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Linux Distro Noob thread of Linux noobs

V

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Honestly it amazes me that ever since I switched to Elemetary OS I haven't looked back. I've booted into Windows a total of IDK 1 maybe 2 times in the past 2 to 3 months since I've made the switch on my desktop. I don't even feel like hey I'm using Linux nerd thing anymore! It's just my main OS that I do all of my shit on and I haven't looked back.

Says a lot IMO at least for me.
 
A

alphaNoid

Banned
Question, how is Luna/Elementary compared to Ubuntu 12.10? I'm currently running Ubuntu 12.10 on my spare laptop at home and enjoying it so far but I'm interested in Elementary. Is the beta stable? As good or better than Ubuntu?

Even if this is very high level to ask, I'm just curious for some feedback.
 
V

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
alphaNoid said:
Question, how is Luna/Elementary compared to Ubuntu 12.10? I'm currently running Ubuntu 12.10 on my spare laptop at home and enjoying it so far but I'm interested in Elementary. Is the beta stable? As good or better than Ubuntu?

Even if this is very high level to ask, I'm just curious for some feedback.
Click to expand...

It's still early, but it's way better than it was a couple of months ago. When I first installed it worked, but I got all kinds of weird issues. I haven't really gotten any in a long while though. It's an Ubuntu 12.04 downstream so you still get access to all your usual ubuntu/debian/mint stuff in terms of programs.

There are still some design qualms I have, but I've not had the itch to switch to anything else which says something for me.
 
S

stktt

Banned
I installed the elementary beta on my old laptop. There are still some bugs, but it seems like a responsive, well designed DE and set of applications.
 
P

peakish

Member
wsoxfan1214 said:
Question. Does anyone know how to change the boot default (the system it boots to after a certain amount of time) with grub2?
Click to expand...
I believe that the default is the order in which entries in /etc/grub.d/ appear, i.e. the instructions in 10_linux appear before those in 20_example and so on in the menu. You can also change GRUB_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub to the entry you want (counting indices 0, 1, 2, ... in the actual menu, not corresponding to the numbers 10_, 20_ in /etc/grub.d/). After you have changed these options you can regenerate the actual grub config file /boot/grub/grub.cfg which is read on boot by executing
Code: 
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
as root. This reads /etc/default/grub and the /etc/grub.d/ directory files to apply your configuration into a proper file.

If you want to you can modify the /boot/grub/grub.cfg on your own to do this but it's not recommended since that file will be regenerated and your changes discarded whenever Grub updates after installing a new kernel or whatnot. Finally there seem to be some GUI tools available to do it if you feel like using that instead.

Just don't forget to backup the original files :p

http://members.iinet.net/~herman546/p20/GRUB2%20Configuration%20File%20Commands.html
 
W

wsoxfan1214

Banned
peakish said:
I believe that the default is the order in which entries in /etc/grub.d/ appear, i.e. the instructions in 10_linux appear before those in 20_example and so on in the menu. You can also change GRUB_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub to the entry you want (counting indices 0, 1, 2, ... in the actual menu, not corresponding to the numbers 10_, 20_ in /etc/grub.d/). After you have changed these options you can regenerate the actual grub config file /boot/grub/grub.cfg which is read on boot by executing
Code: 
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
as root. This reads /etc/default/grub and the /etc/grub.d/ directory files to apply your configuration into a proper file.

If you want to you can modify the /boot/grub/grub.cfg on your own to do this but it's not recommended since that file will be regenerated and your changes discarded whenever Grub updates after installing a new kernel or whatnot. Finally there seem to be some GUI tools available to do it if you feel like using that instead.

Just don't forget to backup the original files :p

http://members.iinet.net/~herman546/p20/GRUB2%20Configuration%20File%20Commands.html
Click to expand...

Thanks. Wish half of this made sense to me. Not well versed with grub2. I changed the default in /etc/default/grub to 4, which is the option for windows on the default, then ran

Code: 
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

but it still isn't working. Do I have to edit another file then?
 
A

alphaNoid

Banned
Brettison said:
It's still early, but it's way better than it was a couple of months ago. When I first installed it worked, but I got all kinds of weird issues. I haven't really gotten any in a long while though. It's an Ubuntu 12.04 downstream so you still get access to all your usual ubuntu/debian/mint stuff in terms of programs.

