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Linux Distro Noob thread of Linux noobs
- Thread starter Flying_Phoenix
- Start date
GameplayWhore
Member
Schlep said:
I'm curious. What software are you using here to benchmark your drives? And how does the SSD do against the HD in write tests?
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Schlep said:
If I get an SSD Windows is using that shit (sorry Linux GAF) as I want to put my most used Steam games on that bitch to help with the load times.
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
I started using Fedora 15 and its great so far.
However I am having two problems.
First off when I upgrade Firefox to Firefox 5, whenever I open Firefox from the favorites panel it always opens up Firefox 4. Even if I delete it from the Favorites then open up Firefox 5 and add it...same thing.
Also I try to update the OS but whenever I do, this happens:
Also, where are the maximize and minimize buttons?
However I am having two problems.
First off when I upgrade Firefox to Firefox 5, whenever I open Firefox from the favorites panel it always opens up Firefox 4. Even if I delete it from the Favorites then open up Firefox 5 and add it...same thing.
Also I try to update the OS but whenever I do, this happens:
Also, where are the maximize and minimize buttons?
By default, gnome 3 does not have min/max buttons. You can add them by installing the gnome tweak tool.
As for your upgrading issue, try doing so from the terminal and see what happens.
Not sure what Firefox is doing though. Did it upgrade itself or did you use Yum?
Also, your titlebars are obnoxiously large. Try running the following command to fix it (if you want):
sed -i '/title_vertical_pad/s|value="[0-9]\{1,2\}"|value="0"|g' /usr/share/themes/Adwaita/metacity-1/metacity-theme-3.xml
Now, this is from the Arch wiki, but the changes are OS-agnostic.
As for your upgrading issue, try doing so from the terminal and see what happens.
Not sure what Firefox is doing though. Did it upgrade itself or did you use Yum?
Also, your titlebars are obnoxiously large. Try running the following command to fix it (if you want):
sed -i '/title_vertical_pad/s|value="[0-9]\{1,2\}"|value="0"|g' /usr/share/themes/Adwaita/metacity-1/metacity-theme-3.xml
Now, this is from the Arch wiki, but the changes are OS-agnostic.
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
Jerk said:
So how do I minimize and maximize with Gnome 3? Or would I be "doing it wrong" then?
And yeah used yum in terminal, worked fine.
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
So yeah updated everything.
The firefox problem no longer exist but now after installing Flash when I try to play videos I can't because they still say that I need Flash...
The firefox problem no longer exist but now after installing Flash when I try to play videos I can't because they still say that I need Flash...
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
What the fuck is this shit!? After installing Fedora it corrupted both Ubuntu and Windows 7 partions!!!!!
GameplayWhore
Member
Flying_Phoenix said:
The general method for maximizing in most bloaty desktop environments these days seems to be dragging the window against the top edge of the screen.
GameplayWhore
Member
Flying_Phoenix said:
ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS backup before doing an OS install or upgrade.
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
GameplayWhore said:
Luckily I did. But I'm pissed becasue one partion was Windows 7 Ultimate, an OS that came with the computer when I brought it on Ebay.
I have Windows 7 on my desktop but still...
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
After playing with it for some hours I've decided that Fedora is definetly not for me. Back to Ubuntu.
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
You know I saw Phoenix in another thread and noticed the new icon, but I didn't notice it here. I read all of those posts about his problems to, but didn't realize till this morning that it was actually Phoenix posting and not a new comer to our little gang. LOL
On a related side note while I don't think we are gonna get drastic overhauls or anything... I DO think both Gnome 3.2 as well as Ubuntu 11.10 both are gonna be more what Gnome Shell and Unity really SHOULD have been and well WANTED to be. I say this only because Linux people tend to be fickle, very much haters, and tend to make long standing judgements (like for some reason they have to pick a side and champion it for life or something).
Just keep an open mind and everyone should reroll both Ubuntu and Fedora (sort of the defacto standard Gnome 3 distro)'s next releases later this year. Shit might not be the way you want it or you might not like the work space flow logic being used, but at least everything should be tidied up a bit.
Neither were the abomination that was KDE 4.0, but you could make similar analogies in that both were big changes, and just needed an extra dev cycle to tighten up the user experience as a whole. This also finally to me shows how Canonical works in terms of Ubuntu and feature sets and such. I always understood, but never reaaallyyy understood the way they roll our features in releases and build towards the stable LTS. Then they go and blow things up again and start all over. LOL
PS: I'm definitely an Ubuntu guy, but I'll have Fedora on a USB stick when it drops later this year to try it out as soon as I get free time fo sho!
