Linux General Questions

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Someone gave me an older PC, and it runs XP pretty snappy, but thought it'd make a good Ubuntu box. I got the Ubuntu 11.10 install ISO, and have got that started, but I have questions.

The PC has a recovery partition with an XP image on it, that I'd like to keep. The main partition (currently C: ) is where I'd like to put Ubuntu. I've got that selected in the install process but it wants to know two things:

a) what file system to use for it. (ext2, ext3, etc)

b) a dir for a mount point (/boot, /home, etc)

I'm not going to get too fancy with partitioning, so I think just knowing those two things should get me by. I'll just be using it as a web surf pc.

Thanks!

Use ext4, and make sure it's mounted as the root partition, which is just "/". That should do the job! You'll probably get asked to create a swap partition as well, though, and that's probably a good idea. The easiest way to do that would be to delete your Windows partition, and then create two new partitions: one with most of the space for /, and the other with 1GB or so for swap.

Thanks, pneuman, that's what i'll do exactly. I appreciate the help.

The way I generally install OSes now is to give the setup a load of blank space and tell it to do what it wants with it.

Scratched wrote:

The way I generally install OSes now is to give the setup a load of blank space and tell it to do what it wants with it.

Same here. I used to dick around with trying to find an SSH server for Windows, but recently discovered Arch Linux and figured out how to set up an SSH server with it through VirtualBox that has read access to my Win7 files. Haven't tried writing yet, due to concerns over screwing up my partitions, so I'll try that on a work PC first.

The install went smoothly, but haysus christos I'm frustrated after a couple of hours of simply trying to get my screen resolution set properly.

I have been googling and reading like a fiend, and can't figure out what you'd think would be simple things, installing a video driver, or setting the monitor resolution properly.

Under 'Displays', Ubuntu lists my monitor as "unknown", and will not allow a res higher than 1280x1024. (should be 1680x1050), thus my screen is offset, and somewhat blurry. Screen objects behave as they would in Windows if no video driver was properly installed.

I've read in numerous places that I'm to go to System Administration --> hardware --> drivers, or some such, but I'll be damn if i can find system admin in 11.10.

Is it just needing a video driver? System Info does detect my video as being Intel on-board 845 something or other.

I hated 11.10 when I first installed it. I went back to 11.04. Let me fire up my 11.10 VM and see if I can spot that driver thing.

OK, here it is.... click the Systems Settings icon at the end of the taskbar. It'll either be the bottom or the right side, depending on which way your bar is oriented.

The third category is Hardware, and the first option there is Additional Drivers. Run that, and see what it says.

What video card are you using, btw?

Malor wrote:

OK, here it is.... click the Systems Settings icon at the end of the taskbar. It'll either be the bottom or the right side, depending on which way your bar is oriented.

The third category is Hardware, and the first option there is Additional Drivers. Run that, and see what it says.

What video card are you using, btw?

Thanks. That was one of the myriad things I had tried. It gives me a blank list, and says "no additional proprietary drivers are in use".

Sys Info lists my video card as an intel 845 (on-board).

edit: under 'Displays', it says "unknown" for the monitor (a 19" Hanns-G). So I switched out and put a 22" Samsung 220WM on it, and to my amazement ... "unknown" on that one as well. WTF? I thought Ubuntu's big thing was recognizing hardware and making it easy to get up & running. I even clicked on "detect displays" and still it comes back with 'unknown', and limits my resolution to 1280.

This bug seems a little similar to your issue:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...

Based on that last comment, it sounds like it's worth installing any outstanding updates and seeing if that fixes the problem. The desktop should prompt you to install updates automatically, but if that doesn't happen, you can use the "Update Manager" tool to install them. Perform all the outstanding updates, reboot, and see how you go.

Yeah, good call, pneuman. If an update fixes your problem, it's a bug in the driver for the onboard video.

Generally, Intel video works very nicely under Linux, so an update has a good chance of fixing the problem.

If you have a spare NVidia card anywhere, pretty much anything, they're very well-supported in Linux. That would be another angle of attack if the update doesn't work right. But I think it probably will.

@pneuman: I had tried the update manager earlier in the evening (there were nearly 300 updates), and that completely finished, and the problem persisted.

@Malor: I do have a spare Nvidia card (8400gs), but it's PCI-e, and won't fit on the older motherboard.

