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Old 12-11-2008, 08:42 AM   #1
tothemax6
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Last ditch effort to keep using linux


Hi all,
Well ive been using ubuntu 8.04 for a bit now. The one thing I like about it is that it doesn't hang or decide to start thrashing the hard drive for no reason like XP (even with fresh wipe&reinstall). Its definitely more 'snappy' than XP.
But Im kind of disappointed that it is actually stuffing me around worse than windows (even more so than Vista), so I am just asking for some pointers before I save myself anymore pain and bail.
OK so far Ive been posting for some help, and I haven't really got it or I don't know what on earth they are talking about (of course, I don't blame the helpers). Things like "sudo" and "repositories" etc. So far my list of things which I can't fix no matter how many hours I throw at it are:
  1. The screen is out of horizontal alignment (i.e. half of the trash can icon is off the screen). I have to manual adjust the screens horizontal alignment between XP or ubuntu.
  2. After the last update, the update manager imploded and now doesn't work (says 'E:Malformed line 47 in source list..' then exits)
  3. After installing the .deb file for Adobe Flash Player (downloaded from their site after following the youtube link), and installing it, it still says I don't have it. I mean, I can only install it! What else can I do (wtf)!!
  4. In Hardware drivers, asking it to enable the NVIDIA driver instead gives me "E: Malformed line 47 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list (dist parse) E: The list of sources could not be read.".
  5. Because of the previous point, I can't set visual effects to normal (just none).
  6. It asks me for a password at startup and for anything else. I want it to never ask, but I have found little information on this.

So, could people please guide me in the direction of a good educational site, or some other resource with which I can learn how ubuntu works? Hopefully it will include such topics as, "What repositories are", "Why installing Adobe Flash Player does not install Adobe Flash Player". Or "How to turn off ubuntus Vista-UAC-mimic option".

I apologize if my tone comes off as "shitty", but Ive just been having such a nightmare of a time with computers as of late (Vista being the biggie). I mean, I'm an engineer, how is your average, non-computer literate person supposed to cope?

Thanks all, RM
 
Old 12-11-2008, 09:01 AM   #2
SlowCoder
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Looking at your past posts, you've only been using Linux for 3 days (12/8/08). So, in my estimation, you haven't really given it a chance. And it would take someone new to Windows just as long to learn it as it will take you to learn Linux.

As far as people helping, many Linux community members take on the "teach them to fish" method rather than hand holding. This, while harder in the beginning, will benefit those who tough it out in the end.

Google is a good resource for your research, as is asking questions here on LQ, as are the thousands of other Internet resources available to everyone. And if you've got a friend who can help, there's another.

And, to get you started, a repository (aka repo) is a library of software provided by a distribution's maintainers, or 3rd party source. Your computer has access to its repo by way of the GUI-based or CLI (command line) package manager. P.S. A package is an individual piece of software provided in the repo.
 
Old 12-11-2008, 09:03 AM   #3
Hern_28
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It happens.

Just started playing with the buntu's recently.

1.) Will most likely be fixed when you get the restricted driver fixed. (related to #2)
2.) Just need to manually edit the sources.list file and edit the 47'th line
3.) Another problem for later.(Possibly related to 2 if its trying to use the out of date broken flash)
4.) Same as 2.
5.) Caused by 1 which is caused by 2
6.) Depends on what you are doing. It will ALWAYS ask you for a password when making modifications to your system. If its doing it with firefox and such then we need to look at it. But Adept, synaptic and such should leave them alone so noone can bork your system and when you get it fixed.. you won't use them much anyway.

Tone.. np.. it does get aggravating sometimes.

Lets start with the main problem. Mal-formed line in 47.
Are you familiar with the command line?

Last edited by Hern_28; 12-11-2008 at 09:04 AM.
 