On a related side note while I don't think we are gonna get drastic overhauls or anything... I DO think both Gnome 3.2 as well as Ubuntu 11.10 both are gonna be more what Gnome Shell and Unity really SHOULD have been and well WANTED to be. I say this only because Linux people tend to be fickle, very much haters, and tend to make long standing judgements (like for some reason they have to pick a side and champion it for life or something).
Just keep an open mind and everyone should reroll both Ubuntu and Fedora (sort of the defacto standard Gnome 3 distro)'s next releases later this year. Shit might not be the way you want it or you might not like the work space flow logic being used, but at least everything should be tidied up a bit.
Neither were the abomination that was KDE 4.0, but you could make similar analogies in that both were big changes, and just needed an extra dev cycle to tighten up the user experience as a whole. This also finally to me shows how Canonical works in terms of Ubuntu and feature sets and such. I always understood, but never reaaallyyy understood the way they roll our features in releases and build towards the stable LTS. Then they go and blow things up again and start all over. LOL
PS: I'm definitely an Ubuntu guy, but I'll have Fedora on a USB stick when it drops later this year to try it out as soon as I get free time fo sho!
GameplayWhore
Member
Flying_Phoenix said:
I'm curious. What are the primary differences between them? I mean, not counting stuff that can be easily changed like one having different default software packages installed and soforth.
In other news, Arch isn't playing too nicely nice with AMD graphics drivers and X Compositing. OpenGL works, though -- if that didn't work, I'd pretty much jump ship to Alpine or something, because being able to play Civ4
and nethack
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
Brettison said:On a related side note while I don't think we are gonna get drastic overhauls or anything... I DO think both Gnome 3.2 as well as Ubuntu 11.10 both are gonna be more what Gnome Shell and Unity really SHOULD have been and well WANTED to be. I say this only because Linux people tend to be fickle, very much haters, and tend to make long standing judgements (like for some reason they have to pick a side and champion it for life or something).
Just keep an open mind and everyone should reroll both Ubuntu and Fedora (sort of the defacto standard Gnome 3 distro)'s next releases later this year. Shit might not be the way you want it or you might not like the work space flow logic being used, but at least everything should be tidied up a bit.
Neither were the abomination that was KDE 4.0, but you could make similar analogies in that both were big changes, and just needed an extra dev cycle to tighten up the user experience as a whole. This also finally to me shows how Canonical works in terms of Ubuntu and feature sets and such. I always understood, but never reaaallyyy understood the way they roll our features in releases and build towards the stable LTS. Then they go and blow things up again and start all over. LOL
Unity and Gnome 3 both feel so unfinish its insane.
Brettison said:
Its pretty much Ubuntu with Gnome 3 but speedy and less intuitive with many more headaches.
GameplayWhore said:
Software Store App
Site that actually works (fedoraproject.org kept disconnecting from server)
Rarely has random problems, specifically when installing codecs
Unity > Gnome 3 (IMO)
Much more intuitive (for example in Fedora I can't right click on the desktop to change its background)
Etc.
The only thing Fedora has going for it is that its much more snappier.
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Alright Linux-GAF.... Brettison is back with another question.... this one has been nagging me for a LONG ASS TIME.... and quite frankly I feel stupid for just not "getting" it at this point...
Basically I need a public key encryption lesson for dummies as I just don't get it. Symmetric encryption in which you code your info a certain way and then tell the other party (or the other comp) the way you coded it so they can decode your message makes sense to me. Like take every letter or number I have and move 5 spaces ahead like A=F and 1=6 and then just have it wrap back so that 9=4 and Z=E. You just gotta let the other party know wtf is up ahead of time.
This whole public key private key nonsense just flies right over my head. Plus the fact that you can shorten a public key (I think) to verify against your list on your key ring. I don't quite get how it works, and I never understood the shortening thing either as it seems like your opening yourself up for a fuck up.
Hell I even read that damn Cory Doctrow book "Little Brother" in which the main character goes through a whole ordeal about public key encryption and I was like uhhh WHHATTTT?
Basically I need a public key encryption lesson for dummies as I just don't get it. Symmetric encryption in which you code your info a certain way and then tell the other party (or the other comp) the way you coded it so they can decode your message makes sense to me. Like take every letter or number I have and move 5 spaces ahead like A=F and 1=6 and then just have it wrap back so that 9=4 and Z=E. You just gotta let the other party know wtf is up ahead of time.
This whole public key private key nonsense just flies right over my head. Plus the fact that you can shorten a public key (I think) to verify against your list on your key ring. I don't quite get how it works, and I never understood the shortening thing either as it seems like your opening yourself up for a fuck up.
