Re: HELP! I am new to Linux!


Subject: Re: HELP! I am new to Linux!
christopher.murtagh@wcg.mcgill.ca
Date: Wed Jun 06 2001 - 08:35:39 MDT


On Wed, 6 Jun 2001, Morelos Barros wrote:
>Well, I just bought Yellow Dog and I thought Linux was going to be
>pretty much lilke Mac OS... but I was wrong.
>
>So I am new to Linux. I've read a lot of it but I am begining to use it
>now. I was excited at first but I find it too difficult.

 Congratulations on making the first step. You might not find it easy at
first, but if you stick with it, you'll probably learn quickly.

>1. Installation was pretty simple and easy. How ever I can't install any
>of the Tasty Morsels CD software. I think I have to know some Unix
>commands.... but I don't know any... How can I install Open Office?

 I just tried the YDL 2.0 install for the first time myself. Did you
install the 'Home/Office' package? I would have assumed that Open Office
was part of that, but I could be wrong.

>2. The Linux partition on my hard disk is 2 GB. But how can I know how
>many disk space is left? I tried the KDE explorer but I couldn't find
>where it says it.

 Open a terminal window, and type the following command:

df -h

(the -h stands for human readable format)

>3. you may laugh at this... but is Root my hard disk? I know I had to
>make three partitions but I don't know where are they!

 No and yes..., 'root' is often the name of the administration or
superuser account on the machine (although I like to change it to
something else to fool potential dumb hackers). When you type the df -h
command, you might see something like this:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda7 2.9G 1.2G 1.6G 43% /
/dev/sda9 13G 3.4G 9.1G 27% /www
/dev/sdb7 8.2G 4.3G 3.5G 55% /home
/dev/hdc 629M 629M 0 100% /mnt/cdrom

 This info above breaks down as follows:

 I have 3 physical drives available: sda, sdb and hdc. The sd's are scsi
drives a and b, and the hdc is my DVD-ROM. sda7 is the 7th partition on
the 'a' scsi drive, and it also contains my 'root' directory (note the
confusing use of root here that is different that the user 'root'). The
'root' directory (indicated by '/') is the first node where all
branches/directories must fall under. This is why my CD-ROM is mounted as
a subdirectory of the root even though it is physically a different
device.

>4. Isn't there any stable web browser? Konqueror crashes very often and
>Mozilla just closes and I have to reboot!!

 5 minutes after installing YDL 2.0, I downloaded Opera for Linux PPC.
Wow! What a fantastic browser! I'm also amazed at how much faster both
Navigator and Opera are under Linux than under MacOS (9.1 and X). Up until
today, I was really just a console user (no X windows), but after what I
saw yesterday with KDE and Opera I'm looking forward to some free time to
upgrade my MacOS machine to Linux. Although, being an old NeXT user, I'll
probably switch to windowmaker or afterstep.

>5. Talking about browsers... How about the plug ins? Do we have
>quicktime and flash?

 No quicktime, and I doubt there is flash either. Frankly I think flash
sucks anyway, but I wish Apple would port QT to Linux and Linux PPC
(seeing as I'm sure they would only release binaries). But, seeing how YDL
kicks OS X's butt in the performance and price department, I doubt that
we'll see a port any time soon.

>And last question.... I know I need a very good book. However I don't
>know which one should I buy. Any sugestions for a "Linux for dorks"
>book? *LOL*

 I've looked everywhere for a decent 'teach yourself Linux' book for some
friends, and I have yet to find anything decent. I suggest getting a copy
of O'Reilly's 'Linux in a Nutshell' to start off and just hack away. This
way you'll at least have a list of commonly used commands, which is a good
starting point. Not the most ideal but you'll learn a lot. Also, check out
www.linuxdoc.org. There is a lot of good stuff there (though often not so
easy to find).

 If you do find a decent book, please let me know.

Cheers,

Chris

-- 

Christopher Murtagh Webmaster / Sysadmin Web Communications Group McGill University Montreal, Quebec Canada



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