Author Topic: The *nux Help Thread  (Read 23733 times)

Zakamiro

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The *nux Help Thread
« on: October 08, 2007, 05:43:52 AM »
QUESTION: I want to use a mix of UNIX and a windows-esque GUI. "freeBSD + ?"  seems to be the main question. I want a GUI that I will be able to pick up very quickly from windows XP.. Perhaps GNOME, if I can get that taskbar to be on the bottom, or KDE.. Xfce seems ok... But it's hard to go off of just screenshots alone. hehe.

I looked into "Linux XP" and man, what a fucking joke. If your faq ( http://www.linux-xp.com/faq/index.php?ID=173 ) has what's below, it's hard to take seriously, especially if they are trying to sell something...


Quote
Q: I found that GNOME graphic environment was installed with Linux XP Desktop. Is KDE available for Linux XP Desktop?

A: Forget about KDE. KDE is for hackers and that is why it sucks in end-user oriented distribution.
We are not supporting it in any way. You can install it from Fedora repositories and use it on your own risk.



Q: I understand: You guys want to to became a next Microsoft and want to dominate the world!

A: Yes, you're completely right. Actually, we are Dr. Evil's private company (laughing "Ya-ha-ha-ha-ha!") :-)))

Mao Zedong said "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend". We think the same way. The field in which we work and our point of view we see Linux distribution were unemployed by other teams. We have fixed it and took this point of view. We wish good luck to any other developers. We all work together.

I mean, if you say a different GUI "is for hackers" simply because you're a GNOME fanboy, what the hell am I supposed to think? Making an unsupported (and simply stupid) claim that "KDE is for hackers" and having that your only reason not to use it "and that is why it sucks" just isn't good enough. What gives? It's like going to a car dealership and saying, "why shouldn't I buy from ----?" Then they say, "Because it's for street racers, and that is why they suck."

Not only this, but what the hell is up with their English?
Quote
"The field in which we work and our point of view we see Linux distribution were unemployed by other teams."
What? Are you trying to tell me your entire team was outdone by outdone by other teams? Yeah, really. I'll place my bet on the team with the retards. I also love how they quote an infamous communist dictator, and telling us they think the same way. (obviously in metaphors about schools and flowers.)

Not only this, but how can they badmouth an open source desktop environment, then say "We wish good luck to any other developers. We all work together." Bullshit!

Awful.

</rant>

Anyway... Yeah.

I am looking into Gentoo/FreeBSD.. This may be a good decision.

Also, I was looking into LDXE for my 366 mhz machine, but compiling together the livecd iso turned out to, well.. not work (permission errors? In MY user directory? I guess it's more likely than I think). [and wtf package would I need? GOD I HATE VAGUE AND AMBIGUOUS MANUALS) So anyway... thanks.
« Last Edit: November 27, 2007, 09:44:23 AM by Zakamiro »


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Bobbias

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The Linux Help Thread
« Reply #1 on: October 08, 2007, 09:42:16 AM »
I tend to use KDE based systems, and they're pretty damn easy to pick up. I mean, hell, I actually can't think of a GUI system that's "hard" to really pick up quickly... I have tried Yoper, and Debian, and I'm not exactly sure what is "running" on my current partition, since X wouldn't even run, so I had no GUI because it hates my monitor or something. But in any case, I have a little experience with linux, and found it pretty simple to switch over GUI wise, the bigger issue was the filesystem and the extended use of command line stuff, and that was only a minor issue anyway. The system runs great in linux, but all my programs are windows programs, lol, so I kinda was lost trying to figure out how to replace all my windows programs, and for different reasons I've never been able to really keep running a linux system for very long before abandoning it.
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Spectere

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The Linux Help Thread
« Reply #2 on: October 09, 2007, 05:37:48 PM »
Yeah, the entire Linux XP project is a bad joke.  The fact that it exists hurts my brain.

