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Linux Distro Noob thread of Linux noobs
- Thread starter Flying_Phoenix
- Start date
GameplayWhore
Member
Mine came in the mail last night, but I can't find where I put all my SD cards. :|
Going to put Mint on my second partition along side Win7. But I want to make sure that I will be able to reformat both partitions without ruining the other.
When I ha ubuntu, grub acted funny and If I ever reformated one partition I had to reformat both of them. This is my college laptop so I don't want to lose anything.
Does grub need to be on its own small partition or something?? I don't want the OSs to be dependent on each other like what Mint4Win or Wubi cause.
When I ha ubuntu, grub acted funny and If I ever reformated one partition I had to reformat both of them. This is my college laptop so I don't want to lose anything.
Does grub need to be on its own small partition or something?? I don't want the OSs to be dependent on each other like what Mint4Win or Wubi cause.
Just install Mint after Windows 7 and choose to install a bootloader/grub in the installation, and it should detect your Windows partition and automatically configure grub for you. But if you later re-format say the linux partition and install some other distro you will generally have to reconfigure grub to point to the new kernel and all that for it to boot the new distro, but you could also just install grub again when you install the new distro and then configure it to also boot Windows if it doesn't detect it.
To configure grub you edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file, or increasingly /boot/grub/grub.cfg if the distro is using Grub 2. There's usually a commented example for booting Windows in those files. Grub itself is installed to the 1st primary harddrive's so called Master Boot Record (MBR) which is a small boot sector that exists in every harddrive seperately from the actual partitions and all that.
I'm not sure how it works if one has two linux distros installed though. Which distro's grub.cfg should you configure in that case?
Maybe you could have a unified /boot partition between the two distros. I suppose that would work, but I've never actually had two distros installed at once before.
Edit: Oh and if you're doing the partitioning manually, linux needs a seperate partition for swap space. Just so you know. Actually if you have more than 8GB of RAM it shouldn't be an issue running without swap but it can still be good to have one at around 1-2GB or something. And if you want to hibernate I think you need at least as much swap space as you have memory for it to work.
To configure grub you edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file, or increasingly /boot/grub/grub.cfg if the distro is using Grub 2. There's usually a commented example for booting Windows in those files. Grub itself is installed to the 1st primary harddrive's so called Master Boot Record (MBR) which is a small boot sector that exists in every harddrive seperately from the actual partitions and all that.
I'm not sure how it works if one has two linux distros installed though. Which distro's grub.cfg should you configure in that case?
Maybe you could have a unified /boot partition between the two distros. I suppose that would work, but I've never actually had two distros installed at once before.
Edit: Oh and if you're doing the partitioning manually, linux needs a seperate partition for swap space. Just so you know. Actually if you have more than 8GB of RAM it shouldn't be an issue running without swap but it can still be good to have one at around 1-2GB or something. And if you want to hibernate I think you need at least as much swap space as you have memory for it to work.
opticalmace
Member
Has anyone used Wine to install Office 2010? Did everything work out?
I plan to put it on Ubuntu 12.04.
I plan to put it on Ubuntu 12.04.
Just install Mint after Windows 7 and choose to install a bootloader/grub in the installation, and it should detect your Windows partition and automatically configure grub for you. But if you later re-format say the linux partition and install some other distro you will generally have to reconfigure grub to point to the new kernel and all that for it to boot the new distro, but you could also just install grub again when you install the new distro and then configure it to also boot Windows if it doesn't detect it.
To configure grub you edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file, or increasingly /boot/grub/grub.cfg if the distro is using Grub 2. There's usually a commented example for booting Windows in those files. Grub itself is installed to the 1st primary harddrive's so called Master Boot Record (MBR) which is a small boot sector that exists in every harddrive seperately from the actual partitions and all that.
I'm not sure how it works if one has two linux distros installed though. Which distro's grub.cfg should you configure in that case?
Maybe you could have a unified /boot partition between the two distros. I suppose that would work, but I've never actually had two distros installed at once before.
