Linux Newbie Q+A

[lordjubblydave]

After months of toying with the idea of going over to linux.

I have finally ditched my Win 7 RC and installed the newest Ubuntu.

So far so good i have got most things up and running as i like.

 

I just need to know what the best AV software is, Avast, AVG or Clam ?

Is it possible to run trackmania through Wine ?

Also i could do with a list of good free software.

 

Another thing, when the next Ubuntu comes along, will i be able to upgrade or will a fresh install be required ?

[Slamman]

I'd start with Avast, been pretty happy with them, on Windows of course, but I think they run fine on Win 9x as well, so they seem to cover a good range.

 

I can't even get my Ubuntu to run off the disc image I burned, that and my Suse Linux, I keep getting errors and figure, Windows for me is less trouble-prone, if I hit a confusing roadblock like that, getting it even working, I revert effortlessly to Windows again.

 

But I would like if someone could come over and see what I've been trying to do and remedy it! It's always failed to install in a self-booting manner on a new drive.

[Saggy]

As far as anti-virus software on Linux goes, ClamAV is a very good one to consider because you can run it with a GUI utility, or just run it as a "daemon" ( schedueled process pretty much ) in the background without even installing the bloat of the GUI and the other stuff. It has one of the very best databases around, and it's pretty much the best supported, best documented Linux antivirus software. It's mostly used for mail scanning, but works equally well as a general virus scanner. However, they're all pretty much the same, and you might find that one of the otherones has an interface you like better; so go with whatever is easiest to use.

 

Do you really need a scanner though? I mean, it's a good idea to have it to quick-scan files, but if you're really worried about security you should familiarize yourself with what "rootkits" are too, they're a bigger threat to Linux. chkrootkit is really good to detect them.

 

Now, for "Will * work with wine" questions... http://appdb.winehq.org/ It has a report on virtually every applications I've been able to think of. Here's the report for the game you mentioned: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?...cation&iId=7064

 

 

As for application... Well, it kind of depends on what you're wanting to do, but I'll just give a run down of specific categories of things...

 

Text Editors:

(Command Line Interface)

Nano

Vim ( a little complex, might want to stick to nano at first )

(Graphical User Interface)

Kate

Kedit

 

Word Processors and Office Suites:

Open Office

KOffice

 

Multimedia:

VLC Player - Instant, platform wide classic right there.

Mplayer - My personal favorite, comes with probably the most powerful movie encoder (mencoder) around, a command line version or a GUI version, and plugins and scripts out the yayhoo.

Audacity - Open source audio editing program

Amarok - Pretty good jukebox mp3 player program

Handbrake - mencoder front-end

DVDRip - Another, probably better mencoder front-end

 

Virtualization:

VMWare and VirtualBox are pretty on par, I've heard a lot of cool things about QEMU but haven't checked it out myself.

 

You'll probably find VirtualBox to be the easiest to install and get running immediatley.

 

Chat clients:

Pidgin - Multi protocol chat client

Xchat - IRC client

 

Montioring:

gkrellm

conky

ksysguard

top

htop

 

Most of Mozilla's line of products work under Linux so I just use FireFox and Thunderbird for web and mail.

 

Also, I'd reccomend using "yakuake" for your terminal. It has a nice hotkey feature so it stays out of the way most of the time, and pulls down when you need it.

 

 

Anyway, I know you didn't ask for this, but you should really familiarize yourself with bash and the command line, and the file system structure etc.

 

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/DOS-Win-to-Linux-HOWTO.html - This is a "DOS/Windows to Linux" how to, but it runs down the basics of how to use bash while drawing comparisons to the equivalent operation in DOS command prompt.

http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/index.html - Bash scripting guide. Neglecting scripting will be ignoring probably the most rewarding and powerful experience of using Linux.

 

 

As far as documentation goes, there are two places I'll suggest: http://www.tldp.org/ ( The Linux Documentation Project ), which will show you a lot of how-tos that involes mostly the command line and things that are somewhat "universal" to Linux.

