I was teetering on the brink of losing Windows forever until my Linux machine stopped working (hardware problem) - it's about time someone developed a decent universal FS so we wouldn't have these problems.

I'm currently using a Mac and I don't even know what FS they use

Userfriendly & Linux on the A380
 

This is why I like user friendly so much..! :ok:
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20071116

This reminds me of a blog posting I read here, from a guy who woke up during a flight, to what looked like a reboot of the whole plane! :eek:

Linux - Which Distro?
 

Right, I'm done with Vista - it's going. Plan is to partition hard drive and have a dual boot XP/Linux system. I need to keep Windows on for gaming purposes only.

Now then: which distro? My last tinkerings with Linux were very hit and miss, possibly because I was trying to install it on a Sony laptop. Tried the most popular distros but there was almost always an issue with graphics, LAN etc. As a total noob I ended up editing command lines to get things working and it was just horrible. Now I have a home built desktop system (specs below) I've a feeling things might be easier.

Basically I'm looking for something that requires minimal tinkering - "works right out of the box" if you like. I'm leaning towards OpenSuse 10.3 based on a bit of research but every time I think "that's the one" I come across someone who thinks it's crap. Lot's of head scratching here.

If it helps I'd rather stick with a similar destop layout to Windows, so that would be KDE right? Also is 64bit worth a punt?

Any help / thoughts / input would be appreciated!

Merry Christmas all.

--------------------------

AMD64 Dual Core 3800+
2 Gb Ram Nforce4 Ultra mobo
XFX GeForce 7600GT
160 Gb Hd
CD/DVD writer
Onboard LAN, Sound

Ubuntu, or Kubuntu if you want the KDE desktop.

It's a very user-friendly setup.

SD

Squibbler,

I echo the good Saab - I've used Ubuntu for a long time and it pretty much goes out of the box. You can boot it off the CD & give it a testing without commiting to install. Only fly in the ointment is, in common with nearly all Linux distros, support for Wireless.

Batninth

Try Linux Mint.

It's basically Ubuntu redistributed with all the codecs that you will need to play MP3s, DVDs, etc.

RC

For what it's worth, I went for Ubunto and it worked right out of the box as you specified in your post.

I ran it as a live CD for a few weeks until I got some sort of familiarity with it and then installed it dual boot with my XP system. It installed absolutely perfectly and picked up my internet connection, wireless network,printer and all the other peripherals without any problems.

I'm becoming more familiar with it now to the extent that I have not used the XP option for some weeks now.

Highly recommended.

I'd also go for Ubuntu/Kubuntu. Ubuntu uses Gnome which is more Mac like, while Kubuntu uses KDE which is more Windows like. Both have adherents and advantages - Ubuntu/Gnome is certainly cleaner looking.

The incompatibilities and tinkering that used to beset Linux are now fewer than XP and a lot less than Vista:yuk:

Nevertheless, you'll likely find a few things that don't work as expected - be reassured, if you've met 'em so have other people and the solution is always googleable.

Mepis Linux http://www.mepis.org/ is another distro that is worth considering - I like it a lot

:ok:

Edited to add: There's a good summary of distros in the Inquirer today - http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...free-operating

I have a "Linux box" with three vintage hard drives and seven different distros, all bootable via Grub. I've been playing with them (and with Knoppix on DVD) for a few years.

Ubuntu/Kubuntu is indeed "easy out of the box" but I've not been impressed with the overall performance. If you want an easy life, it's the one to go for. You might find, six months down the road, that it gets frustrating because of the things it won't do.

Fedora is very clever - if you can put up with a little faffing when you first install it. It's the one I use for normal "work". It's extremely stable, and quite Windows-like in how things behave (double-clicks versus single-clicks and the like). If I had only one distro on the Linux box right now, that would be the one.

Mepis is clever, but has a blind spot over SCSI devices if you use any. I do, so that's the end of Mepis.

SuSe (I'm on 10.1) has not been good. It's OK when it works, but it has a habit of deciding it doesn't like my video card. The X-server then refuses to start and I'm in text-only mode.

Debian is simple, is the "Daddy" of several of the others, and has that superb package called Kpackage - an enormous list of all software available for Debian, with a "click here to install it". Other distros use Apt-Get or such laborious stuff for the same, and I long for a working Kpackage on those. Some claim to offer Kpackage, but it's only a very cut-down version that doesn't do the things the Debian one does. If you don't want to install new software on a regular basis, or browse to see what's new this week, then you won't mind. I find Kpackage compelling.