Edit: Oh and if you're doing the partitioning manually, linux needs a seperate partition for swap space. Just so you know. Actually if you have more than 8GB of RAM it shouldn't be an issue running without swap but it can still be good to have one at around 1-2GB or something. And if you want to hibernate I think you need at least as much swap space as you have memory for it to work.
Thanks a ton. I actually didn't know what the swap space was for, as I though OS can make page files when ever, so I didn't create a partition for it.
Just to clearify, where does grub get installed? With my linux partition or on its own separate partition?
It's not an actual partition I think. It's just a separate little space made for installing boot loaders on. I don't even think it's necessarily on the actual hard drive platter, but rather in a small amount of flash memory on the HDD or something. I could be wrong about that though. Check the wiki page for MBR, it explains it pretty well.
Also I do think that you can use a file as swap in Linux as well, but the standard is to have a separate partition.
Also I do think that you can use a file as swap in Linux as well, but the standard is to have a separate partition.
It gets installed into the MBR (located at the very beginning of each disk) of your primary booting HDD. It is possible to install GRUB on its own partition, but it isn't required.
And synt4x is correct, you can make a swap file instead of a swap partition. It doesn't have any performance advantages in normal user scenarioes. But it can be used in larger server systems, e.g. where one might want to change the size of the swap without resizing partitions.
tfur
Member
A good reference for Linux boot process and MBR details.
Inside the Linux boot process.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-linuxboot/index.html
Also, a link to GPT/EFI notes. This is required for very large partitions.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-gpt/
IBM developer works has a nice selection of technical topics.
Inside the Linux boot process.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-linuxboot/index.html
Also, a link to GPT/EFI notes. This is required for very large partitions.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-gpt/
IBM developer works has a nice selection of technical topics.
Huh, the second one is by the author of fdisk for GPT, apparently.
GameplayWhore
Member
The Raspberry Pi is working really well. I've loaded over all of my server functions to it. It's now handling my email needs and has my "PIM" (text editor) and runs my portable instance of pidgin. I am proxying all my web stuff through it, as well. It seems to be having no problems handling these admittedly simple tasks.
I can now pretty much cease having my home computer running when I'm away, so I'll be saving a couple hundred Watts of daytime power draw!
My other hope is that the new machine can effortlessly serve all my media files to my living room media player. It'd be nice to not need to boot up my home computer when people come over to watch stuff.
Side note: I briefly tried archlinux on this, but it came up with a couple not particularly trivial errors on its initial "pacman -Syu", and I recall that on the sheevaplug -- my earlier embedded machine* -- arch handled kernel upgrades in a weird way which caused much annoyance. So I'm using the stock raspbian, which is working pretty well. I have to disable the graphical session, though, as it's not particularly useful given that the closet the thing is in has no nearby screen.
* there's a known problem with those plug computers wherein they can completely die if connected to an external hard drive. I did not know this problem until it happened. It is a stupid problem.
I can now pretty much cease having my home computer running when I'm away, so I'll be saving a couple hundred Watts of daytime power draw!
My other hope is that the new machine can effortlessly serve all my media files to my living room media player. It'd be nice to not need to boot up my home computer when people come over to watch stuff.
Side note: I briefly tried archlinux on this, but it came up with a couple not particularly trivial errors on its initial "pacman -Syu", and I recall that on the sheevaplug -- my earlier embedded machine* -- arch handled kernel upgrades in a weird way which caused much annoyance. So I'm using the stock raspbian, which is working pretty well. I have to disable the graphical session, though, as it's not particularly useful given that the closet the thing is in has no nearby screen.
* there's a known problem with those plug computers wherein they can completely die if connected to an external hard drive. I did not know this problem until it happened. It is a stupid problem.
GameplayWhore
Member
Linux Distributions: debian, archlinux, Android (lacking some capabilities like hardware acceleration), Open webOS (woohoo, Palm lives! note: no UI)
Other operating systems: RISC OS (this still exists!!), FreeBSD (apparently currently working),
NetBSD (possibly not ready yet), Plan 9 (but not GNU Hurd?!?).
Doesn't look like there's a working build of Windows Phone.
Okay lads as much as I didn't want to have to put out a request for help I am pretty stumped =/ And of all the things that could have stopped me its something to do with networking... my chosen study and career path, lol.
