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Linux Distro Noob thread of Linux noobs

N

NotBacon

Member
Andrex said:
More converts to the Church of Gnome.
LtNDbKz.png
Click to expand...

It's TEMPORARY while I wait for based elementaryOS Isis

yfOYeta.png


Vc85wPj.png
Click to expand...
 
A

Aarglefarg

Member
Andrex said:
More converts to the Church of Gnome.
LtNDbKz.png
Click to expand...
I've been around with Gnome Shell for a while, using it frequently from when it was introduced and as my clear DE preference from 3.6 at the latest. Previously though, I'd need to use the newest release because I'd be unsatisfied by the previous once the new one comes out, but that's not the case with 3.10.
 
C

Calibus

Member
I've tried out several distros -- Gnome, Lubuntu, Kubuntu and Unbuntu -- and so far vanilla Ubuntu 14.04 is the most appealing to me. I really like the clean user-friendliness of it.
 
K

-KRS-

Member
Reinstalled Arch on my laptop yesterday. I've been meaning to do that for a long time now because that laptop hasn't been updated since around late 2012... It was when Arch switched to systemd. I couldn't get systemd to work on it even after trying everything I could think of, and when they later officially switched over to it I wasn't able to update it without breaking everything. So I put it off for a long time.

And that was pretty stupid of me. It took only about two hours to install everything and set it up the way I had it before, since most of the user settings were on my home partition. This time I installed XFCE4 instead of Gnome though, because that laptop is pretty old and sometimes it lagged a bit with Gnome 3 at the resolution I ran it.
 
T

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
Aarglefarg said:
I've been around with Gnome Shell for a while, using it frequently from when it was introduced and as my clear DE preference from 3.6 at the latest. Previously though, I'd need to use the newest release because I'd be unsatisfied by the previous once the new one comes out, but that's not the case with 3.10.
Click to expand...

Yeah, 3.10 is super solid. 3.12 was mostly minor tweaks and not much groundbreaking.

It's clear at this point they're just going to keep polishing and polishing. If it wasn't already apparent that Gnome was the highest quality DE now, it will be soon.
 
N

NotBacon

Member
Andrex said:
ElementaryOS just cribbed its best ideas from Gnome shell anyways, it's practically the same thing at this point.
Click to expand...

Eh, I feel like they are quite different in terms of interface and design. They really branched off of their gnome base a while ago, and I feel like eOS is a much more cohesive and polished experience.
But I will give gnome the upper hand in the HiDPI department and their adoption of wayland (soon).
 
K

-KRS-

Member
Hmm something is up with my fonts on some sites, like Neogaf for example. They're really ugly here for some reason. I looked in the source code for the page and it seems Neogaf uses Arial and other Windows fonts primarily. Well I have the Microsoft fonts installed and I can select them in Firefox, but it's still ugly.

Anyone know what it could be?

Edit: Using Arial on Google Docs works fine.
 
S

swecide

Banned
synt4x said:
Hmm something is up with my fonts on some sites, like Neogaf for example. They're really ugly here for some reason. I looked in the source code for the page and it seems Neogaf uses Arial and other Windows fonts primarily. Well I have the Microsoft fonts installed and I can select them in Firefox, but it's still ugly.

Anyone know what it could be?

Edit: Using Arial on Google Docs works fine.
Click to expand...

Try installing ttf-mscorefonts-installer
 
I

injurai

Banned
Question about compiling features into a program. I've seen this come up a few times, it comfuses me why these are available but not already integrated.

Screen compatibility with 256 colors I need to compile it with --enable-colors256.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1630013/vim-colorschemes-in-screen-putty

or getting SFTP support in LFTP
/configure --with-openssl=/usr/lib
http://how-to.wikia.com/wiki/How_to_use_lftp_as_a_sftp_client

These are two situations that I have run into. Do I use gcc? or the program with that as an extension and it will somehow resolve everything itself. There is never much additional detail giving other then some seemingly incomplete command that is meant to deal with recompiling whatever i'm trying to get working.

edit: Currently I'm trying to solve my VI Colorscheme being off when I use screen in PuTTY.
 
P

phoenixyz

Member
Usually the programs documentation tells you what is needed for compilation and what the steps are. So give the official docs, the README or INSTALL file a look. If there's nothing specific you can mostly assume that just
Code: 
./configure
make
make install
should work.
 
K

-KRS-

Member
Yeah usually programs come with a Makefile that you use to compile with the command make. It basically runs the gcc commands automatically for you.

Also you can mostly run "configure --help" to get a list of all the possible options for configure.

I remember setting up urxvt and screen to work with 256 colors... even though the Arch packages are compiled the right way it took quite some reading of docs and tuning of settings before I got it to work. Setting up screen was the hard part.

