Ok, so I'm currently attempting to learn how to use linux. I have Linux Mint installed and am doing well learning my way around that (basic terminal commands and such). However, from everything I've gathered, I would be much better off to go with the 'base distro,' to speak. For instance, Linux Mint is based off of Ubuntu, which is based off of Debian. I guess here is my bottom line. I think I want to install Debian, but I am not sure what that entails. I don't know what comes with a Debian distro, and how hard it is to install. For instance, does it come with a GUI like gnome, or do I need to install that myself? And is the installation process automated, or do I need to tarball everything? Also, many people have advocated using FreeBSD over Debian or Fedora. How difficult is FreeBSD to install, and what are the advantages? Disadvantages? To answer the future question: my primary use of the machine running linux will be simply to play with linux, and I want to learn the basics, as well as some advanced aspects as well. I appreciate any answers in advanced! Feel free to suggest any other distro's or opinions! I'm open to anything Regards, Budro
hahaha.. you want to install BSD but can't read up enough to work out how to go on with debian... have fun.. crash and burn at partitioning. If you have to ask on a forum like this where there are pretty much NO linux users left (cos of M$ shills they all left) then you hope to find unix help.. sorry.. I had to go away and wipe the tears of mirth from my eyes. unix needs google.. even more so than linux. debian has choices.. full distro (totally pointless downloading 3 dvd's of software that is obsolete in weeks) netinstall.. nice and small, installs base system then you choose.. IF you can be bothered taking 2 minutes to read the debian wiki it explains it all business card .. even smaller.. but some hardware has problems I hear.. you say NOTHING about what hardware you have.. arm 64 sparc alpha etc.. so that's that. not nice enough for you? .. tough.. it's a learning curve.. lesson 1 .. GOOGLE IS YOUR FRIEND!!!!
scum101 is one of the more extreme Linux-ers (or not, I dunno) here, so he takes the whole "do it yourself" mantra to the max. That said, what he says about your system specs holds true. What kind of computer are you using? Is it an HP/Dell/Apple/Sony model? Is it custom-built? What kind of video/sound/etc. cards do you have? What type of CPU? Specs, specs, specs. That'd be the best way for us (or at least those here that actually know what they're talking about; me, I'm more clueless than you) to help you choose what to throw on there. That said, you may as well try out some LiveCDs while you wait. They'll help you get a good taste of whichever OS you're testing, whether you like it, junk like that.
Budro, Were I you, I should stay with Mint for a while and download & use its many applications for my hobbies, or learn a programming language. I keep putting off learning Python myself. It seems a good, initial language. C & C++ C was designed for very advanced programmers (assembly language programmers), and C++ was designed for very large programs. The Unix Programming Environment Unix & Linux are more a single philosophy than operating systems. The commands can be combined. A nice example, if you can scroll you terminal windows, is 'man strings | cat'. The commands 'strings' and 'od -a' can be used to peek inside other commands. Vi is an extension of 'ed', if you can remember what 'mode' you're in; otherwise learn a simplified Emacs. Shells & Little Languages Unix has great 'little languages', my favorite being 'awk', for reports. Shell scripts are others: the Bourne shell is for permanent scripts, to be run as part of a program; the C shell is for interactive use and allows you to control your 'jobs' (running programs); and the Korn shell is the Cadillac of shells for interactive use, with the ability to pop your last line back & edit it. (Bourne shell looks alien, C shell looks like C (a good idea), and the Korn shell looks like Pascal.) Shells like 'bash' (the Bourne again shell) combine the best of the three. Paperbacks Older paperback books by Prentice-Hall, selling at, say, http://www.bookfinder.com/ by Kernighan, Bourne, & Bentley are still the best. I can give you a list, but it's better to just buy 'Life with Unix' from the 80s and let it answer all your questions. The internet is filled with tutorials, including a free book on Python. Learn one aspect of computing at a time, or it's overwhelming. Remember that professional programmers took from 6 months to 2 years to learn a new language. Debian GNU/Linux If Mint limits you (and I've never used it), my granddaughter, in 1st grade, loves Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 on her laptop's 6GB hard drive. That's what I'm writing from. It has all the major applications for writing, playing, & drawing (word processor, desktop publisher, typeface editor; chess, backgammon, go; GIMP for photography). Easy Installation Debian was a snap to install, if you've about 180GB contiguous space on a hard disk: Find your processor's distribution, use BitTorrant or similar to download the 'net' or 'small' ISO disc image. Copy it to a DVD. Boot from the DVD (you'll need DHCP, not PPPoE w/o more work). Let it partition your hard drive for you. Boot from your hard drive. Choose between 'laptop' or 'desktop' (you can install more later) and let it roll, installing packages. (This is what I remember her doing, at