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I kinda got the other topic off topic by bringing up linux, so i thought i'd create a new topic specifically about linux. As i learn more and more about linux i'll be able to answer more questions about it, most of which i may end up learning from jerek. Feel free to post anything linux related here.

As for my computer, i finally got the sound to work and i've been playing around w/ some of the features linux has. But i still can't figure out what to do about the internet, having a micrososft DSL modem sucks.

Good idea. Post any questions here that you have. I'll keep this post updated with whatever Linux links are brought up.

Jerek's List of Linux Links:

• http://www.angelar.com/~htcunix/ - This is the page for my Linux teacher's classes. Has a bunch of useful links, and lecture synopses which aren't very helpful unless you know what he's talking about.
• http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/unix/ - A page I just found with various useful things to know. Has some tutorials general info on a variety of things.

Thanks in advance for all the help you'll be giving out jerek. It's good to have an active webmaster that knows alot.

First off, do you know of any informative sites i could go to about basic use, such as how to effectively use the command line, how to get codecs to work in programs, and so on?

Second, the biggest issue i'm facing right now is not having any internet when using linux. Our setup in my apartment is a router in my roomate's room connected to a Microsoft DSL modem (his choice, i was against it). Short of purchasing a non microsoft modem, is there any way to get it to work? Maybe i could call customer support to see what they have to say about linux. They'll probably just say it won't work.

Third, i want to get the video player in linux, Xine i think it's called, to play DVD's from my DVD drive. I found a place where i could download some plug-ins or whatever you would call them, and i put them on a usb card (external flash memory), but i can't get linux to recognize the card (which is my fourth issue). I d/l'd the files and put them on the card because windows runs but does not even recognize the new hard drive. However, will these plug-ins do the trick if i can get them on the HD w/ linux?

Fourth, see the above paragraph about the usb card.

Warning: Huge-ass post! Yeah, it went a little longer than planned...

Wow, I just found a great site listing tons of command references, as well as file system and config file info and more: http://www.comptechdoc.org/os/linux/commands/

The most common commands (all this crap was typed up by me, not that reference I just posted):

Actually, before I go over these, you should know about tabbed filename completion. This is a wonderful thing that the creators of bash made. bash is the command line that you'll use by default. It's based on bsh (Bourne Shell). bash stands for Bourne Again Shell. Yeah, Linux names are absolutely filled with puns. The official name of Linux is GNU/Linux. GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix". The program Wine (which lets you run Windows programs) stands for "Wine Is Not an Emulator". Anyway, tabbed filename completion... When typing in the name of a file you can hit Tab and it will autocomplete the rest of the name for you as far as it can tell. So if you have a file named "This-file-has-an-unnecessarily-long-filename-because-I-wanted-to-test-tabbed-filename-completion-under-the-bash-shell.txt" in an empty folder and you want to cat it (see info on cat below) you can just type "cat This" and hit tab and it will fill in the rest for you. In fact, you can just type "cat T" and hit tab. However, if there's other files in the directory with similar names it won't fill in the entire thing. If you had another file in that directory named "This-file-has-a-short-name.txt" then typing "cat This" and hitting tab will only get you "cat This-file-has-a" and stop there. If you double-hit Tab it'll display all other files that it could be. Or if you already know the other files, all you have to do is type an "n" and hit tab and it will complete the reas of "This-file-has-an-unnecessarily-long-filename-because-I-wanted-to-test-tabbed-filename-completion-under-the-bash-shell.txt". Pretty neat. And now, on with the show!