 

Past that, ubuntuforums will be a great place to get general help and I would recommend you start out there since a lot of the documents on tldp require a somewhat basic knowledge of Linux already.

 

 

[Wolf68k]

As for your Trackmania question, it seems to be possible

Read this topic and see what they say http://www.tm-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=17442

 

[lordjubblydave]

Thanks guys, I will check out all that stuff later and come back with more questions

 

I currently have gnome as my, er ? desktop ?

Am I right in thinking I can install KDE (I think that's what it is called) also, so I can switch between the 2 ?

 

Performance wise is there much of a differance between something installed under WINE, compared to a native windows installation.

I didn't notice much of a problem with spotify last night.

 

1 last Q are there any good repos other than the standard ubuntu one.

I noticed it didn't have apps like spotify and skype which I had to find by myself, I guess because they are not open source or something.

 

1 last last Q I need codecs, is there a linux version of K lite or something similar ? I could not play an mp3 last night, lol

[3niX]

Well...

 

Theres Kubuntu.

I recommend you stick to Gnome for now... things can sometimes get messy with KDE.

 

Depending on the program some things might even run faster with Wine (though its not very often that happens).

 

I do prefer virtualization over a compatibility layer though.

 

 

Also, Ubuntu has a program shop/installer where you can choose programs, they are automatically downloaded and installed. Pretty nifty little thing ... you just need to type in what you want and then select it.

Edited December 8, 2009 by 3niX

[james227uk]

I'd recommend Avast. Non-stop protection. I.E, I tried to go on a games website before, then Avast popped up saying the website contains malware and has aborted the connection. Nice app. Plus it's free.

[Slamman]

I didn't think you could upgrade like you can with Windows, but just burn off a new Distro copy

[Saggy]

 

Thanks guys, I will check out all that stuff later and come back with more questions

 

I currently have gnome as my, er ? desktop ?

Am I right in thinking I can install KDE (I think that's what it is called) also, so I can switch between the 2 ?

 

Performance wise is there much of a differance between something installed under WINE, compared to a native windows installation.

I didn't notice much of a problem with spotify last night.

 

1 last Q are there any good repos other than the standard ubuntu one.

I noticed it didn't have apps like spotify and skype which I had to find by myself, I guess because they are not open source or something.

 

1 last last Q I need codecs,  is there a linux version of K lite or something similar ? I could not play an mp3 last night, lol

Yeah, GNOME and KDE are known as window managers, and you can install several (there's also XFCE, fluxbox, WindowMaker, and way more ). To install KDE on Ubuntu, you want to do

 

 

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

 

 

As for finding software in the Ubuntu repositories, you want to be sure to enable the multi verse and universe repositories, otherwise there will be a lot of software that you won't be able to get until you do so. There are several different ways to accomplish this, but the best way I think is to open "/etc/apt/sources.list" in a text editor, and "uncommenting" (meaning remove the # at the start of the line ) for the lines containing multiverse and universe. There are also a number of guides available, so if you don't want to do it that way you can just search, "Enabling universe repository on ubuntu."

 

This is what that section will look like (with different repositories and stuff of course )...

 

 

## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in## universe WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu security## team.deb http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu/ hardy universedeb-src http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu/ hardy universedeb http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu/ hardy-updates universedeb-src http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu/ hardy-updates universe## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in## multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu## security team.deb http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu/ hardy multiversedeb-src http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu/ hardy multiversedeb http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu/ hardy-updates multiversedeb-src http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu/ hardy-updates multiverse

 

 

Normally there would be a comment in front of the "deb" on each line. Remove the comments for those and the other repositories you want to enable ( I'd reccomend the restricted repository so that you can download and install binary drivers ).

 

WINE will generally run Windows programs at the same speed or faster until you get into things with many system calls, since at that point the overhead that WINE needs to process the APIs will slow it down a little bit. For things like games and what not, there is just too much going on without good direct 3d support, so I will doubt you'll ever see games playing at the same framerate.

