I got Linux

[Dark Jaguar]

That's right, I've finally gotten around to making a special partition so I can fingure out Linux. I picked Mandrake 10 if you are interested. Anyway, for other Linux owners (specifically those familiar with this flavor), a few tips regarding this OS would be welcome.

[Dark Lord Neo]

I had Linux on my X-Box for a while, but I had to take it off so I could use Live

[Great Rumbler]

I've got Windows XP.

[Dark Lord Neo]

I've got Windows XP.

Wow, me too, and 3.0

[A Black Falcon]

Linux is complex. I only know enough to do basic things like run programs in the menu and use the internet... :)

On that note, some of the built in games (my dad uses Linux; has Red Hat.) are fun. XBill, Shisien-sho, mahjong tiles, snakerace, several others... :)

[Dark Jaguar]

I like the Bubble Bobble one :D.

[A Black Falcon]

Oh yeah... Mozilla. Get it. Or Firefox, that looks more like IE... I like Mozilla (1.7 now) better, personally. :)

[Laser Link]

Mozilla is usually the default browser on Linux. I think each environment (KDE, Gnome...) has it's own browser too. I still like Opera, but oh well.

The best tip I can give you is to stick with it, unlike me. I keep saying I'm going to get back into it again, and every day I find something else that is more important. And I never get back to my penguin powered OS. Good luck!

[Dark Jaguar]

I DO need a much better driver for my graphics card. That penguin snowboarding game runs SO slowly....

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, KDE and Gnome have their own default browsers, which is why I said use Mozilla/Firebird. It's way better than the defaults...

Penguin snowboarding... oh, that game! Yeah, that one's fun too. It was released for Windows too I believe. :)

[Laser Link]

Yes, but Mozilla is included and was the default browser with Redhat, and I bet it comes standard with most distros.

I need to update my graphics drivers too. That is actually one of the biggest reasons why I have not used Linux more. I'm stuck in 640x480 until I spend the time to hunt down and install and/or compile new ATI drivers, and ATI sucks for any kind of support. Linux is always a bit of an adventure to do anything, and I haven't had time for treasure hunting in a little while. But I will do this soon. Really.

[Dark Jaguar]

It really is tough to figure things out. I'm not even going near that command prompt until I figure out KDE (I'll save the other GUIs for later). Right now, I seem to lack the ability to modify a lot of stuff. For example, it won't even let me create new folders. Due to that, I can't install the latest version of Mozilla. I'm trying to figure out how to give myself permission to do that.

[A Black Falcon]

Can't you do a lot of things from Root? The other users are more restricted, but Root has all kinds of power...

[Dark Jaguar]

I'm trying to figure out how to make myself the supreme user right now. Any help would be appreciated.

[geoboy]

The summer seems like a great time to dive into Linux. I'm thinking of purchasing <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1593270348/ref=cm_custrec_gl_rec/103-9711548-5367057?v=glance&s=books">this book</a>. But until then, I can't help you with Linux because right now I know diddly squat. =P

[Fittisize]

Why would you buy something so complicated, anyways?

[Dark Jaguar]

Buy?

Listen to him, buy :D.

[Great Rumbler]

Buy? AHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Oh man, that is hilarious. :D *wipes a tear from eye*

[Dark Jaguar]

Yes, indeed, what we MEAN is that this is Linux, LINUX.

Linux, based on the Unix system, is not merely one OS or even a family of OS products by the same company. Linux is "open source", which means the source code is freely available to ANYONE. More than that, due to how it's copyrighted, pretty much ANYONE can not only change the code to make their own "flavor" of the system, they can distrubute it freely afterwards. In fact, the agreement for making any modifications is that you MUST freely distribute the source code at the very least. Many of them also provide for free the compiled finished product. Now, this means a LOT of small companies as well as individual geeks have made their very own Linux and give it out totally for free, totally legally. Red Hat happens to have a price tag on it, but if you look around, you will find a free version of it and you are freely entitled to just get it should you wish. Mandrake just plain gives it away, but it does charge for other services, namely customer support. Most of the popular distributions do request donations to keep them going.

