V.

The book Linux Unleashed is available online at the following location.
It might be of use to those who are new to the unix/linux environment.

http://prognosis.lib.ece.ntua.gr/dimitris/Linux%20Docs/Learning%20Linux%20-Collection%20of%2012%20Ebooks-/Linux%20Unleashed,%20Third%20Edition/ewtoc.html

Vikas

I got the following from
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=105598. A useful little
note. Thanks to the author.

***************************

Well, installing from an RPM doesn’t compile the program. The RPM file
contains the already-compiled program and just copies it into place. It
also saves info in a database about what files belong to what package
and where they are installed.

Compiling a program from source, on the other hand, has the advantage
that the program will be optimized for your hardware and system. For
example, if you have an AMD Athlon, the compiler can use some
Athlon-specific instructions to make your program faster, while the
pre-compiled programs in RPM files must be compatible with all
processors, so they are always compiled with the 386 as a template.
Also, if you have some additional programs installed on your system,
like Kerberos or anything, a program compiled from source can take
advantage of that, while a program in a RPM file always uses as little
extra functionality as possible, to be able to install on all systems,
regardless of whether that system has the extra functionality installed
or not.

RPM does have the not-to-be-denied advantage that it stores info about
where all the files have been installed to, though. That both eases
uninstallation and makes it possible to query unknown files. For
example, if you find a file called /usr/bin/onsgmls and want to know
what it is, you can run “rpm -qf /usr/bin/onsgmls” to find out that it
belongs to that “openjade” package. Then you can run “rpm -qi openjade”
to find out what openjade is. If you find out that maybe you don’t want
the openjade package, you can easily uninstall it by running “rpm -e
openjade”. Or anything… see “man rpm” for more options and possibilities.

Fedora Core 1 and 2 also ship with the yum utility, which allows you to
do automatic RPM installations. For example, if you wanted mplayer, you
could just run “yum install mplayer” (probably – I haven’t tried,
but…), and it would automatically download and install it for you.

************************

I want to use a dot matrix printer (epson lx 300) with openoffice. The
quality of printout is really poor and I simply cannot get openoffice to
give me the kind of prints I got with microsoft office.

Vikas

I have been using KDE instead of gnome. Simply because I like the graphics design of KDE more than that of gnome. But there is this one silly lacunae in KDE. It does not allow the user to shutdown without logging out. Shutting down the machine is therefore a two step process. You first log-out and then shutdown. This is silly.

Gnome gives you the shutdown/reboot options with log-off and you can do whatever you like.

No idea how to crack this. For now, I am just living with this two step process. But it bugs.

V.

The following link explains how to enable read-only access to NTFS drives.
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/instructions.html

vikas

Let us see. Following things still require me to boot the machine in WinXP mode.

1. When I have to open one of the old MS-ACCESS databases. Or when someone sends me an ACCESS file.

It seems openoffice (with mysql backend) can do almost everything that ACCESS did (and perhaps much better than ACCESS). But the problem is that most of my friends are still using Windows and work with ACCESS.

2. For my econometric/statistical applications. I used to use SAS, which my workplace provided. SAS has no linux version (they don’t like this whole free software business). Recently the guys in office decided to dump SAS (which is enormously expensive) and shift to SPSS (which is also pretty expensive, though not as much as SAS). But given that most users here work on windows, they have stuck to the windows version of SPSS. I don’t even know if it has a linux version. But SPSS is really dumb and I don’t want to use it in any case. An alternative is to use something called R (which is free), STATA or GAUSS (both are not free). STATA is relatively inexpensive. But to use a free software is always a good idea. So I want to see if R can suffice for my needs. But none of these packages have the powerful database management capability that SAS had. So I would perhaps need to combine R with MySQL and Perl. Will have to figure those out as well.

3. K3B, the CD-writer, still gives trouble every now and then.

4. Wine was a smart thing. Looked like a solution to the problem in item 1. But I could not install internet explorer on it. Tried various methods described by people (see frankscorner.org). But none worked. And MS-ACCESS will not run on linux without internet explorer.

So that is where I am at the moment. Let us see how long does it take to figure some of these things out.

The following link gives the basic info on installing software in linux.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45094

There is also another, smarter, way of installing software. Use apt (with its GUI interface called synaptic) to search for the software you want, download it and automatically install it. It allows you to upgrade your whole linux distribution, upgrade software etc. The great thing is that it takes care of all the dependencies (other software necessary for installation of the one you want) for the software you want to install. Really smart.

For apt/synaptic for Redhat, see

http://apt.freshrpms.net/

I still have winxp on my machine. It is installed on an NTFS drive. But there is another Fat32 drive where I keep all my data. That drive can be accessed from both windows (obviously) and from linux.

Yes. That is one of the best things that has happenned. I keep all my data on the fat32 drive which I can access from both linux and windows. Isn’t that pretty cool!!!

This is how I do it.

1. Open a terminal window (this is like going to dos prompt).
2. Shift to root by giving the command “su” (for superuser). it will ask you for the password.
3. fdisk -l
This lists all the disk partitions. they are listed as /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2 etc. identify the ones that are fat32. If it says fdisk not found, use “whereis fdisk” to find its location and then give complete path. On my machine i need to say “/sbin/fdisk -l”

The output on my machine is list this:
###############
sk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 5169 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 1355 10243768+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 1356 5168 28826280 f Win95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/hda5 1356 3387 15361888+ b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda6 3388 3401 105808+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 3402 4214 6146248+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda8 4215 4349 1020568+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda9 4350 4484 1020568+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda10 4485 4519 264568+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda11 4520 5168 4906408+ 83 Linux
###############
here /dev/hda5 is a win95 fat32 disk. i have to mount it to linux.

4. create directories where you want to mount your fat32 drives. say you want to create win-d and win-e (if you have two fat32 drives). use:
“mkdir /mnt/win-d” and “mkdir /mnt/win-e”
5. now you can mount /dev/hda5 to win-d by the following command
mount /dev/hda5 /mnt/win-d
Similarly for win-e
6. Now the folder /mnt/win-d is mounted to your d drive. This means that if you go to /mnt/win-d you are actually accessing your d drive. To unmount, you can use unmount command.

7. To mount a drive everytime you boot the machine in linux.

For this you need to make an entry in the file /etc/fstab.
Open /etc/fstab in an editor. i use vi editor. (say vi /etc/fstab)
Insert the following line
/dev/hda5 /mnt/win-d vfat users,owner,rw,umask 000 0 0

Add similar line for each fat32 drive you want to mount.

8. Now you can create a shortcut on desktop that links you to /mnt/win-d etc.

I am one of those millions of people who at some stage got fed up with Microsoft, decided to take the plunge and shift to linux. I installed redhat 9 on my Compaq PIV box.

Had to upgrade RAM from 128 MB to 256 MB. That was not so nice. I was somewhat surprised to find that linux needed so much RAM to be as fast as winxp (Winxp was still perhaps a bit faster). And I had to put an SDRAM card because that is what my box would take. This meant a lot of money.

But since then, I have had no problems that would require me to spend any money.

Having reached this stage, I started struggling with setting up the machine to suit my needs, getting the software in place, and so on. Most of it is done. So I am up and going as far as the routine tasks are concerned.

There are a few major things left though and I hope I shall be confronting those over the next few days/weeks/months.

I plan to use this blog to record various problems that I encountered while setting up my linux box and how I solved them. That would perhaps be of some use to others who are in the same situation. I shall also keep recording progress in respect of the things that still trouble. Let us see where that takes us.