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zfb's noobly questions thread

post #1 of 34
4/3/08 at 1:47pm
Thread Starter 
(feel free to correct me if i'm making dunderheaded incorrect statements - i'd much rather have it pointed out that i sound like a fool so i can change my ways than continue in semi-blissful ignorance)

perhaps this doesn't need to be a new thread, but i figured i'd have numerous questions over time and it would be easy to throw them all in one thread, so i could avoid total spammage and just list my hardware/software/experience once. i'll initially be going dual boot with xp, though hopefully i'll eventually just bail on xp, if i can replace enough of my windows software with viable linux alternatives...

asus m6bne, pentium m 1.8, 1 gig ram, ati mobility radeon 9700, intel pro/wireless 2200bg network card, broadcom netxtreme gigabit ethernet card, toshiba dvd-rom sd-r2512, sigmatel c-major audio.

right now, i'm thinking of going to xubuntu...from what i've read, ubuntu seems like a good place for me to start, but i definitely prefer the xfce desktop to the gnome. i have some experience with some sort of gnome variant back in college, and i remember being slightly annoyed with it; when i booted up both ubuntu and xubuntu from live cds, xubuntu won.


my questions for now...

is xubuntu a good mix of easy to pick up and powerful/some other benevolent adjective that i can't quite think of? i don't mind some headaches, i'm expecting at least a few, but i don't want to learn a new os just to bail to a better option (unless doing so is just a good idea). i realize this is mainly personal preference, and depends on what you wish to do with the machine, but i'll take any thoughts, biases, or preferences...(more of what i plan to do with it is below)

i do a lot of audio editing, with some (old) versions of sound forge and acid - does anyone have any experience running these under linux (via emulator or non-emulator, whatever they're called exactly), or are there any good open source alternatives?

i also do a lot of web design, but i'm pretty sure that that won't be a problem. i currently use dreamweaver as my wysiwyg editor, but i'm not really attached to it, and wind up doing half the coding by hand anyway. i haven't even researched linux alternatives at all, figuring that a capable web design program is probably pretty high on the list for linuxheads...foolish assumption?

i've read a lot on video drivers, and nobody seems to have much good to say about ati and linux. i don't play many games (just tf2 right now), but i'd like to have the option to do so through linux via wine doors, or wine, or the paid wine variant (can't recall the name right now), or whatever - will my video card pose any problems for this? or is the prospect of running steam games via linux just a pipe dream, and i'll need to retain the dual boot option in order to geek out? (what i've read leads me to believe that, but i haven't found anything definitive)

i have an sd card drive built into my machine, but no sd cards with me - so i couldn't test its functionality - any guesses on whether it'll work? (not a big deal, but it would be nice).

does anyone see any red flags from my hardware list, software desires, or basic lack of knowledge? like i said, xubuntu seemed to be fully, or at least near-fully functional in my experiments, but i figured i'd ask anyway...

thanks for putting up with me, and i'm sure i'll have more crap to throw at you in the future...
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post #2 of 34
4/3/08 at 1:57pm
Thread Starter 
also:

in before tl;dr.
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post #3 of 34
4/3/08 at 2:32pm
Based on the latest comparisons, Windows-oriented games tend to run much better in actual Windows than in Wine, so I'd keep your Windows partition for games.

The card reader is pretty much the only thing that DOESN'T work in Linux for my Asus Z71v, so I'd guess yours probably won't work either, unless Asus changed card reader suppliers between 2004 and 2005.

Regarding the rest of your questions, seablade could best answer about the audio editing, since he does that kind of thing professionally. A lot of web design is done via Linux, but I don't know the first thing about it, so the person to talk to there is Shaun@NBF, since this site is on a Linux server.
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post #4 of 34
4/3/08 at 2:41pm
Honestly tl;dr need not apply here, have you seen some of my posts?

Ok taking things one at a time, XUbuntu might be a good choice for you. Ubuntu in general is a good first experience with Linux, but you can certainly take it farther. XUbuntu is one that pops up around here decently often, courtesy primarily of ABF if memory serves. If you didn't have any problems with the live cd, I would certainly say go for it.

In as far as multimedia, that might be something you want to look at Ubuntu studio for. While I believe by default that uses Gnome, you could always put XFCE on it, or put it on XUbuntu. A bit of work, but nothing to bad.

In as far as running those software under Wine(Not emulation), I point oyu to....

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManage...cation&iId=529

You didn't give a version number, sorry Wine is not the easiest thing to get running all the time though, but it can be a decent learning experience at the same time.

