Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

Thank you! This is turning into a rather useful thread!

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

my brother started his linux career with slackware about one year ago, I told him it will be hell but he insisted to try. with just a little of my help he managed to have a full blown slackware running on his thinkpad within weeks, a usable system he had after a couple of hours. your learning experience is that high you just blow. there is no point of "well I just use the system which is there till I got over my lazy times" no you are forced to learn to have a usable system. he is still calling for help from time to time because he gets stuck with something and wants to revert or retry another path but doesnt know what to google to get the right answers. the ubuntu thing is for people who stick to windows behaviour and try linux but not for people who like to become a master of the dark side (most terminals I know are with black as background colour)

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

Lots of good info here. My take is the distro really doesn't matter too much in the beginning, just focus on learning on how to things from the command line. UI changes from distro to distro, but once you know the command line, you can hop on multiple versions of *nix and be comfortable. Try learning things like:

-Learn a shell editor (vi, emacs, etc...)
-Get comfortable where things are (/etc, /usr, /var, etc...)
-Learn about environment variables
-Learn about special command line options, like piping, redirection, etc..
-Try writing and running a simple shell script
-Manually edit config files (things like Xorg.conf, hosts, etc...)
-Kill processes
-Try configuring and runnings services like dhcp, sshd, tftp, etc...
-Download source packages, build, and install

One thing that helped me the most way back when, was trying to install something like the enlightenment window manager from source. It taught me about dependencies, libraries, Makefiles and source code, getting around build issues, and configuring X.

I've been a Linux developer for about 8 years now, and I use Ubuntu as my primary development system. I still do about 90% of things on the command line, with the exception of the web browser, email, and my source editor...the rest is nothing but consoles :)

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

I second Gadgety's thanks for a very useful thread. But I would ask if people could narrow the choice of distros down based on the following:

If I want a distro that uses as many of the same components as Maemo 5, what should I choose?

In other words, when faced with the choice between Gnome and KDE, is Maemo using one or the other as its base? I read about Qt in other threads and I wonder if some distros use it and others don't. I know there must be other Linux distinctions but I'm too much a n00b to know what they are.

Also, can anyone recommend a downloadable and printable introduction to Linux for new users (including but not limited to the command line)?

Or, does anyone have a book they'd recommend (ideally something shorter and cheaper than O'Reilly's 1000 page, $50 "Linux in a Nutshell").?

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

Maemo (5) is debian-based. there are many flavours of debian-based distros, the best known being Ubuntu (which, incidentally, is what i would recommend to a beginner).
the strongest argument for choosing something debian-based is probably the debian packaging system, which is present in Maemo as well.

the choice between Gnome and KDE is really a choice about personal preferences. Maemo 5 is using Gnome/GTK+ as basis for hildon (= Maemo 5 UI), but that will change with Maemo 6 / Harmattan, which will be Qt (=KDE Toolkit) based. most current debian flavours install Gnome by default.

anyways, you'll most likely have both toolkits installed, since you will most likely use applications of both of those families - under Maemo as well.

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

Maybe you can try the "Linux for dummies 9th edition (2009)" book/ebook (I've also heard it's not hard to find illegally on the web.. :B ).

But I rather suggest the link in the previous page regarding the command line, there's a pdf version too. Easy to understand and well explained as far as I have read.
And I'm sure there are plenty of similar free resources on the web, you just need to search a bit (and of course, other people's suggestions are welcome).
Anyway, other than the command line, it's just graphical stuff that you'll be able to use as you use any Windows I think.

The GTK/QT/other debate is quite confusing actually, since some of the best apps are for the one, and some for the others, so you either have to look for a lesser "perfect" alternative, or install all the additional stuff... or am I making confusion with Gnome/KDE/other? lol, as you see I'm not a Linux user either (so far, but I may become one soon).. just following the Linux world from a distance since some time ago. :o

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

no, you are correct. "Gnome" and "KDE" are just names for the ecosystem as a whole, but the things Gnome/KDE apps actually need to function are the Toolkits - GTK+ and Qt, respectively.

there might be some additional differences, for example a standard KDE app might rely on artsd, while the Gnome equivalent to that is pulseaudio. both are audio servers intended to enable the use of the sound card for more than one application.

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

thx for the clarification SubCore, I thought it was something like that.. x)

that brings me a couple of questions I hope somebody can answer:
- assume I want to install two applications, one QT and one GTK on my pc, without having Gnome or KDE; what is the size of each toolkit (mainly GTK and QT) when I'm about to install it? (excluding the application specific data, and specific dependencies like the audio servers you mentioned)
- wanting to install a Kubuntu application (ex. Konqueror/Amarok) on my Ubuntu, do I need only the QT toolkit, or does it require the whole KDE ?

thx for the eventual answers :)

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

The base toolkits aren't too large for either, I think gtk/glib together is probably ~30-40 megs installed give or take. Not sure off the top of my head how big the QT libraries are.