I'm in the process of installing Arch Linux. I have some-what jumped into the deep-end for myself but I'm slowly just following the beginners guide. I initially didn't want to configure the wireless interface as I did not think it was mandatory for an installation and wanted to mess around with the network side of things later after installation. However after I have finished preparing the hard drive I came upon the pacstrap script that installed the base system which I realized had to be connected to the internet.
Now, this is what is returned to me...
# lspci | grep -i net
# ip link set wlan0 up
# wifi-menu wlan0
When I first tried to access the wifi-menu it worked... I then think I entered my WPA2 key wrong for the first time ever as i was just getting authentication failures. I had a look around # netcfg but couldn't find anything that would let me edit or delete the profile to start a new one so what i did (trying to be a smart ass) was go into the config.d dir where the profile is stored and i deleted it... hoping it would just ask me for a new one but no..
Any push in the right direction or guidance will be greatly appreciated!! Thank you for your valuable time
I'm in the process of installing Arch Linux. I have some-what jumped into the deep-end for myself but I'm slowly just following the beginners guide. I initially didn't want to configure the wireless interface as I did not think it was mandatory for an installation and wanted to mess around with the network side of things later after installation. However after I have finished preparing the hard drive I came upon the pacstrap script that installed the base system which I realized had to be connected to the internet.
Now, this is what is returned to me...
# lspci | grep -i net
# iwconfig
# ifconfiglo no wireless extensions
wlan0 IEEE 8.02.11bgn ESSID
Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=19dBm
retry long limit:7 RTS thr
Encrtyption key
Power Managment
Is it loopback that is messing me up? I googled how to turn it off but couldn't find anything..
# ip link set wlan0 up
# dmesg | grep firmware (I suspect that I am missing something with this command since I get no return?
# wifi-menu wlan0
When I first tried to access the wifi-menu it worked... I then think I entered my WPA2 key wrong for the first time ever as i was just getting authentication failures. I had a look around # netcfg but couldn't find anything that would let me edit or delete the profile to start a new one so what i did (trying to be a smart ass) was go into the config.d dir where the profile is stored and i deleted it... hoping it would just ask me for a new one but no..
Any push in the right direction or guidance will be greatly appreciated!! Thank you for your valuable time
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Broadcom_wireless
It looks like you want to use brcmsmac with that card, so see if that section helps.
It might be necessary (and save you from a lot of grief) to do the installation over ethernet first, though, if you can.
(P.S. The Arch wiki is the best)
It looks like you want to use brcmsmac with that card, so see if that section helps.
It might be necessary (and save you from a lot of grief) to do the installation over ethernet first, though, if you can.
(P.S. The Arch wiki is the best)
This is a fact.
Thank you for the timely reply my man!
Unfortunately the mini-laptop I am trying to install this on does not have any RJ-45 ports.
I was hoping it wasn't anything to do with the firmware as the wifi-menu did indeed work a couple of times before i knew i needed to actually go online and before it started giving me random errors like
# lspci -vm | grep 14e4: told me that Network controller [0280] is BCM4313 [14e4:4727]
The wiki mentions:
I ran #modprobe brcmsmac it did not return anything and I am still experiencing the same problems. Do I need to blacklist modules to stop them conflicting for control over my device??
Hm, I didn't notice what you said about config files before. Have you tried just starting the installation again?
I noticed that this person had a similar problem because they entered the key in the wrong format. If you keep having trouble it will probably help you more to post on that forum directly, I guess.
I noticed that this person had a similar problem because they entered the key in the wrong format. If you keep having trouble it will probably help you more to post on that forum directly, I guess.
Sorry, I don't know your expertise, so forgive me if I say something obvious.
I don't think modprobe gives any output upon success(?) Try doing lsmod and grepping for the module, like
Code:
lsmod | grep brcmsmacIf that doesn't return anything, then the module isn't loaded. Did you use sudo when you did the modprobe?
EDIT: But I also echo the previous poster's sentiment of just using ethernet to install, if you have the choice.
