Linux: Anyone use it?

[Dennisch]

I'm on the linux machine right now! With Firefox!

I'm starting to get the hang of it. But I do have a question.

Do you need to start everything from the terminal? Like FF?

Nope! Haha just started clickin' and voila!

Question!

Can I download and install anything with the Sudo apt- command in the terminal?

 

[Owen.C93]

I'm on the linux machine right now! With Firefox!

I'm starting to get the hang of it. But I do have a question.

Do you need to start everything from the terminal? Like FF?

Nope! Haha just started clickin' and voila!

Question!

Can I download and install anything with the Sudo apt- command in the terminal?

Kinda, there are a number of ways to get software, the easiest is via ubuntu software center, then you can use apt-get in terminal but you may need to add extra sources to get some things (google will tell you what to do), then there are .debs which is just like windows installations and some others require a bit more terminal use.

 

[NissanSkylineN1]

Sudo Apt-get Install only gets the packages that you have told it to get. Sometimes, especially when uninstaling, it leaves out packages or dependencies that are necessary for the program to run, and you will need to type them in yourself. However, almost all programs have been aked about on forums, and a quick google search should help you.

 

[Dennisch]

👍

I did Sudo apt-get install software-center!
It is so easy and the command lines take me back to the early 90's.

I'm really getting hyped! Maybe I'm gonna install it on my laptop without windows along side it. Dual core AMD, 3gb ram. Should run as slick as butter.

Skyline, I found out that google is my friend for Linux. 👍

 

[Owen.C93]

👍

I did Sudo apt-get install software-center!
It is so easy and the command lines take me back to the early 90's.

I'm really getting hyped! Maybe I'm gonna install it on my laptop without windows along side it. Dual core AMD, 3gb ram. Should run as slick as butter.

Skyline, I found out that google is my friend for Linux. 👍

Yeah you can do that pretty easily, just create an extra partition in windows and install it onto that, then you can select either or on startup. If you want it to look pretty you can install the bootloader "burg".

 

[Saidur_Ali]

I'm on the linux machine right now! With Firefox!

I'm starting to get the hang of it. But I do have a question.

Do you need to start everything from the terminal? Like FF?

Nope! Haha just started clickin' and voila!

Question!

Can I download and install anything with the Sudo apt- command in the terminal?

Did you get the graphics drivers working in the end? You know you could have used the Synaptic Package Manager intially to install stuff instead of that sudo apt-get command in the terminal. Always good to know the commands though .

 

[BobK]

Hmm, I was under the impression that apt-get also installed any required dependencies. Is Debian's synaptic package manager available for ubuntu? It's basically a point and click graphical front end to apt-get, and does also automatically install dependencies.

I'd like to get a bit pedantic for a second, about apt-get and sudo apt-get. apt-get is a command in and of itself, but it requires superuser (root) privileges to run. This is done via the sudo (superuser-do) command, which allows a normal user to run commands with superuser privileges. I often set "sudo apt-get" as if it were a single command and it just kind of grates.

Sometimes you find a package you'd like to install but apt-get doesn't work and you can't find a .deb installer. Your best bet in this case is install from source which isn't as difficult as it sounds. Download and extract the source tarball, and change into the directory the tarball unpacked itself into. Then type three commands:

./configure
make
make install

Note that you will likely have to run the "make install" command as the superuser (ie, via su or sudo). There is also a way to install it into a private directory, which means you will be the only user on the machine that can use the new program. This isn't a problem of course if you're the only user.

Oh yes. You also need the compiler/build tools to compile from source. Most distros include the tools by default, but I believe ubuntu is an exception (correct me if I'm wrong on that, somebody).

This is good to know because each major distro family has its own package manager (apt-get, yum, emerge, installpkg, etc, etc) and you may not be able to find a package for your distro. But the source is almost always available; even firefox is available in source form.

