Hi
Just dropping a hello in here. My name is Sue and I'm trying to convert from windows to Linux (why does it sound like AA meeting when you start with my name is ....) Anyway, have installed Cygwin on an NT machine for SSH fun and games and looking to replace the current server type unit here with a Linux one in the next round of upgrades.
I'm officially IT manager of a small (um, two people including me) company, learning as I go.
Anyhoos, I work in Ipswich, live in Kesgrave..
Will be lurking about reading your comments and might chip in with a few dumb questions here and there.
Sue www.datadesign.co.uk www.textravaganza.com
On Fri, May 14, 2004 at 09:46:41AM +0100, Sue Green wrote:
Hi
Just dropping a hello in here. My name is Sue and I'm trying to convert from windows to Linux (why does it sound like AA meeting when you start with my name is ....) Anyway, have installed Cygwin on an NT machine for SSH fun and games and looking to replace the current server type unit here with a Linux one in the next round of upgrades.
Welcome to the list Sue.
I'm officially IT manager of a small (um, two people including me) company, learning as I go.
Anyhoos, I work in Ipswich, live in Kesgrave..
Will be lurking about reading your comments and might chip in with a few dumb questions here and there.
The only dumb question is an unasked question :)
On Fri, May 14, 2004 at 09:46:41AM +0100, Sue Green wrote:
Hi
Just dropping a hello in here. My name is Sue and I'm trying to convert from windows to Linux (why does it sound like AA meeting when you start with my name is ....) Anyway, have installed Cygwin on an NT machine for SSH fun and games and looking to replace the current server type unit here with a Linux one in the next round of upgrades.
I'm officially IT manager of a small (um, two people including me) company, learning as I go.
Anyhoos, I work in Ipswich, live in Kesgrave..
Welcome, you sound as if you're in a similar situation to me.
I run a small Ltd. company, I used to be a (computer) contractor but just recently went permie. However I still run the company as my wife has started increasing the amount of freelance consultancy (training and youth work) that she does and doing it through a Ltd. company helps get local authorities in particular to take you seriously. I have also done a bit of 68000 assembler programming through the company recently.
Anway we have a small network at home, desktop machines run win2k but there's a 'server' that runs slackware 9.1. I use cygwin/X on my desktop machine to access the Linux machine and, in fact, do most of my computing on the Linux machine with its xfce desktop displayed on the win2k machine. I'm very impressed with cygwin/X, it's very close to being perfect (i.e. totally transparent) when running the Linux xfce desktop on my win2k machine, mouse clicks and keyboard work exactly as they should which is more than can be said with some commercial X servers. I can even cut and paste between the Linux desktop and windows without going via any menus.
I too use ssh extensively, I have a couple of shell login accounts, one on the machine where my company's web site is hosted. I ssh into there from home and work to read mail (it's a Linux system and I use mutt). I have also just started getting clever and use ssh to tunnel from my work machine in order to send mail and run fetchmail.
We're in Newbourne, just a bit further out of Ipswich in the same direction.
At last Thursday's Norwich meet I was nudged into trying Debian. I dunno why I hadn't done it earlier - too many other things to think about maybe. Partly, I'd been put off by the fact so many Debian users are experts and few seem to like GUIs. Anyway, my SuSE 9.0 is now behind the wave; I wanted a 2.6 kernel and KDE3.2, so rather than pay the cash to upgrade it seemed worth a go.
So I downloaded the Sarge netinst CD image and fired it up (on a spare machine of course). I have to say the installer is just about the easiest I've ever experienced (other than on Macs), which came as a surprise considering how Debian is always touted as the geek's distro. After a couple of tries - finger trouble etc - I got to feel the default package set was a little too rich for my taste. I don't want Gnome, for example. So I tried again, this time requesting that no additional packages be installed. This left me with a minimal installation, so I asked apt to find me KDE, figuring that would probably suck in everything it depends on. Almost right, but I still had to get the X system as well. After running xf86config and another couple of false starts I had KDE2 running smoothly. That's a day and a half, and not even full-time at that. So far, the only (slightly) adverse comments I have are:
1. In the standard installation it appears to be impossible to get into KDE as root. The login page simply refuses to do it. This seems excessively paranoid to me.