 

As far as video codecs go, you should probably use the "ubuntu-restricted-extras" package. Don't forget to search for "libdvdcss" as well ( this will allow you to play all DVDs ), and as far as installing mp3 support, I'd have to say the quickest and most painless way would be to install Amarok, because it will install mp3 support for you if you don't already have it.

 

 

Oh and sorry about not answering your question before: When Ubuntu comes out with a new release, it typically takes them a week or two to offer a "distribution" upgrade through your package manager system. So when you update your packages, it will inform you that you can do a distribution upgrade and ask you if you want to.

 

Sometimes they don't go off without a hitch though, so I'd wait until users have had a chance to work out all the bugs in the upgrade process.

[lordjubblydave]

Thanks Sagacious.

 

You have all been very helpful,

Ok I have got to a point with ubuntu where I am almost positive I want a kde desktop.

I have tried it on a live open suse cd kde is waaay better than gnome, imo far more practical and tidy looking.

The only problem is kde comes with its own set of apps, all beginning with a K it seems.

 

My questions

 

Kde vs gnome: pros and cons ? Is kde stable like gnome ?

 

What would be the best kde distro ?

Suse, mandriva, kubuntu ?

I have always liked the look of mandriva.

 

Secondly is it possible to get rid of the weird K applications in a kde distro and just install things I am familiar with, ie firefox, open office etc.

I guess it is ?

 

Third, unrelated Q, sort of.

 

I need a distro for my other pc it is a P4 sony vaio all in one desktop with 2.4ghz and 512mb ram.

Its running xp reasonably happy at the moment.

But I would like to change it.

 

I guess I will need something reasonably light weight

Maybe one of the netbook distro's ?

Or puppy ?

[supermortalhuman]

I think you'll install a few times before totall happiness, and during those, I just want to say, you should try Linux Mint, it's based on Ubuntu but designed to come with all the multimedia support that Ubuntu doesn't usually include stock (IE: you get drivers and codecs and stuff automatically installed instead of have to find, agree, download, install each one you notice is missing, it's really nice).

[lordjubblydave]

I think you'll install a few times before totall happiness, and during those, I just want to say, you should try Linux Mint, it's based on Ubuntu but designed to come with all the multimedia support that Ubuntu doesn't usually include stock (IE: you get drivers and codecs and stuff automatically installed instead of have to find, agree, download, install each one you notice is missing, it's really nice).

Yeah, im totally with you on mint. I really like it and will probably move over to it eventually.

I want to try the KDE version of Helena first, i don't think it is out yet.

It's just Ubuntu is the first distro to pretty much work out of the box for me

 

 

[Saggy]

Thanks Sagacious.

 

You have all been very helpful,

Ok I have got to a point with ubuntu where I am almost positive I want a kde desktop.

I have tried it on a live open suse cd kde is waaay better than gnome, imo far more practical and tidy looking.

The only problem is kde comes with its own set of apps, all beginning with a K it seems.

 

My questions

 

Kde vs gnome: pros and cons ? Is kde stable like gnome ?

 

What would be the best kde distro ?

Suse, mandriva, kubuntu ?

I have always liked the look of mandriva.

 

Secondly is it possible to get rid of the weird K applications in a kde distro and just install things I am familiar with, ie firefox, open office etc.

I guess it is ?

 

Third, unrelated Q, sort of.

 

I need a distro for my other pc it is a P4 sony vaio all in one desktop with 2.4ghz and 512mb ram.

Its running xp reasonably happy at the moment.

But I would like to change it.

 

I guess I will need something reasonably light weight

Maybe one of the netbook distro's ?

Or puppy ?

Well, first of all I'm going to tackle the "which distribution" thing. That really comes down to which distribution you want to use anyway, because they're all relatively the same. The main difference you'll see is that, those "K" applications and the KDE base in something like Suse is ( from what I've heard ) more up to date than Ubuntu. Now, on the other hand, these packages are "newer", and might have a few bug fixes and what not, but typically there's not much trade off for having the bleeding edge packages, and often times they come with instability issues.

