Ok now I've finally managed to install linux onto both PCs. Typical only my downstairs crappy one had a few problems installing. But I was amazed how easy it was to install. I've got linux+windows on my hware profile and pure lniux on my duron 800. I'm such a n00b to this. I'm still very cautious since it crashed a few times but seems pretty ok now. Could do with some major tweaking though. One question i've never used linux before, when i try to run an exe on mandrake, i get asked what program to open it with. What do I do? I'm also getting used to the /home style address instead of c: etc. I'll be using this thread to ask more questions on my OS Wars: A new OS, Windows Strikes back and its sequel Adventure with Linux: Return of the Penguin ....
Does anyone know of good antivirus for linux. I think AVG is only for Windows but apart from that I don't know of any linux compatible ones.
You don't need an antivirus in Linux. The structure of the operating system resists virii by design. However, there are antiviruses for Linux. Some are free, some commercial, all are intended to scan MS Windows files, either on a Samba share or on other network resources. Unless you're going to be serving files to Windows systems, I don' think an AV is necessary for you.
Cool. Another question whats the windows equivalent of program files. I can't seem to find firefox after i installed it.
OK, Linux keeps all its files neat & tidy. Programs are typically installed to /usr/local/ -- however, if you installed Firefox as a user (and not as root), you don't have write access to /usr/local/! This is a good part of the reason Linux doesn't get viruses. Therefore, since you couldn't write to /usr/local as a regular user, Firefox would have asked to be installed to /home/$YOURNAME/firefox/. This setup will work OK, but since you can modify the Firefox program, Firefox has a similar chance of being damaged as to what it would on a Windows system. If it was I in your shoes, I'd learn the Unix way of installing programs which is actually pretty simple once you understand what's going on. I'll end this post here and post a quick walkthrough on how to install Firefox in a secure and easy to manage way in Linux. -AT
A Tutorial: Howto Install Firefox in Linux I would normally recommend you install software through the software manager of the distribution of your choice. It's easier that way, just a few 'clicks', and any software you install will be updated regularly along with the rest of your OS -- very cool! :good: However, every now and again there will be a program which is not provided in your distro's software repository. In that case, you'll need to know how to install software in a logical, proper, and secure way. That being said, let's get to the tutorial. First, download a copy of the latest Firefox installer for Linux. The Firefox installer is compressed as a tar.gz archive, which is the most common format for Linux compressed archives. We'll need to uncompress the archive before we can run the installer. We could do this graphically, using the 'ark' program, but let's do it from the command line for simplicity's sake. Start a terminal. At the command prompt, type: Code: tar xzvf firefox-1.0.3-installer.tar.gz ...assuming of course that you downloaded it to the root directory of your home, and that the version you've downloaded happens to be 1.0.3. Since users in a Unix-like system can only write to their home directory by default, you will need root (administrator) privileges for the rest of this exercise. Get root access by typing: Code: su - root ...and entering your root password. Next, you will want a folder in which to keep your manually-installed applications. To me, "apps" makes sense for the folder name, so let's go with that. Type the following in the terminal: Code: mkdir /usr/local/apps Now, we'll want to install Firefox there. Change directories into the Firefox installer's folder, and run the installer by typing the following: Code: cd firefox-installer sh firefox-installer You'll be presented with a lovely installer GUI, in which you'll gleefully click 'next' until you come to the screen in which it's asking where you'd like it be installed. In that path, you'd make it: Code: /usr/local/apps/firefox-1.0.3 ...assuming the version you're installing is 1.0.3 of course. Once the installation is complete, a new Firefox window will open. Success! Close the Window now without doing any surfing (you're still running it as root, remember?). Now we've installed Firefox to a place on the system which makes sense, and in which normal users can run firefox normally, save their settings, install extensions & skins, etc., yet cannot actually harm the Firefox program in any way. However, it's still not convenient for users to run Firefox at this stage; they'd have to type /usr/local/apps/firefox-1.0.3/firefox every time they wanted to run it. Not exactly efficient. Next, we'll concentrate on making Firefox easy to run and simple to upgrade. for that, you'll be introduced to symbolic links. Symbolic links are a pretty cool feature of Unix-like systems that makes things a lot easier on everybody. The gist is that you make a placeholder that points a file's true location to a more convenient location. This affords us the best of both worlds -- convenience and organization. First, for simplicity, we'll CD to the apps directory: Code: cd /usr/local/apps Now we will make a link from firefox-1.0.3 to just firefox: Code: ln -s firefox-1.0.3 firefox At this point, a user could execute Firefox by typing /usr/local/apps/firefox/firefox ...starting to get it? OK, well obviously nobody wants to type the full path every time, even thus shortened. So we're going to make yet another symbolic link: Code: ln -s /usr/local/apps/firefox/firefox /usr/local/bin/firefox Now there's a link to the Firefox executable in the folder /usr/local/bin/, which is called 'firefox'. Since /usr/local/bin is in the user's path, all a user has to do to execute Firefox now is type firefox! Simple? Now, you probably want a nice icon that represents Firefox so you don't have to type the command in the shell every time, even though we've made it a lot easier. In Mandrake Linux, you'd type (as root still): Code: menudrake ...since you're running as root, you'll be prompted as to whether or not you want to edit the system-wide menu, or just the 'root' user's menu. Choose 'system'. Now, expand the 'Internet' section. Highlight 'Web Browsers'. Click 'Add Application', for the title type firefox and for the description, Firefox. Now for the pretty icon. Click on the button which says 'No Icon', and for the path choose 'Browse custom directory'. Browse to /usr/local/apps/firefox/icons/, and hit 'Open'. Choose mozicon50.xpm (aka the big one). Hit the 'Save' button. It'll take a second to rebuild the menu system. You're done, you can close out menudrake now and log out of your root account by typing exit a few times. If you want an icon on your desktop now, just open your menu and drag your freshly baked Firefox link right onto your desktop. There you go! Now, since you've got some symbolic links in place, all you have to do in order to upgrade Firefox to a new version is make a new folder for the updated version in /usr/local/apps/, just like you did for the first one (e.g. /usr/local/apps/firefox-1.0.4/). All we have to do is delete the symbolic link which links /usr/local/apps/firefox-1.0.3 --> /usr/local/apps/firefox, then make a link to the new version: Code: rm -rf /usr/local/apps/firefox ln -s /usr/local/apps/firefox-1.0.4 /usr/local/apps/firefox You don't have to remake any of your other links or icons, because your symbolic link, /usr/local/bin/firefox, points to /usr/local/apps/firefox/firefox, which hasn't changed at all. Also, by using the same procedure detailed above and simply making a few logical adaptations, you can do the same thing with Thunderbird and many other applications. -AT
Thanks AT cleared a lot up. I'll try to get to grips with the terminal program and the way linux works.
If you don't mind, could you do a tutorial or an explaination of how to set up printing in linux. I need it for my coursework tomorrow but i'll have to carry my printer upstairs. I tried to install CUPS but it threw up an error saying i didn't have the gcc compilers.
GCC is a big deal, all Linux distros ship with it included. You'll also need CUPS. Follow the directions on how to set up software repositories in this thread. Once you've got all your update sources accounted for, type the following in a console: Code: su - root #enter root password urpmi gcc cups ...that'll install gcc, cups, and everything else you need for them to work in one fell swoop.
If you follow the instructions I've previously posted, you'll no longer require the CDs in order to install software.
I keep getting this message after switching mirrors a few times. Code: [root@x1-6-00-40-f4-4c-4f-a5 root]# urpmi gcc cups To satisfy dependencies, the following 3 packages are going to be installed (28 MB): gcc-3.4.1-4mdk.i586 glibc-2.3.3-23.1.101mdk.i586 glibc-devel-2.3.3-23.1.101mdk.i586 Is this OK? (Y/n) y installing /var/cache/urpmi/rpms/gcc-3.4.1-4mdk.i586.rpm /var/cache/urpmi/rpms/glibc-devel-2.3.3-23.1.101mdk.i586.rpm Installation failed: glibc = 6:2.3.3-23.1.101mdk is needed by glibc-devel-2.3.3-23.1.101mdk Installation failed, some files are missing: ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/linux/distributions/Mandrakelinux/official/updates/10.1/main_updates/./glibc-2.3.3-23.1.101mdk.i586.rpm You may want to update your urpmi database [root@x1-6-00-40-f4-4c-4f-a5 root]# Anything I'm doing wrong?
You're not doing anything wrong at all. The problem seems to be that your repository mirror is outdated -- one of the crappy things about relying on free voluntary mirrors. Anyway, if the mirror has caught up, you can force your system to sync with it. Type this as root: Code: urpmi.update -a ...then try again. If it still doesn't work after that, you should choose a different mirror.
I'll try updating gcc manually. I'm not totally sure what i'm doing but i'll work it out. Eventually. Maybe.
I have another problem. You see a while ago I had a big problem that I couldn't solve with my grpahics card. What happened was I couldn't install my drivers for it in windows, as as soon as windows loading screen finished it would go to a weird screen. I'm trying to install a loinux driver to see if it works, but when i do I have to do: Code: sh linuxdrivername.run and when that happens I get a message telling me that X system is running and needs to be closed. I tried killing the X process but that closed the whole environment and had to log on again. So I tried installing it from just the shell without the KDE GUI. I went into failsafe mode and went to /mnt/cdrom/ and did the same thing but it said that the linuxdrivername wasn't a directory or something. How would I install the drivers without X?
I'll need to know what type of video card you have in order to give you specific advice on that one. However, you can prevent MDK from restarting the X server automatically by running Code: /usr/sbin/harddrake2 ...then clicking on your video card --> Run Config Tool --> Options --> "Would you like X to start with your system?" --> No. Then if you restart the system, no more X. You can re-enable it using the same method. Until then, you'll have to start the X server by typing Code: startx Let me know if you need any more help.