There are still some design qualms I have, but I've not had the itch to switch to anything else which says something for me.
Click to expand...

Hmm perhaps I'll give it a go, thanks.
 
P

peakish

Member
wsoxfan1214 said:
Thanks. Wish half of this made sense to me. Not well versed with grub2. I changed the default in /etc/default/grub to 4, which is the option for windows on the default, then ran

Code: 
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

but it still isn't working. Do I have to edit another file then?
Click to expand...
Did the command not run or did the boot still default to your distro? I think Ubuntu might use update-grub or grub-update instead. You can check if the change actually went through in your /boot/grub/grub.cfg file also, under set default="0" or whatnot. Also, is Windows the fourth or fifth item in the menu? If it's the fourth I'd try with GRUB_DEFAULT 3 instead using standard index notation.
 
W

wsoxfan1214

Banned
peakish said:
Did the command not run or did the boot still default to your distro? I think Ubuntu might use update-grub or grub-update instead. You can check if the change actually went through in your /boot/grub/grub.cfg file also, under set default="0" or whatnot. Also, is Windows the fourth or fifth item in the menu? If it's the fourth I'd try with GRUB_DEFAULT 3 instead using standard index notation.
Click to expand...

It's not Ubuntu. It's my own variant of openSUSE that I built using SUSE Studio that I'm trying to figure out before releasing a beta here maybe.

I fixed it by changing it to 3 before seeing your post because I noticed the advanced options for openSUSE 12.2 entry thing was marked as a subentry.

Anyway, do you happen to maybe have an idea as to how to fix this sound issue I have? Once I give root privileges to a user and add them to the audio group, the sound works.Before that, however, no sound. Should I just default the test account for the beta to the audio group? The issue with that is that it doesn't allow me to assign root to them. Or would it just be simple enough to include a mention bundled with the ISO in the readme?

It really is as simple as going into yast and adding the account to the audio group and then re-logging in.
 
M

markot

Banned
How do I get rid of the AMD watermark when I install the beta drivers >_<?

Its annoying.

How do I install steam on my 12.10 64 bit stuffs >_>?
 
C

CurlySaysX

Banned
G

GameplayWhore

Member
zoku88 wins a cookie.

The problem was that at some point my local backup script, which rsyncs the /mnt/array data to /mnt/backup every night, must have run when /mnt/backup was somehow not mounted. So the root partition filled up until it was full. But when the backup partition is mounted, the /mnt/backup directory belonging to the root filesystem is totally hidden!

So I unmounted, renamed the backup directory to backup.0, remounted, then finally removed backup.0.

Yay, all fixed!



tfur said:
I hate the look of the df with duplicates for rootfs and /. What distro?
Click to expand...

Opensuse, but I'm not sure that it's necessarily the fault of the distro. My embedded debian server at home looks like this:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs 7.1G 2.0G 4.8G 29% /
/dev/root 7.1G 2.0G 4.8G 29% /
devtmpfs 220M 0 220M 0% /dev
tmpfs 44M 472K 44M 2% /run
tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
tmpfs 88M 68K 88M 1% /run/shm
/dev/mmcblk0p1 56M 17M 40M 30% /boot
/dev/sda1 1.8T 1.4T 376G 79% /media/optimus


I also have /media/voltron and /media/trypticon currently attached to my other machine. /media/unicron was retired some time ago. /media/gundam lost its label when I used it to replace my Wii hard drive. ;)
 
A

angelfly

Member
GameplayWhore said:
Opensuse, but I'm not sure that it's necessarily the fault of the distro. My embedded debian server at home looks like this:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs 7.1G 2.0G 4.8G 29% /
/dev/root 7.1G 2.0G 4.8G 29% /
Click to expand...

It's normal and happens if you're using an initramfs. The rootfs one is the where the kernel mounts the initramfs and the second is when you're actual root gets mounted. Both stay listed since rootfs can't be unmounted.
 
Z

zoku88

Member
GameplayWhore said:
zoku88 wins a cookie.