Slackware is, in my opinion, by far the most capable Linux distro. Sadly, it's also the most pernickety to set up. Once it's working, it's stunningly good. When I finally ditch Windows (probably when Vista becomes compulsory), I'll bite the bullet, do the extra bit of Geekschool, and switch the main machine to Slackware.

Several of the above play the "KDE or Gnome?" game. If you're going for dual-boot Windows and Linux, and have the hard drive space, why not set up two Linux distros - say, Ubuntu and Fedora, with KDE on Fedora and Gnome on Ubuntu. If you've been using Windows for years, I'd bet you'll find KDE easier. I don't get on at all with Gnome - must be the way my brain doesn't work.

You might need some "debugging" advice - particularly around Samba if you network your PC, and maybe also with file access permissions.

If you have a colour inkjet printer, you may have serious difficulty finding a decent driver for it (if at all). My Canon Pixma won't print from the Linux machine. It's a known "issue" - there may be a driver "any time now" but that's been the word on the street for about 18 months.

Oh - and if you are going to have more than one distro and also use the machine for e-mail, you can persuade Linux Thunderbird to use a common folder for mail regardless of which distro you're running at the time. I have a separate partition for mail, and all distros use the same one. You do have to install the Thunderbird programme in each distro, but then point it at the mail partition.

Gnome? KDE?

Pah. Gentoo and Blackbox. :}

Good analysis Keef

but, "quite Windows-like in how things behave (double-clicks versus single-clicks and the like)...."

ALL the distros I've tried allow you do decide whether you want single or double clicks - admittedly, on some the GUI setting for this is a bit tucked away.

Happy Christmas to one and all!

Mac

PS: Gentoo is for masochists. I certainly don't want to recompile all my apps everytime I run 'em! ;)

Linux/Linux Dual Boot
 

I have a Ubuntu Linux PC and wondered if it is possible to dual boot it with another Linux OS on a second hard drive.

I've had Windows/Linux dual boot systems in the past, but never had a dedicated Linux box before. Boot managers are something of a mystery to me and not something I tangle with lightly.

Any ideas, Gentlemen, please?

Thanks,

N o t a

Easily done, but there may be other ways to achieve the same ends.

Why do you want to do this?

You can run another Linux kernel/distro within Ubuntu without needing to reboot if you just want to explore another setup.

Yes you can dual boot.

You might also want to explore a VM or try working off an instance that boots off a CD.

As Miraz says - what do you want to achieve?

SD

Thank you, Gentlemen,

What do I want to achieve?
Well, the box is an experimental only PC and I wanted one stable system and the option to try various other Linux distros, hence a dual boot set up.
I'm not sure if it is a case of my intense scientific curiosity at work:O, or simply an inability to follow the old principle of 'working well, leave it alone!'

As suggested, probably best to try alternatives that boot off a CD.

Thanks chaps,

N o t a

Yes, it's easy.

There are two ways to do it. One's Grub, and one isn't ;)

I use Grub. Most of the Linux installers will allow you the option of adding Grub at the same time as you install the distro. It will then find your other installations and set itself up to boot them when wanted.

You can edit the Grub "menu.lst" file to add/delete individual boot options, change the sequence, or start a particular one after a certain time interval. That's handy if it's also a remote server or some such - after a power cut, it will come back up in the default distro.

My "Linux experimentation" PC has seven different versions of Linux at the moment - all listed for 10 seconds at start. Pick the one wanted, or after 10 seconds it's Fedora 7.

If you go for Grub, make a "boot floppy" too, just in case you edit the menu.lst and get it wrong ;) When the first hard drive in the Linux PC died (the one with the Grub config), I could boot from floppy and run Fedora, which happened to be on hard drive 2.

I agree (mostly) with Keef, although I only have 5 flavours of Linux installed at the moment.

Unfortunately, not all Linux distributions will put all of the available Linux instances into the Grub menu, in particular, Mepis doesn't - it just puts itself and Windows (if there is a windows OS installed) into the /boot/grub/menu.lst file.

It is simple enough to use a live CD such as Knoppix to update the grub menu.lst after a mepis install so that you can see all of the Linux distributions though.

Thanks Keef and Izod.

Dedication above and beyond the call of duty.
Seven and five different versions, respectively?
My word. I think I'll settle for two - max!

N o t a:ok:

Izod speaks sooth.

You will need to learn how to set up a menu.lst file. The good news is that it's not hard.

Some of the distros insisted on setting up their own new Grub folder - Mepis was one of those. In the end I sorted it by putting a menu.lst on each partition with a Linux distro on it. The knack lay in finding out which partition was the real Grub boot one. With the same menu.lst in all of them, it doesn't matter.