man - short for "manual". gives information on commands and their options. obscenely helpful to both beginners and even seasoned veterans - they both use it very frequently, and you should too if you use the command line interface much. format: man [command]
cp - copies a file. format: cp [source] [destination]
mv - moves or renames a file. format: mv [source] [destination or new name]
rm - delete. name is short for "remove". format: rm [file to delete]. This one also has a few notable options you should know about before you destroy everything using this command. The -r command will make it delete recursively, so it'll delete whatever you tell it, and all subdirectories and files below what you told it. The -f command will make it delete what you tell it without asking for a confirmation (very useful if you want to delete 1,000 tiny files but don't want to hit "y" 1,000 times). So a common combination is rm -rf to recursively delete a folder and everything in it. If you're familiar with DOS, you can think of this as the deltree command. Very dangerous. The most common use of rm -rf is rm -rf * which deletes everything in the current directory and everything below the current directory - be very very careful about where you are if you use this command! My Linux teacher once told us a story about this command, "...so I typed rm -rf * and thought 'Huh, it's sure taking a long time to delete those 12 text files... Hey, why are all four hard drive activity lights blin-OH MY GOD." So, yeah, he happened to be in the root directory ("/") and wiped the entire system of four hard drives clean with one command. That's also why it's a good idea to not log in as root unless it's necessary. You may think you're knowledgable enough to be okay logging in as root, but in the world of Linux, it's only the newbies that do that, all the veterans avoid root unless it's absolutely necessary. Normal users only have access to change files in their own directory ("/home/[user name]/") and a few other temporary directorys.
mkdir - makes a directory. format: mkdir [directory to create]
rmdir - removes a directory. format: rmdir [directory to remove]
ls - lists the contents of a directory. format: ls or ls [directory] if you want the list of a directory without having to go there. like every other command I know of you can use variables with this command (e.g. * or ?). When you do an ls li* to see how many files/folders you have starting with li and you get any folders it will automatically display the contents of those folders at the end of the directory listing. you can prevent this by adding -d. so ls li* -d or ls -d li* won't list the subdirs as well.
cat - displays the contents of a file. it's supposed to only be done on files that are ASCII files (meaning a text file or text-formated file - for example an HTML file is not called a text file, but it's still text-formatted/an ASCII file). if you do it on non-ASCII files you will get unpredictable results, and probably have to close that terminal. short for "concatenate". format: cat [file to display]. If a file is too long to display on one screen you use one of the following four commands.
more - same as cat, but will go a page at a time, and require you to press space or enter or something to go to the next page. format: more [file to display
less - same as more, but will also let you go up in a file, and displays how far through the file you are. also lets you search by typing "/[search phrase]". So to search for "linux" type "/linux" and hit enter. press n to go to the next result. this command also understands pg up/pg down and home/end. the man pages (see above) use this program when displaying manuals, so what works here, works there (because it's the same thing). the name is a play on the name of the more program (less was created because the author of less thought that more was insuficient). format: less [file to display]
head - display the beginning of a file. the default is to display the first ten lines, but you can change that by adding -#. format: head [file to display]. So to display the first 3 lines of linux.txt type head -3 linux.txt
tail - same as head, but starts form the bottom. format: tail [file to display]
grep - searches the contents of a text file. variables can be used. format: grep [search string] [file to search]. It can also be quite helpful to make a search case insensitive by adding -i.
find - guess. . format: find [location to start looking - will search recursively by default] [-name for case-sensitive search or -iname for case-insensitive search] [filename to search for]. So if you're looking for "TextFile.txt" in any directory on your comp you can type "find / -name TextFile" or "find / -iname textfile" or "find / -iname extfil" and so on.
vi - the de facto editor for Linux. Runs in command line mode like MS-DOS's EDIT, but vi is way better. In fact, it's now my prefered text editor. format: vi [file to edit]. vi works pretty differently than most editors. Okay, any editors (that I know of). By default when you open a file you're in what's called "command mode". This means you can hit keys to give commands for file manipulation, rather than typing. For example, "x" to delete the current character the cursor is over, "dd" to delete the current line, "p" to paste (sorry, don't remember what copy or cut are ), "gg" to go to the first line, "G" to go to the last line (yes, it's case-sensitive - vi may have a command for every upper and lower-case letter, I'm not sure), but most important are "i" and ":". Hitting the ESC key will bring you back to command mode from any other mode, so if something is going wrong and you want to get back to command mode just hit ESC at least three times and you should be there (though more never hurts, since ESC doesn't do anything once in command mode). when in command mode pressing "i" will go to "insert mode", which is normal typing mode. When in command mode pressing ":" will go to... a mode I can't remember the name of, but it's where you give extra commands, such as save (":w" for "write"), quit (":q"), save and quit (":wq", ":qw", or ":x"), quit without saving (":q!"), or enable the mouse (":set mouse=a" - I don't know how to disable it though without just restarting vi). I could say more, but there have actually been whole books written on vi that couldn't cover everything, so I'll just stop here.