 

[Dennisch]

Did you get the graphics drivers working in the end? You know you could have used the Synaptic Package Manager intially to install stuff instead of that sudo apt-get command in the terminal. Always good to know the commands though .

I removed the Prophet and just used the onboard, I found a 40gb disc, and reinstalled it, I have the software center up and running, and if I need a new command, I'll turn to google and find it.

But I have to say, even with the 2.2 and 512mb it's a pretty fast machine.

 

[theRealMeyer]

I am currently using Kubuntu 11.10.

That's because my PCs motherboard died on me (a DFI LP DK 790FXB-M2RSH) and the only decent replacement was a MSI K9N Neo V1. At first I thought my Phenom X4 9750 would run flawlessly on it, but it doesn't even boot. So I'm stuck with a Sempron LE-1250 and a non-working Windows 7 partition (installed that with AHCI on and the MSI uses IDE legacy mode by default with no option to change it, thus it won't boot).

So I installed Kubuntu, and it's actually fun! It's not my first Linux experience and I am by far no linux noob, so I get along with it pretty well.

I kind of feel more statisfied if there is some fiddling needed to get something to run. For example, try to install UT2k4 on a clean Kubuntu 11.10 64-bit install. Same goes for the ICQ Adobe Air app. Adobe Air isn't even supported anymore for Linux, let alone 64 bit.

I could go on and on, but instead let me just say that by fiddling around trying to find out how to get something to run you get a good impression of how a program works and you'll probably find yourself tailoring the program's settings to your needs in passing.

 

[chug-a-bug]

I you're using Ubuntu it's pretty easy to get new software and you shouldn't even need to use the console the software manager is pretty intuitive, I can't remember the exact details as it's been a while since I last used it it crapped out on me when I replaced the graphics card and couldn't seem to get the desktop enviroment working again after that.

 

[Saidur_Ali]

I removed the Prophet and just used the onboard, I found a 40gb disc, and reinstalled it, I have the software center up and running, and if I need a new command, I'll turn to google and find it.

But I have to say, even with the 2.2 and 512mb it's a pretty fast machine.

Onboard graphics are usually supported well. It runs probably very fast on a P3 machine so it should definately fast on yours . I like Lubuntu quite a lot and seems ideal for web browsing and doing some office tasks. Great for netbooks.

 

[nick09]

I could get some old computers and resell them with Lubuntu for families who only need basic computers. I've read Lubuntu a bit and it seems you can even run it on a Intel PII machine! It would be a great use for all of the SDRAM I got sitting around!

 

[bergauk]

Might scare them off with Lubuntu. Zorin OS might actually be better for people wanting to using something that feels like Windows.

http://zorin-os.com/

 

[Dennisch]

Might scare them off with Lubuntu. Zorin OS might actually be better for people wanting to using something that feels like Windows.

http://zorin-os.com/

Well, if you pre-install the most used programs, Lubuntu works the same as windows, but that's my opinion, after a day's use.

Btw, I'm downloading Lubuntu x64 for on my laptop!

 

[bergauk]

It's true that you get the same functionality out of both Zorin-OS and Lubuntu, they just don't look the same. Zorin-OS provides from what I can tell, a nice stepping stone from Windows to a Linux Desktop Environment. It can look like different version of Windows to ease you into a new OS, without you noticing it.

 

[bergauk]

Bump.

Had a question if there was any sort of better file browser for Ubuntu, the current one doesn't allow me to type in file paths.. Or at least it doesn't seem like it does.

 

[BobK]

This probably won't be much help, but I found konqueror version 3.5.10 to be an excellent file browser. Unfortunately it only runs under KDE (meaning you'd need kubuntu) and the current version of both is 4.x. The KDE team introduced a new file browser called Dolphin and pretty much crippled konqueror 4.x.

/rant

Gnome's Nautilus isn't bad, not great. You can't type in a path but navigation through the filesystem is pretty easy with it. Might want to give that a shot, although it needs gnome.