The second question really depends on the apps. Most KDE/Gnome apps will depend on the kde and gnome base libraries respectively, which might also depend on other things, which can become pretty nested. At a minimum, it will probably require something along the lines of kde-base and kde-libs, and something like Amarok will probably depend on some kind of kde audio libraries as well. Using something like Ubuntu or Kubuntu, if you want to install a certain package, it will automatically install all additional dependencies for you.

For instance I use Gnome as my desktop, but I much prefer konsole over gnome-terminal. I don't have every KDE package installed, just enough to support konsole and a few other KDE apps.

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

I can afford to buy it if it's worth it. Whether it's worth it is my question.

At half the price and half the size ($25 and 500 pages) of the O'Reilly "Linux in a Nutshell" it was on my potential list but, I was really hoping for something around 100 - 200 pages that could/should be read cover to cover.

I already pulled down the command line PDFs that have been referenced here. I was looking for the rest of the story - what's a distribution? what's a package? what's GTK or Qt? what's a home directory? why isn't /home the home directory? what's root? why do I want it? etc.

So far, the best links I've found to the sort of guide I think I'm looking for are:

http://www.linuxnewbieguide.org/cont...rview-chapters
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Linux_For_Newbies

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

thanks mattmull :)
probably I'll end installing (K)Ubuntu and adding the whole other DE, and choose at startup which one I want to use, installing whatever application I want... I hope it won't take too much space, anyway it'll be more lightweight than the concurrence for sure (Vista: 15 GB? o.O)...

davep1, maybe you can give that book a look here (legally): http://books.google.be/books?id=PPG8...age&q=&f=false
some pages missing, but you get a good insight in the book. :)
no idea on smaller books, after all they have to describe and let you know an entire OS, different from what most people are used to...

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

regarding the sizes of the toolkits, here a little real-life example :)

this is the output on my Debian/Lenny workstation. i run Gnome as the main desktop, but have several KDE apps installed as well, like amarok, k3b and kdetv.

as you can see, the additional requirements for KDE apps aren't that big 'a deal. the base packages sum up to about 230 MB, the libraries to 60 MB.
also, parts of KDE3 are installed for some older KDE apps which adds a bit additional weight.

don't get scared with the long list, you don't have to worry about any of these packages :) you just tell the package manager what you want and it will happily install every unmet dependency, after getting confirmation from you to do so.

a little word on the commandlines, maybe. this sort of thing always looks like magic when you're not used to it ;)

this is actually a chain of commands, seperated by the "|" (pipe) sign. the pipe connects stdout (standard output character stream) of the first cmd to stdin (standard input) of the second one.

now, the first command, dpkg-query, is called with 2 options:
-f to specify an output format, and -W to specify that we want a detailed output of all packages containing the string kde.

the output format string "${Installed-Size}\t${Package}\n" tells dpkg-query that we want the size of the package, followed by a tabstop, followed by the pkg name, followed by a linefeed.
${Installed-Size} and ${Package} are fields provided by the -W switch, the default output of -W is "Package tabstop(\t) Version"

now, this whole list gets piped to the command "egrep". egrep and the next command grep are basically the same thing, they are used to grab certain lines or strings from files or, as is the case here, from stdin. the difference is that egrep enables regular expressions.
"^[0-9]" is the very simple regex used here, and it tells egrep to only grab lines which start with a digit. ^ is the beginning of the line, [] defines a character class. this is necessary because otherwise the output would contain all non-installed packages as well, but since those don't have a "Installed-Size" field, i can filter using that.

the next grep grabs every line which does not (-v) contain the string "dev". (i have installed several development packages for compiling, and they are quite big)
the last command gets the piped input and sorts the lines numeric (-g) and reverse (-r). without -g it would sort character by character.



i hope i didn't scare anyone away with this little novel, it's just that this sort of thing is what makes Linux so powerful. and you don't have to learn it if you don't want to. at least not anymore :)

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

Just a question. Newbies, such as myself, ask themselves what Linux is, what will it enable the N900 to do (I've seen other threads appearing after this one on the subject), etc.

Howcome admins put it as off-topic? To me off-topic is "what are you going to do for your vacation" or "let's swap recipes." The official definition of off-topic on this site is "Totally unrelated but still worth discussing. An "other" of sorts. No religious or political topics please."

This thread belongs under General which is explicitly defined as the following "Relevant topics not tied to a specific program, OS or device. Post here if you can't find a better place." or create a Linux for Newbies heading or something.

Is there a way to contact admins?

Thanks

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

thx again SubCore :)

@gadgety: the admin: http://talk.maemo.org/member.php?u=2 , see "contact info"

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

True, but keep in mind that even if the question is based on thoughts related to N900 and Maemo the answers are still for other forums so they are not specific enough to be not off-topic.
They are general Gnu/Linux questions and not in any kind related to N900 or Maemo. If someone asks for a related issue he is actually hijacking the thread and would do better posting a new one in the section it fits to.