Whew, that was a lot. just two more things though that will show you how to combine those in to much more useful combinations. The first is piping. A "|" is called a pipe. No, that's not a lower-case L, upper-case i, or a one, that's the key you get by holding Shift and hitting the backslash ("\") key. Piping commands is extremely useful. The second is called redirecting the output. This is done with ">" or ">>". Say you want to list all the files running on your system. the command for this is ps waux, but sometimes it can get quite long, but you can't view this command with more or less, because it's not a file, it's the result of a command. so instead you have a few options: 1) type ps waux > filename.txt. You now have a text file with the output of ps waux that you can view with cat, more, less, grep, vi, or whatever. Very useful if you want to save the output of something long and then sort through the results. But whenever you do this it overwrites the file you sent it to. So you if you do ps waux > filename.txt then the file will only contain the most recent command. If you want to append to the end use ">>". So ps waux >> filename.txt will add to the end of filename.txt (or create a new filename.txt if there isn't one). Or you could just type ps waux | [command] to view it with less (ps waux | less), grep (ps waux | grep [text to search for]), or whatever.

Any questions?

Hm, if it's external you shouldn't have a problem... Open a terminal (or "command prompt" as Microsoft calls it) and try typing "dhclient eth0" and tell me if that does anything for you. If it doesn't fix it, then copy and paste the results here. If the terminal you use doesn't appear to have a copy command, then just select the text and it will probably have copied it when you selected the text (a lot of Linux stuff works that way, they like just having to select something to copy it).

Heh, yeah, Windows hates Linux. You can access your Windows drive from Linux though. First, make a directory in /mnt named whatever you want (I prefer just naming it "c" or whatever the Windows partition calls it when you boot Windows), you can call it constantinople if you want (with the tabbed filename completion mentioned above it wouldn't be a problem ). So mkdir /mnt/c or whatever you want. Then type mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/c and if it doesn't display an errors your Windows drive should now be accessable by going to /mnt/c.

Ah, flash cards. My teacher just recently was having issues with one of his flash cards in Linux. Most flash cards work fine in Linux, but a few were done in stupid ways and don't. He figured it out, but I'm not sure how. I'll send him an e-mail.

Wow, that was quite the post. Alot of good information.

it came back w/ "bash: dhclient: command not found"

mkdir:cannot create directory '/mnt/c': permission denied

Not all is lost though, i did figure out how to view the contents of the flash memory.

Oh yeah, you have to run both of those as root.

The dhclient command is probably not in your PATH unless you're root, and you can't do things to /mnt unless you're root (or mount anything for that matter). However, loging in to your computer as root isn't necessary if you just want to do simple tasks like that. In fact, even when doing things as root you can be logged in on your normal account. Here's a few related commands:

su - switches to root/super user account in a terminal. short for "Super User". format: su and it will prompt you for your root password. Note how the command prompt looks different when you become the super user/root. another option is the command su -. Yes, that's just su with a single hyphen after it. That runs root's initialization scripts when you switch to root. but we'll get in to the fun things with that later. But I'm pretty sure that PATHs are stored in initiallization scripts, so when you switch to root to try dhclient be sure to use su - not su. Also, if you plan to run just 1 command as root you can use the -c command: su -c'[command]'. So if you wanted to run mkdir /mnt/c as root and nothing else you could type su -c'mkdir /mnt/c'
more ls - to view hidden files add -a (for "all"). to view in a detailed list format add [/b]-l[/b]. So common ls command is ls -al or ls -la.
pwd - displays your current directory (short for "print working directory"). format: pwd
PS1= - ahh, a favorite of mine. This looks different from all the others because it's not actually a command, it's how you set a variable. All variables are set by typing [var name]=. All var names appear to be in full caps, and it is case sensitive. Anyway, when you type PS1='blah' (short for "prompt string 1" btw) it will set your prompt in the terminal to look like just "blah". Neat, eh? Don't worry, it's not permanent, it's safe to screw around with it. It'll forget as soon as you log out or close the terminal window. My favorite prompt is PS1='\w/ '. Note the space at the end before the closing '. That's because if you don't have a space at the end then the area where you type will end immediately after the prompt and it can look confusing. Anyway, \w means to show the current path, which I find very helpful. The / at the end is just to make sure that it displays in the prompt so it looks more clear. If you're in your home directory you'll notice that your path is "~/". This is because your home directory is refered to as ~. So if you have a folder in your home directory named "kill-bill-is-the-greatest-movie-ever" then you can type ~/kill-bill-is-the-greatest-movie-ever (don't forget to use tab for filename completion) to reference it. format: PS1='[whatever you want'