In my searching, I had read that you could force higher resolutions by editing the xorg.conf file (in etc/x11 folder). That file doesn't exist for me, and I'm not sure how to create it.

thanks to you both for the efforts.

Ok, after you've updated and rebooted (the reboot is important), try going back into that Hardware Drivers thing to see if anything changed.

It's really supposed to work, and I'm quite puzzled as to why it wouldn't. You shouldn't need an xorg.conf anymore, that's sort of a vestigial remnant of the early days. With the new kernel and updated libraries installed, maybe also try again on Detect Displays, both with the monitor you're using now and that spare you have.

I'm confused about whether it's not loading the right driver for your video, or if there's a problem with the EDID detection -- this is where monitors tell the system what modes they support. If either of these things aren't working, then you'd get the symptom you're seeing.

If you're still stuck, I think the next stop would be the Ubuntu forums. It's probably something easy, so don't dig yourself too deep down any weird CLI rabbit holes too soon. It can be painful to dig your way back out....this is true even for seasoned Linux people, as mixing GUI tools and hand-edits on configuration files is an easy way to really screw things up.

If you run the cord to the monitor through any kind of KVM switch, it will cause problems. I have a KVM switch as I play my 360 on my computer monitor and it really screwed things up.

It may not help, and I have up on Ubuntu shortly after that.

Malor wrote:

Ok, after you've updated and rebooted (the reboot is important), try going back into that Hardware Drivers thing to see if anything changed.

It's really supposed to work, and I'm quite puzzled as to why it wouldn't. You shouldn't need an xorg.conf anymore, that's sort of a vestigial remnant of the early days. With the new kernel and updated libraries installed, maybe also try again on Detect Displays, both with the monitor you're using now and that spare you have.

I'm confused about whether it's not loading the right driver for your video, or if there's a problem with the EDID detection -- this is where monitors tell the system what modes they support. If either of these things aren't working, then you'd get the symptom you're seeing.

In my hours of searching, I did come across the EDID issue, and that may be it, but that was the reason people suggest using the xorg.conf file to control what the driver knows about the monitor. They acknowledge that it's a rarely used file these days. The odd thing to me about the EDID info not being passed to the driver, is that it is happening across multiple, common, relatively recent monitors.

If you're still stuck, I think the next stop would be the Ubuntu forums. It's probably something easy, so don't dig yourself too deep down any weird CLI rabbit holes too soon. It can be painful to dig your way back out....this is true even for seasoned Linux people, as mixing GUI tools and hand-edits on configuration files is an easy way to really screw things up.

In my searches, I've found several cases that are similar to mine in the Ubuntu forums, and the general consensus is that the intel driver sucks.

I've tried a dozen or more different things, including reloading and updating the intel driver (took it from I think 2.15 to 2.17). Absolutely nothing I tried has worked.

Ubuntu, and linux, are fine if things are working, and you can just use the GUI - but man, doing simple things like creating a text file, or changing a monitor's refresh rate can be a nightmare if you don't know what you're doing. Why not have a checkbox with monitor overrides, like Windows does? (e.g. "show unsupported monitor settings").

IMAGE(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/x11.png)

Part of the problem you're having is the massive simplification drive Ubuntu's going through. That new Unity interface sucks goat c*ck. I don't want a f*cking telephone, I want a computer when I sit down at my desk. Shuttleworth has explicitly decided to cripple the computer for the people who actually use Ubuntu, in the hope of pleasing people who don't like Ubuntu.

It's not all his fault -- over time, both the KDE and GNOME teams have lost their collective f*cking minds. KDE went insane when they shipped 4.0, deliberately calling it 4.0 way too early to trick people into testing it for them. And GNOME has completely gone off the rails of late. They're also doing the same thing -- f*cking up the computer for the people who know how to use it, in the hope of converting people who don't. But if the techheads can't use the computer very productively, who's going to evangelise the brain-dead solution to the brain-dead people?

I'm pretty upset with Linux on the desktop right now, honestly. Too many separate teams have gone off down rabbit holes to benefit themselves and not everyone else. I'd suggest trying Ubuntu 11.04, and if that doesn't work, I wouldn't waste much time with it. It's not really worth f*cking with anymore, because they've moved the power-user payoffs way out of reach.

