OK, Linux (Ubuntu) users, help me get started.

[mhendo]

I've been a Windows user for a while, first ME (the OS that was also a virus, aka Satan's spawn) and then XP. I've been happy with XP, but i've always liked the idea of getting out of Bill Gates' clutches. Today i downloaded, burned, and ran an Ubuntu Live CD just to check it out, and quite liked what i saw.

While loving the idea of Linux, i've always been a bit scared of the whole command line interface thing, and all the stuff i don't understand like compiling kernels, understanding dependencies, etc. But Ubuntu looks like it might be easy enough to reward some persistence from someone like me, who is pretty comfortable around a computer but who is by no means an expert.

What i want here is some indication of exactly how much i'm going to be able to do on an Ubuntu (or other Linux) computer, and whether i'll be able to ditch Windows altogether, or will have to run both operating systems. Below, i'm going to outline what my computer has in the way of hardware and software, and what i need/want to do with it. If you can let me know whether i'll be able to do this stuff under Linux, and give suggestions for programs, i'd be most grateful.

I'm not looking for advice (yet) on how to set it up. I'm willing to read all the instructions and work my way through that slowly.

For now, i just want to know if there are Linux equivalents for all the stuff i currently do on Windows. (Note: there's a lot of shit below; i don't expect anyone to answer it all step by step; i just want an idea of what i'm up against)

First, let's do hardware:

• Dell Dimension 8300, Intel P4 3.0Ghz, 800MHz FSB
• 1Gb PC3200 DDR
• nVidia GeForce FX5200
• 2 x 160Gb SATA HDD
• Soundblaster Live!
• 2 x optical drives (1 DVD; 1 DVD+RW)
• 1 x Dell E172FP 17" LCD
• 1 x Samsung SyncMaster 997DF 19" CRT
• Logitech Wireless Keyboard and Mouse
• DSL modem, and LinkSys BEFW11S4 router
• Samsung ML-2010 USB mono laser printer

Is that setup going to present any particular problems?

The processor, memory, etc. are all pretty vanilla stuff. I guess i should find out about my motherboard, too. SATA hard drives seem to pose no real problem for Linux, from what i've read. I've seen on the support forums that a couple of people have had minor problems with drivers for their GeForce 5200 video cards, but were usually able to fix them pretty easily.

When i ran the Ubuntu Live CD today, it only recognized one monitor. The other just had a bunch of squiggly lines and shit. I assume that this is an issue i can fix pretty quickly once i get the graphics card working?

What about the Logitech wireless desktop? The CD that came with it is, i think, for Windows only. I could be wrong, though; i'll have to find it, i guess.

Will Ubuntu have any problems with my router? Also, will it be possible for me to network with my partner's Windows computer from a Linux box? And i've heard that printing can be a pain in Linux. True?

Any advice about this hardware setup most welcome.

Now for software and usage. Here's a list of the things i do on my Windows box, and the software i use to do it. An asterisk (*) indicates that i know that the same software will run on Linux.

Email

Thunderbird*, although stdPikachu and a few others have strongly recommended KMail in the past, so i'd probably check that out.​

Internet

Firefox*, and sometimes Opera.​

Office stuff

MS Office Pro. I also have OpenOffice installed, but rarely use it. Still trying to decide whether it's a completely viable replacement for MS. The thing i need most urgently is a word processor, and ideally it will integrate properly with...​

Reference management software

EndNote X. Something i really need, and not available for Linux. There are some reference management software tuitles avilable for Linux, but i don't know how good they are.​

VPN

I need to get access to my university's databases from off-campus using a VPN. The uni apparently provides a Linux client, so i should be OK there.​

PDF

Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Pro. I need the ability to scan images and make pdf documents out of them.​

Image manipulation

Photoshop CS. Needed for my digital camera, and for some other (light) stuff for the web, etc. I've heard mixed reviews of the GIMP. Also, i use Photovista Panorama to stitch together multiple images, and it's Windows only, i think.​

Music

Listen with WinAmp, edit with Audacity (rarely), rip/convert with CDex.​

Video

Watch online video as well as DVDs mostly with Media Player Classic, ffdshow, RealAlternative, and QuicktimeAlternative. If something doesn't work (very rare), i also have VLC*.

I like to edit and muck around with video on a limited basis, and i want to be able to convert files, and watch basically any type of video i'm likely to find on the net. I currently use TMpegEnc, VirtualDub, and (yes) Windows Movie Maker for editing and converting files when necessary.