Here's my ~/.screenrc:
Code: 
# Set urxvt as terminal
term rxvt-unicode

# Enable bold colors
attrcolor b ".I"

# Enable 256 color support
termcapinfo xterm* 'Co#256:AB=\E[48;5;%dm:AF=\E38;5;%dm'
terminfo rxvt-unicode* 'Co#256:AB=\E[48;5;%dm:AF=\E[38;5;%dm'
defbce "on"

# disable use of the "alternate" terminal
# thus allowing scrollbars to function as normal in
# many terminal emulators
termcapinfo xterm* ti@:te@
termcapinfo rxvt-unicode* ti@:te@

# have screen update terminal emulators titlebar
termcapinfo xterm* 'hs:ts=\E]0;:fs=\007:ds=\E]0;\007'
termcapinfo rxvt* 'hs:ts=\E]2;:fs=\007:ds=\E]2;\007'
hardstatus string "%h screen (%n: %t)"
caption string "%?%F%{= Bk}%? %c:%s %D %d-%m-%Y %{= kB} %t%= %?%F%{= Bk}%:%{= wk}%? %n "
caption always

# but dont print i.e. "bell in window 0" status craps
#hardstatus off

# turn off XON/XOFF, wow. seriously. whys it default, ick.
defflow off

altscreen on

I think the "caption string" and "caption always" puts a little window list and clock on the bottom row. Just comment that out if you don't want it.

Edit: Obviously you'll have to edit it a bit for putty.
 
P

phoenixyz

Member
So I just compiled and installed the utopic (Ubuntu 14.10) kernel on my 14.04 system, now that it's rebased on the final 3.15 kernel, and everything works fine. I just had to disable the splash boot which didn't work for some reason. The faster wakeup from standby is definitely noticeable.
 
T

Treechopper

Member
Do you guys have an idea of when Isis will be released? I know the Elementary team is following the "ready when it's done" idea, but has there been any talk? Kind of itching to try it out after looking up some of their stuff recently.
 
C

ColonelSkills

Member
I hope someone can help a brother out here.

I've got a machine with an older install of Fedora on it (16, to be precise). I want to upgrade to 20.

What's the best method of accomplishing this? The upgrade path on fedoraproject is kind of unclear on this, suggesting anaconda or using a yum based method.

There's also FedUp, which to my understanding is how I go from 18 to 20.

What's the best path for me here? Or should I basically nuke everything and start from scratch?
 
N

NotBacon

Member
ColonelSkills said:
I hope someone can help a brother out here.

I've got a machine with an older install of Fedora on it (16, to be precise). I want to upgrade to 20.

What's the best method of accomplishing this? The upgrade path on fedoraproject is kind of unclear on this, suggesting anaconda or using a yum based method.

There's also FedUp, which to my understanding is how I go from 18 to 20.

What's the best path for me here? Or should I basically nuke everything and start from scratch?
Click to expand...

Yeah I'd just back up all of your data, do a clean install, and re-install your apps. When you're a pro you can automate these steps with rsync, bash, and apt-get ;)
 
C

ColonelSkills

Member
Alright, thanks. The variety of update methods and moving off of an EOL distro made me think that'd end up being the way to go.

Thanks for the input though. Gonna have to clear an afternoon for everything.

Much appreciated, folks.
 
M

Massa

Member
Treechopper said:
How Does One Create a GTK+ Application?

Anybody have any experience writing GTK apps? I would like to think using a distro like Arch would help prevent some of the problems he talks about, but it seems like development hell.
Click to expand...

I use GTK+ at work and never had an ABI related problem, but we tend to stick with standard practices so changes to GTK+ internals have absolutely no effect on our code.

I actually quite like the evolution of the 3.x series, it's quickly becoming a modern toolkit.
 
Y

Young Magus

Junior Member
I recently came across an error when I installed Libreoffice and now my pacman cant work with this popping up in the first line of my terminal

Code: 
error: config file /etc/pacman.conf, line 1: All directives must belong to a section

Here is my configuarion:

#
# /etc/pacman.conf
#
# See the pacman.conf(5) manpage for option and repository directives

#
# GENERAL OPTIONS
#
[options]
# The following paths are commented out with their default values listed.
# If you wish to use different paths, uncomment and update the paths.
#RootDir = /
#DBPath = /var/lib/pacman/
#CacheDir = /var/cache/pacman/pkg/
#LogFile = /var/log/pacman.log
#GPGDir = /etc/pacman.d/gnupg/
HoldPkg = pacman glibc
#XferCommand = /usr/bin/curl -C - -f %u > %o
#XferCommand = /usr/bin/wget --passive-ftp -c -O %o %u
#CleanMethod = KeepInstalled
#UseDelta = 0.7
Architecture = auto

# Pacman won't upgrade packages listed in IgnorePkg and members of IgnoreGroup
#IgnorePkg =
#IgnoreGroup =

#NoUpgrade =
#NoExtract =

# Misc options
#UseSyslog
#Color
#TotalDownload
CheckSpace
#VerbosePkgLists

# By default, pacman accepts packages signed by keys that its local keyring
# trusts (see pacman-key and its man page), as well as unsigned packages.
SigLevel = Required DatabaseOptional
LocalFileSigLevel = Optional
#RemoteFileSigLevel = Required

# NOTE: You must run `pacman-key --init` before first using pacman; the local
# keyring can then be populated with the keys of all official Arch Linux
# packagers with `pacman-key --populate archlinux`.