As a server, it's still one of the better choices available, although the kernel team has all but given up on the idea of security. Running a Linux machine for multiple users is pretty much a guarantee of being hacked, to the point that even the kernel team themselves won't give out shell access on kernel.org. Internal Linux security is so bad it's laughable, and it's only getting worse.

Malor wrote:

Part of the problem you're having is the massive simplification drive Ubuntu's going through. That new Unity interface sucks goat c*ck.

I pretty much agree. I've returned to Linux on the desktop after 3-4 years away and it was bizarre to find that not only had things not improved much, they've actually got worse in many respects.

I've ended up with Xubuntu 11.10, although the UI is pretty bad in places. Cinnamon looks like a worthwhile project, but it's not done yet and it crashed my Xserver a few times.

I've gone over to linuxmint.com and quite like what they're doing. It's an Ubuntu spin off, but not trying to be everything, just a nice OS.

On a related note though, it does seem like every software has a period during which it's 'complete' and after that it goes off the rails as it expands out and encompasses more roles ("feature creep") rather than just going into maintenance mode, and reacting to what needs changing. I guess it's down to the people running it, in Ubuntu's case, Shuttleworth, and once you reach that nice 'complete' point you need to purposefully switch track, and the visionary leader needs to find something new.

Malor, I agree with what you said. I mean, my linux knowledge is quite limited, but the restriction on controls is absurd, and goes well beyond even what MS allows with Windows. I also agree it's not worth pulling my hair out over, and in fact today I had thought to ask about other linux distros that might be more suitable.

@scratched : i'll check out linuxmint.com.

Any other distros people like?

edit: Scratched, I noticed on linuxmint.com that there's a LM 12, and LM 12 KDE RC. Given my hardware on this freebie PC (2.66 celeron, 1 GB ram, etc), which do you think is best?

Also, if memory serves, I remember there being extremely lightweight linux distros that would run super fast even on older hardware. Anyone know of a good one along those lines?

No idea really. I remember the xfce variant of ubuntu being recommended as lower requirements, and perhaps it isn't affected so much by what's happened to the rest of ubuntu. Perhaps a browse of distrowatch.com will help out.

Scratched wrote:

No idea really. I remember the xfce variant of ubuntu being recommended as lower requirements, and perhaps it isn't affected so much by what's happened to the rest of ubuntu. Perhaps a browse of distrowatch.com will help out.

Indeed. I found that earlier, and have been looking around. I think I'm going try Xubuntu 11.04 next, and then maybe OpenSUSE 12.1

There are some really lightweight distros out there as well, some as small as 30 MB.

I've heard a fair bit about Puppy Linux, although I haven't tried it. I know it's supposed to be very small.

Debian is also quite good, but since Ubuntu is based off that code, I wouldn't expect Debian to like your graphic setup any better than Ubuntu.

Xubuntu 11.04 was a no-go as well. Same exact problem, and same exact lack of controls to change anything. I can't even find basic things like System-->Administration tools. This is really starting to amaze me. I thought Linux was supposed to be a power users' OS. I don't get why so many things are hidden or missing in an admin account.

I'm going to try OpenSUSE 12.1, and if that fails, screw it. I'll just use the XP that was on the machine.

update: It wasn't Ubuntu's fault, after all. The problem persists in OpenSUSE. I did something I should have done from the beginning, and that's lookup the PC specs, and the specs on the chipset. It's running an intel 845GV chipset, and that was limited to 5:4 and 4:3 resolutions (max 1600x1200), and will not do widescreen resolutions at all. The PC doesn't even have an AGP port either, that I might have used to get a different card (just basic PCI slots).

So basically, I'm out of luck with this thing. It was free, so no complaints, but a bit of a bummer. OpenSUSE looks pretty cool.

Ohh, okay, that was a seriously ancient machine.

You could buy a PCI NVidia card. They still make them. Probably be like $25.

Or you could demote it to server duty, and just run it from the command line. I like Debian best for that usage.

What I've decided to do is put OpenSUSE 12.1 on my main rig, and dual-boot, on an open 100GB partition that I have available. I'm not sure what purpose this will serve, other than something to mess around with, and maybe learn a little about Linux.