You might learn something in this thread helping you out with questions you would ask for Maemo as well because it is about Linux based systems and Maemo is such a system. But this also means this thread is about something which is discussed on many other forums which are not pointing out the Maemo case and so it remains off-topic for this forums.

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

I understand. In that case I realize I hijacked my own thread by asking what your knowledge of Linux will enable you to do with the N900.

Thanks!

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

I ran across a PDF that made my distro decision a lot easier. To start out and learn, I'm going with Ubuntu and using the following as a guide:

http://manuals.makeuseof.com.s3.amaz...rmic_Koala.pdf

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

I installed Ubuntu on a thumb drive last night and booted to it from my laptop afterward. After iso download, everything was done in under 5 minutes. Fastest, easiest OS install/setup ever for me. Amazing.

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

Holy ****!

All this time I was wondering if my FIOS internet was crippled, as it just seemed too slow for fiber. But I'm accessing the site right now using the Ubuntu thumb drive installation and the internet just flat FLIES.

If WINE can run the applications I need, then I may just say adios Windows...

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

Welcome to Linux :-). My experience is that after a while you will have a hard time understanding why people are using Windows.

If you want to see fast.. check out chromium, I haven't tried it on Ubuntu, but it should be easy to install, there is a HOWTO here:

http://www.stefanoforenza.com/chromium-on-ubuntu-how-to

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

It's more like welcome back. ;)

One problem though: I cannot mount the laptop's NTFS drive from Ubuntu. :( This is a showstopper, unless I can also fit the Maemo SDK + Qt Developer onto the 4 gig thumb drive.

I'm suspecting it's the disk security (Pointsec) that's the roadblock. I have read of a way to strip Pointsec off, and sooner or later I'll need to, but that means reimaging the laptop and I'm just not up for that right now... so I'm googling for an easier solution...

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

did you follow some online guide? how did you do it? i tried this and this (just to try, not my choice of distro.. it looked simple enough :p ), but it didn't work for me ("Boot error" on black screen after choosing to boot the pendrive at startup), mainly for one reason probably: I own a macmini and a macbook, both dual booting osx and windows xp, and macs come with Efi intead of Bios.
Also tried making a 1:1 clone of the Slitaz iso on the pendrive, but it doesn't show on the boot screen..

Anybody owning a mac can help me? What I want is a Linux distro on a 8 GB pendrive, possibly to launch from the rEfit boot screen. (And possibly supporting the hardware)

edit, useful info: both are Intel macs

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

here is a very good (but german) how-to for booting on EFI system, and here an english one. there are also a few threads on the ubuntuforums regarding this issue.
it's a bit more involved, i'm afraid, but it should be possible :)



yup, definately. google says that pointsec already provides kernel modules for linux to their encryption solution, but pointsec.com seems to be down, so i can't check.
also, you'd probably need a certificate for decryption, and i have no idea how you could obtain it.


btw, i'm just reexploring wine myself, and it has come a loooong way.
last time i tried it, you had to be a bit adventurous if you installed it. wine was actually the only application that managed to completely crash my linux boxes :D
but now, the newer games mostly work out of the box! i'm seriously impressed by the wine team's progress over the past few years. :)

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

Wow, quite some difference between the links from my post and your second link... xD
(I don't speak german, only english, italian, dutch, and some french)
I need some easier solution.. x)
Thanks anyway, I'll check on the ubuntu forums you linked :)

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

hehe yeah, sorry. that was the only one i found quickly :)
and it's not even about a live USB system...

the german link is actually exactly what you need, and you don't need to understand every bit of it.

here a short translation (i'm currently at work, so i shouldn't spend too much time here *g*) of the most important parts:

*) install rEFIt on the mac
*) prepare the ubuntu USB stick
*) get grub2efi (aka bootusb.tar.gz)
*) copy the "efi" folder from that archive to the usb stick
*) edit /efi/boot/grub.cfg on the stick and make sure the filename of the ISO is correct

that's basically it.
the rest of this article are troubleshooting suggestions for the video driver on macbooks.
adding "fix_video" in the menuentry for your ubuntu image, and adding
Driver "fbdev"
to /etc/X11/xorg.conf should fix video issues.

with the folder /efi/boot, rEFIt should list this USB stick as a possible boot option.

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

thanks, I'll try that at home and let you know; on the ubuntu forums I found that somebody installed opensuse from live cd directly to the usb drive, and refit recognised it as a bootable device after, thus, opensuse should configure grub correctly.. i'll try that too if I find an empty cd somewhere/buy one.. xP

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

You can skip over Ubuntu and go right to Debian. Debian is what Ubuntu is based on, it is widely used on servers, and is also easy to install.

Debian has the largest number of packages, supports the most architectures, and is the most free distro in terms of software freedom.

You cannot go wrong with debian.

Re: New to Linux - best way to learn and which distro to get?
 

... but unlike ubuntu it's not exactly beginner-friendly :)