2. I have yet to see the equivalent of YAST for overall system configuration. Maybe the bits of it are squirrelled away in the new KDE, which I haven't fully explored. Is there a separate GUI-based system configurator?
3. When running xf86config it suggested my mouse driver is most likely to be /dev/mouse. Fine, except that driver doesn't exist. I expect it's only a symbolic link but nothing told me what to point it at. After some scratching I tried /dev/psaux and all was well.
So, I guess you can say 'another convert'. Now I need to load it up with everything I can think of, run it for a week or two then hopefully take the plunge and do my main PC.
Finally, as I type this I've been installing OpenOffice, but it's just crapped out, warning "setting locale failed" and asking me to check my locale settings. How do I do that?
-- GT
- In the standard installation it appears to be impossible to get into KDE
as root. The login page simply refuses to do it. This seems excessively paranoid to me.
This setup is also the default on Mandrake 10, which is also KDE 3.2. There's a way to get around it - on the relevant KDE config page, there's a button at the bottom for 'administrator mode', which prompts for the root password and then gives you the option of deselecting root as a hidden login option.
On Saturday 15 May 2004 5:42 pm, Graham Trott wrote:
This left me with a minimal installation, so I asked apt to find me KDE, figuring that would probably suck in everything it depends on. Almost right, but I still had to get the X system as well. After running xf86config and another couple of false starts I had KDE2 running smoothly. That's a day and a half, and not even full-time at that.
Only a day and a half to get X and KDE running? And you still didn't have the locale set or Open Office installed? Good thing it wasn't a difficult install!
I have to say the installer is just about the easiest I've ever experienced (other than on Macs), which came as a surprise considering how Debian is always touted as the geek's distro.
Like knowing how and where to set the locale, for example :-)
For comparison, most mandrake installs take about 20 mins including partitioning, installing all the above plus other stuff and configuring the network connection. Plus the time you leave it to read stuff off the DVD/CDs of course so maybe an hour and a half.
Which usually gives you a nice usable shiny system straight out of the box - but maybe that's no fun :-)
Syd
On Saturday 15 May 2004 20:28, Syd Hancock wrote:
Only a day and a half to get X and KDE running? And you still didn't have the locale set or Open Office installed? Good thing it wasn't a difficult install!
For comparison, most mandrake installs take about 20 mins including partitioning, installing all the above plus other stuff and configuring the network connection. Plus the time you leave it to read stuff off the DVD/CDs of course so maybe an hour and a half.
That's not comparing like with like. The Debian net install using all the standard options takes about three hours, bearing in mind that all 550-odd MB arrives down my ADSL link in real time as the job proceeds. From a set of CDs it would be far quicker, just as with any other distro, but I prefer to give the broadband link something to do rather than fill my room up with yet more CDs that are out of date a week later. What took a day and a half was learning how to do it manually from a minuimal command-line install up to a complete GUI, leaving out all the redundant fluff you get with SuSE or Mandrake. And ending up with a much better understanding of what's going on.
-- GT
On Saturday 15 May 2004 8:52 pm, Graham Trott wrote:
For comparison, most mandrake installs take about 20 mins including partitioning, installing all the above plus other stuff and configuring the network connection. Plus the time you leave it to read stuff off the DVD/CDs of course so maybe an hour and a half.
That's not comparing like with like.
[...]
What took a day and a half was learning how to do it manually from a minuimal command-line install up to a complete GUI, leaving out all the redundant fluff you get with SuSE or Mandrake. And ending up with a much better understanding of what's going on.
Oh absolutely, very different indeed, but I just couldn't resist making a comment, especially as you often remark on how difficult it is to do things in 'linux' compared to windows :-)
It's all horses for courses of course. I guess I'm in a minority in ALUG as I'm not an IT professional so I just use something that works for me with the minimum of hassle. Although I'm still quite happy to edit config files when needed so I'm not a total wimp (bad pun intended).
