Ubuntu: An Excellent Beginners Distro

Originally posted by Deadly Ferret
Having done that, would 'apt-get uninstall scrot' be a valid command, or would one go about uninstallation in a different manner? :)

I like the idea of being able to install or uninstall with such a simple command.


PS: Did anyone else think, when seeing the name: Ubuntu, Ubuntu, they drink it in the Congo? :D
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Almost, it's

apt-get remove scrot

But like I said Synaptic is the GUI frontend for it which is perfect for beginners. Heres me upgrading all the packages on my system to the latest versions (equvielent to "emerge world" for us gentoo users). You first open up Synaptic and click "Mark All Upgrades" I then chose the "smart" method. At the bottom of synaptic it give a little summary like so and so number of packages to install / upgrade. To test I also decided to remove all the gnome games (thus the "2 to remove"). When you click "Apply" to downloads all the packages that need upgrading automatically (The screenshot went a bit funny there, I think it was because of the drag down menu I used to take the screen shot).

http://www.selman.demon.co.uk/linux/screenshots/ubuntu-update-download.png

once downloaded it installs it

http://www.selman.demon.co.uk/linux/screenshots/ubuntu-update-success.png

Note that I'm even updating the kernel here and Ubuntu even installs it and updates your bootloader for you ... however I haven't yet rebooted to see if it actually has done it properly ;p
 
Originally posted by dirtydog
Oh another question! Ubuntu didn't prompt me for a root password during installation, so how do I log in as root?
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Actually that bit threw me as well, fortunately it's in the ubuntu faq. You just need to set the root password by typing
Code: 
sudo passwd root
I would have thought there should be a not somewhere during or after the install but hey :p
 
Originally posted by Mpemba Effect
Actually that bit threw me as well, fortunately it's in the ubuntu faq. You just need to set the root password by typing
Code: 
sudo passwd root
I would have thought there should be a not somewhere during or after the install but hey :p
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I've created a root password but it won't let me login as root from the login screen? It says the Administrator cannot login from this screen.

It would be helpful as I can't edit the config file to change my monitor frequencies otherwise :/

I found the specs for my monitor on the web, 30-72 and 50-130 which will presumably do the trick.
 
Update: I just chose 'run as different user' from the system tools menu and ran gedit as root, edited the file and restarted X with ctrl-alt-backspace.. the refresh was put to 85Hz automatically, hurrah ;):D
 
Originally posted by dirtydog
Update: I just chose 'run as different user' from the system tools menu and ran gedit as root, edited the file and restarted X with ctrl-alt-backspace.. the refresh was put to 85Hz automatically, hurrah ;):D
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Good job mate. I see you figured it out all by yourself :) I've rebooted and yup the kernel successfully updated

ubuntu-kernel-update.png


Although it's only a very minor update, a first I thought it didn't update since the version numbers were the same but then I noticed the dates were different :)
 
Originally posted by Mpemba Effect
Good job mate. I see you figured it out all by yourself :)
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Yeah I surprised myself too ;)

refreshrate.png


I've mounted the Windows partition that I wanted to mount (the one with my MP3s on) but it unhelpfully won't let me access it except from the console when I'm in root mode. And of course I can't login as root :| I wonder what the reason for this is.

rootlogin.jpg


I guess it's a case of working out how to change folder permissions from the command line then.

This could all be a bit easier, all I wanna do is look in a folder :eek:
 
Personally I just use the user account and use "sudo" whenever I need to do something as root. What you want to do is add the mp3 partition to your fstab with the user / users and umask flags so that normal users can mount / umount it. You should then be able to access it from your normal user account. If you really must have root access on the login screen go to

Computer > System Configuration > Login Screen Setup > Security

and tick "Allow root to log in with GDM".

edit: a bit like this
 
Last edited:
1) Disable spatial nautilus is "gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser true" then log out of X and log in again. It's an upstream issue, really, although the package maintainers could disable it by default.

2) The Debian Microsoft TrueType fonts package -- which includes Arial, Times New Roman, and Verdana -- is called "msttcorefonts". It contains no fonts itself but rather a script to download them from mirrors using wget (to avoid licensing issues, I guess).

