I'm moving - to a new linux distribution.

My troubles with Debian and support for my hardware, and the 'mount' issue gives me the idea, that I need a less troublesome distribution. Maybe a new kernel would do the trick, but I don't wanna spend hours trying to compile my own kernel.

I've read about:
MEPIS - seems very easy, has nice USB features, but has problems with community support.
UBUNTU - pretty new, looks very much like Debian, and seems easy to install.
and Gentoo - very much a 'command line' linux, which I don't like, being a 'newbie'.

I think I'll try the Ubuntu 'BreezyBadger' cutting edge technology <- as of October 2005

later...

You & me USB! - You & me

I'm starting to get the hang of it...but there are still issues that I cannot comprehend.
'mount' for one... How on earth, will the linux world ever get to a point, where they have the same amount of ease as windoze does? When it comes to 'drives' HDD/USBSticks/Zips whatever... 'mount' is your worst enemy. Mine at least!
Here is the story: I have an external harddisk, enclosed in a box with a USB2.0 connection. Obviously, I want it to communicate with my Linux! I plug it in and knowing that 'mount' is the key, I start Googling for 'howto mount usb hard disk'.
Great sources of knowledge came towards me, but none gave me the clue I needed. While struggling for hours, I started getting a little bit impatient, and started 'shouting' (inside). Finally I found some newsgroup answer, talking about 'fdisk /dev/sda' <- this little command will give you a menu, if there is something attached to /dev/sda (normally SCSI drives, that's another story) and pressing [p] will give you partition information. The clue it gave me, was that my External HDD has 2 partitions. This means, if you need partition 2, you'd have to tell it to mount on sda5 instead of sda1/2 or 3..... Nice! It never occured to me that I have two partitions, and why would I give a sheit!, just give my drive som sort of nice standard name like 'hdd1..10'
Well I had it working 2 seconds after my finding, and now I'm smiling again :)
Gave the 'KDE' chat client 'KoPete' a try, it works great! Now my friends are smiling too...

What the HELL!

Well, had to reinstall Debian. I couldn’t see any other way out of my misery.

I’d just bought a dead cheap DVD-burner. Installed it instead of my old DVD-Rom, and tried the ‘thing’ in Windoze, worked perfectly! Did some testing with a couple of movies, not illegal ones (don’t worry I have none) but some I did previously with my DV-cam and my kids. Worked as expected, Great! Now I just want to try this out on my Linux…

So, I ‘boot’ up my Debian…and suddenly it halt’s….waiting!.. Nothing…it’s stopped, try pressing [CTRL+Alt+Delete]..Nothing.. it just said something like ‘keyboard character whatever not supported’…bla bla bla, what the hell do I care! ‘The only thing I did was change a DVD-Rom drive for gods sake. Tell me I can get around this’ I was on my knees, crying!! well actually not, I just reinstalled the bugger.

Don’t mess with a windoze nerd, we’ll just reinstall!!!

I might end up being really glad I did. Learning a lot from it…I mean you learn a lot by doing wrong sometimes…

Hold it, where's my drives?

I knew one or two things about Linux and the filesystem it uses...It's not FAT!
like it's not too obvious how to get to the different drives you've placed on your system. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm a windoze nerd (still is, has'nt convinced me just yet), that means, I have a couple of NTFS drives around somewhere. They are 'floating' around when it comes to Linux, because they are 'persona non grata' if you don't do nothing, to get them onboard.
Thats where 'mount' comes in handy, and "what the hell is mount?" you ask! A little tricky for me to explain, let's just say "it's a way to give you access, to your drives'.
But the tricky part, is to give the right person the rights to 'read-access' to your NTFS drive, never 'write'(it's not supported yet I hear). The easier way is to put this 'mounting' into the file that handles all mounting at startup. It's called 'fstab' and resides under the folder '/etc'. To mount your NTFS partitioned drive you would do something like (this gets a little technical I know...)
/dev/hda1 /media/xp ntfs ro,umask=000 0 0
Will I try to explain that? No! ...I will just tell you that the tricky part is where it says 'umask=000'(thats 3 zeros) and it means, give everybody readOnly rights to this drive... Enough of that technical stuff, damn I'm getting 'nerdy' again...