 

Ubuntu however gets most of its packages from the Debian downstream, and Debian developers are pretty hard-set on releasing stable software over bleeding edge. You might often find that the versions of software available in some Debian OSs are three or four versions behind; Ubuntu does a good job staying a little bit more up to date, but can still be considered unstable and as far as the Debian team is concerned they are. I'm telling you this because, it's important to know that Ubuntu and Debian are very close to the same beast under the hood and there are so many other distributions that are also Debian based. Mint is as well I believe.

 

It's a pretty convoluted thing to try to detail... But if you're asking my opinion of what the best KDE distro is, my main line of response is either "Kubuntu", or "whatever you want to use" because installing KDE in any one of these distros is quite easy, and the actual difference in level of performance is not really too noticeable.

 

Other than that it kind of comes down to what you're looking for out of it... I know that I preferred Kubuntu beacuse the menu system was very much like Windows, and it was easy to carry out simple administrative tasks. Suse is exceedingly good for that, matching just about every administrative thing you can do in Windows in its control panel; the problem I feel ( since the last time I used it anyway ) is that building dependencies to compile on Suse is too difficult in comparison to using Debian ( with the traditional build-essentials ) or Slackware/Gentoo with those types of dependencies already there by default. To me Suse is very much a business oriented Linux OS.

 

As for Mandriva, I haven't used it too much, but most of the people I know migrating from Windows to Linux speak very highly of it.

 

 

As for KDE vs. GNOME, I really don't even want to touch that one. However, the general consensus is that GNOME is more streamlined, performs better and is more secure. KDE is typically regarded as bloated, and most people are very displeased with the disorganized development track since version 4.

 

However, I will say that GNOME is not really a "Windows" friendly type of interface. There are so many things that you would figure you could accomplish through the system menus that GNOME simply wants you to rely on the terminal for. Great for people already use to doing so, but quite annoying for newcomers I would say. Not to mention that when it comes down to it, if you're using GNOME because you're looking for a less bloated alternative to KDE, then XFCE, Fluxbox etc. are all very low resource alternatives.

 

The reasons for using GNOME? It's pretty lookin'? Spinnan cubes? I honestly don't know.

 

 

I'm not sure if you can necessarily "get rid" of all of the "K" applications, but you can certainly use alternatives to many ( if not all ) of them. The only thing you're going to be kind of locked into using would be something like "kdesu" which I'll explain later if you'd like. However, for things like "Konversation" ( KDE's IRC chat client ) you could easily download something like Xchat, and I think mIRC even works very well in WINE. As for actually removing those applications, it varies from distro to distro; on Ubuntu, if you try to remove one KDE app, it will by default try to remove all of kubuntu-desktop ( including KDE itself ), so you have to be careful to hold back removing the entire packages. So of course you can get rid of those applications in favor of others, but there are caveats you need to become aware of.

 

 

As for your laptop, I think most distros are going to be pretty comfortable on 512mb. What are you looking to do with it exactly, just web browsing and things like that?

 

The only reason I would lean away from Puppy or Netbook distros, is that they would be slimmed down to the point where installing and launching services that you might feel should be on by default would need your intervention, such as installing, compiling and loading the proper modules for your WiFi card. Not to mention that they're oriented to things with low disk capacity, so the actual amount of applications available to you by default would be limited, and then of course distros that get down to that small of a level frequently start using kernel versions back in the 2.4 and 2.5 days, and you will be quick to find that troubleshooting hardware and software issues with those kernels is much more annoying than the with the current 2.6 track, mainly due to the sheer amount versions relesed on the 2.6 branch has made it much more documented. I mean, you can get everything working on a 2.5 kernel by patching and compiling, but that requires some extra elbow grease.

 

So try Xubuntu for your laptop at first. If you're feeling bold or like a project, maybe try Gentoo or Slackware too. These distros require you to set them up thoroughly, but once you've got them set they are extremely lightweight in terms of resources, and exceptionally fast and stable.

