Linux General Questions

Using the file you downloaded to verify the same file makes no sense to me.

Well, I believe the thinking is kind of like putting a digital signature on a binary. The signature refers to everything else, except the signature. But all of the standard tools for verifying checksums expect the .md5 to be separate, and I don't think there's any official way to glue the two files together, so even a one-byte difference in where the file is split will ruin the checksum. It just seems like a bad idea, all around.

If you want an inherent checksum, use an archive utility that supports them, like RAR.

And, heck, if you want to just break standards like that, why not go to a genuinely GOOD tool, like .PAR? Not only will it verify the file, if you include some extra data, it can actually fix errors, not just report them.

Finally installed Ubuntu 12.04 on my work laptop and am in the process of setting things up like I had them in the VM.

First good news: When I jumped into the bios, I had the "Run Integrated Graphics" so it looks like Optimus won't be an issue for me

So, up and running and enjoying Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

My biggest concern now is backups without having to deal with an external drive. We've been using Carbonite at the office for all Windows and Mac systems with little hassle, and I'd like to see about getting something similar setup on this system now. Is that even possible? And if so, what's the recommended method?

CrashPlan >>>>> Carbonite.

The above is true even before you factor in CrashPlan's support for Linux.

*Legion* wrote:

CrashPlan >>>>> Carbonite.

The above is true even before you factor in CrashPlan's support for Linux.

QFT. Crashplan is great.

This is a dumb question, but does anyone know how to rotate a screen in Lubuntu (LXDE)? I can't seem to find a way to do so.

I've seen that option in the Nvidia control panel. Of course, that only helps with Nvidia cards.......

What bizarre spam.

Scratched wrote:

What bizarre spam.

Yeah.

There is a certain logic to it. That is a quote from an article entitled "Linux frequently asked questions for newbies".

Also, italian delivery.

I was wondering where the F that response came from. I went back two pages looking for someone who responded "Let me google that for you" and didn't see anything so just figured it was crazy random intezen.

absurddoctor wrote:

There is a certain logic to it. That is a quote from an article entitled "Linux frequently asked questions for newbies".

Also, italian delivery.

Is the article famous enough you recognized it, or did you google? The irony if the latyer amuses me.

Miashara wrote:
absurddoctor wrote:

There is a certain logic to it. That is a quote from an article entitled "Linux frequently asked questions for newbies".

Also, italian delivery.

Is the article famous enough you recognized it, or did you google? The irony if the latyer amuses me.

I don't know if it is famous. I had come across it in the past so that the quote looked familiar to me, but I did have to google the phrase to find the original source.

Eezy_Bordone wrote:

I was wondering where the F that response came from. I went back two pages looking for someone who responded "Let me google that for you" and didn't see anything so just figured it was crazy random intezen.

If you quote it, you can see the html link, which is disabled here for newbies.

What's linux NTFS support like nowadays? I'm wondering about read/write support mainly, as I know read support has been there for ages, but I seem to remember something that write support was a little experimental, and that you were advised to chkdsk the NTFS partitions afterwards to make sure it didn't mess up anything, but that might be ancient information.

Scratched wrote:

What's linux NTFS support like nowadays

Pretty good, if you're using the NTFS-3G driver, which runs in user-space (via FUSE). It's been around for a while now, with full read-write support, and I haven't heard any reports of it eating anyone's filesystems, so it should be perfectly safe to use.

Sounds like they're pretty on top of that driver, having issued a number of fixes for Win8 just a few days ago, and they say most distros come with it preloaded. From the description of the features added and bugs fixed in the most recent release, I'd trust it. They sound minor and fiddly and responding to the Win8 changes, rather than real problems with their code.

Besides, you do have backups, right?

Typical newb question. Either direct answers or telling me what to google to find the answer would be great.

I've got a physical drive with a previous install of Linux that's borked beyond boot capacity. No worries. I have a different drive that boots just fine and reads the first one without a problem. But if I want to access it from a program, like LibreOffice, I have to go to the Places menu and open up the drive first. Otherwise I get a hanging error or 'This drive cannot be opened because another operation is already in progress.' After that all is good, and I don't need the file browser open. What would one do to fix this? Also, is there any reason not to just delete all the old system files from the broken Linux install? Space isn't really an issue, so I haven't done it yet.

When accessing the second drive, are you just going by drive letter (sdb, sdc or whatever) or do you have it mounted already somewhere, such as /disk2 or what have you? You could try creating a mount point for the second disk, and mounting at boot. that way it should alwways be available.

omnipherous wrote:

When accessing the second drive, are you just going by drive letter (sdb, sdc or whatever) or do you have it mounted already somewhere, such as /disk2 or what have you? You could try creating a mount point for the second disk, and mounting at boot. that way it should alwways be available.

What I assume is happening, is that the drive is unmounted at startup, but can be seen and accessed via the default file browser because it will display unmounted disks in the sidebar. Once you click on an unmounted disk gnome-volume-manager will mount the disk for you automatically and it will remain mounted until you log off. The traditional linux method of getting a disk mounted whenever your computer starts up would be editing /etc/fstab. Before you dive into that though, you might be able to accomplish it easier by simply following their directions for mounting automatically with udisks.

Whenever I see /etc/fstab, I think of f-stab... I'm not sure if I think it is more pirate-y or dirty

Been using Ubuntu 12.04 now for nearly 2 months instead of Windows and have been very happy. Sure, I've had my issues, but it's been great otherwise. Glad I'm generally plugged in, because yes, my battery life is terrible, but I'm ok with that (I know many wouldn't be, though).

Interesting, my battery life in Ubuntu has been really good I think. Do you have an nVidia Optimus equipped laptop?

I've been running Ubuntu for the last week full-time, even for work. Love it! No idea what battery life is like though, guess I should give it a try.

Also, went to my first Linux Expo, Scale 11x, or the 11th annual Southern California Linux Expo. Great time, some good speakers and met lots of cool people. Definitely going again next year

LiquidMantis wrote:

Interesting, my battery life in Ubuntu has been really good I think. Do you have an nVidia Optimus equipped laptop?

Yep, I do. I've had trouble with Bumble bee so I just moved to discrete mode since having a second monitor is a lot easier to setup that way (was for me, anyway).

Ah, that explains it.

LiquidMantis wrote:

Ah, that explains it.

Oh, before I was on discrete mode I was having battery issues, too. I just decided that performance and multi-monitor was more important than battery life and went down the rabbit hole with that.

IIRC, Nvidia battery life isn't that good, even on Windows, if you have multiple monitors connected. I think the cards refuse to drop into low-power state when they have multiple screens to drive, and they eat battery really quickly.

I'm not certain if that's still true with current hardware, but I know it was true in the 4XX series.

I'm rarely on battery, so I've given that concern up until it becomes something I need again.

I'm sure this has been discussed, but Ubuntu Unity. What's so bad about it?

Maybe I've learned to somewhat avoid spending a bunch of time in OS menus altogether when I don't have to, but I don't find that Unity hinders me in any way. I like how the top bar is small and unobtrusive, and I like the apps on the left, that's where I've had it for about a year in Windows as well. I think it makes sense for a widescreen monitor, you have much more width to spare than height.

But when I need to open a program, I usually already know what it's called. I click the Ubuntu button or press the Windows key, and I just type in the program I want. Once it's the first one to show up, I click enter. Done. Terminal is ctrl+alt+T, so that's easy.

Has Windows 7 and 8 just trained me to ignore and skip over the OS UI as much as possible?