Syd
On Saturday 15 May 2004 21:04, Syd Hancock wrote:
On Saturday 15 May 2004 8:52 pm, Graham Trott wrote:
What took a day and a half was learning how to do it manually from a minuimal command-line install up to a complete GUI, leaving out all the redundant fluff you get with SuSE or Mandrake. And ending up with a much better understanding of what's going on.
Oh absolutely, very different indeed, but I just couldn't resist making a comment, especially as you often remark on how difficult it is to do things in 'linux' compared to windows :-)
It's all horses for courses of course. I guess I'm in a minority in ALUG as I'm not an IT professional so I just use something that works for me with the minimum of hassle. Although I'm still quite happy to edit config files when needed so I'm not a total wimp (bad pun intended).
Well OK I know I've made some unflattering comments about things that Windows users take for granted but in Linux are very difficult. I'm not an IT pro either; just a programmer who specialises in GUI stuff, so the hassle factor is pretty much the same for me as for you.
The problem at the top of my list is not how easy it may be to set up a system; it's what happens a year or two down the road when it's time to upgrade or the hard drive fails. Figuring out what has to be done to restore my personal files and applications on a new system is a right royal PITA whether on Windows or Linux. From what I've seen so far, the package management of Debian is significantly better than any of the others, though I'm not clear about the best strategy to deal with stuff for which no package can be found, only tarballs. Unfortunately there's quite a lot of that, especially once you get into multimedia (for example).
It's getting late so I may be talking even more garbage than usual, but would it be a good idea to keep all custom system files in a folder structure under /root that mirrors the main structure (e.g. /root/custom/{etc,usr...}) and just set up symlinks to them from their "proper" places? At rebuild time that ought to make it easy to identify anything not under package control, but would require discipline. Along with that I suppose I'd need to religiously keep all (non-packaged) tarballs so they could be restored to the new system. Anything under /home obviously isn't a problem; it's the system tweaks that take so long to deal with as the whys and wherefores have been long forgotten.
-- GT
On Saturday 15 May 2004 11:06 pm, Graham Trott wrote:
On Saturday 15 May 2004 8:52 pm, Graham Trott wrote:
leaving out all the redundant fluff you get with SuSE or Mandrake. And ending up with a much better understanding of what's going on.
The second point is I think the most valid and a very good reason for going down the debian road. The first point is less compelling since Mandrake at least can be installed with only the packages that you yourself choose.
Of course most people choose the set options ('networked' 'office use' 'internet use' etc) but that is not obligatory. And even then the list of choices can be amended before installing (and the list of choices stored on disk to make repeating the process much easier).
Well OK I know I've made some unflattering comments about things that Windows users take for granted but in Linux are very difficult.
Yes, but which *distro*? Only the command line to the kernel is 'linux'. That isn't nit-picking, it is simple statement of fact, and an important one at that.
Something that is difficult in one distro, or even in many distros, is often very simple in another, especially any distro that has GUI tools as front-ends for installation and configuration.
The problem at the top of my list is not how easy it may be to set up a system; it's what happens a year or two down the road when it's time to upgrade or the hard drive fails. Figuring out what has to be done to restore my personal files and applications on a new system is a right royal PITA whether on Windows or Linux.
It doesn't have to be. I simply have a small notebook and note down any packages that I install and all configuration applied. Re-installing is simply a case of redoing those steps.
I've done it several times and it was very easy. Most mandrake system configuration, to continue with the mandrake example, can be done in using GUI tools (including wireless cards which is something you mentioned on thursday as being lacking!)
I keep a backup of any files that I have edited by hand (samba.conf being the main one that I don't want to have to re-do from scratch :-)
Finding and installing software using 'urpmi' or the GUI tools is almost always a doddle once your sources are set up as all dependencies are automatically found and installed (much better than standard 'rpm' command).
From what I've seen so far, the package management of Debian is significantly better than any of the others,
Apt is excellent. Debian is excellent too of course - once it is installed and configured. My only point is that there are some distros that are much easier to manage and configure than most others. Also that mandrake is much more complex and powerful than many people realise if they have only used it for a short time and not explored how to use it.