DVD ripping done with DVDDecrypter, and i also use DVD Shrink and VOB Blanker. For converting DVD clips to avi for classroom work, i use Gordian Knot, and for the reverse process i use AVI2DVD. Would be good to get a DVD authoring program.​

CD/DVD Burning

Nero and Sonic RecordNow.​

Webpages

Dreamweaver, and sometimes NVu or 1stPage.​

Download Manager

Leechget. Good for controlling download speeds when my partner also needs the internet connection on her computer.​

FTP

SmartFTP.​

Misc.

I also run Skype, Google Earth, and the Palm Desktop for synchronizing with my PDA.​

That's about it. How much of this stuff will i still be able to do on a Linux computer? Any advice most appreciated.

 

[Jonti]

...
First, let's do hardware:

• Dell Dimension 8300, Intel P4 3.0Ghz, 800MHz FSB
• 1Gb PC3200 DDR
• nVidia GeForce FX5200
• 2 x 160Gb SATA HDD
• Soundblaster Live!
• 2 x optical drives (1 DVD; 1 DVD+RW)
• 1 x Dell E172FP 17" LCD
• 1 x Samsung SyncMaster 997DF 19" CRT
• Logitech Wireless Keyboard and Mouse
• DSL modem, and LinkSys BEFW11S4 router
• Samsung ML-2010 USB mono laser printer

Is that setup going to present any particular problems?

Here's three ways to check things ...

• If the hardware worked under the liveCD, it will work running Ubuntu off the hard disk as well.
• There's also an Ubuntu Hardware Compatibility List in the WIKI. Here. And since it is a WIKI, you can add your hardware to the list if it isn't already there.
• If you've booted Ubuntu, you can run a check on the system's hardware by pointing your browser at http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/ and following the instructions on that page.

 

[jæd]

Have you tried the ubuntuforums.org, as well as the Ubuntu Start Guide (http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Edgy) and the Ubuntu Wiki (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/) ...

While myself and others will try and answer quuestions you might get better and faster support at the "official" places...

But well done for having a go...!

Oh, and I'd really suggest thinking about getting Crossover Office... It runs Windows apps on Linux... (If you've already got a copy of Office then why change...? Its actually quite good)

 

[Jonti]

Email

Thunderbird*, although stdPikachu and a few others have strongly recommended KMail in the past, so i'd probably check that out.

Evolution is the default package for Ubuntu. Thunderbird is a supported package and easy to install via the Synaptic Package Manager

Internet

Firefox*, and sometimes Opera.

Firefox is the default package for Ubuntu. Although it is not an Ubuntu package as such, Opera is easy to install.

Office stuff

MS Office Pro. I also have OpenOffice installed, but rarely use it. Still trying to decide whether it's a completely viable replacement for MS. The thing i need most urgently is a word processor, and ideally it will integrate properly with...

Reference management software

EndNote X. Something i really need, and not available for Linux. There are some reference management software tuitles avilable for Linux, but i don't know how good they are.

Open Office is more compatible with MS Office than is MS Office! (Sometimes a flavour of Word will fail to open documents created with another flavour of Word.)

You can use Bibus Reference Management software with Windows, OS X or Linux. There is an Ubuntu package available (meaning it's click to install)

VPN

I need to get access to my university's databases from off-campus using a VPN. The uni apparently provides a Linux client, so i should be OK there.

Yes. Network professionals and security experts tend to favour Linux ...

PDF

Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Pro. I need the ability to scan images and make pdf documents out of them.

The scanner program XSane is supported by Ubuntu. Although Adobe suport for Linux is not as good as it could be, the *.pdf specification is published and available for others to code from. OpenOffice will save in *.pdf and there are some powerful utilities. Read more about *.pdf and linux, here.

Image manipulation

Photoshop CS. Needed for my digital camera, and for some other (light) stuff for the web, etc. I've heard mixed reviews of the GIMP. Also, i use Photovista Panorama to stitch together multiple images, and it's Windows only, i think

The Gimp is not really suitable just yet for a graphic artist who needs to send work files directly to a professional printing service. But it is more than adequate for web work etc.

Music

Listen with WinAmp, edit with Audacity (rarely), rip/convert with CDex.

Music is well catered for. There's a great deal of choice. There are even music distros! Audacity is an Ubuntu package.

Video

Watch online video as well as DVDs mostly with Media Player Classic, ffdshow, RealAlternative, and QuicktimeAlternative. If something doesn't work (very rare), i also have VLC*.

I like to edit and muck around with video on a limited basis, and i want to be able to convert files, and watch basically any type of video i'm likely to find on the net. I currently use TMpegEnc, VirtualDub, and (yes) Windows Movie Maker for editing and converting files when necessary.