Old 12-11-2008, 09:18 AM   #4
jstephens84
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Well for starters you might want to check your /usr/lib/firefox/plugins or /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins or /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins [Can never remember] and see if you have a mapping for the libflashplayer.so file in there. If you don't then we need to create a symbolic link. I have found that Flash install on Ubuntu doesn't always work well (This is not a fault of Ubuntu but simply a poor script written by Adobe)

This can be addeb by creating a symbolic link in the plugins directory that will map to the libflashplayer.so file. My have to do a search for it
Code:
sudo find / -name "libflashplayer.so"

or

sudo find / -name "*flash*.so"
This will probably take care of your flash issue. Now for your apt list sounds like your entry at line 47 or above is not correctly typed in. I would look at for starters on problems 2 and 4.

to enable automatic login run
Code:
sudo gdmsetup

or 

sudo /usr/sbin/gdmsetup
then click on security tab and choose Enable Automatic login and select the user to autologin. However a word of caution this is not the most secure thing but I will not ask for your intentions.

Hope this helps.
 
Old 12-11-2008, 09:20 AM   #5
jstephens84
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Oh and one other thing. If you have non-free repositories in your apt list you can run
Code:
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
that should install flash for you. Worked great on my debian machine. Even fixed the problem with Adobe's new flash plugin causing flash dropdown menu's to hide behind the flash animation.
 
Old 12-11-2008, 09:34 AM   #6
tothemax6
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Quote:
Looking at your past posts, you've only been using Linux for 3 days (12/8/08). So, in my estimation, you haven't really given it a chance. And it would take someone new to Windows just as long to learn it as it will take you to learn Linux. As far as people helping, many Linux community members take on the "teach them to fish" method rather than hand holding. This, while harder in the beginning, will benefit those who tough it out in the end. Google is a good resource for your research, as is asking questions here on LQ, as are the thousands of other Internet resources available to everyone. And if you've got a friend who can help, there's another.
Ubuntu quite literally then. Google? Whats that? .
Quote:
sudo find / -name "libflashplayer.so"
Hurray! But what did this do and why did it need to be done? Thanks jstephens.

Thanks Hern, I fixed the 47th line thing, but the NVIDIA problem was around before this error.
 
Old 12-11-2008, 09:42 AM   #7
anarchyinc
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Stop feeding the trolls!
 
Old 12-11-2008, 09:58 AM   #8
Agrouf
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You've got to open your mind. Your engineer status works against you in this case.
You should accept that you know nothing and have to learn it a bit before you can run.

For a start, you should know that Ubuntu, unlike Windows, is a set of a lot of Open source software. It's not a big block but many small bricks. what is installed on your computer is a subset of all the software that are available on Ubuntu (more than 30000 software are available directly from Ubuntu). The repository is where Ubuntu stores all those software. You can pick more software from the Ubuntu repositories of from other "repos" (short for repository).
When you want to install something on Ubuntu, you don't have to go to a shop and buy a box with the software or to hunt the web for the soft. All Ubuntu softs are centralized in the repositories. You just use a 'package manager' which will download software and install for you from the ubuntu repositories. When you get used to this idea, you will see the light and understand that this way of installing software is by far the best way and you will understand why it is the way it is and how superior it is when compared to the window way of installing software. It's way easier than you think. You just have to set your mind to understand things are simple.

The source.list file is the file that contains the address of all the Ubuntu repositories where your package manager is expected to fetch software. You didn't have to get a .deb file to install flash. You just had to tell your package manager to install it for you.
You should learn how to use synaptic, which is a very powerful and very very easy tool. I won't google it for you because I would get the results in french, but try "synaptic Ubuntu" on Google.

Last edited by Agrouf; 12-11-2008 at 10:02 AM.
 
Old 12-11-2008, 10:02 AM   #9
jstephens84
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tothemax6 View Post
Ubuntu quite literally then. Google? Whats that? .
Hurray! But what did this do and why did it need to be done? Thanks jstephens.