Yes, it IS complicated, and with so many versions with such different code behind them, there is the issue of picking the one you want. I myself had a lot of trouble finally picking the one I wanted. It was between Red Hat and Mandrake for a while, but eventually due to a lot of suggestions that Mandrake is basically more designed for home users and first time users of Linux, I went with that. Now I'm experimenting (and as a result, have had to reinstall from scratch a few times already :D, it's all good), and trying to figure out how it works. There's a reason I'm doing this. It's not for the vast library of exclusive games :D, it's so I can get to understand an OS that will surely take it's place among businesses, and with my goals in life, that's kinda important. I say it'll take over simply BECAUSE of how much cheaper it is.

Anyway, so far I've found out that by using the su command, I can run install programs with root's permissions, and thus installed the updated Mozilla. Problem is, it didn't find the existing Mozilla installation, so now I have both 6 and 7 on there. If it wasn't for me being afraid of deleting something important to the KDE GUI, I'd get rid of Mozilla 6 myself.

Anyway, there's one thing that's clear. While Linux can read FAT32 partitions (and probably NTFS), XP cannot read from ext3 partitions. Oh well :D.

[A Black Falcon]

If you want Linux on a CD yes, you do have to buy it... you can also DL, but purchasing it isn't that outrageous. It's certainly simpler, for one thing, especially if you're installing a new version of the OS over the old one, I'd expect...

I know my dad has always gotten Red Hat CDs. Though I'm also sure he gets an educational discount. :)

[Dark Jaguar]

You misunderstand. Due to how these things need to be installed, downloading isn't enough. You actually do have to first burn the ISO images you download onto a CD (or 3), and then you have to boot from the CD. Now, if you are using an older computer, prepair to go on a search for just the right floppy drive boot disk that does nothing more than point the boot procedure to the CD-ROM drive (or, you know, you could make the CD-ROM drive C: in the lineup, but that opens up a whole new nest of trouble). If you are using a newer PC, your PC already scans the disk drives for boot information. After burning it all to the CDs, then you just install just like if you bought the CDs pre-burned. You will need software that can burn ISO images though. Fortunatly, Nero came with that DVD burner I got as a gift a while back.

Anyway, generally downloading is the SAME as buying preburned disks except you need a burner and some blank disks.

[bountyhunter]

Sorry for the long post you guys are ebout to endure, I normally would not do this, but you gotta admit, he's a funny guy.. PS. I got the damn dos joke.

Ronin Weltall: hey
bountyhunter au: hi ya
bountyhunter au: whats new weltall
Ronin Weltall: I got odin on board
bountyhunter au: oh yeah
bountyhunter au: is it true you are against us now?
bountyhunter au: in that case
bountyhunter au: die
bountyhunter au: :-)
Ronin Weltall: yes, I will destroy you all
Ronin Weltall: :D
Ronin Weltall: http://www.tendocity.net/testmain.shtml
bountyhunter au wants to send file D:\Backup\documents\talks\Rogues\goron.htm: lol... this is fun
Ronin Weltall: it is nearly complete
Ronin Weltall received D:\Backup\documents\talks\Rogues\goron.htm.
bountyhunter au: you did all that?
Ronin Weltall: yes
Ronin Weltall: for the last 10 hours
Ronin Weltall: :-)
bountyhunter au: then?
Ronin Weltall: ahahahhhahahahha
Ronin Weltall: never have I seen him so defensive
bountyhunter au: you gotta let me help you with things
bountyhunter au: :-)
bountyhunter au: what do you mean?
bountyhunter au: oh
bountyhunter au: yeah
bountyhunter au: lol
bountyhunter au: you mean with the DF2 vs. Rogue thing
bountyhunter au: he is backed up into a corner like a cat.... of course he is on the defensive
Ronin Weltall: hehe
Ronin Weltall: I have the world's most filthiest keyboard
bountyhunter au: is it official?
Ronin Weltall: oh yes
bountyhunter au: wow.. so the dudes over at guiness book of records has given you the title?
bountyhunter au: damn
bountyhunter au: *decides to clean his keyboard now*
bountyhunter au: hmm, you should let me help you out with tendo city here and there
Ronin Weltall: well, this wasn't all my work :-)
bountyhunter au: oh?
Ronin Weltall: nar
bountyhunter au: who helped?
Ronin Weltall: I had help from Whitefleck, DMiller, and demon
Ronin Weltall: you may not know the last two
bountyhunter au: whitefleck helped?
bountyhunter au: is he any good?
Ronin Weltall: immensely
Ronin Weltall: well, he found the right place for me to learn the CSS
bountyhunter au: I see
bountyhunter au: :-)
Ronin Weltall: DMiller made the menu dynamic, which is quite difficult to do
Ronin Weltall: demon also helped with the CS
Ronin Weltall: S