Likewise video -- if the hardware supports linux, you're sorted.

DVD ripping done with DVDDecrypter, and i also use DVD Shrink and VOB Blanker. For converting DVD clips to avi for classroom work, i use Gordian Knot, and for the reverse process i use AVI2DVD. Would be good to get a DVD authoring program.

CD/DVD Burning

Nero and Sonic RecordNow.

Codec conversion, and CD and DVD creation are something linux users are as keen on as anyone else ...

Webpages

Dreamweaver, and sometimes NVu or 1stPage.

Not Dreamweaver, no. Yes for NVu. It, like quite a lot of the software you have mentioned, was developed on Linux (the linux development environment is much more powerful and easy to control -- and the tools tend to be free -- so a surprising number of applications are developed there first, and then compiled for whatever Windows version).

Download Manager

Leechget. Good for controlling download speeds when my partner also needs the internet connection on her computer.

Retriever is a cross-platform Download Manager available for Linux.

FTP

SmartFTP.

gFTP is an Ubuntu package. It's a high quality package.

Misc.

I also run Skype, Google Earth, and the Palm Desktop for synchronizing with my PDA.

I've run both Skype and GoogleEarth under Ubuntu. There's info on how to use your PDA with Ubuntu here.

Gis' a job

 

[RaverDrew]

Automatix and EasyUbuntu will installl many of the programs that you have mentioned with just one click.

 

[stdPikachu]

Yoiks, I got namechecked a mere few days after my anticlimactic comeback!

Anyhoo, am at work so can't really prepare an exhaustive list of software I'd recommend, so am just going to plough on through regardless. I'll also add a disclaimer that alot of the stuff I recommend are KDE/Qt apps, since I much prefer KDE to any of the other DE's out there. I do use a few GTK apps but they tend to be standalone thingies.

I love KMail because it integrates utterly seamlessly with Kopete (instant messaging), the KDE address book and calendar and all manner of other KDE apps. Thunderbird and it's ilk I find acceptable but IMHO they're very much standalone apps rather than a component of a PIM stack.

If you're a bit sick of OpenOffice, you might wanna try giving the KOffice apps a whirl. They use the same file format as OOo and so are easily interchangeable (more or less... not done exhuastive testing). KOffice also comes with a pretty good image app in the form of Krita and a wicked little DB frontend called Kexi.

I'm not even entirely sure what reference management software means, but you can use the Zotero FF extension to maintain a nice list of all your citations from teh webz. OOo has a bibliography stack due to be implemented in 2007, but then obviously that means it's some way off being production-ready. This page lists a few citation management apps available for Linux, but it's never something I've used myself so I can't comment on their usefulness.

VPN stuff is usually a doddle. The command line VPN client vpnc supports every VPN protocol I've heard of, and you can get a nice KDE frontend to it. Imports Cisco PCF files too.

You'll never see Acrobat on Linux; IIRC they did bring out a version in the 5.x days but I doubt we'll be seeing one again in the near future. Thankfully the PDF spec is open so there's lots of OSS apps that can create and manipulate PDF files - although unfortunately I do most of that on the command line so am probably not much help for a nice GUI to do it all. Ghostview however is easily capable of turning pretty much anything into a PDF, and of course OOo will also manage that.

For image manipulation, I'm a bit of a Krita convert - I find it much easier to use than GIMP. For simple stuff (i.e. basic cropping, colour balance, etc) there's apps like GwenView. You could even try out Picasa on Linux if you're feeling brave. I've never tried doing any panoramas, however Digikam (digital camera manager thingy) tells me it has a panorama tool lurking.

Music-wise, I'm a complete Amarok fanboy - kinda like a nerdy iTunes for Linux. LastFM and musicbainz integration, DB backend, support for pretty much every file format I've heard of, and nice eye candy (esp. with the projectM visualisation prog). For ripping I generally use the command line tool "abcde"; you'll prolly prefer stalwarts such as GRIP. If you plump for KDE, Konqueror (KDE file manager) has a nifty feature that'l create a "virtual folder" of an audio CD, and do an on-the-fly rip when you darg'n'drop into your music collection. For tagging duties I alternate between amarok, kid3 and EasyTag in order of severity.

Online vids are supported pretty well through the mplayer plugin which should work with all browsers (although IIRC it was a bit of a bitch tos et up in Opera) - just make sure you read the Ubuntu wiki about how to enable restricted formats like WMV. For other video playback, xine and, latterly, Kaffeine are generally all I use. Kaffeine is probably the closest you get to MPC on Linux and uses xine as a backend, so it'll generally play everything you can throw at it. mplayer and VLC are also good options, I just hate their (usually god-awful) frontends.