In as far as alternatives, it depends on what you use them for. For ACID, I can't think of a good looper off hand, but take a look at apps.linuxaudio.org and see if you find anything there as I am not to familiar with it. For Soundforge however, yea there are certainly choices. Audacity and Rezound are both available for single file destructive editing, and for multi-track audio sequencing, Ardour is my first choice hands down.

For web development, NVu/Kompozer is an option, though I wasn't to impressed recently with its CSS editing. As a result I actually went with Eclipse with some PHP/WDT plugins and code by hand at the moment, previewing in a browser. Works great on my Mac, have no reason to believe it would work different on Linux. You also have several other options like Emacs, Bluefish, etc. Also worst case scenario, I believe Dreamweaver CS3 is on the list of must work applications for Wine 1.0

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManage...cation&iId=183


ATi doesn't have the best reputation no. That being said, they are also making huge strides forward recently in opening up all their drivers and in another year or so we may find them as good as Intel's, depending on how fast AMD moves. So that may change rapidly, and enough development has happened recently I am considering them for my next Video card. So in essense, they might not work great now, but shortly they may work a heck of a lot better.

NVidia on the other hand, while being closed source tend to work pretty good. Intel, with the notable shortcoming of all currently being integrated solutions, have open source drivers and tend to work the best of the newer stuff.

SD readers tend to be a mixed bag. Some work some don't. In general these days you will probably find more work than don't, but it is hard to guess at these things. What you CAN do though is post up the output of

lspci -v

and we can look it up by the chip manufacturer for your reader to give a better guess.

Seablade
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post #5 of 34
4/3/08 at 2:42pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Djembe View Post
Based on the latest comparisons, Windows-oriented games tend to run much better in actual Windows than in Wine, so I'd keep your Windows partition for games.
yeah, that's the sense i got. maybe i should just grow up and stop playing computer games

Quote:
The card reader is pretty much the only thing that DOESN'T work in Linux for my Asus Z71v, so I'd guess yours probably won't work either, unless Asus changed card reader suppliers between 2004 and 2005.
nuts! but like i said, no big deal - a $15 reader can take care of it.

Quote:
Regarding the rest of your questions, seablade could best answer about the audio editing, since he does that kind of thing professionally. A lot of web design is done via Linux, but I don't know the first thing about it, so the person to talk to there is Shaun@NBF, since this site is on a Linux server.
i'm doing some reading on the web design facet now, and as i suspected there seems to be plenty of options: http://webdesign.about.com/od/htmled...tpwyslinux.htm
i pretty much only use wysiwyg editors to do intensively menial tasks anyway (laying out complex tables, image maps, etc), and it looks like it'll be no problem dumping bloated, annoying dreamweaver.

thanks, dj! i knew you're an asus and linux guy, so i knew i'd get something good out of you
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post #6 of 34
4/3/08 at 2:42pm
Curse you posting while I am typing Djembe

Yea for the record I use Ardour over my ProTools, in fact i haven't bothered to update Protools lately just because I never use the blasted thing. The thing I DO miss however is a good strong notation editor, preferably with live playback capabilities ala Notion Music's-Notion

Seablade
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post #7 of 34
4/3/08 at 2:43pm
Dang I am getting one upped all over the place

PS On your games, check Crossover Games by the way, it just got released and supports some newer stuff, but in general dual booting for games is not a bad idea.

Seablade
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post #8 of 34
4/3/08 at 2:44pm
Holy crud, Im a jackpot now? I don't know whether I should be scared or not....

Seablade
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post #9 of 34
4/3/08 at 2:51pm
Thread Starter 
awesome, i've hit the seablade jackpot!

thanks for the audio recommendations and links - i don't do anything professionally, so i know if it works for you it will almost certainly be fine for me...

i haven't read too much about wine and all the related non-emulators, just enough to know that they exist, and sometimes work. i guess dual-boot isn't such a terrible fate

*scurries off to read about ubuntu studio, audacity, rezound, and ardour*

massive thanks, guys!

edit: next time i boot into linux, i'll get the card reader info...
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post #10 of 34
4/3/08 at 9:33pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by seablade View Post
XUbuntu might be a good choice for you. Ubuntu in general is a good first experience with Linux, but you can certainly take it farther. XUbuntu is one that pops up around here decently often, courtesy primarily of ABF if memory serves. If you didn't have any problems with the live cd, I would certainly say go for it.
when you say take it farther, what do you mean? are there other distros that provide a higher degree of customization, or that (once i got my sea legs, so to speak) i'd find more suited for my needs? i'm probably going to continue messing around with live cds for another week or 2 before i actually install anything, so if you've got any suggestions, i'm open to them - i've got the time and cd's to burn, and bittorrent has made downloading several distros in a short amount of time laughably easy...