least.) Current Version Debian 5 will install (I understand), GNOME, with Firefox & Thunderbird modified so all applications appear the same. The Synaptic Package Manager lets you install or uninstall well over 10,000 packages very easily (and, no, my granddaughter has reported no library problems). Debian maintains itself. All the classical Unix packages for backup, &c, are still available. Consider GNUstep for writing programs for MacOSX. Why Debian? Debian is my favorite because I've agreed with Richard Stallman's philosophy from his days at MIT, and supported his attempt to write a free Unix for all (the Hurd kernel). His work preceded Linux, so Debian GNU/Linux appears the most supported, full Linux version. Unix FreeBSD is, I believe, parts of BSD 4.4 Unix (not Linux). Splintering of its supporters and their starting OpenBSD & NetBSD has delayed its development: it supports little hardware, certainly not laptops. At the moment it's for nostalgic, retired programmers. However, Debian 6, to be released next year, may offer BSD Unix in place of a Linux kernel. (I honestly don't know how my Linux's kernel works, but BSD Unix was very highly tuned when Bill Gates was releasing DOS. Comparing its task scheduler with Windows 3's was very amusing.) Pick the Daisies So, my granddaughter recommends Debian. She says 'Go for the daisies', referring to its login screen & desktop, I think. You can then be ready for BSD Unix if it's later offered. Bias My experience with Unix comes from being the User Consultant responsible for it in the 80s at the John von Neumann National Supercomputer Center, outside Princeton, NJ. My job description there included firing people who wrote e-mails to users like Scum 101's. Sorry, Scum. (I love your posts.)
Oh, sorry: a postscript. Debian performs daily security patches & bug fixes of whatever you've installed with its package installer. The standard archives of packages all satisfy the GNU GPL, so you'll likely not find Flash or Quicktime. Flash However, there are optional, commercial (pay & free) archives that contain these. My granddaughter had me connect her Synaptics Package Manager to these. Programming in C and C++ (maybe Java as well) The real jewel in the default package archive of Debian is that all applications AND the operating system itself have the actual source code you can download (and modify & compile). The code is often written by professionals, in their evenings, so is very good & very well commented: an amazing way to learn C & C++ programming. The GNU GPL licenses allow you to create (in the future) a program by modifying a current one, then distributing it free. Kernel Fights The original kernel, about which C-language shells were built, was in assembly and had the minimal device drivers to boot on that platform. Linux has many more, as 'kernel extensions' instead. The default kernel has LOTS, so you can trim your down for your particular system by recompiling the kernel. (No assembly required.) Desktops & Window Managers You can also change GNOME's appearance and even GNOME itself. All is adjustable. Roll your own desktop. (I couldn't avoid that pun.) Best of luck.
I certainly can't top that reply, i was simply going to suggest searching thru the forum for similar posts I don't usually do any scripting at home, but am knocking one up at the moment (bash, though the script is fairly generic, i'm just piping awk, cut, sed etc to manipulate certain lines in a text file). I like having the internet to fall back on when i forget syntax or bits and pieces, i can never keep everything in my head, man pages are great and everything but sometimes an answer is needed quicker in case you lose your train of thought, and for those times when you need to magic something up that requires lots of man page trawling, my eyes glaze from too much man page consumption. I like the different text editors that linux provides, but my favourite has always been Vi, i know my way around but don't profess to know all the in's and out's, the trouble is there's so blumming much to Unix, it's too damn flexible , always 600 ways to accomplish the same tasks. Glad you didn't mention Perl, I worked with two guys who were very good at Perl (it's way over my head), i've always been a shell scripter, i can generally whizz up a shell script in no time, had only spent a year learning bash, the syntax isn't difficult at all, variables took me a little while to get a handle on as i'd spent 7/8 years doing shell scripting without variables (purely as i could achieve anything without using them is all). With bash it's just the nested loops that always take me a long time to get my head around, i have a load of large scripts that i'd previously worked on that i'm going to reaquaint myself with in the near future. A book i've had for donkeys years is this half ton 1342 page monster ~ UNIX Unleashed: System Administrator's Edition (Second Edition) - it keeps your arm and back muscles exercised and it's very good as it covers a nice range of stuff. I discovered Xming the other day, very impressed with it, installed it on one of my Win7 machines to access the Solaris laptop, works very well indeed ~ http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_jump.cfm/637778/4911034
lmfao XD anyway.. post a question like this on ANY large *nix forums and my reply would seem mild by comparison. You can come out from under the table now creakster.. Since I started taking 2x as much meds as I'm supposed to things have mellowed somewhat.