The problem was that at some point my local backup script, which rsyncs the /mnt/array data to /mnt/backup every night, must have run when /mnt/backup was somehow not mounted. So the root partition filled up until it was full. But when the backup partition is mounted, the /mnt/backup directory belonging to the root filesystem is totally hidden!

So I unmounted, renamed the backup directory to backup.0, remounted, then finally removed backup.0.

Yay, all fixed!
Click to expand...

hmm, maybe it would be a good idea to have your backup script mount the partition?

I was thinking of something like this, if you only do it for backups
Code: 
mkdir /mnt/backup
mount /mnt/backup
backup-stuff
umount /mnt/backup
rm -rf /mnt/backup

But, that also sounds like a good way to delete all of your backups if it isn't careful (I guess umount can error out if a file is still in use.) :-/

So, I'm not sure how you could 100% avoid the situation you got. For some reason, I haven't encountered this, even though my backup script has run while my backup drive has been totally not there. lol I must have put something in there so that it would error out.
 
S

Schlep

Member
The only issue is you'll need to download the 32 bit flash lib and put it into ~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/plugins/ to see the trailers in the store.
 
G

GameplayWhore

Member
zoku88 said:
hmm, maybe it would be a good idea to have your backup script mount the partition?

I was thinking of something like this, if you only do it for backups
Code: 
mkdir /mnt/backup
mount /mnt/backup
backup-stuff
umount /mnt/backup
rm -rf /mnt/backup

But, that also sounds like a good way to delete all of your backups if it isn't careful (I guess umount can error out if a file is still in use.) :-/

So, I'm not sure how you could 100% avoid the situation you got. For some reason, I haven't encountered this, even though my backup script has run while my backup drive has been totally not there. lol I must have put something in there so that it would error out.
Click to expand...

Avoiding it would be pretty easy.

if [[ "$(mount | grep backup)" != "" ]]; then backup-stuff, fi

But yeah, I gotta do this a little more smartly than before. :|
 
A

alphaNoid

Banned
Install Elementary Luna beta on my laptop and I'm fucking loving this. If feels even more of a complete OS than standard Ubuntu 12.10 I was running. I highly recommend you guys try this OS out.
 
C

CrazedProfessional

Member
Installed MINT on my Laptop and I am so happy with it.
A question to ask would be if there's anything more compatible with Microsoft Office filetypes that isn't the standard Libre Office?

I don't want to run into any issues in regards to opening up documents and spreadsheets and finding Libre having trouble with the formatting and such.
 
A

archnemesis

Member
I know older versions of MS Office run fine under Wine, but I haven't tried it myself. The easiest solution is to tell people to send PDF documents instead. I currently use a mix of MS Office 2007, MSO 2010, LibreOffice, and Google Docs, and they don't like each other at all.
 
G

GameplayWhore

Member
Since we're talking about the Staroffice heirarchy, I wanted to rant slightly:

A) "LibreOffice" is a horrible name.

B) It really, really sucks that you can't globally turn off AutoRecover. The feature almost never works right, and it *always* brings up the recovery wizard *every* time I log into my account.

(I am happy that it has the earlier, superior autosave feature available in the options, though &#8212; edit: whoops, maybe it doesn't; I think I was confusing backup copy for autosave!)


edit: Oh, awesome. I might actually be able to just delete the files the user/backup directory whenever I log in!
 
hitsugi

hitsugi

Member
alphaNoid said:
Install Elementary Luna beta on my laptop and I'm fucking loving this. If feels even more of a complete OS than standard Ubuntu 12.10 I was running. I highly recommend you guys try this OS out.
Click to expand...

Sigh.. I just put Ubuntu 12.04 LTS back on my laptop after a brief stint with Arch.. Now I wonder if I should wipe it again and try Elementary out. If nothing else, it is nice looking.
 