Quote:
You didn't give a version number, sorry
i didn't get it before. now, after reading a bunch of forum posts and whatnot about wine, i get it. linux jokes!

i think i've decided to put off messing with wine until i get whatever distro i want chosen, installed, and comfortable. and even then i might not mess with it - i'll probably just look for any native solutions i can get, and not worry about anything else, since i'll be dual-booting anyway...then again, i've always enjoyed tinkering, so who knows...

thanks again...

*burns ubuntu studio to cd*
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post #11 of 34
4/3/08 at 9:43pm
Quote:

when you say take it farther, what do you mean? are there other distros that provide a higher degree of customization, or that (once i got my sea legs, so to speak) i'd find more suited for my needs? i'm probably going to continue messing around with live cds for another week or 2 before i actually install anything, so if you've got any suggestions, i'm open to them - i've got the time and cd's to burn, and bittorrent has made downloading several distros in a short amount of time laughably easy...
Yes there are other distributions that provide higher levels of customization, Gentoo for instance. But then again Gentoo is a bit more difficult to work with, but is a great learning experience for system administration.

And yea Bittorrent has been used for linux distribution for some time now, far longer than the media has picked up on it for illegal file sharing. It was originally intended for such purposes.

Quote:

i didn't get it before. now, after reading a bunch of forum posts and whatnot about wine, i get it. linux jokes!
Holy crap I made a joke?

Seablade
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post #12 of 34
4/3/08 at 10:03pm
Thread Starter 
just read the philosophy of gentoo, and i'm pretty impressed. do they actually pull it off?
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post #13 of 34
4/3/08 at 10:42pm
EH... thats a good question

That most notable thing about Gentoo is everything is compiled from source. Whereas Debian based distributions use APT to install new software, Gentoo uses a peice of software called emerge. Notable about emerge, is because it compiles everything itself, it also is set up to customize things very easily. But on the flip side of things, it compiles EVERYTHING, meaning when you install it, you actually compile your system from the ground up.

I like Gentoo myself, I tend to run a customized setup and it works well for me. Other distributions work well however, so don't get me wrong. Thing with Gentoo is that it is also one of the more difficult to learn right off, but when you do learn it you will be able to apply most to all of what you learned to any distribution, and you will learn the basics of how to operate on the commandline as well as system administration and compiling your own kernel. But you will likely go through a couple of failed installs as you do so, it will be harder to learn right off. But it is a good experience.

Seablade
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post #14 of 34
4/5/08 at 2:10am
Thread Starter 
well, something happened when i was making partitions and formatting for dual boot (ineptitude, most likely)...and i managed to erase my xp install...oops! i'm surprisingly indifferent towards losing windows, and all my data was backed up, so i'm looking at it as an excuse to just drop windows altogether...

not wanting to go through the asspain of an xp install just to have dual boot, i decided to go with linux only (xubuntu for now, but i'm keeping an open mind and eye for other distros).

one question i do have - i made / and /home partitions, and i was expecting /home to show up as a drive - but it's just a folder (what appears to be a folder with 49g of free space on a drive with 5g free)...were my expectations wrong, or did i make another blunder? i'm suspecting that it's ok, and i'm just used to windows...
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post #15 of 34
4/5/08 at 2:17am
if you're only booting linux, / and swap should be the only 2 partitions you have. ubuntu has /home for your personal files or whatever. It's analogous to the Documents and Settings folder in Windows. for instance, /home/(your_username)/Desktop is your Linux desktop just like C:/Documents and Settings/(your username)/Desktop is your Windows desktop. To the best of my knowledge, by setting up a partition for that folder, you've designated a certain amount of hard drive space exclusively for your personal files in that folder.
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post #16 of 34
4/5/08 at 3:43am
Thread Starter 
i read that having a /home partition would allow you to install new versions (instead of upgrading) while still keeping your settings, files, and whatnot...and would allow me to (eventually) create a new partition, install another distro of linux (dual boot), and have both distros share files from the /home partition...

i had a couple pages about it bookmarked, i'll see if i can relocate them...

edit: http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/partitioning is 1 of them...
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post #17 of 34
4/5/08 at 8:34am
Yea I actually disagree with Djembe on this one. I almost always set up a /home partition as it does keep my personal files seperate from the system.