Syd
On Sunday 16 May 2004 05:34, Syd Hancock wrote:
The problem at the top of my list is not how easy it may be to set up a system; it's what happens a year or two down the road when it's time to upgrade or the hard drive fails. Figuring out what has to be done to restore my personal files and applications on a new system is a right royal PITA whether on Windows or Linux.
I have a 2nd hand DAT drive, and am running the free version of Arkeia. It's only a DDS3 drive (quite small) so I run a two tape set, one for the home dirs and one for my music directory and /etc. I don't care about anything else as 99.9% of packages on my system came from the SuSE disks anyway. /etc is handy because I can refer to it for any configuration stuff I have forgotten and if I was doing a like for like restore then could pretty much copy it over the top.
This is an area where Linux shines, Windows is a complete nightmare to backup in regards to system settings, configuration data and even some user data. Sure you can use the System State thing in NT backup, but try restoring it to a machine that is not identical. I had a nightmare restoring a MS SBS 2000 Server the other week for this exact reason.
I don't know what I am going to do when I upgrade my machine soon, I am planning on having at least 160GB available and there is no way I can afford to have a tape drive capable of holding that. I may have to resort to the cheaper method of attaching an external drive, backing up to that and then keeping it off site somewhere.
As to upgrades, The machine I am typing this on has gone from SuSE7.2-SuSE7.3-SuSE8.0-SuSE9 I think the first time I upgraded I may have blown away everything but the home dirs, the other times I simply used the SuSE upgrade wizard. It has worked pretty well so far.
However the upgrade to 9.1 will be a fresh install as this machine is due for an upgrade and pretty much the only thing staying is the case.
Tidying up - just a final word on this to say apologies if my little tease and comparison was out of place. Definitely was not claiming that any distro, least of all Mandrake, is 'perfect'. But, must admit that it was probably not appropriate to break the unwritten rule.
Syd
On 2004-05-15 23:06:09 +0100 Graham Trott gt@pobox.com wrote:
[...] Unfortunately there's quite a lot of that, especially once you get into multimedia (for example).
I don't know if DeMuDi still have multimedia things which aren't packaged for main debian yet. http://www.agnula.org/download/demudi/demudi_1_0_apt has some apt source lines.
/root that mirrors the main structure (e.g. /root/custom/{etc,usr...}) and just set up symlinks to them from their "proper" places?
I think it's more normal to confine tarball-installed things to /usr/local or /opt, or use stow, gobo or something similar to control symlinks. Taking copies of etc is also handy for reference on a reinstall. I'm not sure whether you can dump all debconf settings in any structured way, which might also be useful.
On 2004-05-15 20:28:59 +0100 Syd Hancock syd@toufol.com wrote:
Like knowing how and where to set the locale, for example :-)
I'm surprised that wasn't set on install. It always has been for me.
For comparison, most mandrake installs take about 20 mins including
Stop trolling. Mandrake is good, but not perfect either.
Graham Trott wrote:
- I have yet to see the equivalent of YAST for overall system configuration.
Maybe the bits of it are squirrelled away in the new KDE, which I haven't fully explored. Is there a separate GUI-based system configurator?
Not that I've heard of. There are a lot separate ones, but not a yast type thing (although webmin is an admirable substitute IMO)
- When running xf86config it suggested my mouse driver is most likely to
be /dev/mouse. Fine, except that driver doesn't exist. I expect it's only a symbolic link but nothing told me what to point it at. After some scratching I tried /dev/psaux and all was well.
Yep, just a symlink. I had the same problem when I installed debian.
So, I guess you can say 'another convert'. Now I need to load it up with everything I can think of, run it for a week or two then hopefully take the plunge and do my main PC.
And when you do, try linux from scratch on your back up machine. I learnt more in the 6 months I was running LFS than I have done previously or since (and after seeing the multitude of binaries on debian, which I haven't got a clue what most of them do I feel the slight urge to go back to it)
BenE
On Saturday 15 May 2004 20:45, BenEBoy wrote:
And when you do, try linux from scratch on your back up machine. I learnt more in the 6 months I was running LFS than I have done previously or since (and after seeing the multitude of binaries on debian, which I haven't got a clue what most of them do I feel the slight urge to go back to it)
BenE
Already been there - well partway at least. The current release isn't kernel 2.6 though, so I'll wait for version 6. Though maybe I won't; just as I don't do my own car maintenance I feel that for me, getting that intimate with Linux isn't really necessary. I just want a bit more control than is offered by SuSE or Mandrake, and some better justification for the ADSL line here that sits idle most of the time.