T

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
New settings panels coming to Gnome 3.8/10:

network.png


network-dialog.png


power.png


date-and-time.png


time-and-date-time-zone.png


privacy.png


search.png


notifications.png


displays.png


sharing-small.png
 
P

peakish

Member
Andrex said:
New settings panels coming to Gnome 3.8/10:

http://afaikblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/network.png
http://afaikblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/network-dialog.png
http://afaikblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/power.png
http://afaikblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/date-and-time.png
http://afaikblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/time-and-date-time-zone.png
http://afaikblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/privacy.png
http://afaikblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/search.png
http://afaikblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/notifications.png
http://afaikblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/displays.png
http://afaikblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/sharing-small.png
Click to expand...
Thought about posting those, haha. Privacy, Notifications and Search are great additions. Also looking forward to seeing how the Presentation settings work, getting that right OOTB would be awesome.

The continuous evolution of Gnome is great, every release just polishes so much that going back is unthinkable. To think that it was my favorite desktop experience even in the comparatively bad 3.0 release.
 
T

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
Haha, same, although I think I only got interested in 3.2 and was "OMG"ing at all the stuff 3.4 was polishing up. It's really amazing how much smoother and more sublime it is compared to virtually every other DE. It's absolutely fantastic now and only gets better with each release.

I'm very interested to see how GNOME OS turns out. Having a "standard bearer" like Google's Nexus program but for Linux might be the kick in the pants other distros need to make stuff actually work well together.
 
I

itxaka

Defeatist
Has anyone tried fish shell?

Autosuggestions, auto-completition based on man pages, web configuration, use of threads...

I has become my default shell on all my ystems, so good! man-based autopcompletition is a godsend.
 
Z

zoku88

Member
itxaka said:
Has anyone tried fish shell?

Autosuggestions, auto-completition based on man pages, web configuration, use of threads...

I has become my default shell on all my ystems, so good! man-based autopcompletition is a godsend.
Click to expand...

Haven't tried; somewhat interested, though. Maybe I'll try when I get home.

Zsh does some of that man page thing (sometimes, at least. I haven't really figured out when/why it works.)
 
T

thcsquad

Member
peakish said:
Thought about posting those, haha. Privacy, Notifications and Search are great additions. Also looking forward to seeing how the Presentation settings work, getting that right OOTB would be awesome.

The continuous evolution of Gnome is great, every release just polishes so much that going back is unthinkable. To think that it was my favorite desktop experience even in the comparatively bad 3.0 release.
Click to expand...

Those screenshots look amazing. Gnome has really been knocking it out of the park lately. Of the DE/WMs I've tried, it's both the easiest to use and one of the fastest. I might distro-hop, but I always end up switching the DE to Gnome.
 
P

Polari

Member
thcsquad said:
Those screenshots look amazing. Gnome has really been knocking it out of the park lately. Of the DE/WMs I've tried, it's both the easiest to use and one of the fastest. I might distro-hop, but I always end up switching the DE to Gnome.
Click to expand...

Still needs a good distribution behind it though. I don't even know what GNOME OS is precisely. The developers were asked to define what it is on the mailing list last year and the discussion turned into a total clusterfuck. It's a real shame because they've got a great product, they just need to take a more vertically integrated approach and sell it like Android is sold to OEMs, ie. "Here's this great free operating system to put on your computers/devices, feel free to brand and modify it as you please."

As it stands I'm super happy with Lubuntu at the moment. Lacking a little bit of polish in terms of integration and artwork, but that aside it's really impressive.
 
T

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
Polari said:
Still needs a good distribution behind it though. I don't even know what GNOME OS is precisely. The developers were asked to define what it is on the mailing list last year and the discussion turned into a total clusterfuck. It's a real shame because they've got a great product, they just need to take a more vertically integrated approach and sell it like Android is sold to OEMs, ie. "Here's this great free operating system to put on your computers/devices, feel free to brand and modify it as you please."
Click to expand...

This interview does a great job explaining it.

Q. How is making yet another Linux distribution going to fix this, though? I think we have enough distros for now…

A. Gnome OS will be a Linux distro, but it isn't going to replace traditional distributions, nor does it want to become the sole home for the desktop environment. Instead, it's designed as a platform for testing and development - like a reference implementation of the ideal Gnome system.

Ideally, Gnome OS will introduce features, ideas and technologies that will be absorbed by the mainstream distributions, making Gnome work more consistently across them. As time goes on, application developers will be able to test their programs on Gnome OS, and they should work very easily on other Gnomeish distros too.