That is a good shout. I'll reformat and install the live boot usb once again and start over. Haha yeah... I was trying to register and hop into the newbie corner over at ArchLinux but unfortunately the following question at the end of the registration page stopped me in my tracks:
Lol, as if I didn't already feel defeated enough... I entered it into bash and 'root@archiso' changed to something silly like 'then then z9u03t023t' something along those lines anyway.. upon trying to replicate it there i actually managed to type it in correctly and i am now signed up Although I can't say I'm happy about copying what it returned by hand/eye from one computer to the next
Thanks anyway bud! Hopefully round 3 goes a little smoother!
Edit: No need for apologies zoku88 I can pretty much assure you that I am the noobiest of noobs paddling about in the deep-end without any arm bands! I shall try your commands right now. Unfortunately as i said before i do not have Ethernet but I will most like just re-reformat drive and start again!
Thanks anyway guys I have learned more and that's all that counts
Edit: Oh no.. I've still got the question wrong haha. I'll keep at it.. my answer was b7093e2653b5c2355b6d0bd6c08337c82c3a8f2e10be73ff62b19d7d1f7c0e63 :|
Lol, as if I didn't already feel defeated enough... I entered it into bash and 'root@archiso' changed to something silly like 'then then z9u03t023t' something along those lines anyway.. upon trying to replicate it there i actually managed to type it in correctly and i am now signed up
Although I can't say I'm happy about copying what it returned by hand/eye from one computer to the next Thanks anyway bud! Hopefully round 3 goes a little smoother!
Edit: No need for apologies zoku88 I can pretty much assure you that I am the noobiest of noobs paddling about in the deep-end without any arm bands! I shall try your commands right now. Unfortunately as i said before i do not have Ethernet but I will most like just re-reformat drive and start again!
Thanks anyway guys I have learned more and that's all that counts
Edit: Oh no.. I've still got the question wrong haha. I'll keep at it.. my answer was b7093e2653b5c2355b6d0bd6c08337c82c3a8f2e10be73ff62b19d7d1f7c0e63 :|
GameplayWhore
Member
Huh. So I have that problem where du and df report dramatically different space usage. Difference is, the problem survives reboot, so it's not the open files issue that you work out via lsof.
# du -shx /
12G
# df -h | grep "\/$\|^Filesystem"
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2 147G 131G 8.9G 94% /
What is going on here? fdisk on /dev/sda2 reported nothing! HEEEEEEELP!!!
# du -shx /
12G
# df -h | grep "\/$\|^Filesystem"
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2 147G 131G 8.9G 94% /
What is going on here? fdisk on /dev/sda2 reported nothing! HEEEEEEELP!!!
I can't really think of anything besides du getting a wrong directory somehow, or du not being able to read certain directories because of permission issues (which could very well be possible, since it seems like you're running it at /)
For a sanity check, did you try supplying du with a directory argument (I guess / in this case.)
you only have a single partition mounted? x option is to keep du from jumping to different file systems, but if you have / mounted on a single partition it's definitely weird not to show the used space, that's for sure.
check what du -h --max-depth 1 / outputs and maybe it will give you an idea of what it's doing wrong. Yeah, humor me and drop the -x option.
12G is close to my / size, that is without counting home and several other partitions.
GameplayWhore
Member
No. I grepped out the other partitions, because they were irrelevant to the issue. That's the «grep "\/$\|^Filesystem"» part of my command.
I guess I can try that on Monday. It's a work machine. It will likely take the greater part of an hour if I omit -x, as we have some pretty gigantic file sets on the system's data drive!
Yep! You can see that in my original post! I think you just missed the "/" at the end of my "du" command.
Yup, totally missed that ^^
Hmm, you didn't get any error messages when you ran du on / ? I wouldn't expect everything on / to be readable by a user.
GameplayWhore
Member
Also, the # at the start of my commands is shorthand that means I'm typing it in as root.
In some — but not all — filesystems you can get errors in some special areas even as root, if I recall correctly.
edit: Ah, lost+found is fully viewable as root. For some reason, I thought it was reserved in some special, bizarre way.
Ugh, am I even reading the things you are posting?
Obvious in hindsight :-/
Yea, I can't think of anything.
For me, the biggest difference is 1 or 2 GB :-/ Then again, my / is only 30GB.