Ronin Weltall: and I put it all together
bountyhunter au: err
bountyhunter au: your close menu button isn't working
Ronin Weltall: i know
Ronin Weltall: I'm removing that feature
Ronin Weltall: I just havent yet :-)
bountyhunter au: :-)
bountyhunter au: it looks very professional
Ronin Weltall: well thank you
Ronin Weltall: the "talk of the town" image is my very first Photoshop work
bountyhunter au: lol, and isn't it better than PSP7!!!
Ronin Weltall: MUCH
Ronin Weltall: the top image was PSP6
Ronin Weltall: I love photoshop
Ronin Weltall: I am a convert
bountyhunter au wants to send file D:\Backup\documents\talks\Rogues\Fenix.htm: I didn't get SSB as I said I could... but guess who!!!
Ronin Weltall received D:\Backup\documents\talks\Rogues\Fenix.htm.
Ronin Weltall: hahahahhaa
Ronin Weltall: you know he's gonna be a mole, right?
Ronin Weltall: Oh; BH...if only your cocky sense of humor in face of your overwhelmingly superior enemy could help you.
Ronin Weltall: yunno, I almost feel guilty about this... almost :-)
bountyhunter au: who's the overwhelmingly superrior enemy?
bountyhunter au: and I told him he didn't know what he was missing out on
bountyhunter au: lol
bountyhunter au: he actually said "DF2=veterans whilst rogues=a whole bunch of newbies"
bountyhunter au: each one of us is a veteran
bountyhunter au: I want to talk to odin
bountyhunter au: dammit
bountyhunter au: it would finish us off
bountyhunter au: we would be complete
bountyhunter au: almost
bountyhunter au wants to send file D:\Backup\documents\talks\Rogues\SSB.htm.
Ronin Weltall received D:\Backup\documents\talks\Rogues\SSB.htm.
bountyhunter au wants to send file D:\Backup\documents\talks\Rogues\SSB2.htm: here's the crack up though
Ronin Weltall received D:\Backup\documents\talks\Rogues\SSB2.htm.
bountyhunter au: you there?
Ronin Weltall: not at all
bountyhunter au: ahh all's good then
bountyhunter au: you read them two?
bountyhunter au: the last one's funny when you read the first
Ronin Weltall: working on it :-)
bountyhunter au: you will have to excuse me
bountyhunter au: I am going to install linux now
Ronin Weltall: noooooo
bountyhunter au: what
Ronin Weltall: nooooooooo
Ronin Weltall: do not turn away from the light, young one
Ronin Weltall: GOD IS GOOD