Contrast that with the current situation, where a developer can't simply write an app for Gnome and share it with all Gnome users around the world. Instead, he or she has to package it up for all the different distros that use Gnome, taking into account their quirks and differences, and then set up a package repository and deal with all of the technical implications of that.
Click to expand...

Q. So it's trying to be like a package manager as well? We have enough of those too.

A. Sort of. The Gnome team hasn't come up with any specifics about this yet, but we can understand their goal. Getting applications out to Linux users is notoriously difficult, unless they're running a rolling-release distro (like Arch) and you have good relations with the package repository maintainers. Trying to distribute apps yourself is also tricky, for the above reasons.

The Gnome hackers would like a situation where Gnome users, regardless of their underlying distro, can try the newest Gnome apps as soon as they're released. Similarly, Gnome will have a proper SDK with stable APIs.

Right now, to develop a Gnome app you have to read various bits of documentation from different sources, sign up to a few mailing lists to keep track of changes, and generally juggle various things at once. With a well-maintained SDK and APIs that have definite lifespans, life will be a lot easier for developers targeting Gnome. In particular, it will make proprietary application developers more interested in Linux, if they can focus on porting the code and not battling with a million combinations of distros and package managers.
Click to expand...

I mean Gnome is 80% of an OS already, considering it's everything the user sees and is including increasingly complex apps like Boxes, Gnome OS is just bundling all that with an installer and making sure there's a great SDK to make Gnome apps.
 
Xenon

Xenon

Member
Is there a way to recover data from a Luks encrypted drive after it was reimaged with completely new load of Linux and Luks?
 
N

Nostremitus

Member
OK true n00b here...

I have two laptops, one is an ancient celeron with integrated gfx and 2GB RAM, the other is a Turion II with Radion HD 3200 gfx card with 6GB RAM.

Why would Ubuntu run flawlessly on the underpowered machine and be slow, stuttery and incapable of playing video better than around 5 fps on the faster machine?

Does the OS just not work well with AMD chips?
 
pants

pants

Member
Nostremitus said:
OK true n00b here...

I have two laptops, one is an ancient celeron with integrated gfx and 2GB RAM, the other is a Turion II with Radion HD 3200 gfx card with 6GB RAM.

Why would Ubuntu run flawlessly on the underpowered machine and be slow, stuttery and incapable of playing video better than around 5 fps on the faster machine?

Does the OS just not work well with AMD chips?
Click to expand...

I jumped from Ubuntu --> Mint on my older boxes, love it.
 
M

Massa

Member
Nostremitus said:
OK true n00b here...

I have two laptops, one is an ancient celeron with integrated gfx and 2GB RAM, the other is a Turion II with Radion HD 3200 gfx card with 6GB RAM.

Why would Ubuntu run flawlessly on the underpowered machine and be slow, stuttery and incapable of playing video better than around 5 fps on the faster machine?

Does the OS just not work well with AMD chips?
Click to expand...

You should probably install AMD's proprietary drivers, that should give that machine a big boost.
 
M

Mew2

Neo Member
I've been out of the Linux game for awhile (Last distro I checked out was Redhat)
Is it worth jumping back into? If so, what distro do most people recommend?

I'd like to run some server applications and jump into management so it doesn't have to be PuppyLinux or anything
 
M

Massa

Member
Nostremitus said:
I have... It really did nothing noticeable...
Click to expand...

No idea then... sorry. :(

Mew2 said:
I've been out of the Linux game for awhile (Last distro I checked out was Redhat)
Is it worth jumping back into? If so, what distro do most people recommend?

I'd like to run some server applications and jump into management so it doesn't have to be PuppyLinux or anything
Click to expand...

It's definitely worth trying for free. :) Easier than ever now, where you can just plug a live cd or usb stick and try the system without installing it.

I'd recommend the newly released Fedora 18. It's a wonderful system! And it's very similar to CentOS, which is what I would recommend for a server.
 
Z

Zapages

Member
Guys, I have question to all of you guys.

Whats the best version of Linux to install on an old Intel Pentium 3 Server... I was going to install Ubuntu on it... Bu then I was thinking of going with Red Hat. What do you guys recommend. Its an ancient server, but its going to be used for Data Storage.

Thank you in advance. :)
 
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