 

Gentoo and Slack might be a little too hands on and involved at this point though, so maybe try something like Arch Linux. It's very lightweight, and keeps up-to-date in a "rolling update" style of fashion. So instead of a major release every six months, you just keep your system up to date a little at a time and the updates come through the downstream gradually. Or something like that... To be honest I haven't used it, but all of my buddies love it, and are running it on rather old laptops or desktops.

 

sh*t that was kind of long...

 

Anyway, gist of it...

 

KDE is virtually the same on any distribution, but some like Suse and Mandriva have heavily customized interfaces you might prefer more than KDE on say, Slackware, which would be extremely standard.

 

GNOME vs. KDE is a bad argument to get into. When it comes to interface issues, KDE is generally really popular amongst people looking for a Windows like interface, but is regarded as bloated.

 

You can substitute almost all of the "K" applications with ones of your choice, but uninstalling them might be a little tricky.

 

Your laptop will probably run most desktop Linux distros pretty well, but I would try Xubuntu first.

[lordjubblydave]

Wow, dude you certainly seem to know your stuff, and are really passionate with it.

Have you been using linux for a long time ?

The terminal stuff is a real headf*ck, I have always been terrible with that kind of stuff ever since my days of trying to get programs running on my spectrum.

10:print lol

20: goto 10

Etc

Anyway i was messing around with distros on my spare computer, which is pretty much used as a media player it was performing magnificently with ubuntu and mint, way faster than it does with xp.

 

Only problem is I could not get the wireless working on it although a snoop around some other forums told me that my particular card is a bitch to get working, its no biggie though a new card is cheaper than win 7.

[Saggy]

Wow, dude you certainly seem to know your stuff, and are really passionate with it.

Have you been using linux for a long time ?

The terminal stuff is a real headf*ck, I have always been terrible with that kind of stuff ever since my days of trying to get programs running on my spectrum.

10:print lol

20: goto 10

Etc

Anyway i was messing around with distros on my spare computer, which is pretty much used as a media player it was performing magnificently with ubuntu and mint, way faster than it does with xp.

 

Only problem is I could not get the wireless working on it although a snoop around some other forums told me that my particular card is a bitch to get working, its no biggie though a new card is cheaper than win 7.

I think I've been using it for a bout two or three years constant now, but I dabbled in it way back in 99'ish too.

 

The terminal becomes a lot less intimidating once you become accustomed to using the man and info commands to read how to use the programs. Nine times out of ten, in order to use a program I don't even have to read the manual, I can just look at the example section and it will give me several examples for various things I might try to do. Not all programs have example sections though, but when worse comes to worse, it's always easy to find a tutorial on using a specific command line program. So the overall uncomfortablness of using a terminal is easy to get past after a little while.

 

 

Wireless is still kind of touch and go, especially when it comes to older WiFi problems. I honestly haven't had any problems myself though. What card and distribution is it? As far as I recall, worse comes to worse you have to use "ndiswrapper" and the Windows drivers for some of the more troublesome cards.

 

To be honest though I haven't gotten any WiFi card issues since Ubuntu 6.06, and all I did to fix that was using 6.10.

[lordjubblydave]

Its a 3com office connect (3crwe154g72) version 2.

From what I can gather people have trouble with it using prism or ndiswrapper.

I have tried it with ubuntu 9.10 and mint helena, with no joy using ndiswrapper it just says invalid driver.

[Saggy]

Its a 3com office connect (3crwe154g72) version 2.

From what I can gather people have trouble with it using prism or ndiswrapper.

I have tried it with ubuntu 9.10 and mint helena, with no joy using ndiswrapper it just says invalid driver.

Have you tried to compile ndiswrapper like so? http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=316764 And then loading the NDIS file?

 

To be honest with you though I've never really successfully tackled any WiFi card issues, and from what I've read not a lot of people have had much luck with them either. You might be better off trying to buy a new WiFi card for cheap, but I would try compiling before I did that.

