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Linux Thread.
Jasconius
sword criminalmad onlineRegistered User regular
sword criminalmad onlineRegistered User regular
Handy Commands and Shortcuts
Keep in mind that these are only the most basic forms of each command, and that they all have dozens of switches and caveats that enable you to do awesome things with them.
FILE MANIPULATION:
cd <directory> : change current directory to <directory>
ls : list directory contents
ls -a : list directory contents including hidden files
ls -l : list directory contents in detailed list format
mkdir <dirname> : make subdirectory <dirname> (can also specify full directory e.g. mkdir /home/thesquid/giantAngryBear)
rmdir <dirname> : deletes empty subdirectory <dirname>
cp <file> <dest> : copy <file> to <dest>
cp -r <directory> <dest> : copy <directory> and everything inside it to location <dest>
mv <file> <dest> : moves <file> to <dest>
rm <file> : removes (deletes) <file>
rm -r <directory> : removes (deletes) <directory> and everything inside it
chown <user> <file> : change user ownership of <file> to <user>
chgrp <group> <file> : change group ownership of <file> to <group>
chmod XXX <file> : change permissions of <file> to octal number XXX (probably best to 'man' this one)
touch : change file timestamp (and will create an empty file if it doesn't exist)
HANDY TOOLS:
man : gives the manual page on any command including all of these ones (lol man mount)
man -k <string> : gives a list of all man pages with <string> in the title or short description
less : an extremely simple viewer of plaintext files, has regex searching and up/down movement
more : an even simpler viewer than less (now you get the less is more than more gag in bash)
view : a read-only version of vim, so has all the vim commands, but you can't edit the file
vim / emacs / pico / vi / nano : complex text editors that support enormously complicated yet awesome shortcuts, syntax colouring, the whole shebang
SYSTEM STUFF: (you will probably need to be root to take advantage of these)
top : display Linux tasks (equiv. to Task Manager) htop is a widely preferred and more interactive alternative
ifconfig : for configuring network interfaces (setting ip address, activating and deactivating network cards)
iwconfig : for configuring wireless network interfaces
iwlist : getting more info from a wireless network interface (especially seeing wireless networks in range)
route : show / manipulate the IP routing table
dhclient : DHCP client
lshw : list hardware
lspci : list all PCI devices
lsmod : list modules in Linux kernel
modprobe : add / remove <module> from Linux kernel
mount : mount a file system
umount : unmount a file system
USEFUL THINGOES:
wpa_supplicant : for connecting to WPA networks. Requires several reads of the man page, editing of a configuration file by looking at several example files for clarity, and possibly carving arcane symbols into your face.
tar : for making tarballs of a directory / several files
gzip : for compressing said tarball using *.gz
gunzip : for uncompressing a gzipped file
bzip2 : for compressing said tarball using *.bz2
bunzip : for uncompressing a bzipped file
tar xvfz <file> : for uncompressing a *.tar.gz file
tar xvjf <file> : uncormpressing a *tar.bz2 file
date : printing the date and time
ping : to ping
pwd : print out current directory name
killall <process> : kills all processes of name <process>
ps -aux : prints a snapshot of all current running processes
kill <jobid> : kills process of job id <jobid>. <jobid> can be found with ps -aux or top
which : locates a command
Useful techniques:
* Searching for a file based on file name:
e.g. I want to find all the files in the current directory and any subdirectories that start with Photo and end in jpg, such as Photo322.jpg.
Command: find . -iname "Photo*.jpg"
English translation: find, starting in the the current directory (the "." argument), any files that match the name "Photo*.jpg" in a case insensitive fashion (the "-iname") argument.