Gentoo/FreeBSD is still a fairly new project and the support isn't really at a very good level for if you're just getting started.  Using Gentoo Linux might be a better idea.  Either way you're going to have to do a bit of command line work, but if you go with Linux there will be more people available to help you (including me) if you should run into a problem.

If you're concerned about stability, Linux is every bit as good as *BSD.  I'm using a Linux-powered system as a NAT router/firewall at the moment and haven't run into any hangups with it.  The only reason its uptime is as low as 11.5 days is because I did a kernel update 11.5 days ago. :P  Linux also seems to be a bit better at keeping up with new hardware as well, more contributors and all that, and the package managers included with the distros tend to be better and more up-to-date (especially Gentoo).

As far as the entire desktop environment wars go, they're really about equal in my eyes as far as usability is concerned, though I think I prefer KDE a bit better.  My perception of GNOME has changed in the past few years but I still don't think I like it enough to make it my full-time environment.  You can do quite a bit with the panels on either environment.  For instance, here's what my PowerSmack's installation of GNOME looks like (click to enlarge):



You just need to play with it a bit, really.

As for your older system, the LiveCD for LDXE probably doesn't have the entire filesystem set as writable (i.e. it's trying to write to a read-only squashfs/cramfs volume).  Type "mount" at the prompt and look for mount points with "rw" in the options area (inside the parenthesis) -- those are the parts of the tree that you can write to.

Another small distribution that you may want to consider is Puppy Linux.  I haven't used it myself but I heard it was good and fast.  Just from looking at the main page I could definitely tell you that the maintainers keep it up-to-date (the latest version of Puppy uses kernel 2.6.21.7, which is still pretty new as far as distributions are concerned (for the record, most distributions are many versions behind -- I believe Debian is only at 2.6.18 in the unstable branch).
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Bobbias

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« Reply #3 on: October 10, 2007, 01:06:39 AM »
I'm back trying to install Yoper... I love the system, since it's i686 optimized, it runs VERY fast, without requiring nearly as much work as gentoo. Since I don't want to start a new thread, I've got a bit of a dilemma. Yoper's install CD doesn't place Grub/Lilo in the MBR, so right now windows is booting directly, and even though I have Yoper installed, it's completely unaccessible. How do I safely install Grub or Lilo into the MBR and set it to boot XP and Yoper as an option? (When I had tried to install gentoo last time, it made a separate boot partition for grub that was separate from the gentoo partition, but I've got things down to 2 partitions, windows, and linux, but I can't seem to get the Yoper CD to place Grub or Lilo in the MBR, so I can't boot into linux..)
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« Reply #4 on: October 10, 2007, 03:16:13 AM »
Okay, here's what you've got to do.  Make sure that your /boot/grub/menu.lst looks something like this:

Code: [Select]
default 0
timeout 10

title=Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0) #replace this with the proper partition
chainloader +1
makedefault

title=Linux
root (hd0,1) #replace this with the proper partition
kernel /boot/name-of-your-kernel #
initrd /boot/your-initrd-file #Yoper more than likely uses this, being a binary distro

Now, as root, run grub in the command prompt and key in the following commands:

root (hd0,1)  **change this to point to your Linux partition
setup (hd0)  **since you're going to want GRUB installed to your main drive, regardless of where your Linux partition is

Type quit, reboot, and pray. :)
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Bobbias

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The Linux Help Thread
« Reply #5 on: October 10, 2007, 07:34:14 AM »
So, that'll place grub in the MBR, and still let windows load? What is the chainloader for anyway? Someone on IRC said they thought it was only there fi you were trying to run windows from a different partition or something. Well, if it fails, the worst case scenario is having to install windows again.
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Zakamiro

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The Linux Help Thread
« Reply #6 on: October 10, 2007, 08:32:45 AM »
the worst case scenario is having to install windows again.

Something you're clearly not a stranger to.


We pressed on. Shortly afterwards, we arrived in a poisonous, post-apocalyptic hell - a sprawling, toxic dumping ground stretching for a mile or two. This is the final resting place for your old TV, computer or mobile phone.