#
# REPOSITORIES
# - can be defined here or included from another file
# - pacman will search repositories in the order defined here
# - local/custom mirrors can be added here or in separate files
# - repositories listed first will take precedence when packages
# have identical names, regardless of version number
# - URLs will have $repo replaced by the name of the current repo
# - URLs will have $arch replaced by the name of the architecture
#
# Repository entries are of the format:
# [repo-name]
# Server = ServerName
# Include = IncludePath
#
# The header [repo-name] is crucial - it must be present and
# uncommented to enable the repo.
#

# The testing repositories are disabled by default. To enable, uncomment the
# repo name header and Include lines. You can add preferred servers immediately
# after the header, and they will be used before the default mirrors.

#[testing]
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[core]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[extra]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

#[community-testing]
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[community]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

# If you want to run 32 bit applications on your x86_64 system,
# enable the multilib repositories as required here.

#[multilib-testing]
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

#[multilib]
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

# An example of a custom package repository. See the pacman manpage for
# tips on creating your own repositories.
#[custom]
#SigLevel = Optional TrustAll
#Server = file:///home/custompkgs
Click to expand...
 
C

CurlySaysX

Banned
Swapped my motherboard and cpu from a LGA775/C2D to a H97/Xeon and Kubuntu booted straight up! Only issues I can find is Amarok seems broken - removed it and using clementine now - and muon update centre is super slow and doesn't respond. It still appears to work though.
The intel integrated network adaptor didn't work initially either, but after messing around with the sata ports it seems to be working flawlessly.
Does anyone know if it's o.k to switch chipsets on linux without doing a fresh install? i.e any security issues or anything else?
My windows 7 partition doesn't boot up, and gives me a blue screen and reboots btw.
Linux 1 - Windows 0
 
N

NotBacon

Member
CurlySaysX said:
Swapped my motherboard and cpu from a LGA775/C2D to a H97/Xeon and Kubuntu booted straight up! Only issues I can find is Amarok seems broken - removed it and using clementine now - and muon update centre is super slow and doesn't respond. It still appears to work though.
The intel integrated network adaptor didn't work initially either, but after messing around with the sata ports it seems to be working flawlessly.
Does anyone know if it's o.k to switch chipsets on linux without doing a fresh install? i.e any security issues or anything else?
My windows 7 partition doesn't boot up, and gives me a blue screen and reboots btw.
Linux 1 - Windows 0
Click to expand...

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
 
H

Hugh Buelow

Member
MagusKen said:
I recently came across an error when I installed Libreoffice and now my pacman cant work with this popping up in the first line of my terminal

Code: 
error: config file /etc/pacman.conf, line 1: All directives must belong to a section

Here is my configuarion:
Click to expand...

If you run this in your shell

Code: 
hexdump -C /etc/pacman.conf | head -n 1

can you confirm that the first two bytes are 23 and 0a?


edit: if you are wondering why I ask that, the only way I could reproduce the error is by adding a non-printable character (in my case, a BOM) right at the beginning of the file.
 
Y

Young Magus

Junior Member
Hugh Buelow said:
If you run this in your shell

Code: 
hexdump -C /etc/pacman.conf | head -n 1

can you confirm that the first two bytes are 23 and 0a?


edit: if you are wondering why I ask that, the only way I could reproduce the error is by adding a non-printable character (in my case, a BOM) right at the beginning of the file.
Click to expand...

Did it in Guake and I got the following:

Code: 
00000000  ef bb bf 23 0a 23 20 2f  65 74 63 2f 70 61 63 6d  |...#.# /etc/pacm|
 
H

Hugh Buelow

Member
MagusKen said:
Did it in Guake and I got the following:

Code: 
00000000  ef bb bf 23 0a 23 20 2f  65 74 63 2f 70 61 63 6d  |...#.# /etc/pacm|
Click to expand...

That's the BOM at the beginning of the file. Since it appears before the comment marker, pacman interprets it as a directive and you end up with the error you mentionned.

