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...

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

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

thx again SubCore

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

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.

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!

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

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.

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...

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