If a new distro changed the one already there, I could edit the relevant bits of it and put that into the "common" one.

The format of the instructions in menu.lst is slightly different for different distros - if you want a copy of mine, say the word and I'll post it here or e-mail it. It covers Debian (stable and unstable), Fedora 7, Mepis, Kubuntu, SuSe 10, Slackware, and Windows XP.

I'd suggest using VMware server to play with the other distros

It is all nicely packaged up for Ubuntu, it should be listed in the Package Manager so the whole installation is merely point and click.

Then you can run multiple copies of Linux/Windows/whatever takes your fancy

Another possibility is the Xen virtual machine system, which is the Linux native solution, available for Ubuntu in the standard distributions. Haven't had to use it myself, yet.

The advantage of Grub is that it doesn't depend on any one of your distros. It will start anything, running as "native". It can be edited from anything that can access the partition it sits on. If that fails, it can be run from a floppy.

When one of my Linux HDs died, it was (of course) the one with the boot stuff and Grub on it. I dug out the Grub floppy and was up and running with the other two HDs in a minute or so.

Linux -Key Encryption -Cannot connect to net
 

Can anybody please help ?
Just been given dinky little laptop ASUS EEE PC 4G , which has Linux installed rather than XP .
If the local Wireless I/net is unencrypted , it works a treat , but if encrypted I cannot get connected even with correct Key entered .It goes to 'Pending' and stays that way.
Only thing I have noticed is that it only asks for key once , whereas XP usually asks for key twice.
Handbook gives instruction for converting to XP with M/soft disc etc - is this the only way out ?
Thanks.

These links may help you (or not)
LinuxPlanet - Tutorials - Linux Wi-Fi Works With wicd - wicd Linux Wireless

Linux Security for Beginners - Wireless Security on Linux


Wireless Tools for Linux

Thanks green granite , the first one looks good , and I will hand it over to my computer wizz son when I get to UK on Thursday .

Posting from memory as I don't have my dinky little unit at hand, but right click on the connections icon (bottom right, looks vaguely like two computer screens if not connected, or shows a green power meter kind of thing if connected), then click on "connections" something or other (edit connections?), go Refresh if needed, then click on your desired connection and go Connect. The net result of this is that it should bring up the password input dialog--if you already know how to get to that, then do it the way you're used to.

Once you've got the password dialogue, it's really easy, all you do is type in your password. If you've typed it in correctly, then below your password input box you should see a message saying something like "valid WEP password entered" or some such, if you don't get anything, then change the encryption type option from the selection list (I only have two options, it's either one or the other)... that should bring up the aforementioned message if you've selected the right encryption type. Then you accept the dialogue and wait for it to connect. Click on "Details >>" to see if it's doing anything if it takes a long time.

HTH. I'll try to update a bit latter when I have access to my unit.

One tip - I find it useful to have the key on a USB stick, so I can copy and paste it rather than (mis)typing it!

Given that the connection works when no encryption is used, I wonder if the problem is to do with a mismatch between what the Wireless Access Point (WAP) is configured with, and what the EEE is set up for - e.g. WEP vs. WPA or WPA2.

To state the obvious, the client must have the correct settings for authentication type (WEP / WPA), the encryption type (AES or TKIP) and key provision (Open or Shared for WEP, WPA or WPA-PSK - pre-shared key - for WPA) to match the WAP settings.

Also a common problem is that some WAPs can be set up with a password that generates the WEP / WPA key, but you have to put the key into the client, not the password - if you see what I mean.

SD

Linux Advice Please?
 

Hi guys,

I come from an Win 95/98/2000/XP background. I am looking at spending a couple of weeks trying out Linux for some aspects of my work.

The applications I will mainly be using are Autodesk Maya and MatLab. My graphics card is NVidia.

Can anyone recommend a distribution of Linux that would be good for me? I am not averse to tweaking and command lines, but would like to spend most of my time in a GUI.

The biggest thing for me is that I need to triple boot this system - Windows XP, Windows XP x64, and Linux. I don't care what order I install the systems in, but I need a decent boot loader for the Linux system (I used a freeware distro briefly a couple of years ago and the install routine was hideous - it asked me to set various directory paths, but with NO explanation as to what those paths were...).

I'm not a computerphobe, but I do need things to be reasonably user friendly! ;)

Any advice much appreciated.

Many thanks,

Martin

For what it's worth I use (and like) SUSE which has quite a good gui, but I believe Ubuntu is the one recommended to try out for the first experience. Both can be downloaded off the web.