Notes: It is very important if you are passing wildcards to find that you escape the wildcards by using \ or ". If you do not, then the shell will expand the wildcards on the command line and your command will then be the equivalent of:
find . -iname* Doing the same operation on a bunch of files e.g. I want to gzip up each text file in the current directory into their own separate archive Command: for eachFile in *.txt; do gzip "$eachFile"; done English translation: Take the list of files that are returned by *.txt. Go through each of those filenames in the list one by and one, and each time 1.) Assign the current filename to the variable called "eachFile". This can be accessed by $eachFile. 2.) Execute the command between "do" and "done". In this example, it is gzip "$eachFile". Notes: "$eachFile" is enclosed in quotation marks so that any filenames with spaces get passed correctly to gzip. The semi-colons tell the shell that a command is done and to treat anything after the semi-colon as a new command. If you wanted to, you could have the loop do more than one command on a single line, like so: for eachFile in *.txt; do gzip "$eachFile"; mv "$eachFile".gz .. ; done Any more complexity, and you're probably at the stage where you should be writing a script instead of trying to fit it into one line. * Displaying the contents of files/simple manipulation of standard input head [filename] tail [filename] cat [filename] Head will show, by default, the first 10 lines of a file, or if no filename is provided, then standard input. Tail will show, by default, the last 10 lines of a file, or if no filename is provided, then standard input. Useful for looking at log files. cat will dump the entire contents of a file to standard output (typically the screen, but often not). If no filename is provided, then it will basically echo standard input to standard output. This is useful in creating simple files. e.g. I want to create a file called "hello.txt" containing the line "This is a test" cat > hello.txt This is a test Ctrl-D (Ctrl-D signals end-of-file). To *append* something to an existing file: cat >> hello.txt This will be the second line of the file Ctrl-D Note the >>! If you just use >, you will overwrite the file, instead of appending. * Displaying something to screen echo Hello world! The echo command will echo whatever arguments is passed to it back to the standard output. Typically used in scripts to show status reports. Chaining it all together! Let's list the first ten lines of every text file in the current directory and pretty it up with a header. for eachFile in *.txt; do echo "*** Ten lines of $eachFile ***"; head "$eachFile"; done Oh crud, it went by too fast to see it! Hang on - we know that we can use 'less' to view text files for eachFile in *.txt; do echo "*** Ten lines of $eachFile ***"; head "$eachFile"; done | less Tada! (push 'q' to quit from less, by the way). Replace with appropriate options for those times you want to sort mp3 files, or photos, or whatever.
this is a discord of mostly PA people interested in fighting games: https://discord.gg/DZWa97d5rz
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
Jasconius on
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Look at Pydev for Eclipse. And while it didn't make it in time to be shipped with Ganymede (the next release of Eclipse), there is a plugin for Python in development that will be an official Eclipse project (as part of the DLTK).
Two other IDEs that I can think of are Eric and SPE (Stani's Python Editor).
Eclipse is an awesome IDE with plugins, although with C++ you might want to also consider Code::Blocks.
Of course, real men use vim, autoconf and automake.
Also what distro of Linux are you going with?
For some reason after installing Nvidia drivers the terminal would stop launching.
So on Monday I will put it on my laptop which doesn't really need Nvidia drivers, and return to my sandbox.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
Oh, also, it's worth noting that you're not stuck with GIMP; Photoshop runs fine in Wine.
Secondly, why Pascal over Python? It's a teaching language that has long since passed its use-by date. Python is popular for a reason.
Thats not an accurate comparison at all. Firefoxs UI is virtually identical to IE. OpenOffice is pretty similar to earlier versions of Office. GIMPs UI is completely different to Photoshop, and, in fact, sucks.
One uses GNOME, the other uses KDE. That also means that the default applications installed will be based on GTK+ or Qt, depending on which one you choose.
If you decide to switch you could always install the appropriate desktop package:
I wasn't whining, I didn't use the word "stuck" with negative connotations. I use GIMP as my primary image editor myself. However, if he does professional graphics work, there's a high chance that he already owns and knows how to use Photoshop and thus that would be more productive for him. Additionally, GIMP was missing CMYK support (or at least support that didn't require a 3rd party plugin and was as nice as what Photoshop has) last time I checked, which can be a big deal for some kinds of professional design work.
Finally, The GIMP doesn't have a great interface. It's not horribly awful, but it could be a lot better. The team behind GIMP was working on a redesign of sorts last time I checked. They've got a GUI brainstorming blog, which is actually quite interesting if you like UI design.
Actually when I said graphics/media I work I meant on the programming side of things, dynamic image generation, manipulation, streaming video, etc.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
Whats the difference from GNOME and KDE? Are applications limited between them?
The difference is that KDE is better. :P
GNOME uses the GTK+ library to build its applications on, while KDE uses the Qt library. They also have differing design philosophies, with GNOME looking to limit the amount of options and make things as simple as possible, while KDE has traditionally strived to give a plethora of options. That's changed a bit with KDE4, which is really freakin' exciting, but is still a fair comment when comparing it to GNOME.
I think the deciding factor is native applications. At least, it was for me. But you can run GTK+ apps in KDE and vice versa with Qt apps and GNOME, so if you really like Amarok but want to use GNOME, you can.
KDE = Windows? Absolutely EVERYTHING is configurable via the GUI, much more 'complex'.
XFCE = BeOS/OS X? Very lightweight GUI, great for older systems or if you just use X to run multiple BASH windows.
Those are the main three, but many more are available.
As far as IDE's, the only IDE I ever use is emacs.