Why don't we do away with genders altogether.. we can take she he and it and combine them all together and get shi.... no that doesn't work either *giggles*
Actually, funny you should mention that. In my Phonology class, we were discussing how some languages don't distinguish between past, present, and future tenses. And how some languages actually DO merge s/he/it. Like Hmong. It's all "Where did Sarah go?" "It went to the store." "With John?" "Yeah, it volunteered to go with it." EDIT: But anyway. Linux.
*bored* .. same old boring questions from people who can't or won't look further than their own lazy arse... My suggestion for a good distro.. QNX
Weren't we supposed to be practical, not creative? QNX is very creative! There has always been one problem when learning computing, though. The poor student has to learn both programming and how to use their computer at the same time. There's a fix! My 1983 IBM PC has some advantages that modern PCs don't: it did 80-bit floating-point arithmetic, accessible by an APL interpreter; its memory had a parity bit; it used a soothing green or amber TTL monitor; and a squirrel could nest inside without affecting either its performance or reliability. DOS was a dog, of course, but the APL interpreter needed it; so I installed the Epsilon editor (Emacs clone), MKS Toolkit (Unix shells, little languages, & hundreds of commands), TeX, and C interpreter & compiler. I see there's an MKS Toolkit currently on Ebay (for Windows 95) selling for US$1.00! I couldn't find the others in the ... sniff ... collectible section. Though QNX was available, at a price, Minix augmented Tannenbaum's book on operating systems. Both are very similar, using microkernels for reliability. QNX is faster and commercial, but Minix (v.1) used the same system calls as the 'last Unix', Version 7; and was considerably less expensive than QNX. Both are free, now; though Minix is 'free-er'. QNX has been around forever (and runs forever), and Minix (v.1) was designed for teaching operating systems. Both QNX & Minix have left their 8088 roots behind, and use GUIs on modern machines; but one can experiment with various kernels on Debian. So, to learn basic programming in shells, awk, emacs, vi, rcs, & C on a pretty TTL monitor, I'd recommend the MKS Toolkit on a computer you already know how to use; then move up to Minix and read about operating systems & networks, then Debian Linux. Or, just go there last. If you install the last, you'll be getting your software from someone who the SF Chronicle once reported as being considered by the Board at IBM as a good target for an assassin. That's not creative, but it's nostalgic!
Here's a thinner one, but it emphasizes programming. Kernighan, B.W., & R. Pike, 1984. The Unix Programming Environment. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. If one wants to use a computer to learn about computing, I recommend learning to touch type and using solely a command-line interface (along with your book). Scripts & directories can simplify your work. Kernighan & Pike is a good reference, as is Bourne's original book. Computer professionals use, if not prefer, CLIs: administration and programming is done on CLIs. A CLI can also be used for hobbies: I once picked up a $20 Toshiba laptop of the 80s, using Minix on a microfloppy, and wrote a program to water my garden, using the RS-232C interface, that fit in real memory. It ... almost worked. Today you can learn to burn DVDs using the Linux CLI, then write a script to simplify it. The CLI is essential to customize your computer. KDE or GNOME If one wants to use a computer, I'm very keen on simple, OOUI. A computer should be like a car with no stick shift: anyone can drive it without thought. Linux has free tools that let you focus on your hobby or profession only.
I burn dvd's with k3b .. why reinvent the wheel? My old 286 does things no modern hardware will do too.. like realtime thread delay .. especially useful for running os8 on the pdp8 simulator. but people don't want to learn computing.. they want to do all the same things everybody else does. I don't often write code any more.. I let other people do that because I have better things to do with my life. I did enough back when.