Ripping DVD's is either easy or hard, depending on how fussy you are - tools like dvd::rip and OGMrip will typically just do the whole thing with a few clicks (dvd::rip even has a cluster mode to run across multiple machines) but I don't like them a great deal because they don't give me enough options. Editing video is handled adequately by tools like KDEnlive or Avidemux, but don't go expecting Premiere. IIRC DVDShrink runs natively on Linux through WINE.

For CD/DVD burning, k3b rules. Never used it to create anythig so archaic as a DVD video, but QDVDauthor is meant to do what it says on the tin...

Never bothered with a download manager, but KGet has integration with the rest of the KDE desktop and Konqueror. For FTP I also use Konqueror and it's superb KIO slaves subsystem, which handles a variety of different protocols (including FTP and SSH) like a local filesystem.

Skype and GoogleEarth are both available on Linux, although I've never used the Skype client (yucky proprietary protocols, ya see). Not sure about syncing with palms, but Kpilot is the usual KDE interface between PDA's and the KDE PIM stack. IIRC it should support Palms.

Google tells me tha Nvu is available in a native Linux version, so no probs with that - Dreamweaver, of course, has never been and will never be available on Linux.

All your hardware should work fine out-of-the-box, just be sure to follow the Ubuntu guide for getting the nVidia drivers installed to get a proper accelerated desktop.

That's all I can manage for one lunchbreak...

 

[fear-n-loathing]

you could try abiword supposed to be much better than open office for word processing.

 

[lobster]

Samsung-ML-2010 works out-the-box with ubuntu.

In regard to Reference management software, there are lots of gui frontends to BibTeX as well as supporting the Endnote format.

pybliographer
jabref
wikindx

 

[mhendo]

Wow! Awesome! Thanks for the help and advice, everyone.

It really looks like i could move to Ubuntu with little or no loss of functionality compared with my Windows setup. I'll probably start with a dual-boot system, just to be sure.

By the way, if i'm going to do a dual boot, would it be easiest to leave one hard drive for Windows, and devote the other to Linux? I assume the setup will take me through things like setting up partitions, swap file, etc?

I believe the Linux drive needs to be formatted to a non-NTFS file system.

Finally, will i be able to transfer my files (jpegs, video clips, documents, etc.) from the Windows setup to the Linux setup pretty easily?

 

[lobster]

By the way, if i'm going to do a dual boot, would it be easiest to leave one hard drive for Windows, and devote the other to Linux? I assume the setup will take me through things like setting up partitions, swap file, etc?

ubuntu have started a so called "windows installer" , everything like partitions, swap is done in both installers

I believe the Linux drive needs to be formatted to a non-NTFS file system.

You can use a NTFS filesystem if you wanted to, its very stable from what ive heard, personally i would not bother, using either ext3 , xfs or jfs will give you better performance overall over ntfs.

By the way, if i'm going to do a dual boot, would it be easiest to leave one hard drive for Windows, and devote the other to Linux? I assume the setup will take me through things like setting up partitions, swap file, etc?

ubuntu have started a so called "windows installer" , everything like partitions, swap is done in both installers

I believe the Linux drive needs to be formatted to a non-NTFS file system.

You can use a NTFS filesystem if you wanted to, its very stable from what ive heard, personally i would not bother, using either ext3 , xfs or jfs will give you better performance overall over ntfs.

Finally, will i be able to transfer my files (jpegs, video clips, documents, etc.) from the Windows setup to the Linux setup pretty easily?

in gnome its as simple as drag and drop, mind you, if your going to keep the windows partitions, i would just run the files from the windows partition.

 

[mhendo]

Just bumping this to get a bit more advice before i proceed. I've done a bunch of reading on the Ubuntu boards, and while i'm still a bit nervous about the whole thing, i think i'm just about ready to go. (Jonti, i didn't realize you did this stuff for a living; if you would prefer not to give your expertise out for free on a message board, i completely understand).

Firstly, apart from the aesthetics, is there any compelling reason to choose Ubuntu over Kubuntu, or vice versa, for a beginner like me?

My main question has to do with the issue of partitioning. I didn't really find an answer to my specific problem on the Ubuntu boards, so i thought i'd see what people here think.

My current set-up has 2 x 160Gb hard drives. Each drive is just a single partition; there are no smaller partitions within either drive.

Drive C has my Windows installation, all my programs, and a bunch of stuff in the My Documents section. Drive F just has files, things like pictures, music, movie backups, etc., as well as backup copies of some of the important files on Drive C (my academic work, etc.).