Hell I even read that damn Cory Doctrow book "Little Brother" in which the main character goes through a whole ordeal about public key encryption and I was like uhhh WHHATTTT?
Help me Obi-Nix-GAF you're my only hope! - Brettison
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Flying_Phoenix said:
To be fair I already tried the last Fedora release with Gnome 3. I was more saying I'd try the next version cause it will ship with Gnome 3.2. This gets back to your 1st comment that both feel so unfinished. Which while I think I prefer Ubuntu's paradigm of how to do things, I'll still want to check out Fedora just to see what a more polished version of Gnome 3 with Gnome Shell is really like.
PKE is actually really simple.
We have two users: Tom and Jerry.
Each user has a key pair, a Public Key and a Private key.
Public Key: Encrypts data. This is the only purpose it serves and it can pretty much be given to anyone.
Private Key: Decrypts data. ONLY YOU SHOULD EVER know this.
Now, let us say that these two gents wish to exchange data. All they have to do is exchange Public Keys and they are good to go.
When Jerry sends data to Tom, he encrypts this with the public key given to him by Tom and sends it to him. When Tom receives this, he uses his private key to decrypt this.
When Tom wishes to reciprocate, he follows the same procedure.
We have two users: Tom and Jerry.
Each user has a key pair, a Public Key and a Private key.
Public Key: Encrypts data. This is the only purpose it serves and it can pretty much be given to anyone.
Private Key: Decrypts data. ONLY YOU SHOULD EVER know this.
Now, let us say that these two gents wish to exchange data. All they have to do is exchange Public Keys and they are good to go.
When Jerry sends data to Tom, he encrypts this with the public key given to him by Tom and sends it to him. When Tom receives this, he uses his private key to decrypt this.
When Tom wishes to reciprocate, he follows the same procedure.
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Why do people always talk about some digital certificate thing in regards to PKE. Also how do you go about storing all of the public keys? Where do you keep your private key if you use say multiple computers?
How would you use PKE to login to say a server via SSH? Wouldn't the public key be hella long? How would you type that shit in? Would you just store your private key on the server? Wouldn't that be dangerous if others can login to the server too?
How would you use PKE to login to say a server via SSH? Wouldn't the public key be hella long? How would you type that shit in? Would you just store your private key on the server? Wouldn't that be dangerous if others can login to the server too?
Brettison said:
-_-
The keys are usually stored in files and managed by programs, not the user directly. SSH for example can handle all that for you.
Ex:
ssh-keygen - Creates a key pair and saves them.
ssh-copy-id - Uploads the public key to a server that you can SSH to. Downloads Public key of server.
The keys are usually kept in files, and the permissions of these are pretty specific (I think 'group' and 'other' are not allowed any permissions). In addition, both computers usually keep track of the credentials and identities as make sure no shenanigans are afoot.
As for the other questions, I think you understand enough to search Google/WIki (these articles are particularly helpful)
The general idea is that secret keys live on each individual computer, while public keys are stored in an "~/.ssh/authorized_keys" file on remote machines. For instance, the public key from Laptop A might be stored on Server B, Server C and Server D. Since Laptop A is the only one who can decrypt messages encrypted with that public key, the servers can allow it to login more securely and without the need for a password.
Once the keys are in place, you can configure SSH to refuse password-based logins entirely which eliminates one method of unauthorized access to your machines.
Once the keys are in place, you can configure SSH to refuse password-based logins entirely which eliminates one method of unauthorized access to your machines.
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Thanks for the info. I actually have tried to google around for info, but that always ends up confusing me more! LOL
In terms of SSH which set of keys are you using... if A=Server and B=Laptop are you using the key set of A or the key set of B to log in?
In terms of SSH which set of keys are you using... if A=Server and B=Laptop are you using the key set of A or the key set of B to log in?
When trying to login from B (laptop) to A (server), the server needs to have B's public key in order to let it login. The secret key always stays with the machine and shouldn't be sent anywhere, while the public key goes everywhere you want to login to. Ubuntu's online documentation has a pretty straightforward guide on the subject. I found an even simpler walkthrough that may be useful also.Brettison said:
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
Time to post our desktops!
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
tuffy said:
Wouldn't a bunch of people have access to your public key though so anyone could log in with your public key? Do you keep the private key on B (laptop) or do you have to copy it to A (the server) at some point so it can then use your public key as authentication?
If not wouldn't you still have to send the private key from B (laptop) over the connection if it's gonna work in tandum with the public key? Isn't that not private anymore since you'd have to send it over the net to work with your sent public key?