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« Reply #7 on: October 10, 2007, 12:54:36 PM »
The person on IRC was quite wrong.  Basically, chainloader tells GRUB to call the Windows boot loader rather than trying to boot the kernel directly like it can with FreeBSD, Linux, etc.

It's not hard to avoid having to install reinstall Windows.  All of the data is still there (the boot loader is in the boot sector of the Windows partition, hence the reason chainloader +1 works).
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Bobbias

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« Reply #8 on: October 10, 2007, 01:20:10 PM »
Problem: Your way of booting windows just makes grub go back to itself. I'm posting this from my FINALLY working linux setup, because I'm locked out of Windows now... Oh the irony...

Also, KDE only gives me a small list of resolutions, but there's a much larger list of modelines. I'm trying to get it to render the desktop at 1440x900 with this line:
Modeline      "1440x900" 100.000 1440 1456 1464 1480 900 916 924 940 -hsync -vsync
(found it online someplace from a google search) but I dunno how to get KDE to recognize that it's supposed to set the resolution to that.
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Spectere

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« Reply #9 on: October 10, 2007, 01:31:40 PM »
Um...it's the method that I, and millions of other people, use to boot Windows with GRUB.  Are you sure you set it to the right partition?  If you didn't it will loop (since GRUB will either continually chain load itself or bugger out and reload itself).

Also, modelines aren't used a whole lot now aside from in special cases.  I was able to get X working on all of my monitors -- including my laptop -- without using modelines.  I only put resolution lines in the display section, like so:

Code: [Select]
Section "Screen"
  Identifier  "Default Screen"
  Device    "S3 Inc. ProSavage KN133 [Twister K]"
  Monitor   "Generic Monitor"
  DefaultDepth  24
  # Skipping some text to improve readability
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth   24
    Modes   "1024x768"  <--- right here
  EndSubSection
EndSection

Add the resolutions to the line that I marked, starting with the one that you want your system to default to.
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Bobbias

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« Reply #10 on: October 10, 2007, 02:04:43 PM »
Well, my linux partition is hd0,1 and it's the second partition on the disk, the first being windows.

Code: [Select]
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
Is my setting for windows, and it doesn't work. It just chainloads Grub...
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Spectere

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« Reply #11 on: October 10, 2007, 02:13:45 PM »
If that's the case, odds are Yoper fucked up and installed GRUB to the wrong place.

Boot from your XP CD, go into the recovery console, and use the fixboot and fixmbr commands.  Make sure you can get into Windows, then install GRUB manually as I outlined above.  You're going to have to boot from a LiveCD (Gentoo's will work, as will Slax, DSL, et al) and chroot into your installation to do that.  If you need directions, feel free to ask.
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Bobbias

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Re: The Linux Help Thread
« Reply #12 on: October 10, 2007, 02:21:17 PM »
Thing is.. I did what you said. The installer is "supposed" to install grub in the right place automatically, but since it didn't, I had to manually install grub the way you told me, so now, apparently I have 2 copies of grub installed, correct?
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Re: The Linux Help Thread
« Reply #13 on: October 10, 2007, 06:38:35 PM »
So it seems.  Like I said, the most logical explanation is that Yoper screwed something up during installation.  The fixmbr/fixboot utilities will restore the NT boot loader and allow you to boot back into Windows.  After that you can reinstall GRUB.

Running fixboot alone will probably do the trick and not touch GRUB -- try that first.
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Zakamiro

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Re: The Linux Help Thread
« Reply #14 on: October 10, 2007, 09:17:44 PM »
Puppy linux is great. It comes bundled with some crappy software.. SeaMonkey looks like netscape but with a mozilla program icon.. Wtf son. To get a really good linux boot cd you'd need to make it yourself.
« Last Edit: October 10, 2007, 09:20:09 PM by Zakamiro »


We pressed on. Shortly afterwards, we arrived in a poisonous, post-apocalyptic hell - a sprawling, toxic dumping ground stretching for a mile or two. This is the final resting place for your old TV, computer or mobile phone.