3) Generally, running X as root is a bad idea altogether. If you must run an X program as root use sux, kdesu, or gksu.

Wow, from the response here, I'm definitely going to be recommending Ubuntu to new Linux users.
 
Originally posted by ninja
Wow, from the response here, I'm definitely going to be recommending Ubuntu to new Linux users.
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Just installed no problems. Definately better than RH9.0. It even recognises my wifi card. Can't get it to work at the moment, however at least it knows what the hell it is :p

Going to try and install RealVNC now.

Wish me luck :D

Dunc
 
no i didnt :(

but am downloading the iso again from different mirror, 3 mins left thanks to 2mb adsl :cool:

will let you know what happening
 
Hmmmm, I tried this today and i wasn't too impressed.

Now probably a lot of the problems are that I've used Gentoo for a couple of months now and everything in Gentoo seems to be done a different way to other distros, like for example the network settings not being at "/etc/init.d/net". Just little things like that at first. Also I'm not a fan of Gnome, I used it ages ago on Redhat 7 and although it's improved dramatically since then it just doesn't feel right after using Fluxbox, was pretty nippy though.

Perhaps in hindsight I should have tested it on a desktop system rather than a Thinkpad, but it failed to configure either wireless network card in the machine (both of which Knoppix picked up) and there was no ACPI functions at all. I'm now installing Gentoo on the lappy instead as if I have to go through a bunch of hassles to get a distro working right it may as well be one I already know :p

On a positive note though, the install was very quick and painless, it picked up all the hardware including a CF card reader plugged into a PCMCIA slot (except the wireless cards) with no problems, Gnome felt nice and fast (especially compared to the previous XP install) and I wa pleased to see it didn't install 7 applications which all do the same thing like Mandrake does. I'd recommend it to someone who has already used Linux a little bit, but perhaps not to a total beginner.

7/10
 
hi i'm still got the same error as above with new iso from different mirror

i never had problem with mandrake, fedora suse 9.1 and few others on vmware before

i give up :(

edit: ok :o before i give up, how to check the iso with md5sum? cheers
 
Originally posted by wesley
hi i'm still got the same error as above with new iso from different mirror

i never had problem with mandrake, fedora suse 9.1 and few others on vmware before

i give up :(

edit: ok :o before i give up, how to check the iso with md5sum? cheers
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what's the error message in /var/log/messages - or in virtual console 3 for that matter?
 
Originally posted by FishFluff
Hmmmm, I tried this today and i wasn't too impressed.

Now probably a lot of the problems are that I've used Gentoo for a couple of months now and everything in Gentoo seems to be done a different way to other distros, like for example the network settings not being at "/etc/init.d/net". Just little things like that at first. Also I'm not a fan of Gnome, I used it ages ago on Redhat 7 and although it's improved dramatically since then it just doesn't feel right after using Fluxbox, was pretty nippy though.

Perhaps in hindsight I should have tested it on a desktop system rather than a Thinkpad, but it failed to configure either wireless network card in the machine (both of which Knoppix picked up) and there was no ACPI functions at all. I'm now installing Gentoo on the lappy instead as if I have to go through a bunch of hassles to get a distro working right it may as well be one I already know :p

On a positive note though, the install was very quick and painless, it picked up all the hardware including a CF card reader plugged into a PCMCIA slot (except the wireless cards) with no problems, Gnome felt nice and fast (especially compared to the previous XP install) and I wa pleased to see it didn't install 7 applications which all do the same thing like Mandrake does. I'd recommend it to someone who has already used Linux a little bit, but perhaps not to a total beginner.

7/10
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I dunno, I quite like it and I've used only gentoo with fluxbox / pekwm / pure shell for the past 2.5 years and freebsd with fluxbox / shell before that. I've installed RH9.0 on a virtual machine sometime back but it got removed quite promptly. Don't get me wrong I'm not going to convert from my beloved Gentoo but I really think it's a superb distro, perfect for the beginner. I'm just amazed on how fast responsive gnome feels, I know my machine is a 3.5G P4 but this is installed on a virtual machine with only 225MB of RAM given to it. So It might not autoconfigure some of the more exotic hardware like your thinkpad but what distro does? :) I really can't fault it especially on how new this distro is, given time to mature it can see it being very successful.
 
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