Today, i've taken delivery of a new 320Gb drive and an external enclosure. My plan is to copy the My Documents stuff from Drive C over to Drive F, then remove drive F and place it in the enclosure. Then, i'll replace drive F in the computer with my new 320 gig drive.

This will leave me with a setup that has 1 x 160Gb drive with Windows and some files, and a blank 320Gb drive. From what i've been reading, it seems that the best thing would be to partition Drive C, with Windows (NTFS) on one partition (say, 80Gb), as well as the Linux boot partition (small), Linux /root partition (ext3, about 75Gb), and Linux /swap partition (small, about 1Gb).

Then, i could use the second hard drive for storage. I was thinking of giving it 3 partitions; one NTFS for Windows; one FAT32 for sharing between Windows and Linux; one ext3 for Linux.

Does that all sound OK, or stupid? Sorry if it's dumb; the question of setting up partitions is the thing i'm having most trouble getting my head around.

 

[jæd]

Firstly, apart from the aesthetics, is there any compelling reason to choose Ubuntu over Kubuntu, or vice versa, for a beginner like me?

Most help documents are from the perspective of using Gnome in Ubuntu. It would be less confusing. But under the hood it would be the same.

Does that all sound OK, or stupid? Sorry if it's dumb; the question of setting up partitions is the thing i'm having most trouble getting my head around.

Seems fine... I'd burn all your important docs to a CD or DVD just in case the whole thing goes tits-up. Or even just keep the spare 160gb drive as an emergency backup. Re-partitioning is something that can get out of hand quite quickly...!

 

[mhendo]

Seems fine... I'd burn all your important docs to a CD or DVD just in case the whole thing goes tits-up. Or even just keep the spare 160gb drive as an emergency backup. Re-partitioning is something that can get out of hand quite quickly...!

Yeah, i'm going to put everything that needs backing up onto the second 160Gb, then take it out of the computer and replace it with the new 320. That way, there's no chance of any of my important stuff getting lost during the partitioning and installation process.

The backup and such might take a while, because i also want to take this opportunity to clean out a bunch of crap that i no longer need. I'll report back once i've done got Ubuntu up and running, probably in a couple of days.

Thanks for the help.

 

[RaverDrew]

I'd go for Kubuntu over Ubuntu anyday.

Loads more user friendly
Feels more like Xp
Has loads of useful apps pre-installed

 

[stdPikachu]

Ditto go for Kubuntu, cos I find KDE far better than Gnome. Depends on how much you value you tweakability I guess; KDE gives me the shitloads of configurability I desire whereas I've always found Gnome's alternatives too simplistic.

Horses for courses I guess.

Not that there's anything to stop you running both KDE and Gnome, of course.

 

[fractionMan]

Personally, I like gnome for its simple interface. But yeah, it's horses for courses. KDE is certainly more "XP like". You can use KDE apps under gnome and visaversa

 

[stdPikachu]

KDE is certainly more "XP like".

Only in it's default configuration

 

[mhendo]

Reporting back in to update interested parties on my progress.

After taking delivery of a new hard drive, and spending a bunch of time backing up all my files and settings from Windows (just in case), i finally got things how i wanted and was ready to proceed. Here's what i did:

1. Transferred all essential files to my system's second 160Gb HDD.

2. Removed that hard drive and placed it in an external enclosure, so i can put the files back later, and then use it as a backup drive.

3. Added a new 320Gb hard drive, giving me a 160Gb primary hard drive with my Windows installation, and a blank 320Gb hard drive in my computer.

4. Used the GPartEd Live CD to partition the 320Gb drive as follows:

2 x ~50Gb NTFS partitions
2 x ~50Gb FAT32 partitions
2 x ~50Gb EXT3 partitions​

5. Used GPartEd to partition the 160Gb drive as follows:

1 x 40Gb NTFS Windows partition (drive C: )
1 x 12Gb EXT3 partition (/ for Ubuntu)
1 x 1.5Gb linux-swap partition
1 x ~50Gb NTFS partition
1 x ~50Gb EXT3 partiton (/home for Ubuntu)​

6. Installed Ubuntu (decided on Ubuntu over Kubuntu for the moment, because most things i've read suggest that it's a bit easier for newbies).

The installation itself went off with nary a hitch, and rebooting took me to the GRUB menu, which worked flawlessly for both operating systems. Windows suffered no ill-effects from the repartitioning process, and is working fine.

Ubuntu loads fine, and all my network settings appear to have been detected perfectly. The internet worked immediately, and i was browsing in Firefox moments after entering the Ubuntu desktop.