Perhaps because budro likes GNOME? It's nice to see, if one's interest is DVDs, how GUI applications like K3b just run some command-line programs, with options as choices and arguments as requests. If one application has target book types, for example, it shouldn't be difficult to add DVD-ROM to the list. Pleased to hear it. Poor thing, being called 'brain damaged' by Microsoft. People may not know that the PDP-8 was a very early mini-computer by DEC, which had the ability to network with other machines, connecting their processors (like a supercomputer). The OS could both multi-task processes and split each program's process into threads which ran independently on different processors, then rendezvoused before splitting between processors and continuing. This is again useful, for people with 'dual-core' or 'quad-core' processors. Debian GNU/Linux has what?, 15,000 free, professional applications? Many love programming. I think it's as fun as taxes. My profession was geology. I used APL to test hypotheses as I thought: it was a fast array calculator; and now I need to recast my algorithms (and standard ones, being sold for US$300) into very professional programs with nice GUI applications that anyone can easily use. Yes, I agree that computers should be like cars, or forks: just another, simple tool. However, because people who do anything well have always honeed their tools the way they want, I see people always hacking. I'm fortunate that so many who love programming have flooded me with programs I can modify for my needs. I've owned only three computers. The last is a Mac Quicksilver whose boot disk recently died. However, when I attached it by cable to my granddaughter's Aslan (all shared devices deserve a name), Debian GNU/Linux mounted it and couldn't find an error. So, I can now at least back up my HFS+ data using Linux on an Intel Pentium. It's time to upgrade the Quicksilver with a much bigger disk. First I must know the physical condition of the current boot drives, to budget myself. (For it looks as if I need memory.) So, I'm attaching it tomorrow to Aslan the laptop & running Code: smartctl -I /dev/hda === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Model Family: IBM Travelstar 25GS, 18GT, and 12GN family Device Model: IBM-DARA-206000 Serial Number: AF0AFKR6738 Firmware Version: AR2OA5AA User Capacity: 6,007,357,440 bytes Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show] ATA Version is: 4 ATA Standard is: ATA/ATAPI-4 T13 1153D revision 17 Local Time is: Tue Nov 10 23:12:02 2009 PST SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability. SMART support is: Enabled === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED <SNIP><SNIP> SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 5 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 062 Pre-fail Always - 0 2 Throughput_Performance 0x0005 100 100 040 Pre-fail Offline - 0 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0007 131 131 033 Pre-fail Always - 1 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0012 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 2828 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 005 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 067 Pre-fail Always - 0 8 Seek_Time_Performance 0x0005 100 100 040 Pre-fail Offline - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0012 085 085 000 Old_age Always - 6730 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 060 Pre-fail Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 1865 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 5 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 1 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0008 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x000a 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 <SNIP><SNIP> The above is the health of Aslan's current disk, not mine! Note that Microsoft would report it only as 'Passed Health Inspection'; but note smartctl's evaluation of the sensor data below. (Details are in the Wikipedia, under S.M.A.R.T.) Sometimes it's nice to have access to a lot more than you think you'll need. (This apparently inapropos discussion is for all, for 'smartctl' runs on ATA or SCSI optical drives as well.) This one's for Creaky, however. 'Perl: Proof of Aliens on Earth!'
'Distribution Watch' tracks the popularity & details of each Linux & Unix distribution. Here are the top ten packages. http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major Were I to recommend a distribution to save my wife's Mac G3 iBook, I might well consider Fedora, because of its security enhancements and support for the G3 & G4 PPC Macs. Has apt-rpm rather than Debian's apt. If my little LCD HDTV hadn't died (screaming), I might have considered the Sony PlayStation 3, which is a PPC G4 w/AltVec (I think) that dual-boots the Yellow Dog variant of Fedora, and plays high-definition DVDs. To the point: it streams NetFlix movies (DRM)! I'm told it plays games, too. Perhaps after Christmas its WiFi will run under Linux. In any case, the above link gives people weekly news of new releases.
I personally like debian because as the OP put it "base distro". I'm not big into linux as of yet, mostly due to the unforgivable act of dialup and no options. So linux being as it is, I can't really be downloading lots of apps, and libraries and everything else linux needs. However I did put Ubuntu on my netbook and it runs great, so I at least can have access to some linux when the urge hits. I decided on Debian after I took a class on Apache web server where they used Knoppix live CDs. And before that the only linux exposure I had was a remote login using putty to a Red Hat system to learn shell scripts. I loved working with Knoppix, and since Knoppix is a live CD port of Debian, my choice was pretty clear. Plus after some research and digging, I found more reasons to choose Debian, mostly due to the wide support of apps. Right now I'm using Debian in a virtual machine setting at a college class to teach us Linux administration. Unfortunately, I'm still a Linux baby but I do love using it when the opportunity arrives. The only thing keeping me back from using it fully is the before mentioned fact of being stuck with crappy Internet access. I'm still learning what I can do with it and then learning how to do it lol. I am a huge open source junkie too and that plays a big role in why I love linux.