My /home, which is 102G, seems to have no difference.
Maybe it's actually some type of bug XD. Then again, the manpage for du says that it's an estimation. It never says a "good" estimation
Can anyone tell me what are the pro's, and con's of using Ubuntu over windows? Ever since they announced their phone OS, I'm kinda interested. I have two laptops('05, and '09) that I could use to play around with it. Even a desktop, once I get a hold of a usb drive.
GameplayWhore
Member
Ugh, am I even reading the things you are posting?
Obvious in hindsight :-/
Yea, I can't think of anything.
For me, the biggest difference is 1 or 2 GB :-/ Then again, my / is only 30GB.
My /home, which is 102G, seems to have no difference.
Maybe it's actually some type of bug XD. Then again, the manpage for du says that it's an estimation. It never says a "good" estimation
Heh. I'm actually hoping that df is what's lying, because I can't imagine where all that space is being used (doing it without -s or with --max-depth as suggested earlier would perhaps be helpful here)!
I don't think anyone could objectively answer this question (unless they are only talking about security.)
You would just have to try it out yourself.
GameplayWhore
Member
Pro: Really customizable. If you don't like the interface, you can make it more Win95-like or more Mac-like or unlike anything else that any sane person would use (like I do!).
Con: Many programs work in wildly different ways because there is much less uniformity (this is more a bad thing if you're coming from the Mac world, where everything is super standardized and works much the same way no matter what app you're in).
Pro: Programs are super trusted, because they are kept in special places called "repositories" which are tested for safety (there are other reasons). No more downloading "exe" install files from websites, giving them full access to your computer, and hoping that they're not evil deathbombs. It's also substantially easier and faster to install programs through repositories than it is the "exe" way
Con: If a program you want is not in a repository (not an uncommon issue!), it's usually much more annoying to obtain and install compared to an "exe" file. And that doesn't always work.
Pro: A really wide array of support from the community that you don't always get in the Windows world.
Con: They're dicks.
Pro: Even recent versions can be modified slightly to work on crazy old computers, from both a performance and drivers support (really old devices often don't get drivers in new Windows releases) perspective
Con: Newer computers may not be fully supported because Linux developers have to make their own drivers while Windows and Mac OS devs can just sort of sit back and enjoy the free support.
Pro: You can grow a beard* and pretend to be superior to everybody else. You even get to use the word "sheeple".
Con: You forget that the sheeple are actually really nice folk who just want something easy to use and fun (see: "Nintard", "mobile gamer")
* Disclaimer: I only have a couple days of weekend growth
…not all of the above was serious. >_>
Pretty much what was stated before, the biggest thing is system performance...Windows by nature is just hoggy, where Linux tends to be much kinder to the machine it's running on.
Personally I'd go with Mint over Ubuntu, pretty much the same thing underneath but using Unity is just a real turn off for me, you are much better using a Mate or Cinnamon desktop.
GameplayWhore
Member
This is something that always felt odd to me. In Linux, you can install a different interface no matter what distro you're running. But nearly every time that I see here something about people changing their distro, it's because of the default interface. It's like, I dunno, you have oil heating in your house but you want gas heating, so you sell your house and buy a house that has gas heating built in.
For me, this is a big "wat" thing.
I hear ya. My main distro criteria is the package management system and how often it updates, with a preference for Debian/apt-get-based systems just cause of familiarity. I end up just installing Gnome 3 on whatever distro that is. I'm on Bodhi right now at home due to the semi-rolling release system, and Ubuntu at work.
It is odd, I just like the default "feel" of mint over Ubuntu..it's just something you kinda get once you've run Linux for a while. I've been tolling around since the slack 4/red hat 5.2 days..so I think I've just run about every interface that has been out there, and I still swap them around from time to time.
If the distro is for development or hosting services you don't want to be playing with all these personal things. So people gravitate towards certain distros that they enjoy the defaults. Supporting such a system is also much easier.
For hobbiest yes, but nobody wants to make their job harder.
This is pretty much me.
Also, how much stuff there is by default as well.
I tend to gravitate towards rolling distros that don't have a lot of default packages installed.