The problem with the BOM is that all editors / terminals that support unicode won't show it, but programs that parse files will consider it to be invalid data (on Linux at least)

To remove it, first make a copy of the pacman.conf file and then run a sed script.

Code: 
cp /etc/pacman.conf /etc/pacman.conf.bom_infected
sed "1s/^\xEF\xBB\xBF//" /etc/pacman.conf.bom_infected > /etc/pacman.conf

The sed "script" will remove the BOM at the beginning of the line, on the first line only.

By curiosity, which editor did you use to edit this file?
 
S

Schlep

Member
Has anyone else been having issues with Chrome and Chromium where you hit a page with, I'm guessing, a lot of Javascript (like Yahoo articles) that causes the CPUs to max out and the whole machine become very unresponsive?
 
T

Treechopper

Member
For my laptop I've finally settled on Arch with Gnome on top. I fought it for a long time because I thought Gnome would be too much, but really, it works just fine. It's really impressing my roommate as well (who I'm trying to push into the Linux world).

Sorry i3. Sorry Openbox.


Am I giving more fuel to Andrex?
 
P

phoenixyz

Member
Gnome just isn't for me. Everytime I try it because of the nice Eye-candy-screenshots everywhere I just can't get into it. Same with Unity. I need either the classic Desktop metaphor or a tiling window manager. Everything else is for touch-based devices ;)
 
T

Treechopper

Member
It would be awesome to have a stable Linux distro on my touch based devices!

I have Elementary on my desktop machine for the more classic experience. However, it feels like it needs an update or that it's not quite there yet. I'm hopeful for Freya because I like what I hear and Luna is rock solid.
 
M

Massa

Member
phoenixyz said:
Gnome just isn't for me. Everytime I try it because of the nice Eye-candy-screenshots everywhere I just can't get into it. Same with Unity. I need either the classic Desktop metaphor or a tiling window manager. Everything else is for touch-based devices ;)
Click to expand...

If you don't mind me asking, what specifically do you not like about Gnome and Unity? is it the lack of a windows list?
 
N

Nostremitus

Member
Alright, I can't get steam to open.

Ubuntu 14.04

CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1045T

GPU: R9 270 (Latest CCC installed)

RAM 8GB 1333MHz

I upgraded to the R9 270, Steam ran fine on my old HD 5570 and Ubuntu 14.04.

I did a fresh install of 14.04, then installed Steam.

I've removed and reinstalled Steam, but no change.

Code: 
nostremitus@NosLinux:~$ steam
Running Steam on ubuntu 14.04 64-bit
STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(0_client)
Uploading dump (out-of-process) [proxy '']
/tmp/dumps/crash_20140726102349_1.dmp
/home/nostremitus/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: line 755:  7493 Segmentation fault      (core dumped) $STEAM_DEBUGGER "$STEAMROOT/$PLATFORM/$STEAMEXE" "$@"
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/nostremitus/.steam/registry.vdf’: No such file or directory
Installing bootstrap /home/nostremitus/.local/share/Steam/bootstrap.tar.xz
Reset complete!
Restarting Steam by request...
Running Steam on ubuntu 14.04 64-bit
STEAM_RUNTIME has been set by the user to: /home/nostremitus/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(0_client)
Uploading dump (out-of-process) [proxy '']
/tmp/dumps/crash_20140726102351_1.dmp
/home/nostremitus/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: line 755:  7620 Segmentation fault      (core dumped) $STEAM_DEBUGGER "$STEAMROOT/$PLATFORM/$STEAMEXE" "$@"
Finished uploading minidump (out-of-process): success = yes
response: CrashID=bp-93376ce4-2772-456c-ab23-c870b2140726
Finished uploading minidump (out-of-process): success = yes
response: CrashID=bp-832195bc-e9c7-4b8a-b4f8-e3b072140726
nostremitus@NosLinux:~$

any ideas?
 
N

Nostremitus

Member
Treechopper said:
Code: 
/home/nostremitus/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: line 755:  7493 Segmentation fault

What does line 755 of steam.sh say?
Click to expand...

I can't say. Someone on the Steam Forums suggested I switch back to Xorg, then reinstall Steam because apparently Steam doesn't like to install properly on 14.04 with Catalyst already installed. I switched back to Xorg and rebooted, but now Linux won't boot at all. It drops to a shell. So, I'm just gonna say screw it and start a fresh install.

So, any Steam gamers on here? What distro have you had good luck with using AMD cards?
 
P

phoenixyz

Member
Nostremitus said:
I can't say. Someone on the Steam Forums suggested I switch back to Xorg, then reinstall Steam because apparently Steam doesn't like to install properly on 14.04 with Catalyst already installed. I switched back to Xorg and rebooted, but now Linux won't boot at all. It drops to a shell.
Click to expand...

I doubt games will work any better with the open source drivers.
 
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