[lordjubblydave]

Yeah that Ndiswrapper business confuses me

 

Anyway This Site seems quite useful if anyone is having WiFi card troubles in Linux.

 

My card should work out of the box according to This Site im going to try a few Distros out.

 

I will get back to you.

 

Weird, i performed a clean install of Mint.

The card has been recognised using ndiswrapper.

but i can't for the life of me get it to connect using network manager, it tries. I put my p/w in and it searches but just will not connect

any ideas ?

 

Edited December 11, 2009 by lordjubblydave

[lordjubblydave]

Sorry for double post.

 

I have been distro hopping like a motherlicker all week.

The distro that has impressed me most is Mandriva 2010,

I think that is what I am going to settle on once my ne pc is built

1 question, mandriva sell a retail package, that includes a boxed install disc, 300 page manual and 3 months of support from mandriva amongst other stuff. For about £50

Does anyone think for a linux newbie it would be worth me paying out to get the manual and support ?

[Vasilyrud]

So I have been thinking about installing some Linux OS, but I just can't decide on which one is better -- Ubuntu, Kubuntu ... Mint? Can any of you experienced Linux users, suggest your personal favorite?

 

Also, is it really worth installing an AV on a Linux? I heard that there are really little infections on Linux. Does anyone have any experience with Linux viruses?

[lordjubblydave]

Like I said above, mandriva is going to be my first distro, as it is very newbie friendly.

 

Ubuntu is also nice for us beginers, kubuntu is the KDE desktop which I prefer. (Mandriva uses the same desktop by default also)

Mint is a modified version of ubuntu, with more codecs pre_installed and a more pleasing software manager.

I am in the same boat as you though.

Best thing I can suggest is, try them all either in virtual pc or using live cd's.

See what you like best, what works best with your setup etc

[Saggy]

Also, is it really worth installing an AV on a Linux? I heard that there are really little infections on Linux. Does anyone have any experience with Linux viruses?

Well, I'm just gong to talk a little bit about Linux security in general here...

 

You don't really need to worry too much about viruses effecting your Linux system. There's so few of them, and finding one to actually get infected with is more of a challenge than a concern.

 

However, if you're going to be using a mail client like Thunderbird or if you're going to be running applications in wine, you'll probably want to use a virus scanner to scan your mailbox and WINE directory for Windows viruses. The reason to do this is because they can mess up your WINE configuration and cause all sorts of problems, and because if there is a virus that can say, make Thunderbird make you email every person on your contact list the same virus, you'll still want to catch that.

 

Most mail services scan their emails before they ever get to you, and downloading something on WINE that is potentially dangerous comes down to the same "common sense" kind of process. So basically, you'll probably want something like "clamscan" (ClamAVs cli virus scanner) to scan something you want to install in WINE before doing so, or to periodically scan your mailbox, but that's really not too important unless you're running a mail server.

 

I mean, viruses really aren't a primary concern for Linux users, but you shouldn't think that you're invulnerable and don't need to worry. You can still catch and spread Windows viruses without them really doing any harm to your system...

 

Think of it this way. Let's say you're immune to the flu. You could go around, hanging around with people that are sick, not bothering to check or take care of yourself, and then just go hang around with people that aren't sick. You won't get sick, but you will spread it to the other people who are not immune and get them sick, unless you keep good hygiene practices and clean yourself of the germs.

 

In this context, running a virus scanner on Linux is just to make sure you're clean. You don't really need to worry about it if you're not going to be exposing yourself to possibly infected computers, but it's just a good idea to do so to be careful not to accidentally infect Windows computers.

 

I have heard of some pretty wicked Linux rootkits though. One of them for example, replaces the standard DHCP client on a Linux server with a program that will upload a payload to the PC that's requesting the address, and if it's the right Windows server it will put a botnet irc applications in and basically hand over control to whoever wrote the thing. Most rootkits written for Linux are of this nature: They take advantage of the server side aspects of it in order to infect and control more end-computers like Windows machines with a totally separate virus. So in essence, even if you keep yourself clean of viruses, you could have a rootkit that is constantly re downloading and pumping them out somewhere.