An addendum to that is that some applications may use libraries provided by a desktop environment in addition to whatever toolkit (Qt/GTK+) is used. It's usually something minor that the end user doesn't need to worry about, but there may be certain amenities that a developer wants to take advantage of that may use it. A couple of examples include gconf, which is sort of like an XML-based registry (you can edit the configuration with a text editor if you like) that is part of GNOME, and the KDE file dialog that is like the Qt file dialog but has a section that includes folder bookmarks (so you're only one click away from your porn).
Nothing that the user has to worry about, because if a KDE user installed a GTK+ application that uses a little piece of GNOME the package manager will download and install it for you.
I've tried both Ubuntu and Fedora, but while the wireless network is detected, when I submit my WEP key it always fails to connect.
If I walk my laptop over the router and plug it in via CAT5 then it works fine.
Unacceptable.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
GNOME is simplistic and the Ubuntu default. The GUI handles what 99% of regular users would need (most likely including yourself, yes you, Mr. Power User) but its a bit ugly and doesn't have that perfect console->GUI translation, which is why Linux purists hate it. Setting religion aside, though, it's quite adequate.
XFCE is like a lightweight version of GNOME. There's a slightly higher chance you might need the terminal, and some panel and desktop options missing that you might wish were there for conveniences sake, but otherwise the differences are negligible and XFCE provides an awesome CPU and memory boost.
GNOME apps work perfectly on KDE and XFCE and vice versa. It's a matter of libraries. The only difference is when you load up a KDE app on GNOME and vice versa it goes to the trouble of loading up all the KDE libs into memory, thus creating a slight boot up pause and an overall increase in memory usage, but when all that's done there's no performance decrease at all. There is a noticeable UI inconsistency though, although barring severe OCD I think we can all live with that.
Of course, there's e17 if you're a nutjob, which is awesome in its own special way. I keep trying it and regretting it later, mostly because it's almost impossible to use without ending up loading all the memory and CPU intensive GNOME/KDE libraries anyway, thus defeating the purpose of e17.
Die in a hole you emacs freak. Vim forevaaaaaa!!!!11
Some wireless cards aren't very nice with Linux. Since it detects the network, I suspect you're fine.
However, are you sure it's WEP and not WPA? And if you find out which type of key it is, are you sure you have it correctly set up on the Linux side as the appropriate key type?
Yeah, I went there.
Specs: AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (not X2), 1GB DDR, Nvida Fx5200 (Ive got a console for gaming).
What I want do with that machine: browse el web, watch movies (WMV,AVI,MP4), encode movies (Handbrake CLI hopefully), torrenting, remotely access it (RDP-esque, VNC?)... and that's about it right now.
Other random questions:
My main storage drive in the machine is an NTFS formatted drive, so how is NTFS support in Linux these days? I know that reading hasn't been a problem for quite a while now, but what about writing to NTFS? Is that stable yet?
Is there any notable/noticeable performance difference between KDE & GNOME?
I know it's not very tough to get the machine to boot into a console-mode instead of a desktop/gui-mode, but do most distros support what I think are reffered to as frame buffered consoles? For instance: Gentoo I know will do the frame buffered console with a really nice resolution and even a little picture of Tux at the top. Can/will K/ubuntu do this?
I'll probably have more questions. It's been a while since I've looked at *nix for more than just a storage server... thanks a bunch for any help guys!
It comes default with Firefox 3, Totem for movies (it's astoundingly easy to download the appropriate codecs for it, or you can just download VLC or MPlayer and bypass all that), don't know about encoding movies, for torrenting it comes with Transmission, which isn't too great, but you can install Azureus on it, and as for remote-access, well, for simple console stuff there's ssh and scp, for VNC type stuff Ubuntu comes default with Vinagre.
And NTFS pretty much works fine nowadays. They've cracked it. Wouldn't use it for business, but I've never had a problem shuttling movies, music and ISOs back and forth between my Windows and Linux partitions (back in the day when I bothered with Win)
KDE is supposed to be a bit more CPU and memory intensive than GNOME, but not by too much. They're still the two big heavy hitters in Linux window management. Of course, once Compiz/Beryl effects are on their differences become somewhat moot in comparison.
And of course you can get frame buffers working with Ubuntu. It's all Linux at the end of the day. Perhaps it has a different installation method, but at the end of the day, you can get a console frame buffer such as uvesafb working on any distro at all.
The main difference is in philosophy regarding advanced features. GNOME goes by "if you know how to use it, you'll know where to find it". This is analogous to Firefox, where the basics are in the preferences, but you can also use about:config for specific settings. KDE tends to expose everything through the main GUI, sometimes with separate preference dialogs depending on what you're changing.
If you're coming from Windows, KDE will feel more familiar. If you're from OS X, GNOME probably will.