The real power of Linux, and Unix in general, is that there's no dividing line between users and programmers. If you use Unix more than trivially, you'll end up writing shell scripts... even simple ones (like batch files in DOS) are a form of programming. There's no extra step to becoming a programmer, you just start doing it as a natural outgrowth of using the system.

And getting to the better languages is dirt simple. You're not just limited to bash shell scripting. Normally, you put #!/bin/sh on the first line of a shell script, which tells the system that it's a program that's run by /bin/sh. (which is a link to bash on most systems... bash is the Bourne Again shell, a more powerful variant.) But you can put #!/usr/bin/python, and then write a Python script instead. It can be run like any other program... it's just as integrated into the shell environment as the bash shell itself is. Scripting languages are first-class tools in the environment, able to be instantly embedded with almost no effort. Well, no effort beyond writing the program, anyway.

If you start getting really advanced, you can switch to compiled languages, like C or Haskell, and generate binaries, and all the tools you need to make them are either included with the install, or trivially downloadable.

In fact, every single tool that was used to create everything on the system, top to bottom, stem to stern, is immediately available to you for inspection and potential modification. If you want to modify the Linux kernel to say "Jeff-66 is cool!", you can actually do that.

The Unix command line is an extraordinarily powerful tool, and it's the heart and soul of any Unix. Learn it, and you will know why Unix is still so popular, and runs on essentially every system complex enough to support it, more than thirty years after it was first invented.

Oh, and because of that 'all users are programmers' thing, you'll get the most out of Unix if you force yourself to completely live in it for several months when you first start. That means converting your main desktop, and to the best of your ability, staying completely in Unix for all your computing tasks. (this isn't always possible, if you're running specific Windows or OS X proprietary programs, but you should do the best you can otherwise.)

The immersion will be painful for quite awhile, but you'll come out the other side having a reasonable grasp of just what the heck is going on with Unix, and why the seriously technical people always gravitate toward it. It's like a black hole for techies -- the smarter they are, the less likely they are to ever emerge, once they fall into its gravitational field. Even the brightest sometimes resist its siren lure, but for an awful, awful lot of the truly gifted techies, it's handing the best tool in the world to someone who absolutely loves tools.

I actually found enough hardware laying around to build a 2nd pc. I thought the motherboard was bad, but it seems to be working. So now I have this :

* intel e6750 core2duo CPU
* gigabyte P35 motherboard
* 2 GB PC3200 ram
* nvidia 8400GS (discrete) video
* 200GB WD IDE hard drive

And I have OpenSUSE 12.1 up and running on it -- no problems ... so far.

One thing that drives me NUTS about linux is that it constantly asks for the admin password for every little action. It makes Vista's UAC seem tame by comparison. Is there a way to turn that sh*t off? I'm logged in as an admin, I shouldn't constantly have to prove I'm an admin.

The thing about admin/root on linux is that it is all powerful it will do exactly what you say. This is where the "rm -rf /" thing comes from, as root that will nuke your system and it will be happy about doing it (perhaps I ought to try that in a VM just once). It's very potent. *nix OSes are set up from the very foundations to support users with varying permissions, and most distributions will set you up with a safe normal user and a relatively easy to elevate yourself if you have the password. Pretty much all *nix software will fully support this. System configuration stuff will need elevated privileges, user stuff won't.

Comparing this to windows land, the OS and the software ecosystem it's better than it used to be, but poor in comparison. I'm sure either my system would either sh*t the bed or I would if it suddenly had *nix style permissions imposed on it's day-to-day operation.

Circling back around to the topic of desktop environments:

I recently switched to LXDE on my desktop. I had been using it on my netbook, and it worked well. And after frustration with some other DEs, I finally asked myself, "do I really need more than LXDE provides?". And the answer was, not really, no.

Malor wrote:

Shuttleworth has explicitly decided to cripple the computer for the people who actually use Ubuntu, in the hope of pleasing people who don't like Ubuntu.

I like that Ubuntu is doing Unity. I don't like Unity right now. I don't know if I will ever like it. But they absolutely should be experimenting with UI concepts and trying to come up with something new.

Unity is its own project. It doesn't stop users from installing any other desktop environment they want.

GNOME 3, however, is a crime. The GNOME team took a desktop that a sh*t-ton of people were using and happy with, and yanked it out from underneath them.

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