 

I don't want to post a whole novel about rootkits. However basically, they're the real threat to your Linux machine, and you can think of them doing undesired things in the same way that a virus does; the reason they're called rootkits, is they get root permission and thus have the ability to do anything to your system. If someone root kits it, they have the power to do anything. So if you're saying to my last example, "Oh well, I won't be running a DHCP server on my Linux machine it doesn't matter," a rootkit has the power to install a DHCP server and even ARP poison your network to the point that your PCs think that machine is the router, and soon will be downloading infected payloads via DHCP. Same scenario could be laid out for several network services.

 

A little less sophisticated, but malicious nonetheless: A rootkit could simple erase all of your data.

 

Worse yet, pretty much every new kernel up to the 2.6.31 release has a couple of local root exploits. So downloading and running a rootkit would be disastrous for you or anyone else that doesn't have that security fix taken care of. Linux is pretty secure, but definitely not impervious.

 

So yeah...

 

Check for viruses to make sure you don't spread them.

Check for rootkits to make sure your system isn't compromised

 

 

I wouldn't be too obsessive about doing either one ( I think it's been a year since I last checked for either ), but it's basically what you need to cover when it comes to Linux security concerns, besides turning other services ( like POP3 or whatnot ) off so that you don't have open ports all over.

[lordjubblydave]

I have hard drive formated to FAT 32 which i have in an external enclosure,

This stores all of my photo's, music etc.

Would it be possible to install it in my machine as an extra HD ? would linux recognise it and mount it ?

or would it try and reformat it ?.

I want to get all my music etc into my linux machine but, unfortunately the existing HD is not big enough to copy it over.

 

[NTAuthority]

Would it be possible to install it in my machine as an extra HD ? would linux recognise it and mount it ?

or would it try and reformat it ?.

I want to get all my music etc into my linux machine but, unfortunately the existing HD is not big enough to copy it over.

GNOME/KDE's automounting feature (actually, HAL/udev) would recognize the drive and mount it if you connect it using USB, and likely also if you connect it internally. However, as far as connecting it internally goes I'd recommend writing the new HDD's line in /etc/fstab to automatically mount it on boot... otherwise it's going to be like network drives in Windows, having to manually do things every boot

 

FAT32 has obviously been supported for a really long while in the Linux kernel, so, obviously it's going to work.

[Saggy]

 

Would it be possible to install it in my machine as an extra HD ? would linux recognise it and mount it ?

or would it try and reformat it ?.

I want to get all my music etc into my linux machine but, unfortunately the existing HD is not big enough to copy it over.

GNOME/KDE's automounting feature (actually, HAL/udev) would recognize the drive and mount it if you connect it using USB, and likely also if you connect it internally. However, as far as connecting it internally goes I'd recommend writing the new HDD's line in /etc/fstab to automatically mount it on boot... otherwise it's going to be like network drives in Windows, having to manually do things every boot

 

FAT32 has obviously been supported for a really long while in the Linux kernel, so, obviously it's going to work.

FAT32 and NTFS are supported by vfat and ntfs-3g , respectively...

 

As far as a line in the fstab goes, it's a good idea, but you might want to use the UUID to refer to the disk instead of the usual /dev/hd#partition# format, because the strange thing about Linux, is that it will change the order of your drives.

 

For example, let's say you've got a 500 GB harddrive and a 50 GB you're using for your OS or something. Linux will label the 500 /dev/sda and the 50 GB /dev/sdb. However, say you go and get something larger than your 500 GB, linux will change the 500 from sda to sdb, and the 50 from sdb to sdc, and give the biggest volume the sda slot.

