Call for Ideas.
Here we are at 81 posts. That’s 81 posts that pretty much came off the top of my head dealing with all the stupid little things that stopped me dead when I moved over to GNU/Linux.
It was always my intent to get the basic building blocks in place (understanding the file system, file permissions, untarring and installing applications, etc) and then graduate to more complex problems. That’s the beauty of blogging — now that the building blocks are in place, they will be there forever.
However, I’m concerned that perhaps I only put my basic building blocks in place. Before I move on to more complex issues, I want to ensure that your basic building blocks are in place. With that in mind, I am calling for ideas.
I can use my stats system here to see what search engine searches are successfully sending people here for information, but I can’t see what people are searching for that doesn’t point them here. “Help me help you” by using the comment system to leave me clues about problem areas that you would like me to investigate and write about. There are many more than 81 things out there tripping us all up, so let’s hear them.
Thanks!
Related Stories
POSTED IN: General
9 opinions for Call for Ideas.
Kevin Humphrey
Nov 16, 2005 at 12:41 pm
Jon - I’d like to see a simple and concise tutorial on how to set up your system to monitor hardware temperatures and fan speeds.
I’m using gkrellm now to watch cpu, disk and eth activity, but I’d like see what else is going on under the hood and then what kind gui front ends are there to display that info?
Jon
Nov 16, 2005 at 6:43 pm
Hi Kevin,
Great idea! I had gDesklets running with a bunch of sensors that monitored all the stuff you’re talking about - temperatures, free space on drives, ethernet activity, netstat information, system log scrolls..the whole shebang.
I’ll work on it. Thanks!
geoff
Nov 17, 2005 at 5:51 pm
Hey Jon,
An analysis of some of the short and sweet commands (with flags) might be good. For example, I just found this one out today:
$ du -a | sort -rn | head -50
Recursively sorts the largest 50 files in the cwd
Jon
Nov 18, 2005 at 9:31 am
Hi geoff,
Another great idea. I’ll be putting these ideas into play this weekend.
Thanks!
Jeremy Wright
Nov 19, 2005 at 8:39 am
How about a step-by-step idiot’s guide to getting a reasonable Linux distro installed on a box with a big HDD and Windows XP on it (and lots of free disk space)?
Not that I’m asking for me, of course ;-)
Jon
Nov 19, 2005 at 1:13 pm
Hi Jeremy,
I have a link to a a step-by-step tutorial (including photographed screenshots) on how to install Ubuntu 5.10 onto an existing Windows XP machine. I’ll dig it up and write an entry on it. I can’t actually vouch for whether or not it works since I’ve never tried it, but it certainly jives with what I’ve had to do in the past to dual boot a Windows box and other GNU/LInux distros.
Maybe you can tell your ‘friend’ when I post it :)
Jeremy Wright
Nov 19, 2005 at 1:21 pm
I’m not sure my friend knows if Ubuntu is the best for a beginning user. But if it’s good, I’ll trust… I mean, he’ll trust your judgement ;)
Oliviu
Nov 26, 2005 at 6:01 am
Hello Jon,
I could use some help in installing .deb packages downloaded elsewhere on the web.
Saw the http://www.newlinuxuser.com/howto-install-deb-rpm-and-source-code-files/
but it only refers to apt-get install (downloading/installing standard packages). I downloaded the .deb for a piece of software but i can’t seem to get it to install on a debian.
And as a second question: packages named .run. How to install them? ./package_name.run does not work (as I, as a long time Win user expected it) ;)
Regards,
Oliviu
Jon
Nov 26, 2005 at 10:23 am
Hi Oliviu,
In order to install .deb files that are resident on your local system, you likely want to use the dpkg -i filename.deb command.
I’ll write an article on the use of dpkg because you’re right - I should have an entry on that topic and I don’t think I do.
I honestly don’t know what a .run file is. I asked the File Extension website and it seems to think that .run files are AMOS executable files (shrug). Here’s the link to that page:
http://filext.com/detaillist.php?extdetail=RUN
If this is true, and you do indeed have an AMOS file, then I don’t think you’re going to be able to run it on a GNU/Linux box.
The only other thing that comes to mind is that perhaps it’s a script, but you’ve not made it executable. I did an entry (complete with audio) on file permissions here (http://www.newlinuxuser.com/explain-gnulinux-file-permissions/) that might help you, but in short you might need to chmod the file by typing chmod +x filename.run, and then attempting to run it again.
It’s also possible that you have a funnily named python script. If that’s the case, then you’ll have to try python filename.run. Assuming you have python installed on your system, that should work.
That’s about all I can think off of the top of my head.
There may be something I’m missing though, that was just a quick Google search on my part.
Let me know if any of that works for you, or if you find a solution.
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: