Waaahhh.... Linux newbie!!!

[Orsorum]

I need help... utterly confused. Well, not really. Just mildy confused. Just installed Mandrake Linux on my desktop (Windows was givin' me crap, regardless of whether I installed XP or 2K). Needless to say, Mandrake made the install process very, very easy.

However, I'm kind of at a loss as to finding good programs such as an AIM replacement, etc... a good Dreamweaver replacement (unless, of course, there's a Linux version). Not sure how to install stuff, either...

As you can tell, I am a complete, utterly hopeless and helpless newbie. If you have any hints, suggestions, words of advice or encouragement, I would appreciate it.

One more question... if I have ~50 gigs of crap on my secondary partition, with FAT32, is there ANY way I can access it within the Linux shell? 'Cuz I'd love to be able to play my mp3's, but only if I can do it within the shell.

Again... wow, this is a long message. Thanks!

 

[TheOmegaCode]

gaim and you can always try dreamweaver with wine...

To get to your other partition you need to get into console, then su to root. Type mkdir /mnt/win/. The command you need next is mount. mount -t vfat {devicename} /mnt/win... The device name will be something like /dev/hda1 or whatever... If it's a different drive all together, then hdb1...

 

[XZeroII]

just give it up and go back to Windows. Unless you like pain (like the kind you are in now), switch back. I've tried Linux many times and found it to elicit much pain. mount -t vfat {devicename} /mnt/win is a great example of this pain. Makes me cringe just thinking that I would have to go back to a command line interface to do stuff.

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: Zakath15
One more question... if I have ~50 gigs of crap on my secondary partition, with FAT32, is there ANY way I can access it within the Linux shell? 'Cuz I'd love to be able to play my mp3's, but only if I can do it within the shell.

Again... wow, this is a long message. Thanks!

Linux reads (and writes) FAT32 without problems. You need to add the FAT32-partition to your /etc/fstab (or was it mtab? I always mix those two up). If you want help, try these links:

Linuxnewbie.org
The Linux Documentation Project

 

[lowtech1]

I don't know Dream Weaver or uses WYSIWYG, but you could give OpenOffice (free) a try, or WebSphere Homepage Builder.

 

[murphy55d]

This is why I have never installed Linux. Command lines=bad.

 

[Kadarin]

Originally posted by: TheOmegaCode
gaim and you can always try dreamweaver with wine...

To get to your other partition you need to get into console, then su to root. Type mkdir /mnt/win/. The command you need next is mount. mount -t vfat {devicename} /mnt/win... The device name will be something like /dev/hda1 or whatever... If it's a different drive all together, then hdb1...

There's also an official AOL AIM linux version.

If I'm not mistaken, Mandrake probably already has the partition mounted upon boot. Look in the /mnt directory and you'll probably see it.

Not sure about the Dreamweaver app...

 

[nihil]

Originally posted by: murphy55d
This is why I have never installed Linux. Command lines=bad.

i live my life in a command line.


http://sourceforge.net/ has tons of good stuff.

 

[mpitts]

Originally posted by: murphy55d
This is why I have never installed Linux. Command lines=bad.

Only if you don't know what you are doing and have no patience to learn.

The power of linux is in the CLI. I have nearly weened myself off of the GUI on a linux box. I only use Windows for my workstation. All of my servers are linux.

BTW, GO WINGS!

 

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by: murphy55d
This is why I have never installed Linux. Command lines=bad.

not for servers

for servers
GUI=bad

 

[murphy55d]

Originally posted by: mpitts

Originally posted by: murphy55d
This is why I have never installed Linux. Command lines=bad.

Only if you don't know what you are doing and have no patience to learn.

The power of linux is in the CLI. I have nearly weened myself off of the GUI on a linux box. I only use Windows for my workstation. All of my servers are linux.

BTW, GO WINGS!

You're right on both of those. I don't know, and I do not have the patience to learn it.

GO WINGS!!!!!!!!

 

[Orsorum]

Thank you all for your tips!!!

Now I'll see if I can get everything up and working, .

 

[nihil]

another tip.

RTFM - it really does help

honestly though, just keep reading. the more you read, the more you will learn. read as much documentation as you can possibly handle, especially FAQ's and HOWTO's. the more time and effort you devote to linux, the faster you will learn.

 

[Orsorum]

Originally posted by: nihil
another tip.

RTFM - it really does help

honestly though, just keep reading. the more you read, the more you will learn. read as much documentation as you can possibly handle, especially FAQ's and HOWTO's. the more time and effort you devote to linux, the faster you will learn.

GRRRR..... 'K, I just installed Sun's SDK 1.4; trying to install BlueJ (java compiler) , but I'm not able to open the jar file... any suggestions?

 

[nihil]

did you read the readme files, or the installation instructions?

they should be on the site that you got the file from.

 

[Orsorum]

Originally posted by: nihil
did you read the readme files, or the installation instructions?

they should be on the site that you got the file from.

I did, but it's not working.... Waaaahaaaa....

