

Also, question, I want to be able to use OneNote. I've been reading Wine doing run MS Office apps all that well. Consequently, is it possible to virtualize Windows 7 and run MS Office through there? Does that sound like a good plan or will I encounter problems?

I'd rather not dual boot as Office is just about the only thing I'd use Windows for over Ubuntu. No, I don't like Open Office and there is no OneNote replacement :lol

Googls Docs yo. :D

Dunno what OneNote is. :p

Edit- OneNote is like, the new Google Docs from reading the Wiki article.
 

Bboy AJ

My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
No, it isn't :lol

My Ubuntu 10.4 just freezes up after maybe a couple of hours of the computer being on. And sometimes when I shut the computer down, it'll hang up on a black screen in the middle of shutting down. How can I begin to start troubleshooting what the problem is?

Jul 3 15:36:11 cupcake avahi-daemon[802]: New relevant interface wlan0.IPv4 for mDNS.
Jul 3 15:36:11 cupcake avahi-daemon[802]: Registering new address record for 192.168.1.71 on wlan0.IPv4.
Jul 3 15:36:11 cupcake dhclient: bound to 192.168.1.71 -- renewal in 39458 seconds.
Jul 3 15:36:12 cupcake NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): device state change: 7 -> 8 (reason 0)
Jul 3 15:36:12 cupcake NetworkManager: <info> Policy set 'Auto Go49ers' (wlan0) as default for routing and DNS.
Jul 3 15:36:12 cupcake NetworkManager: <info> Activation (wlan0) successful, device activated.
Jul 3 15:36:12 cupcake NetworkManager: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 5 of 5 (IP Configure Commit) complete.
Jul 3 15:36:12 cupcake avahi-daemon[802]: Registering new address record for fe80::21d:e0ff:fe70:9a13 on wlan0.*.
Jul 3 15:36:15 cupcake ntpdate[1655]: adjust time server 91.189.94.4 offset -0.244832 sec
Jul 3 15:36:21 cupcake kernel: [ 56.597088] wlan0: no IPv6 routers present
Jul 3 15:36:58 cupcake AptDaemon: INFO: Initializing daemon
Jul 3 15:41:59 cupcake AptDaemon: INFO: Quiting due to inactivity
Jul 3 15:41:59 cupcake AptDaemon: INFO: Shutdown was requested
Jul 3 15:44:23 cupcake kernel: Kernel logging (proc) stopped.
Jul 3 15:44:23 cupcake rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="4.2.0" x-pid="725" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] exiting on signal 15.

When xxx41 hit, that's when I force shutdown the laptop by holding down the power button. I hope there's nothing in that log I shouldn't be revealing.

Seems like I'm not the only one: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1478787
 

Bboy AJ

My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
Andrex said:
Hrm, sounds more like Wave actually... What do you use it for?
No, dude, it's not like anything Google does! Give it up! :D

I use it for class notes. It's a huge help in organizing my notes.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
Bboy AJ said:
No, dude, it's not like anything Google does! Give it up! :D

I use it for class notes. It's a huge help in organizing my notes.

That's it? You can use Notepad for that dude. :p
 
Deluge for torrents here, although Transmission is awesome too. Deluge's UI is uTorrent-like, but Transmission's one is awesome in its simplicity.
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Late to the party on this I know, but I love the notification thing in Ubuntu now as I mentioned earlier.

Well I was checking out the OmgUbuntu blog, and they had an article about a gmail notification thing that would tell you if you had mail in your gmail in the icon. You can check out the article here! They had a link to two older apps that they previewed as well a few months ago.

I'm currently testing them out to see which one I like, but in general I can't believe I didn't look for this before! I'm currently using the Gmail Notifier and am totally digging it!
 
Brettison said:
I'm currently testing them out to see which one I like, but in general I can't believe I didn't look for this before! I'm currently using the Gmail Notifier and am totally digging it!
I *think* I'm also using that one. (The one that places itself in System->Prefs, right?)

It's awesome. Has also most no features, but that's a feature on itself. It "just works". Although recently it had to not only show my Inbox, but also check other GMail Labels. And waddayaknow, it actually has the option!
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Suitcase Test said:
I *think* I'm also using that one. (The one that places itself in System->Prefs, right?)

It's awesome. Has also most no features, but that's a feature on itself. It "just works". Although recently it had to not only show my Inbox, but also check other GMail Labels. And waddayaknow, it actually has the option!

One I'm using is under internet in applications.

On a side note WTF is up with Liferea not using the default notification button like everything else. I did a search to see if it was a setting I was missing, but it seems they just haven't incorporated the feature yet. Makes liferea feel odd compared to the rest of my shit like gwibber, rhythmbox, empathy, gmail notifier etc...
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
For those that care...

Mandriva updated to 12.1 this week!

powerpack_w600.jpg


PS: I only mention this because Mandriva formally Mandrake is one of the older big Linux releases. I don't mention all of the random off shoots that much.
 
Any news when the next update or possibly big release of Ubuntu is coming?

I really want to have another dig with Netbook edition, but unfortunately it just isn't built to work well enough on my computer.
 

itxaka

Defeatist
Flying_Phoenix said:
Any news when the next update or possibly big release of Ubuntu is coming?

I really want to have another dig with Netbook edition, but unfortunately it just isn't built to work well enough on my computer.


Ubuntu new releases always come at the same time, its even on the name!It's every 6 months.

Ubuntu 10.04 -> 2010 Month 04, so April 2010

Next one as usual is XX.10, in this case 10.10 -> 2010 Month 10, so October 2010.

Next one after will be 11.04, 11.08, 12.04, etc...
 
itxaka said:
Ubuntu new releases always come at the same time, its even on the name!It's every 6 months.

Ubuntu 10.04 -> 2010 Month 04, so April 2010

Next one as usual is XX.10, in this case 10.10 -> 2010 Month 10, so October 2010.

Next one after will be 11.04, 11.08, 12.04, etc...

Oh shit, I never knew that! :O

Hope they add dual finger scrolling/multitouch and fix the huge problems with the update manager and software freezing under netbooks.

I loved Ubuntu Netbook edition, but it just had to many problems.

Any info or rumors on new features or it doesn't work that way?
 

itxaka

Defeatist
Flying_Phoenix said:
Oh shit, I never knew that! :O

Hope they add dual finger scrolling/multitouch and fix the huge problems with the update manager and software freezing under netbooks.

I loved Ubuntu Netbook edition, but it just had to many problems.


I think that the dual finger scrolling is available now for selected netbooks. I know the eeepc series has it (I think it needs to be supported by the hardware) as I had it myself on my netbook. No idea about other ones, but as I said I think it has to be supported by hardware.

No idea about the update-manager issues, I guess it only affects the Netbook edition?

Edit: regarding the features I know there is a roadmap somewhere with the status of it (completed, todo, for next release) but I can't find it.

I think one of the things that is gonna improve is the indicator area, like the volume tray:
U9SGy.png



Edit 2: Find it -> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/maverick/+specs

Multi-touch and Kernel
Ubuntu Blueprints Multi-touch and Kernel
- N-trig, Wacom, Stantum, Synaptic status
- Expected work for 10.10 (missing drivers, features, etc.)
 
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