Getting my second monitor to work took a bit longer, and i messed things up once by not following the instructions on Ubuntu Forums closely enough, but now my desktop stretches across both monitors and i can easily move windows back and forth between the two. The right-hand monitor (my CRT) seems a tiny bit fuzzy (the text, anyway), so i might need to make some adjustments later, but it's perfectly acceptable.

Making Ubuntu my only (or even my primary) operating system is going to take some time. I'm going to have to sit down and read all the documentation from the beginning so that i understand how things work, because things that happen automatically in Windows need to be set up in Ubuntu.

For example, in Windows, all my hard drive partitions (except the EXT3 ones, of course) show up, and i can read and write to all of them from an admin account. All the partitions are mounted and show up in Ubuntu also, but i can't write to any of them except my /home partition. This means that, right now, i have about 100Gb of FAT32 and 100Gb of EXT3 hard drive space that i can't do anything with. I'm going to have to learn more about how permissions and such work.

Also, i have so far been unable to extract any sound from my SoundBlaster Live soundcard. I followed some fairly comprehensive instructions on the Ubuntu Forums, but without any joy. Following these instructions was made even more difficult by the fact that the person who wrote them seems to assume that i know what the hell i'm doing.

I haven't started any of my own threads on the Forums yet, but in the ones i've read i've noticed a tendency of people giving advice to give rapid-fire instructions without really explaining anything. Sure, in some cases simply following their instructions or copying their text into the terminal gives the desired result, but if i'm going to use this OS permanently then i want to understand what the hell i'm doing.

If my experience so far is any indication, anyone who claims that Ubuntui is a viable alternative for most regular Windows users is dreaming. Getting my video card working took about an hour, and while i was happy to take the time, and rather chuffed when it worked, the simple fact is that this same video card was up and running in about three minutes under Windows. Most people i know aren't interested in entering SUDO commands or editing the xorg.conf file just to get their monitor working properly.

Similarly with my sound card. I spent a couple of hours messing around, and am no closer to solving the problem than i was at the beginning. No-one i know would be interested in doing this much faffing about just to play their mp3s. And i haven't even got to the stage of working out extra audio and video formats yet.

I'm not really complaining. I'm not giving up on Linux. I'm not in a hurry, and i'm going to try and slowly pick up what i need, until i actually have it running properly. And, in the meantime, my Windows setup is still working fine. But if i continue to have problems, you might start to hear some swearing.

Thanks for listening.

 

[Jonti]

...The installation itself went off with nary a hitch, and rebooting took me to the GRUB menu, which worked flawlessly for both operating systems. Windows suffered no ill-effects from the repartitioning process, and is working fine.

Ubuntu loads fine, and all my network settings appear to have been detected perfectly. The internet worked immediately, and i was browsing in Firefox moments after entering the Ubuntu desktop...

Good to here that. And it's good to hear you're in no hurry to get everything completely sorted. Ubuntu does represent a different way of going about things. One big difference is that ubuntu tends to do (only!) what it is told, but windows can second-guess the user. Sometimes that's really helpful, but other times it guesses wrong and one can end up fighting windows to get it to behave as wanted.

For example, in Windows, all my hard drive partitions (except the EXT3 ones, of course) show up, and i can read and write to all of them from an admin account. All the partitions are mounted and show up in Ubuntu also, but i can't write to any of them except my /home partition. This means that, right now, i have about 100Gb of FAT32 and 100Gb of EXT3 hard drive space that i can't do anything with. I'm going to have to learn more about how permissions and such work.

When a partition is mounted under linux, you get to tell it the permissions the *drive itself* is to be given. Linux has played safe, as it does, and not given write permissions automatically. You probably need to amend the /etc/fstab file to umask the drive and give it the permissions you want. This may be very helpful. The reason for this is that not all other file systems have the same way of handling file permissions, so linux has to have its own way of bringing the drive into the linux system.

If my experience so far is any indication, anyone who claims that Ubuntui is a viable alternative for most regular Windows users is dreaming. Getting my video card working took about an hour, and while i was happy to take the time, and rather chuffed when it worked, the simple fact is that this same video card was up and running in about three minutes under Windows. Most people i know aren't interested in entering SUDO commands or editing the xorg.conf file just to get their monitor working properly.

Similarly with my sound card. I spent a couple of hours messing around, and am no closer to solving the problem than i was at the beginning. No-one i know would be interested in doing this much faffing about just to play their mp3s. And i haven't even got to the stage of working out extra audio and video formats yet.