<--- bawls in frustration

<--- leaves to get some lunch.

 

[Orsorum]

'Nother question... when I'm trying to mount a separate partition, how can I find out which partitions I have, altogether? I have /dev/hda1 already mounted (obviously) as my root dir... but I have another partition on the same hd, was d:/ in Win2K. I've tried "mount -t vfat /dev/hda2/ /mnt/win/"

Responded with... "mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda2, or too many mounted file systems. (aren't you tryign to mount an extended partition, instead of some logical partition inside?)"

Bah.

<--- *runs off to get Milano cookies*

 

[nihil]

df will show you what partitions you have mounted.


as for mounting the FAT32 partition, i'm not really sure how to do it as i've never done it before.

 

[FuZoR]

I hate linux played with it for about 3 months. Learning all the diffrent commands and how to update/upgrade drove me nuts. Then one day linux refused to bootup after i screwed something up... and now that machine is back on win2k. hahaha.
enjoy!

sorry i didnt help, im a n00b

 

[nihil]

Originally posted by: FuZioN
I hate linux played with it for about 3 months. Learning all the diffrent commands and how to update/upgrade drove me nuts. Then one day linux refused to bootup after i screwed something up... and now that machine is back on win2k. hahaha.
enjoy!

sorry i didnt help, im a n00b

thanks for your insight.

if you quit after 3 months you must be even lazier than i am.

 

[SyahM]

From my experience with linux, you have to read a lot if you dont have previous knowledge about Unix. Just keep on reading and Freshmeat.net is another good place to find latest applications and programs. Have fun!

 

[manly]

The easiest way to answer your last question about mounting is that the mount command is smart enough. Instead of passing in the filesystem type as an argument, just let mount decide.

I.e.

# mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/win

If that is in fact your Winblows D: drive, then the command is successful and you'll see the files.

Like someone else mentioned, you can specify your filesystems in /etc/fstab. I would have thought Mandrake would make things easy for newbies though (i.e. it uses supermount for removable media and pre-installs entries in /etc/fstab for VFAT filesystems).

Finally, why do you need to open BlueJ's JAR file? Did you install the J2SDK by RPM or by (self-extracting) .bin script? I prefer the latter, but the RPM is okay as well. Installation is successful if you can run:

$ java -version

If so, then you could try:

$ jar tf /path/to/BlueJ.jar

Remember that JARs are just zip files, so using a native unzip tool is a faster way:

$ unzip -l /path/to/BlueJ.jar

LMK if you have further Java/Linux questions.

 

[XZeroII]

Originally posted by: nihil

Originally posted by: FuZioN
I hate linux played with it for about 3 months. Learning all the diffrent commands and how to update/upgrade drove me nuts. Then one day linux refused to bootup after i screwed something up... and now that machine is back on win2k. hahaha.
enjoy!

sorry i didnt help, im a n00b

thanks for your insight.

if you quit after 3 months you must be even lazier than i am.

Giving it a go for 3 months is a huge investment. I fail to see how someone spending 3 months trying to learn an OS then giving up is lazy. IMO the OS should be the easiest piece of software to use on the computer. It should be almost completely transparent to the end user. If you are spending months trying to get the OS to work, that means that you are not even spending time on the apps that run on the OS. IMO, that's bad.

 

[nihil]

Originally posted by: XZeroII

Originally posted by: nihil

Originally posted by: FuZioN
I hate linux played with it for about 3 months. Learning all the diffrent commands and how to update/upgrade drove me nuts. Then one day linux refused to bootup after i screwed something up... and now that machine is back on win2k. hahaha.
enjoy!

sorry i didnt help, im a n00b

thanks for your insight.

if you quit after 3 months you must be even lazier than i am.

Giving it a go for 3 months is a huge investment. I fail to see how someone spending 3 months trying to learn an OS then giving up is lazy. IMO the OS should be the easiest piece of software to use on the computer. It should be almost completely transparent to the end user. If you are spending months trying to get the OS to work, that means that you are not even spending time on the apps that run on the OS. IMO, that's bad.

well imo it is lazy. you need to spend more than 3 months to try to learn an entirely new way of computing. it's hard to go from a windows user to any version of unix. there are new things to learn, new ways of doing things, etc. you can't just sit down and expect to be an expert in no time.

as for getting the os to work. who said there were issues about getting linux to run properly? if you spend tme to read the readme files that are included with any software that you install it should be straightforward in how to get most things done including compiling, configuring and customization of said program. as for learning unix style commands, sitting down with any basic unix book for a while with a bit of hands on experience will make you feel that much more comfortable with your new environment.

furthermore, it's not an issue of *nix being any more difficult to use than windows. it's rather an issue of getting aqainted to something new. or it's just plain user error.

 

[Orsorum]

*sigh* Thanks, y'all, for your suggestions... I'm going to take what seems to be the collective's advice and start reading about Linux before I install it as the sole OS on my rig... (read: it crashed this morning, I said forget it and installed Win2k).

Thanks, again! I'll post back if I have more questions.