This being said, I prefer Gnome. KDE just has so many stupid design decisions. They don't even have decent Human Interface Guidelines like Gnome, Windows, OS X, etc.
The images Janin posted pretty much sum it up. If there's something you want to change in KDE, you can. Period. The option is probably buried in a huge, scrolling, multi-paned control panel someplace, but it's there. My issue with it is that I hate the defaults, and can't be bothered to mess with it until it behaves like Gnome.
XFCE and Gnome really aren't anywhere close to each other, aside from using the GTK+ toolkit.
GTK+ has a really nifty feature where you can just start typing in the file manager, and a little box will appear in the lower right-hand corner of the window showing what you typed as it jumps around selecting the file name you're typing. Windows, OS X, and QT (KDE) do almost the exact same thing, but without the little box. It sounds stupid, but the little box feature is pretty much the best thing ever, and I'm not switching to KDE until they have it implanted.
Gnome's file manager can access SAMBA, FTP, WebDAV, and a bunch of other networked filesystem type things, while XFCE's file manager can pretty much only access them if you've done it the hard way and set it all up through the command line.
XFCE's window manager is a lot more flexible and supports things like rolling up windows and dragging windows between desktops. Gnome has a better panel that supports reorganizing windows in the tray.
Gnome is one of the easiest desktops to theme. You download a theme package, then drag and drop it onto the appearance control pane to install it. In XFCE, you have to manually extract the theme, then copy it's folder to "~/.themes"
Also, you can't edit the automatically generated system menus in XFCE, but you can in Gnome. It's weird.
Just install them all. There's nothing preventing you from just changing sessions, and you can uninstall
I can't help you without knowing the wireless chipset (make and model) of your laptop.
For years I ran Gnome with XFWM replacing Metacity (which is a piece of shit) for this very reason. I still do it on the computer that's not good enough for Compiz.
Linux is wonderfully configurable.
Anyway, I found a nice, albeit unwieldy, tutorial on making a USB key into an Ubuntu installer, so I'm pretty sure I can get my system all squared away.
Now I'm thinking that I'd also like to use the thing as a diagnostic tool at work. One obvious thing would be to use ClamAV to scan removable media, since we occasionally have users who need to backup data from a virus ridden machine and this would allow me to scrub the files they back up. Any other neat uses? I'm also thinking I might keep an Ubuntu boot CD on hand to virus scan hosed windows boxes.
Speaking from experience, you won't really that much unless you are forced to use Linux for every day things. Then you will have to figure out how to configure things, maintain them, and keep them stable so that you can go about your daily business. I dual booted ages ago Windows and RedHat 7.3, and I didn't learn a damn thing until I jumped over to Gentoo and Debian. When I was forced to do things by hand.
It sucked at the time, because I didn't know hardly anything at all. But the upside is that I don't need a GUI anymore to do all the things I do daily. Now, I do use KDE at the moment for convenience's sake, and also because amarok is awesome, but if X suddenly dies I can get by just fine on the terminal.
Also, the first thing you should do is learn the UNIX file structure. Figure out what the hell is in /, /bin, /src, /etc and all that - I still have to go and look from time to time because I never use the terminal anymore for everything. But once you know how the file structure works, things will become infinitely easier.
Get's dem lernin's in.
That's an excellent link. Thanks for posting that.
OP, read that link.
important folders that did not get mentioned there:
/boot - your kernel goes here, as do the files that contain bootloader options. Don't screw with this unless you know what you're doing.
/media (formerly /mnt) - where essentially all drives that aren't your main filesystem get placed: secondary hard drives, the CD drive, etc. For example, "ls /media/cdrom0" lists off the contents of whatever CD is in your first CD drive (assuming it is a data CD and that it has been mounted, but pretty much all Linux distros mount CDs automatically now as they are inserted).
/opt - essentially the same as /usr/local, but nothing installs here by default. In practice, a place to install programs when you don't have a package for them to be installed the "right" way.
/root - home folder for the root user. For whatever reason it is traditionally not in /home/root. I have no idea why; I'm sure it made sense at some point.
I can safely answer this because of an odd malfunction I'm currently experiencing with fstab - it's there so that if your /home folder is mounted on another partition, and said partition shits itself, the system can take it, and you can still properly log in, and root will still have a complete home folder with any emergency tools that root might like to keep around in that folder for whatever reason.
If it weren't that way, the root home folder would be some kind of exception to how things get mounted in Unix, which would be an untidy clusterfuck.
And you were right to. Pico gangstas 4 lyfe.
I've been using Ubuntu at work instead of my normal Mac OS X platform. Ubuntu embodies the same ease of use, but for Linux. Really impressed with Hardy Heron, having not used Linux for years. Things have come on a long way.