Ronin Weltall: GOD
Ronin Weltall: IS

Ronin Weltall: GOOD
Ronin Weltall: *cries for your tainted soul*
bountyhunter au: umm... microsoft=bill gates..... linux=freedom
bountyhunter au: take your pick
bountyhunter au: :-)
Ronin Weltall: it is a well formulated LIE
bountyhunter au: huh
Ronin Weltall: BILL GATES INVENTED LIMUX
bountyhunter au: continue
Ronin Weltall: and Linux too
bountyhunter au: haha
Ronin Weltall: see
bountyhunter au: uh huh
bountyhunter au: lol
Ronin Weltall: his middle name is Linus Torvald
bountyhunter au: hahaha
Ronin Weltall: it's his despicable way of enslaving and torturing those who dare turn away from him
Ronin Weltall: PLEASE DON'T
bountyhunter au: lmfao
bountyhunter au: it sounds like you have had this convo before
Ronin Weltall: Command lines are the tool of Satan :-(
Ronin Weltall: C:|
Ronin Weltall: C:\dos
Ronin Weltall: C:\Dos\run
Ronin Weltall: run dos, run
bountyhunter au: whats that got to do with linux
Ronin Weltall: you don't have dick and jane down there, do you?
bountyhunter au: *kicks the dos 3.5 box in his room*
bountyhunter au: shuddup already
bountyhunter au: GUI.. it has one
Ronin Weltall: you don't have dick and Jane??
bountyhunter au: though I know there are prompts to run your drives
bountyhunter au: a what and who?
Ronin Weltall: oh god, there may be no hope
Ronin Weltall: Dick and Jane, man!
bountyhunter au: I got a dick
Ronin Weltall: the reading primer of the ages!
Ronin Weltall: I got a Jane, but that's beside the point
bountyhunter au: huh
Ronin Weltall: the command line joke doesn't work
Ronin Weltall: cause you don't have Dick and Jane
bountyhunter au: *slaps his head with the palm of his hand*
Ronin Weltall: poor child
bountyhunter au: god dammit
Ronin Weltall: C:\Dos
bountyhunter au: *falls of his chair*
Ronin Weltall: C:\Dos\Run
Ronin Weltall: Run Dos, Run
bountyhunter au: ha...ha.....ha
bountyhunter au: there
Ronin Weltall: in D&J-speak
bountyhunter au: I laughed
Ronin Weltall: See Spot
Ronin Weltall: See spot run
Ronin Weltall: Run spot, run
Ronin Weltall: you suck
bountyhunter au: DAMMIT
Ronin Weltall: :D
bountyhunter au: I get it already
bountyhunter au: :-D
bountyhunter au: lol
bountyhunter au: I love our conversations
Ronin Weltall: LYING SACK OF SHIT
bountyhunter au: bill gates
Ronin Weltall: so do I, these are classic:-)
bountyhunter au: and the next question for a million dollars is......
bountyhunter au: (umm.. I choose D... bill gates)
Ronin Weltall: I choose you, pikachu
Ronin Weltall: Pikachu: PIKA PIKA PIKA
bountyhunter au: the genitaless pokémon hey...
bountyhunter au: *pulls out his pokésex*
Ronin Weltall: translation: I'm so fuckin stoned right now
Ronin Weltall: just remember
bountyhunter au: "Pikachu: some times known as the gay pokémon, males and females sound the same and are known to rape rock pokémon and smoke plant ones"
Ronin Weltall: if you install linux, Bill Gates will cause a General Protection Fault in your brain
bountyhunter au: lol
bountyhunter au: deltree/brain
Ronin Weltall: Geodude: Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuude, pokemon is like so totally rad
bountyhunter au: problem fixed
bountyhunter au: brb
bountyhunter au: partitioning 40 gig now
Ronin Weltall: IF bh=linux THEN GOTO hell
Ronin Weltall: Darunia: The shitstreak on the underwear of existence
bountyhunter au: your just jealious because millenium edition scrwed you sideways
Ronin Weltall: No purchase necessary
bountyhunter au: lol
bountyhunter au: where do you come up with those
Ronin Weltall: no, it screwed me in the ass too
bountyhunter au: there's only one way it can go in and still be called penetration
Ronin Weltall: the ears
bountyhunter au: I'm not going to go there
Ronin Weltall: you don't need to
Ronin Weltall: thanks to Microsoft Windows ME
Ronin Weltall: bringing the digital world onto your desktop
Ronin Weltall: Microsoft Windows ME is 13 times* more stable than Windows 98 2.0
Ronin Weltall: *13 times zero is still zero
bountyhunter au: lol.. that ones going every where isn't it
Ronin Weltall: yes
Ronin Weltall: but hey
Ronin Weltall: scandisk is now graphical
Ronin Weltall: progress is made
Ronin Weltall: oh yeah
Ronin Weltall: with Microsoft Windows ME, you can take advantage of all new fun and family friendly features
Ronin Weltall: like viewing your pornography as thumbnails :-D

That was three years ago september 26th :P

[Great Rumbler]

"if you install linux, Bill Gates will cause a General Protection Fault in your brain"

Hahaha! :D

[Laser Link]

DJ, type <i>su</i> at a command prompt to switch to root, and then enter the root passwd. Think of it as SuperUser. Just don't forget to logout of root as soon as you can, because it's not good to play with things as root when you are new.