Thanks Hern, I fixed the 47th line thing, but the NVIDIA problem was around before this error.
it needed to be done so we know where your flashplugin is so if the symbolic link is not in your plugins folder then we can add the sym link to the location of where your flashplugin is.
 
Old 12-11-2008, 10:39 AM   #10
thorkelljarl
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I was in your shoes.

This might be a useful. http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/index

Good Luck and Patience
 
Old 12-11-2008, 11:58 AM   #11
johnsfine
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I have some comments on your items 1 and 4 (other than that, everything you ask looks to me like it is specific enough to Ubuntu that you will need help from someone who knows more about Ubuntu than I do):

Your screen alignment problem is caused by whatever open source driver you are using for the nvidia display adapter in Ubuntu using different timing rules than the closed source driver you use in Windows.

If I understand you correctly, either set of timings would be OK if it were the only set, but having them different is not OK. It is nightmare difficult to change that timing in Windows (though I've done it) but pretty easy to change in Linux and with a little experimentation you could make the Linux timing match the Windows timing.

BUT, before you try that, it is best to switch to the closed source driver from nvidia instead of whatever open source driver you're using (I'm assuming you're not an open source fanatic, so you should prefer open source when other factors are equal, but choose non open source when it is clearly better).

Ubuntu has its own distribution specific way to install non open source drivers. I don't know what that way is. There are some modest advantages to doing that Ubuntu's way, if you can figure it out and get it to work.

But, Nvidia has a generic (same across all Linux distributions) way to install their driver from a file you can download from their website. If doing that the Ubuntu way is too hard, do it the Nvidia way instead. The end results are pretty similar.

Probably the Nvidia driver for Linux will default to matching the timing of the Nvidia driver for Windows. In the unlikely event that isn't your solution to problem 1, in Linux you can put custom modelines in the xorg.conf file and directly set the video timing to anything you want it to be. That works with both the open source driver you have now and the closed source nvidia driver you should switch to. Documentation on how to do that isn't exactly easy to find, but it isn't all that hard either. Several other threads here discuss it. If you get to that point and still need help, start a new thread to ask about custom video timing in xorg.conf.

Last edited by johnsfine; 12-11-2008 at 12:00 PM.
 
Old 12-11-2008, 06:12 PM   #12
tothemax6
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Ok my latch ditch effort was succesfull (hurray!). It said in small print that I had to run "dpkg --configure -a" for the NVIDIA driver to enable. Which I did, and this fixed everything. I even managed to get MP3s to run myself (another problem I had).
The only thing that remains is how do I stop the password box coming up? There must be a way to say to linux "You never need authorisation, ever". Otherwise this is just a clone of Vistas UAC!

Thanks for all the help, RM
 
Old 12-11-2008, 06:43 PM   #13
brianL
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tothemax6 View Post
Otherwise this is just a clone of Vistas UAC!
How can something that's been around for a long time be a clone of something relatively new?
 
Old 12-11-2008, 06:46 PM   #14
Hern_28
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jstephens post.

jstephens gave the info on how to do that in his first post.. Glad you got it working and welcome to Linux.

Would recommend scanning through the wiki here. It will give you some basics that will make this easier for you if you have another problem:

http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/

Yea I know the video card was a problem before these others started. Read it in your other posts. It was simply easier to fix once you got the repos back. That would give the option of re-installing and letting it complete by itself.

Only guess on what happened was something went awry on an update when on of the software installers was reading the list. Rare but happens.

Sorry I stepped out for a bit lol.
 
Old 12-11-2008, 07:05 PM   #15
jay73
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Quote:
The only thing that remains is how do I stop the password box coming up? There must be a way to say to linux "You never need authorisation, ever". Otherwise this is just a clone of Vistas UAC!
a clone of UAC? More like the other way round.

Btw, if it never needs authorisation - ever - then it's basically granting full authorisation to anyone. If that is what you like, then definitely Linux is not for you. Anyway, when do you ever see that authorisation box? The only time I see it anymore is when there are updates, that is about all.
 
  


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