GameplayWhore
Member
There we go!
All of that 38T in /mnt is on other drives. I've double-checked for other stuff in /mnt, just in case.
Again, the problem is that df is reporting that I'm using 131 GB of space on my boot drive, but I can only account for about 12 or 13 GB of it using du (or any other method I can think of, in fact). fsck says everything's okay. Tried sacrificing a pig. No help there, but it was tasty.
Any suggestions?
Been running Ubuntu as my only desktop OS (outside of work Win 7 lappy) for about two years. There are a couple minor annoyances from time to time like keeping the nvidia graphics up to date, but outside of that it's very solid for general computing. The only major con I have is that it can't do Netflix without some workarounds.
So I would say pros: stable, user friendly, fast, free software, and flexible (multiple workspaces, compiz options like expose on Mac, easy user management)
Cons: getting some things working initially takes a bit of work (eg. SSD, at least as of 11.10), multiple monitor support is iffy on some things like Flash, and while it's very polished, certain things are not as polished as OS X or even Win 7.
Seriously, I have no clue.
This looks like a work machine that you probably can't restart? If not, I would just boot a live cd, mount only /dev/sda2 and see if anything changes. That could totally be a waste of time, but idk :S
GameplayWhore
Member
As I mentioned, restarting the machine is possible.
That's actually a really good idea, mounting from a live disc!
tfur
Member
cat /proc/mounts
free
Assuming you to not have any autofs mounts.
Probably related to tmpfs or maybe devtmpfs.
lsof -s | grep /dev/shm # note size column
see what your largest VIRT is in top (shows a total), sort by "shift" ">", or do:
ps -eo vsize,pid,user,args --sort vsize
sync # Only way to tell is to sync everything to disk, check again
echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches # write everything to disk, check again
sync # Only way to tell is to sync everything to disk, check again
bring down large processes, check again
go into single user mode, check again
do the boot into another OS, check again
I hate the look of the df with duplicates for rootfs and /. What distro?
To hopefully save an hour or two worth of troubleshooting for anyone, here's a quick story. Can't remember what prompted me to do it, but at one point I had installed bumblebee and my system was fine. Eventually graphics went down the tube so I installed the driver from nvidia's website, necessitating re-installing every time there was a kernel update.
Decided to save myself from that headache longterm and go back to nvidia-current. Banged my head against the wall for a bit over an hour with the system not recognizing that I was using nv-c, despite several complete removals and reinstalls as well as checking aliases and nvidia-xconfig. Kept having 640x480 as the max res.
Long story short, remove bumblebee if you're having issues getting nvidia-current to work. Also make sure that you have nvidia-common installed through synaptic.
Decided to save myself from that headache longterm and go back to nvidia-current. Banged my head against the wall for a bit over an hour with the system not recognizing that I was using nv-c, despite several complete removals and reinstalls as well as checking aliases and nvidia-xconfig. Kept having 640x480 as the max res.
Long story short, remove bumblebee if you're having issues getting nvidia-current to work. Also make sure that you have nvidia-common installed through synaptic.
wsoxfan1214
Banned
Okay. Been building my own openSUSE-based OS via suse studio and I cannot fucking get any windows programs to work. I have tried regular wine, right clicking and selecting run with wine, running terminal in the folder and typing
wine "programname.exe"
Tried running Wine Doors, q4wine, etc. None work. I am relatively sure I have all of the correct packages installed. As I am doubting anyone wants to download the ISO and install it, can anyone give any ideas from the outside?
If anyone on any off-chance does want to try what I put together though and see if they can fix it themselves, feel free to PM me and I'll send the link to the ISO. It would be much appreciated.
wine "programname.exe"
Tried running Wine Doors, q4wine, etc. None work. I am relatively sure I have all of the correct packages installed. As I am doubting anyone wants to download the ISO and install it, can anyone give any ideas from the outside?
If anyone on any off-chance does want to try what I put together though and see if they can fix it themselves, feel free to PM me and I'll send the link to the ISO. It would be much appreciated.
bbrrr... fdisk -l ?
GameplayWhore
Member
Do you get any particular errors when you run via command line?