If you don't have permissions for stuff, you need to use <i>chmod</i>. I don't know how much about Unix filesystems you know, so if I'm repeating stuff ignore me. They have 3 categories of users: User (yourself), group (people who you choose to give special permissions to), and other (everyone else). You can give read, write, and execute access to everything for each individual user category. And of course, it's done with binary bits!

Permissions on a file will look like this:
rwx r-x r--
The first set of numbers represents user access, the second is group, and the third is world. So this means that You have read, write, and execute permission on this file, the group has read and execute, but not write, and everybody else has read only. Make sense?

Just look at one category for a minute, say User. Each permission is either on or off, so think of it as a 1 or 0. For this example, User has all permissions, so instead of rwx it could look like 111, emaning all on. The Group looks like 101 and Other is 100. If you know binary, you'll see these are binary numbers 7, 5, and 4. So to set these permissions for this file you would type
<i>chmod 754 filename.txt</i>
chmod is the command name, 754 is the numbers representing the permissions, and filename is of course the file you want to change the permssions on. There are other ways to do it, but I like this way because the binary makes sense to me. I think you can also do something like:
<i>chmod u+rwx g+rx-w o+r-wx filename.txt</i>
Which does the same thing, by adding read, write, and execute permissions to user, adding r and x to group, and so on. I don't guarantee that the syntax is perfect on that, because I never use it, but it will get you started!

Now, I know you said you are staying away from command prompt for now, so all I told you won't help. I imagine you can change permission on files in the GUI by right-clicking or something, but I have only used the GUI a little bit. When I learned Linux, they threw us straight into textland.

I highly recommend you start learning how to navigate by command prompt. I bet you know DOS, so it will be an easy transition. Linux is much, much, MUCH better to work with than DOS. I'm sure you will find plenty of suggestions of good commands for beginners. Learn about pipes, and redirection, and all that fun stuff. Learn how to change your prompt to show different stuff, and try with some basic shell scripting. It's fun stuff!

Don't wait until after you have everything set up from the GUI, because first of all I don't think you CAN set everything up from the GUI. :) And don't even worry too much about getting everything set up. That's one of the quirks about Linux, like it or not. Nothing is every finished. It's good, because no matter what program you are looking at, whether it is a Windows Emu or the Kernel itself, chances are someone is always working hard to make it better. But at the same time, it can drive you crazy if you let it. Have fun!

[Dark Lord Neo]

My friend told me that she just bought unreal tournoment, and found out she couldn't play it because her mac doesn't run on linux.

[EdenMaster]

Ronin Weltall: Darunia: The shitstreak on the underwear of existence

[Dark Jaguar]

So I'll never be done getting that penultimate setup? To think just making sure I have the latest patches and drivers for everything can drive one nuts...

Thank you for that parser method of doing things. Actually, yes the KDE GUI does let me change permissions. I'm not sure if it's JUST the GUI, but I don't seem to be able to change ENOUGH permissions for this. The "default" install location for Mozilla is in a directory I previously was unable to use. However, by using the SU command (which I picked up elsewhere actually), I was able to run that from the prompt (learning how to execute programs from the prompt was a journey I'll say, but now that I know it, it's an easy enough thing to do). Anyway, I was able to install Mozilla to the default location it wanted, but perhaps it would be best to simply change it to my personal user folder next time?

Not really sure how to handle things usually... There are the stanard bits of info, but it's how to use that knowledge that I'll really need to learn. Anyway, any extra commands would be helpful. Yes, I think I'll learn the prompt first after all. I learned DOS before Windows so it's likely the best way to go about it.