More on tabbed filename completion: Linux and Unix have been able to use spaces in names for about 30 years. Makes you wonder why Windows 3.1 required 8.3 length names 20 years after Unix, eh? Yeah, Microsoft is pretty retarded. Anyway, there's two ways you can do that. If you have a file named "file name.txt" and you want to cat it you can type cat "file name.txt", cat 'file name.txt', or cat file\ name.txt. The \ in Linux is almost always used to indicate special characters. If you want to reference a backslash (since I think you can actually make a filename with a backslash in it - Linux will allow almost any weird filename you can think of - e.g. "..." or ":" or all sorts of things that you can't do in Windows) then use \\ . However there's an easier way: use tabbed filename completion. To cat "file name.txt" just type cat file and hit tab for bash to complete it for you (using backslashes). If for some reason you want it to use quotations or single quotes, then do cat "file, or cat 'file and hit tab and will complete the line accordingly, quotes/single-quotes and all.

I feel like I'm forgetting something, but this is enough for now...

Other commands you should read about when you have the chance that would take too long for me to explain or are obvious enough: chmod (has to do with changing/modifying file permissions), passwd (if you're root you can run passwd [user name]).

Wow, you're awesome jerek! The information you've put into the last 2 replies is going to take me a while to digest, now i've just got to get on my home computer and play around w/ it to get a good feel for it. Thanks.

Oh, and two more helpful things to keep in mind: pressing Ctrl+c will cease the currently running program if you're running something in a terminal. So if you use the find command, but forget the -name or -iname part and it starts scrolling tons of garbage on your screen you probably don't want to watch it, and can just hit Ctrl+c to stop it and return to the command prompt. Also, pressing Ctrl+d at the command prompt will give the logout command which will close the current terminal window (not all terms or log you out of the system, just logs you out of that one window).

Alright, i tried it out in root, then i copied the output into open office and saved it as a .txt file so that i could bring it over to windows. But when i bring it over, it's displaying it as a bunch of gibberish(or any other technical term you'd like to use). Why won't word, word pad, or even notepad recognize the file type?

One very important thing about Linux: the extention has nothing to do with the file type in Linux. MS DOS and MS Windows are the only operating systems to make extensions relevant in that way. In all non-Windows systems extensions are only used as helpful indicators of what a file type is. So when you save it make sure that you are choosing to actually save it as a text file and not saving it as a Word document named something.txt or some other sort of mixup.

So you can access your Windows HD from Linux now okay? And is your Windows HD formatted with NTFS? If you're not sure if it's NTFS, just tell me which Windows you're running, cause the latest Windowses only use NTFS (unless you're crazy enough to purposely use an older and weaker file system type ).

First off, let me just say how happy i am, i am currently writing this from linux...i now have internet working in linux, yay!!

I am currently using WinXP, so i believe that falls under NTSF. I created the /mnt/c and i believe i am now able to access the Windows HD, but i don't know how to call up stuff from it. It's not really a big issue anymore cause all i wanted to do w/ it was to get files that i had d/l for linux just incase i couldn't get internet in linux, but now i do, so i don't need to access it. But it would still be nice to know how. I'm sure if i just play around w/ it some more i can figure it out, so that's what i'll do for a while now. I'm still trying to figure out how to add codecs to Xine, but i'm sure i'll understand it soon.

Thanks alot for the help you've given me jerek, and thank your instructor too.

