Linux.com

> "User proopnarine explained how to use desg from the command line"
That should read, "dmesg" and it runs like this, with the end of the output telling us about what just happened:
user@shell$ dmesg [enter key]
[ 0.000000] Linux version 2.6.24-15-generic (buildd@rothera) (gcc version 4.2.3 (Ubuntu 4.2.3-2ubuntu7)) #1 SMP Fri Apr 4 03:48:31 UTC 2008 (Ubuntu 2.6.24-15.26-generic)
...
...
...
[46202.310165] usb 3-2.2: new full speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 9
[46202.438473] usb 3-2.2: configuration #1 chosen from 2 choices
[46202.851632] cdc_acm 3-2.2:1.0: ttyACM0: USB ACM device
[46202.855251] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_acm
user@shell$

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The typo has been repaired. Just a reminder, though, that if you have advice to contribute to any of the threads mentioned above, you need to post to the forum thread, not add comments here.

Nate

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I have done the same "dove right in" , burned 7 LiveCDs. But i installed each of them, because it is on trying to install extra software that i found my preferences.
I got tired of installing software on debian based systems (ubuntu, kubuntu, kurumin) and tried RPM packages.

From that experience Suse and Mandriva became the best versions. My Nokia N800 runs debian based, but i do not find much software for that yet.

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Like many people, pdmayton has it backwards. He's made the first, crucial, mistake: buying a laptop without checking whether Linux has support for all the devices in it. Chances are, he is going to find Linux frustrating and go back to Windows.

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"Like many people, pdmayton has it backwards. He's made the first, crucial, mistake: buying a laptop without checking whether Linux has support for all the devices in it. Chances are, he is going to find Linux frustrating and go back to Windows."

That may be true. However, from the standpoint of helping people out I think those of us who are savvy and Linux evangelists need to be kind and patient in our explanations of things like that. I'm hearing that the vast majority of desktop systems use components common enough that they generally work, but I would agree that is not universally true, and it is much less true with laptop systems. There are a few laptop systems that are sold that actually come pre-installed and pre-configured with Linux software. Asus has a line of those low end "eee" class systems that are plenty powerful enough for many tasks, but Dell and Lenovo actually sell a few systems that are quite capable by any standards. For the first timers, those may be the best ones to get into so that the initial experience is positive.

I have heard it said that in general, one to two year old laptops tend to be a fairly safe choice. Probably so as long as it is a mainstream laptop vendor with a household name. However, even back in 1999, I had good results with a no name Cybermax laptop, so who is to say!

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On the contrary, in this case pdmayton did nothing wrong. As he explains in the thread, he bought the laptop planning to use it as-is -- only after experiencing Windows Vista did he decide it was too big of a pain and decide he had to find an alternative.

And that's a very, very common route to a new user's first introduction to Linux -- it'll continue to be so, too, especially with laptops as no one takes the build-your-own approach.

Nate

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I have a similar question: I'm currently running Mandriva 2008.0 at the office, and am planning to buy a new home machine (Intel DP35DP motherboard, which supports e-SATA), and put on 2008.1 when I get it. I'm an environmental modeler, so I wind up with *lots* of "working data" -- 300GB or so. I'm considering getting one of Seagate's e-SATA/USB2 500GB external drives (~$150 at Amazon).

My questions: (1) I know I can do "hot-plug" USB operation -- can I "hot-plug" with e-SATA? (2) are there any "gotchas" about getting an e-SATA controller for the office, and using e-SATA hot-plugging there?

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If you want an answer, you need to post your question in the forums! That's what they are for; by tomorrow new stories will have pushed this article off of the front page, and no one will be looking at the comments.

Nate

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With an external drive... format it using FAT or FAT32 for some uses.

If formated with a traditional LINUX file system, then as you change machines you have then take ownership of the drive to use is. This means hunting for the command line to do this.

I use a chown command to get to those files.