Yes, many folks are going to need some help to get things completely set up and working (depending on their kit and what they want to do, of course). But put a working ubuntu system in front of a regular windows user, and they are well able to use it with little or no hand-holding. Hence the importance of having OEMs ship boxes with linux already installed.

I'm a bit dismayed to hear about the sound card. If it supports linux, it *should* have been auto-detected. Best to think about things for a while, I think.

You'll find there is a package called Automatix listed in your Synaptic Package Manager (System --> Administration --> Synaptic Package Manager). This can automatically install many of the goodies like extra audio and video formats that you may want. But first we need to get the sound working, of course ...

 

[stdPikachu]

When a partition is mounted under linux, you get to tell it the permissions the *drive itself* is to be given. Linux has played safe, as it does, and not given write permissions automatically. You probably need to amend the /etc/fstab file to umask the drive and give it the permissions you want. This may be very helpful. The reason for this is that not all other file systems have the same way of handling file permissions, so linux has to have its own way of bringing the drive into the linux system.

Snip from my fstab:

/dev/sdb2               /storage/music      vfat            uid=1000,gid=100,utf8,shortname=winnt   0 0
/dev/sdb3               /storage/stuff      vfat            uid=1000,gid=100,utf8,shortname=winnt   0 0
/dev/sde1               /storage/dvdrip     vfat            user,noauto,uid=1000,gid=100,umask=0000,utf8,shortname=winnt    0 0

First two drives are writable by userid 1000 and readable by group ID 100; third drive is read/writable by everyone. The utf8 enables unicode support for things like é (used alot in music files) and the shortname=winnt parameter means that uppercased file/folder names aren't converted to lower case, DOS stylee.

The soundblaster live shouldn't be a problem, but it's always been a bit of a finicky beast from accounts I've read. If it's available, have you tried using the onboard audio? But yeah, autodetection shoudl have worked for it just fine...

 

[jæd]

I haven't started any of my own threads on the Forums yet, but in the ones i've read i've noticed a tendency of people giving advice to give rapid-fire instructions without really explaining anything. Sure, in some cases simply following their instructions or copying their text into the terminal gives the desired result, but if i'm going to use this OS permanently then i want to understand what the hell i'm doing.

Well... Thats probably because its focussed on solving problems. And with Ubuntu (and most Linux distros) its quickest to give a list of command-line commands rather than "click here, select this, click there".

Most commands have documentation in the "man" files.

Eg:

man ls

Will tell you everything there is know about ls.

man man

Will tell you how to use the man pages properly...

For everything else, there is Google...

 

[mhendo]

Thanks for the help and encouragement. Things have progressed a little bit, although i'm still just about ready to tear my hair out.

I thought i'd start with the permissions issue. I've managed to get write permission for my FAT32 partition, so there has been some success. But this process has also further confirmed my suspicion that i might eventually get Ubuntu up and running properly without ever knowing why anything works the way it does.

Take the issue of getting write access to a FAT32 partition. The link given by Jonti suggests this line:

/dev/sda2       /winshare	vfat     defaults,umask=000    0       0

which works fine, allowing write access to the FAT partitions. And i think i understand that setting the umask value to 000 gives read, write, and execute access to the owner, the user, and others. Is that right?

The line suggested by StdPikachu for read and write access for everyone contains these properties:

user,noauto,uid=1000,gid=100,umask=0000,utf8,shortname=winnt

Firstly, i don't know (and have not been able to find out from anywhere) why some umask vales have three digits (e.g., 000), and some, like the one quoted above, have four (e.g., 0000). I googled umask, and found a page with the promising titlew of What is umask and how to set up default umask under Linux, but that page defines one topic by introducing a whole bunch of other terms that a newcomer to Linux has never encountered, so it's effectively useless for me.

There is no section on umask under the man command suggested by jæd, and a perusal of the man mount and man fstab and man fs mntops didn't really help very much.

Also, i haven't been able to find a sensible explanation of when, how and why the uid and gid options should be used, or even exactly how i find out what my user number is, and what the group numbers are. Pasting stdPikachu line into my fstab file didn't work.

Furthermore, additional reading suggests that the umask option is not even valid for ext3 partitions, offering a partial explanation for why i still can't get write access to those partitions on my computer. I only worked this out after googling an error i got when i tried to give a umask value to the fstab entry for an ext3 partition.

And putting in values that i've seen suggested in various forum posts hasn't worked either. Following the instructions on this page, i tried adding the following options to one of my ext3 partitions:

auto,owner,users,rw

but that didn't work either.