Many thanks green granite - I will give SUSE a look.

M

If you google the application and linux you should find the official line about what distros have been tested / certified or are formally supported for each application.

What distro you go for may depend on the level of compatability / support you actually need.

Fedora, Red Hat and Ubuntu would be other candidates.

Regarding boot order - you should always load Windows first, as XP is not considerate of other OS's!

I would suggest XP 32, XP 64 then Linux as the install order.

I assume you are au fait with file system selection - NTFS is still not officially and reliably writeable under linux.

SD

You can also, just to play with it for a while, down load 'virtual box' and install it in windows and then install linux in that, it gives you a chance to play with it without altering your current set up, and you can switch between them without re-booting.

Here's my £0.02, all its weight thrown behind Ubuntu - although on my rig I prefer Matlab Windows based as some crucial toolboxes used to lack Linux support and even if they worked now, don't fix what ain't broke. After saying bye to the venerable but aging Gentoo, we (is I & colleagues) migrated to a variety of systems, the favoured setup proving to be Kubuntu as a virtual machine in Sun VirtualBox, running on top of Vista or Mac. It's actually a very smooth running combo, with full networking and sound and bells and whistles one can only desire, and the switch between the two systems takes as much as a keystroke.
Even if you prefer the separate boot option, I recall that while installing Kubuntu, it offered to install as a standalone system. I'd be interested to see it work, do post your experience if you decide to go for it :ok:

I would also recommend trying the distro you choose virtually, and I believe Sun VirtualBox is the best choice for Linux rather than MS Virtual PC.

Ubuntu can be run from the Live CD or another good way to try it with complete functionality is installing it as a program within Windows.
Just insert the CD or run the iso on a virtual drive within windows and install.
Doing it this way means if you are not happy with it, you can just uninstall using add/remove programs.

The GRUB boot loader is very good and will handle all your os's better than The XP one.
There are some apps that can be installed in Ubuntu to control GRUB if you need to modify it without having to use a command line.

You will not be able to run all Windows programs in Linux, even using Wine, which is a Linux program designed to run Windows software.
It's often trial and error, but it is a good learning experience.

The problem with Ubuntu is that it is very "prescriptive" about what it will let you do.
I found it frustrating after years of using Debian and Fedora. It kept telling me "No, you aren't allowed to do that". In the end, I stopped using it.

If you want flexibility and the option to do different stuff, and provided the software you want to use supports it, I'd suggest Fedora as the most capable and flexible.

I run several other distros on my "Linux toy" - Debian is friendly, Mandriva is good, SuSe is OK, Slackware is brilliant but needs more "geek input". Knoppix has saved my bacon a few times, but is essentially "Debian run from a DVD".

As SD says, while some distros can read and write NTFS, that's a high-risk scenario. Keep 'em separate!

Linux expert required please
 

Hi chaps. I admit I am completely new to Linux and now have an issue with my Eeepc.

Just downloaded and installed the latest updates, one of which was for Mozilla Firefox. After install I restarted the computer and can no longer run Firefox and so can't access the net on that laptop.

The error stated is:

<toolbar item id="search-container"title=&searchitem.title;"------^

Its an XML parsing error:unclosed token location blah blah blah

Would really appreciate any help. Is it like windows where you can uninstall a program and then install? If so how do I effect this if I can't open a browser?

Apprecaite any help thanx

Fowlup

Hmmm - maybe (just maybe) I'm not the dummy I thought I was. Solved it. Got onto the mozilla website where installation instructions existed. Not exactly ideal instructions to the linux newbie but it worked....... Just adopted the standard philosophy of reinstall. What confused me intitially was that "add remove software" in linux doesn't exactly mean that!

It took me a quite a while to actually get a downloaded program to install in suse and I'm still not totally sure how to do it correctly.

'Tis a different skill set from Windows, and there are many variant ways of doing it.

The easiest is kpackage, which comes with Debian and its siblings.
Yum and Yumex (Fedora) ain't bad.
With those, you pick what you want from a list, click "Yes" a couple of times, and it installs. Usually it tells you that you need another 45 packages you didn't know about, but it will do them all for you.

The rest get progressively harder and more pernickety.

The real man with hairs on his mouse uses the DOS 1.1-like command set - with
./make-install "gee.whiz." #Fred $Nerk /a .../b $config-all
(or something very like that - it's a while since I felt so masochistic as to try).
One error, and it throws up its hands and you start again.

Suse, in my experience, is about in the middle.