However I do also set up a swap and / partition.

Now on to your question about folder vs drive. On Linux drives are handled a bit differently then on Windows. You mount a partition or drive anywhere on your filesystem. So what is actually happening, is you are mounting your partition with the contents of / as the root of your filesystem. Then you are mounting the partition with the contents of /home in the location of /home under the root of your filesystem.

What this ends up meaning is that you have one filesystem, that contains all of your drives. If you kept your windows partition, often times it ends up mounted under /mnt/windows or a similar location. CDRoms end up mounted under /mnt/cdrom or /mnt/media often times. These are all just general locations and the exact location may be slightly different.

Also just for your reference, the physical drive is referenced by what is called a 'node' in the /dev folder, or device folder. The node will appear just like a file. In the case of IDE hard drives it will generally appear as /dev/hda with each partition being a number appended to the end. So /dev/hda1 would be the first partition on the first IDE drive. /dev/hda2 would be the second partition, and so on. If you had an IDE CD Rom as your second IDE drive, it would appear as /dev/hdb and if you had a thrd IDE drive /dev/hdc and so on. SATA works in the same way, except it is reference by /dev/sda or /dev/sdb and so on.

Now you can't actually access the device however until you mount it. Ubuntu usually takes care of this automatically, but it will help you understand what is happening with your file system if you know what is going on. To mount a device, the full command is...

mount -t <filesystem type> <device reference> <mount location>

Where:
<filesystem type> is the format of the filesystem. For CDs this is ISO9660, for HDs it can be vfat, ext2 or 3, hfs or more likely hfsplus if you are on a mac, etc.
<device reference> is the reference in the /dev folder, ie /dev/hda1 or /dev/hdb3
<mount location> is the folder on your filesystem where the device is to be mounted. So for your root partition, this is just / For your home partition it is /home. etc.

So what actually happens automatically in Ubuntu, is it runs the command above automatically for all your partitions so you don't have to. It does this by looking up all the information in the /etc/fstab file. If memory serves Ubuntu actually uses UUIDs which are slightly different ways to reference the device, but for the moment we won't worry about that as the basic concept is still the same.

So did that help explain how your partitions are used? Unlike on Windows, which mounts drives seperately at C: D: etc. Linux incorporates the mounting directly into the filesystem.

Seablade
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post #18 of 34
4/5/08 at 2:04pm
Thread Starter 
if i read your post correctly, then my only problem is being accustomed to windows ways...i can see sda0, sda1, etc files in my dev directory, and gparted shows my partitions as follows:



i was further confused by the fact that when i boot off the live cd, it shows 8GB volume and 48GB volume drives on the desktop, as i was expecting...

god, it'll be nice when i actually know what i'm doing

thanks for the description of the file system...much clearer than the stuff i'd previously read online...

edit: seablade, do you install programs to /home, or just put files there?
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post #19 of 34
4/5/08 at 10:03pm
Yea your LiveCD showed that as it was automatically mounting the hard drive and showing it on your desktop, but your CD was providing the root filesystem. When you install your HD provides the root file system so there is no need to separately mount it, if that makes sense?

I don't install programs to /home, I usually only put files there. In general on a Linux system the primary places for software to get installed tends to be...

/usr
/usr/local
/opt

/usr will get most software, the binary files being in /usr/bin Superuser and system administration software tends to go into /sbin /usr/local can be a bit confusing at times, some people use it to install non-repository installed software, sometimes I have found repo packages installed there. I tend to use /opt for any software I install not going through the distribution package manager or for software I am working on the development of.

You COULD install software to /home if you wanted, nothing stopping you from doing that. And I believe it is not uncommon for multi-user systems when the system administrator wants to allow users to install software only they can use so that it doesn't affect the rest of the system. In fact I do that on my web host for some software they don't provide. Just for my workstation I tend not to do so.

Seablade
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post #20 of 34
4/5/08 at 11:46pm
Thread Starter 
ahhh, that does make sense with the cd providing the root filesystem...once again the explanation is obvious (once seablade enlightens me )

since it's far faster and easier to install packages than i thought, reinstalling packages after a fresh install now seems like much less of a pain. i also imagine there's a slick way of grabbing all the packages you had installed previously, so i'll continue putting programs in the / partition (is it just called root?), and save /home for files.

i don't know why i didn't abandon windows earlier...i feel like my computer is mine again! i'm still learning how to walk, so to speak, but i've seen enough to know i'm not going back...
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