So did dhclient eth0 work? Does your connection work permanently or do you have to run dhclient eth0 each time you restart? (not like Linux needs to restart that often )

apparently i've got to type in dhclient eth0 every time i reboot.

Try following the directions on this page. You only need to follow the instructions on the first page, since the ones on the second page are specific to my college and so wouldn't work for you at all.

A few things to note about that page. When he says "must add a file in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts" he doesn't give the actual filename you're supposed to use because the filename you're supposed to use is also written on the first line of the file you create ("ifcfg-eth0:0" - and yes, you actually use a ":". Linux can handle colons in filenames, unlike a certain inferior OS we all know ). So the total path to the file you create should appear as what is listed on the first line of that file. Then restart and see if you can connect to the net without using the dhclient command.

ALSO, before you save that file be sure to change all instances of 192.168.2.[#] to 192.168.1.[#]. That third number being a 2 is because these instructions were written for one of my Linux teacher's classes, so the instructions are a little different from what you should be doing.

What are your partitions set to? You can give me a list of this by typing "df" in a terminal and just copying and pasting the result here. And did you manually set the partitions, or did you have Mandrake do it for you?

I forgot to mention some stuff about cutting/copying/pasting you should know. Like Windows, you can usually copy things when in the GUI (graphical user interface) by selecting them, right-clicking and choosing Copy. Many (and probably most these days) parts of the OS should also support Windows's standard Ctrl+x to cut, Ctrl+c to copy, Ctrl+v to paste. But in a terminal these don't do that (particularly Ctrl+c which ceases the currently running program when in a terminal). In most terminal windows you can copy by selecting something with your mouse and right-clicking to choose copy, but not always. In some terminals you simply select the text, and once you have selected it the terminal immediately copies the text. And to paste, instead of Ctrl+v use Shift+Insert. The Shift+Insert command also works in Windows, and makes more sense, and is more comfortable to use, so I use it all the time now.

Holy crap Jerek, what are you writing? A fricken Novel? I was gonna try to catch up with this topic, since i need to know about linux but, holy shit man.

Well, it is a lot of stuff that's very helpful.

That all sounds great, but now i have another problem. When i tried to boot linux this morning, it brought me up in the command console, the gui i was using, gnome, wasn't loading for some reason. Is there a command i can use to load up a gui? The only thing i played w/ last night was getting gaim set-up, and i tried downloading macromedia flash for linux, but i couldn't get it to work.

The command to start X Windows (Gnome is a part of X Windows, remember. First X Windows loads, and then it loads your window manager of choice, which is Gnome right now, but all systems also come with KDE, another very popular one, and maybe some others. personally, I'm really starting to like Fluxbox) is either startx (if this just loads a black screen with a terminal in the corner then hit Ctrl+d in the terminal or type logout and then you should be back in the original command UI) or xinit. I think it's xinit.

Each time Linux boots at some point it'll say "Entering runlevel #" or "Executing Initialization #" or something. That # will be a number 3, 5, or in rare cases 4. I won't go in to detail on this yet, but basically it's the mode that your computer is starting in. 3 is usually (it depends on the distribution, some versions of Linux change these things around a little) about the same as 5, but with no graphical login. 5 Is a normal environment. The higher the number, the fancier the setup basically. Well, except 6, which means restart. I think 1 means power down... or maybe that was 0... Anyway, you get the idea.

i'll have to give it a try when i get back on my home computer (i'm at work right now).

A question about gaim: If i log into 2 seperate msn accounts, will it mix my contacts and add both lists to each account like it did w/ trillian? I'm trying to keep my work list on one e-mail address, and friends and family on another e-mail address.

No idea, I've never used Gaim, and I don't use MSN.

Ya, same here BK. I have to keep going back to his previous posts just to look up stuff that i want to use, almost like a text book on linux. But, helpful it surely is. Alot.

Oh i deffinately wasnt complainging, in fact, im going to bookmark this particular thread for when the time comes that i switch to linux, should be handy to have.

i didnt even read any of those posts, so if any said that they hate linex i agree... i HATE linex

Really? I've never even heard of "linex". What's so bad about it?