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chown">Wikipedia Chown page</a>

or


<a href="http://www.linfo.org/chown.html">Linux Information Project Chown page</a>

What is needed maybe... is a LINUX feature, that could be added by a user like adding an application, for when a USB device is attached and the file system is not allowing access! Where upon adding the file system on that USB device, that a pop up asks for a admin level password for chown access (or permisssion for single use of chown for only this device) is allowed, PASSWORD PERMITTING only... , of course!

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for a linux newbie, I recommend Ubuntu, since it runs virtually out of the box ... but I recommend partitioning your hard drive first ..

http://www.oneview.com/home/link_details.jsf?linkID=12020

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He should get himself a copy of Windows XP then. Otherwise he will be sorely disappointed with all the half-assed Linux junk software.

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Before trying to choose a distro, you need to dump out your hardware list using something like dxdiag: Start|Run dxdiag.
I think of it as lspci for windows, though not quite. Then google search each piece of hardware for forum discussions about the hardware on linux.

Then you'd find the linux drivers for all of it. If you are missing some drivers, no distro will work the way you want unless you don't plan on using the hardware.

You want to find out what person x had to do to get the hardware working on distro Y. In most cases, Ubuntu takes care of this stuff for you. Just in case, check the Ubuntu forums for discussions on your hardware stuff.

Once you figure out what drivers are available, the rest is cake. Read up on the philosophies of the distros and find one that works for you.

Here are some samples:
Ubuntu: just works(tm), at least most of the time. The "people's" distro. Includes the goodies like video codecs etc. Excellent for new linux users, though their patching policies (quarterly) don't handle 0day vulnerabilities very well.
Debian: only includes completely FOSS stuff. no proprietary stuff allowed (like mp3 codecs, nvidia drivers etc.)
SuSE: stability package distro suitable for corporate desktops, though their server is no slouch.
Fedora: Not exactly sure ROFL. Free redhat workstation/server. Sort of a beta test for Enterprise.
CentOS: Red Hat ES clone built from src RPMs. (God bless GPL!) Excellent server distro.
Red Hat ES: Great server OS, though any of the others will also do this job pretty well.
Gentoo: Performance? Need the best docs in the community? can't be beat when you compile your entire OS from a bunch of text files, YARRR! The community documentation is driven by very talented people who really know what they are talking about. Go there for answers even if you don't run Gentoo. All of it applies to all distros, excepting details about emerge (their packager).
Slack: Like gentoo, only super stable(aka stable but not latest and greatest), though Gentoo can be if you don't use the dangerous stuff.

Basically if you are uncomfortable building your OS from command line in a shell, stay away from Slack and Gentoo.
If you want to pop a cd in and get a nice general build back on your hard drive, Ubuntu or Fedora, though you may have issues with Fedora since they are kind of the beta Red Hat test platform.
If you think like Stallman, go with Debian. Just be prepared to have trouble with multimedia, unless you go outside of Debian for the packages they won't support, like vendor provided video drivers and media codecs.(can be a PITA if you've never configured dpkg before, though the docs are great)
SuSE's a great stable desktop, with lots of eye candy (compiz fusion etc) built in, though it's not free in the truest sense of the word.

Just remember that any distro can do whatever you want it to, as well as what any other distro can do. They just have different paths in getting to the end result. They are all linux OS's and run the same software, with the differences being patches made to programs to modify them the way the distro maintainers see fit.

At the end of the day, they are all the same software mostly, with different packaging systems and philosophies. Each distro has their add-on goodies to differentiate them. Day to day, once the system is up and running, this simply doesn't matter. You can automate them all to patch automagically.

For a beginner, I'd roll with Ubuntu. It's free, stable, and easy to patch/upgrade. I like bleeding edge performance and am a software engineer, so I'm a Gentoo user. Configuring your own kernel using menuconfig, and compiling it floats my boat. The only real differences between distros are attitude, packaging systems and ease of maintenance.

They are all GNU\Linux, have nearly the same software builds, and all have their particular quirks. I love them all for various reasons unique to each distro.

-AC

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