 

 

So obviously if you've studied the fstab at all, you'd know this would cause some problems if you installed a new harddrive, because then fstab will start mounting the wrong hard-drive to the wrong mount point based on the numbers. Ubuntu writes the fstab with UUIDs by default, so when you add your own fstab lines you need to be careful of this.

 

 

The easiest way to get your UUID that I know of on Ubuntu (probably works for most debian distros) is the vol_id command

 

 

fidsk -ul ( then get the partition number of the drive you need mounted, for clarity let's say it's sda1)vol_id -u /dev/sda1

 

 

The program will give you a line of numbers and letters. Copy and paste this, and then open fstab in a text editor, and add a line like this

 

 

UUID=(the id you got from running vol_id) mount_point vfat user,rw,auto,umask=0000,uid=1000,gid=1000,iocharset=utf8

(This should be one line)

 

The mount_point is a directory somewhere in your file system you want the partition to show up in. Most people make a directory for this in /mnt/ or /media/

 

The last thing you want to do once you've got it mounted and in fstab, is to be sure that you have writing permissions for the mount_point you're using. So use chmod to set the permissions you want, and then us chown to signify that you own that directory. You want to give yourself ownership of it.

 

So something like..

 

 

chown user:user mount_pointchmod 755 mount_point

 

(For now, just put your user account ain place of "user" and don't worry about groups unless you're going to have more than one person using the computer)

 

Then restart the system ( the UUID won't be valid until you restart ) to let the partition mount, and once again do

 

 

chmod 755 mount_point

 

 

To give yourself permissions on the actual root directory of that partition. When you assigned permissions to the mount_point, you were applying permissions to the directory of that mount_point on the file system itself. So you have to do it twice depending on the situation. When it comes to a FAT drive I don't think you really need to, but if you're doing this with a Linux filesystem you'll want to remember to set permissions twice.

 

 

There are numerous graphical alternatives for setting up disks and partitions and what not. However, the fstab and "mount" CLI ways are nearly universal and well worth learning.

 

For example...

 

Ever download some software that you needed to mount an ISO image in Windows like Daemontools or Alcohol 120%? If you learn mount, you'll be able to do the same thing as easily as

 

 

mount -t iso9660 -o loop image.iso mount_point

 

[Vasilyrud]

So I am planning on installing Ubuntu, but before doing so I must add a new partition. I am planning on using either Partition Wizard or EASEUS Partition Master.

 

I am wondering how I must manipulate my hard drive's partitions in order to add a new partition for Ubuntu. I currently have 2 partitions on my one and only 250Gb hard drive. (the two current partitions take up all the space)

I have disk C: used for the Windows installation, and D: for backing up files (whenever I reinstall Windows, I can format my C: disk, while keeping the files on D:). D: = ~37Gb and C: = ~195Gb. (I think both are NTFS, but I am not sure.)

 

Now that I want to install Ubuntu, I am planning on making disk C: smaller by around 30Gb, and using this space to create a new partition for my new Ubuntu OS. Is this possible?

 

____________Previous Disk C:______________ | _____Disk D:_____

__________Disk C:__________ | _New partition_ | _____Disk D:_____

 

 

If this is not possible, what would you recommend me to do? I need a way to create a new partition without losing the data on disks C: and D:.

[NTAuthority]

Yes, this is easily possible, even using the ubiquity installer itself... you don't need a separate application anymore from the time ntfsresize learned how to handle non-contiguous partitions.

[Vasilyrud]

So, erhhm, now what do I do? I'm somewhat lost now.

Edited December 19, 2009 by Vasilyrud

[NTAuthority]

So, erhhm, now what do I do? I'm somewhat lost now.

Just burn the CD and start from it. Some systems might not start from CD by themselves, but you can override that in many BIOSes by pressing F8 or F12 while booting.

[Vasilyrud]

So, erhhm, now what do I do? I'm somewhat lost now.

Just burn the CD and start from it. Some systems might not start from CD by themselves, but you can override that in many BIOSes by pressing F8 or F12 while booting.

I mean, what should I do concerning partitioning the hard drive.