The public key is a bit like a padlock that only the secret key can open. Since the server also has a set of public and secret keys, the login procedure works a little like this:Brettison said:
- server sends client its public key (found at "/etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub")
- server sends client a secret encrypted with the client's public key (found at "~/.ssh/authorized_keys")
- client decrypts secret - which only it can do, since it's the only one with the secret key
- client sends server the secret encrypted with the server's public key
- server decrypts secret sent from client and verifies it's the same secret it first sent out
Therefore, while anybody with your public key can allow you access to their machines, knowing the public key alone is not enough to give anybody else access but you.
GameplayWhore
Member
Jerk said:
:O :O :O
I always did
Code:
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh user@server "mkdir ~/.ssh ; cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys ; chmod -R 700 ~/.ssh"Note for the unknowing: the mkdir ~/.ssh ; and the ; chmod -R 700 ~/.ssh parts are superfluous and unnecessary if you just need to copy the public key.
Also, does ssh-copy-id do it both ways when you use it? Won't that let the user at the target ssh into your machine? I usually prefer to do this unidirectionally.
EDIT: Oh hah, the ssh-copy-id is just a shell script that pretty much does what I've been doing all along!
Code:
{ eval "$GET_ID" ; } | ssh $host "umask 077; test -d ~/.ssh || mkdir ~/.ssh ; cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys" || exit 1tuffy said:
This is an awesome analogy.
Flying_Phoenix said:
I'm curious, since I've never seen this DE before (It's G3, right? I only saw it in very limited beta a while back): What did you customise on it to achieve your personalized desktop? Does it let you make theming changes, or can you only do stuff like changing the wallpaper? I don't know how far detached from the default look/design this is.
GameplayWhore
Member
Krelian said:
Hmm. Unity does not appear to be in my distro's repositories. I'm having trouble finding a download link at their website, too.
Also, this is a dumb name for the project. There's already a distro named unity, and Fedora already has a "Unity" project on top of that which is completely unrelated, so it's all the more difficult to get my hands on it! It's a dick move to try to co-opt a program or name in computing that's already established. I'm looking at you, chromium (a somewhat popular Linux shooter which is still maintained, I believe)! And Chrome for that matter (it was already the internal name of the UI for the most popular Linux browser at the time google released theirs)!
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
It's a shell for gnome made specifically by canonical for Ubuntu. So if you aren't running Ubuntu you aren't gonna see Unity ever. It's an Ubuntu specific project.GameplayWhore said:
GameplayWhore
Member
Brettison said:
This makes me angry. When you build on the work of thousands of other people, it seems just rude to keep your subsequent efforts all to yourself.
That said, virtualbox is being installed so's I can try it on my already download U11.04 iso.
Edit: fwiw, Ubuntu isn't blocking port attempts, but apparently it's a pain in the ass to move over, according to the guys at both opensuse and fedora.
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Nobody sais they are keeping it to themselves, but they are the ones doing the work and nobody else has wanted to use it. Outside of other Ubuntu distros who else would anyways?GameplayWhore said:
Everyone else is using gnome 2.x or gnome 3 +gnome shell just in terms of general gnome use. It's not as if Canonical is keeping it to themselves, but rather nobody else wants to use it. So it just isn't there.
GameplayWhore
Member
Brettison said:
As I said (in my edit, which you probably missed since I likely made it while you were typing the above), folks at opensuse and fedora have both been working on porting it.
Why would nobody want to use it? I'm interested in trying it out. If I'm interested, there are likely thousands of people who have preferred distros who would like to see how the interface works.
Unity blows. Compiz is such a memory whore. I have 8 gigs of ram and yet stupid shit like the weather indicator and system indicator almost never work in the panel at the top. They randomly decide on boot to work and then crash hard in the background and disappear. I'm going to go with Lubuntu from now on, fuck Ubuntu. It lost all the good faith it built with me by releasing this turd of an update.
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
GameplayWhore said:
Well it was built as a specific shell for Ubuntu built on top of Gnome verse an independent gui like say Gnome or KDE. So the way it works is totally intertwined with the actual intricate setup of Ubuntu going forward. To a certain extent I'm not even sure how it would work outside of Ubuntu because it's made to work with other choices Canonical made with the OS as a whole.
I'm not saying nobody would want to use it. I'm saying if you want to use it then you'd just use Ubuntu. Though I get the idea of wanting to try it out (that's semi negated now with the advent of the great linux invention ever: LIVE DISTROS!), but I don't see why you'd need a port of it to work on a more niche distro. I assume the whole point of making a niche distro is you can't find what you need in the major stock distros like Open Suse, Fedora, or Ubuntu.