-- GT
Graham Trott wrote:
On Saturday 15 May 2004 20:45, BenEBoy wrote:
And when you do, try linux from scratch on your back up machine. I learnt more in the 6 months I was running LFS than I have done previously or since (and after seeing the multitude of binaries on debian, which I haven't got a clue what most of them do I feel the slight urge to go back to it)
BenE
Already been there - well partway at least. The current release isn't kernel 2.6 though, so I'll wait for version 6. Though maybe I won't; just as I don't do my own car maintenance I feel that for me, getting that intimate with Linux isn't really necessary. I just want a bit more control than is offered by SuSE or Mandrake, and some better justification for the ADSL line here that sits idle most of the time.
version 6? I didn't know version 5 was out. While I remember, I've been meaning to ask a LFS related queston for ages...
The reason I got rid of it and installed debian was because it was too much hassle trying to keep packages up to date (security-wise). I came up with the idea of making a script that will keep the versions of currently installed software in a file (or a database or whatever) and ftp into the appropriate servers and compare the version numbers as a chron job. I abandoned that as being a nasty hack of the highest degree. Can anyone suggest another solution?
On Saturday 15 May 2004 21:19, BenEBoy wrote:
version 6? I didn't know version 5 was out. While I remember, I've been meaning to ask a LFS related queston for ages...
The reason I got rid of it and installed debian was because it was too much hassle trying to keep packages up to date (security-wise). I came up with the idea of making a script that will keep the versions of currently installed software in a file (or a database or whatever) and ftp into the appropriate servers and compare the version numbers as a chron job. I abandoned that as being a nasty hack of the highest degree. Can anyone suggest another solution?
Quoting from the LFS5.1 book:
"If you wish to keep track of which package installs what files, you may want to use a package manager. For a general overview of package managers have a look at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/cvs/introduction/ pkgmgt.html. And for a package management method specifically geared towards LFS see http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/downloads/files/ more_control_and_pkg_man.txt."
The second of these is a 23-page printout that goes way over my head. On a 'need to know' basis Debian's apt is a far better match to my requirements.
-- G
BenEBoy wrote:
[SNIP]
The reason I got rid of it and installed debian was because it was too much hassle trying to keep packages up to date (security-wise). I came up with the idea of making a script that will keep the versions of currently installed software in a file (or a database or whatever) and ftp into the appropriate servers and compare the version numbers as a chron job. I abandoned that as being a nasty hack of the highest degree. Can anyone suggest another solution?
Yep: Gentoo.
Cheers, Laurie.
On 2004-05-15 17:42:52 +0100 Graham Trott gt@pobox.com wrote:
- In the standard installation it appears to be impossible to get
into KDE as root. The login page simply refuses to do it. This seems excessively paranoid to me.
I assume that Debian just does whatever KDE recommend, but if it bothers you, then it may be worth "reportbug kdm" (or whatever package is offering the KDE login that you see).
- I have yet to see the equivalent of YAST for overall system
configuration. Maybe the bits of it are squirrelled away in the new KDE, which I haven't fully explored. Is there a separate GUI-based system configurator?
I think the nearest equivalent to YAST is debconf, but I usually still run that from the command line with "dpkg-reconfigure locales" or similar.
Finally, as I type this I've been installing OpenOffice, but it's just crapped out, warning "setting locale failed" and asking me to check my locale settings. How do I do that?
Have you checked in /usr/share/doc/openoffice.org/README.Debian to see if this is a common problem? There are a couple of long-standing locale bugs listed on http://bugs.debian.org/openoffice.org too.
-
BenEBoy -
Brett Parker -
Chris Green -
Graham Trott -
Laurie Brown -
MJ Ray -
Owain Sutton -
Sue Green -
Syd Hancock -
Wayne Stallwood