The basic Ubuntu documentation goes straight into explaining how to install programs and play around, but as far as i can tell it's very light on telling you how to actually get things set up. It could be that i've missed something, and that instructions for this sort of thing are just sitting there somewhere, but so far i've been unable to find much helpful stuff.

If you hear a loud noise from across the Atlantic, it will be me heaving my computer out the window and onto the streets of Baltimore.

 

[mhendo]

Hold on, it appears i've got write access to my EXT3 partitions now. Please ignore my previous ranting.

By following the instructions in post #3 of this page, i appear to have had success. Apparently the key was that i needed not only to edit the fstab file, but also do chown and chmod commands so that i "own" the drive.

I must admit that, even though i'm very happy that it worked, i'm still not quite sure of what i've done, or if i've made my permissions too open and vulnerable.

Here is the relevant section of my fstab file. If you think i should change anything, i'd be most grateful to hear it:

/dev/sda2       /windows        ntfs    defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0       1
/dev/sda5       /               ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0       1
/dev/sda7       /home           ext3    defaults        0       2
/dev/sdb7       /media/disc1ext ext3    rw,auto,user        0       2
/dev/sdb8       /media/disc2ext ext3    rw,auto,user        0       2
/dev/sdb9       /media/disc3fat vfat    defaults,utf8,umask=000,gid=46 0       1
/dev/sdb10      /media/disc4fat vfat    defaults,utf8,umask=000,gid=46 0       1
/dev/sda8       /media/ntfs1    ntfs    defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0       1
/dev/sdb6       /media/ntfs2    ntfs    defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0       1
/dev/sdb5       /media/ntfsdocs ntfs    defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0       1

Note that i haven't changed any of the settings on my NTFS partitions. I know that it is now possible for Linux to write to NTFS, but i can't myself ever needing that option, especially with so much EXT and FAT storage space.

Also, i haven't yet added all of the options suggested by stdPikachu (e.g., shortname=winnt) because i wanted to get up and running with the basics first.

 

[jæd]

Also, i haven't been able to find a sensible explanation of when, how and why the uid and gid options should be used, or even exactly how i find out what my user number is, and what the group numbers are. Pasting stdPikachu line into my fstab file didn't work.

Well... On my system "man umask" gives a detailed explanation of umask, but then thats because I've got lots of developer libraries added so its probably bits of that... I don;t think that man page is included on a stock install...

Have you looked at Users/Groups panel in the System->Administration menu... Under Advanced it will tell ou you uid. I'm a bit surprised that you can't get write access to your ext3 partitions... Personally I'd use root to make a directory, and then use chown to let me use it without being su.

The three vs four notation of umask is probably just being more specific. I'd guess that 000 is the same as 0000.

Linux (and most Unix) documentation tends to assume that (a) you know everything else (b) are paying attention. Best to learn a little at time and take frequent breaks. (When I first learnt Linux commands I had a cracking headache for the first two weeks, had the "bingo" moment when I had learnt enough for everything to make sense, and then I was fine. That eating paracetamol for breakfast, lunch and dinner)

 

[mhendo]

Linux (and most Unix) documentation tends to assume that (a) you know everything else (b) are paying attention. Best to learn a little at time and take frequent breaks. (When I first learnt Linux commands I had a cracking headache for the first two weeks, had the "bingo" moment when I had learnt enough for everything to make sense, and then I was fine. That eating paracetamol for breakfast, lunch and dinner)

Yeah, i seem to be gradually getting there. This page is making some things quite a bit clearer.

My sound is now working, and (predictably enough) it was me and not Linux that was the problem. After i put the new hard drive in my computer, i accidentally plugged my headphone lead into the wrong jack on the sound card.

I have Kontact (with KMail, KOrganizer, etc.) up and running now, and it's great. Initially it wouldn't work with a POP account, but then i downloaded a plugin pack and everything was fine.

I've also downloaded a whole crapload of multimedia stuff, so playing avis, mpegs, wmvs etc. now works fine. stdPikachu was right about the awful frontend that comes with MPlayer. I found it both unattractive and annoying to use. VLC is fine as a backup (i use it as a backup for Media Player Classic on Windows), but i'm really happy with Kaffeine; it certainly seem to be the closest thing to MPC available for Linux. I haven't yet tried out my optical drives, so the whole paying CDs/DVDs thing is ahead of me.

My Samsung printer is working like a charm. The GIMP definitely looks powerful enough for my (fairly limited) graphical needs, but getting used to that interface after working with Photoshop is going to take some time.

Anyway, i'll stop bothering you all with my ramblings now. Suffice to say that, only a few days in, Ubuntu is already functional enough for about 95% of my computing needs. Thanks for listening.