Oh well....

..a little too late.

A good friend told me(a little too late) that Debian actually has a very nice way of keeping up-to-date. It's called 'apt'(Advanced Packaging Tool), this sounds way too xtra-terrestrial for me.
I found 'Synaptic' which is actually part of my distribution, and that would, I hoped, guide me to 'the safe haven' . But alas, another tool that gives you endless lists of unpronounceable names of programs/tools/utilities or what have we... I browsed, I searched ...and finally! I found a name I recognized! 'Mozilla Firefox', yiphee!! ....but.... a little too late, is a little too late.
Yesterday, I was crawling with Mozilla, I thought to myself, better find my normal browser, and install that. I did! I downloaded a Linux version of Firefox and with no fuzz at all, it worked like a charm... the next day my good friend told me of the terrific way Debian keeps itself all shiny and happy, using 'apt'. Great work guys!!!

Later....

- Wish these Blogs would be able to go upside down instead...

Good lord, it's VI...

Did I mention VI? I think I did... But did you get it? - neither did I, when first introduced to this 'headache' of an editor.

There are 'nerds' out there saluting this editor, I'm definitely not one of them :( allthough I would like to be.... knowing this editor well, does give you a feeling of being part of some secret society... one of the 'dawgs'. But you need a loot of experience! ...and it's essential when fumbling around with Linux. That hit me, the first time I had to edit a config file, on my new Debian linux.

It was'nt my first time using VI, I'm happy to say! I was introduced by 2 former colleagues of mine, that used it primarily to edit Java source code ...and they had a lot to say, when it came to what programs you could install, on your work PC. I figured...better do what these guys say, or I'll have a rough time(meanwhile I did some research on other editors).
But you have alternatives to VI. I found JEdit which is a good IDE(Integrated Development Environment) and used it when they were not looking ;) no! not really... but they kept teasing me... resulting in a short period, where I tried to learn the 'VI-way'.

That short period saved me, when I had to edit that linux config file ...and the vi Cheat Sheet.

First off..

You want high resolution, when using your 17" monitor, at least 1024x768, and not the standard "looser" 800x600.
Where to start?

I tried to "Google" the question "debian linux howto" and got a list of what claimed to be the knowledge I wanted (it's always like that with Google). Searching the list, I found the Single list of howto's and thats what I want, Yeah!.... A *single* page nothing less, nothing more!
...and my problems started. Where do I go from here? what am I actually looking for? 'Monitor', 'gui', 'video', 'graphics' 'hardware' WHAAT!?

Ahemm, I feel that I need to tell you that I have some knowledge of the linux world, allthough I'm a Windoze nerd. That's why I knew to look for X windows.

I found something that looked like the thing I was looking for. The complete HOWTO XWindow guide, and that gave me an idea of what to do..

Found the file "/etc/X11/XF86Config" and with my VI skills, managed to edit the line where it states both "800x600" and "640x480", insert'd "1024x768" in front, and did a restart, woohoo!
It worked...

An adventure has begun...

I was wondering why my Windoze XP started giving me problems, when I found out... It's still the trial version I'm using. In the beginning of XP, they gave it away with a 60 day trial period. And some Crackers found out how to remove the annoying 'reminder' after the 60 day period. I just installed that... It's still a crack you say? nooo! it's just hacking... Anyways, the little trick M$ use on windozeUpdate to check for validity of your XP, just had me.
I'm going to switch OS.. Yes! and Linux just happened to be at the right spot this day... Grabbed a copy off some server, burned a CD (the one that said network install), and the rest is a piece of .....

Well not really, it's a bloody miracle I'm up and running. The work I had to put into this, is horrifying, I'll tell you the whole story later ... but for now, I'm still sure this is the way I want to go, because MickeySoft will throw more of that 'validity-check' at you once their new 'Vista' OS hits the market, and that gives me the creeps!

Later..