My line of thinking is probably just crazy though.
Massa said:
I've heard this as well, and pretty much agree it to be true. Yet the one thing that always threw me on this was Linux Mint seems to do just fine, and it's part of the Debian/Ubuntu stream. It's actually fastly become one of the most popular distros honestly.
GameplayWhore
Member
Brettison said:
They're pretty awesome. That's why I was firing up virtualbox, so I can boot to an iso in a window.
Some niche distros have features that are really, really useful (like out of the box proprietary driver support or they offer a rolling release instead of possibly having to do full reinstalls every half year), but that doesn't mean that we should have to give up other features found in the more popular distros.
My coworker loves Mint dearly, though he specifically prefers Mint Debian. The Ubuntu-specific brand of "differentness for the sake of differentness" apparently drove him crazy after a while.
Brettison said:
It would not be as difficult as you would think. The entire thing is written with GTK2 so as you say, most of the work would be making some if its components OS agnostic.
Personally, I am not a fan of it. I find KDE4 with some of the candy stripped(play) and Xmonad(work) to be much nicer.
Although I am contemplating moving to something more stable than KDE; the graphical glitches are starting to get to me.
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Jerk said:
Interesting... I thought they had all of that worked out by now...
GameplayWhore
Member
Jerk said:
Linux graphics support is bizarrely not as great as it was when it was less popular. I never had a problem for most of the past decade, then all of a sudden things stopped working reliably.
Anyway, for what it's worth, kde4's compositing is working great on this opensuse 11.4 + nvidia GeForce 7300 GS machine here at work. I can't quite get gnome 3's compositing working, but I get the vague feeling that I need to completely restart X11 for that, and I keep my sessions running for long swaths of time. kde4 on my home Arch + AMD 880G does not seem to do compositing at all. In the best case scenario, every window exists and is interactive, but the contents of the windows are all snow. Thankfully, as I probably mentioned above, the graphics drivers are otherwise working, and I can continue getting my butt kicked by the Iroquoi nation.
GameplayWhore said:Linux graphics support is bizarrely not as great as it was when it was less popular. I never had a problem for most of the past decade, then all of a sudden things stopped working reliably.
Anyway, for what it's worth, kde4's compositing is working great on this opensuse 11.4 + nvidia GeForce 7300 GS machine here at work. I can't quite get gnome 3's compositing working, but I get the vague feeling that I need to completely restart X11 for that, and I keep my sessions running for long swaths of time. kde4 on my home Arch + AMD 880G does not seem to do compositing at all. In the best case scenario, every window exists and is interactive, but the contents of the windows are all snow. Thankfully, as I probably mentioned above, the graphics drivers are otherwise working, and I can continue getting my butt kicked by the Iroquoi nation.
My Arch installations both at work (intergrated nvidia card) and on my laptop(nvidia 8600m GT) run KDE decently. My issue is with my rig at home (Radeon 6570).
Which I suppose means I should direct my ire at AMD. To be clear, they are all perfectly useable, but they do not run nearly has glitch-free as Gnome 2 used to (my stardard for stability when it comes to the more bloat-filled Desktops).
And yeah, graphics support on unity, gnome-shell and plasma-shell are awful. Honestly, I think I may start using XFCE + Nautilus.
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
I have a 48XX series Ati card, and I run the proprietary Ati drivers (I'm personally not an anal FOSS person so I don't mind) and everything works fine here in KDE, Gnome Shell, and Unity with the effects on. Guess I should consider myself lucky!
GameplayWhore
Member
Jerk said:
Arch can be quirky with some hardware. It's the only distro that requires serious workarounds to get my printer working, for example. So maybe if I switch to Calculate, the AMD problems will vanish.
I tend to push LXDE for people somewhat used to KDE. It's like XFCE in terms of quickness, only you can customize it.
BTW, I'm going to be kind enough to refrain from posting my desktop so that your eyes don't try to escape from their sockets.
GameplayWhore
Member
Brettison said:I have a 48XX series Ati card, and I run the proprietary Ati drivers (I'm personally not an anal FOSS person so I don't mind) and everything works fine here in KDE, Gnome Shell, and Unity with the effects on. Guess I should consider myself lucky!
FOSS graphics drivers can suck my uvula. nouveau is crap and breaks on our very simple programs here, but I had to do cartwheels to get opensuse to use nvidia. radeon ... okay, maybe it's not any worse than the amd drivers, since neither successfully are doing compositing on my box.
On the other hand, aren't the Intel open source drivers supposed to be better than what they provide?