Windows/DOS girl thrown in deep end with Linux
 

Hi! I'm a Windows girl from way back (I first learned DOS 3.1 . . . ) who recently got catapulted into the Linux world when I bought a cheap Chinese netbook preloaded with somebody's Linux. (More on that on another thread!) Where's the Command screen? How do I do a three-finger salute?? What the heck is an SNES??? ARGH!

Cynthia "ChibiBarako"

Hi.What distro is on the netbook?What is the brand and model of the netbook?Answers to these questions will help us to help you.Cheers.

Welcome to LQ! :D

The "three-finger-salute", depending on distribution (as mentioned above, this kind of info would be beneficial to us helping you), will have a different effect than under Windows. Usually this will either reboot the computer, or (this is more likely) it will bring up options for restarting, shutting down, logging out, etc.

Don't worry, while Linux is very much a learning experience, once you get some of the basics down (and more away from the traditional Windows/DOS way of thinking), then things should get much easier as you go. :)

SNES is a super nintendo emulator for playing snes roms.

One of the little surprises is that almost everything is customisable. Your user interface is an add-on, not part of the OS, so different distros make different choices.

If you click on the menu you should find the terminal (command screen) listed somewhere like System tools. Or you might have a little screen to click on in the panel ... it all depends.

Pressing Ctrl-Alt-Backspace will probably log out and present you with a log-in screen. Ctrl-Alt-Delete will usually give you a choice of shutting down, hibernating, or re-booting.

Try pressing F1 and see if you get Help.

I remember DOS 3 — not altogether fondly — but then I remember DOS 1 :)

Windows/DOS girl thrown in deep end with Linux: Make Model info
 

Oops, thanks for the catch, suppose I ought to tell you that much. The netbook is a Skytex SX-E700. I have no idea what distro of Linux it's running; I can't seem to locate an "About" screen (though I need to check the other replies). I wouldn't worry about it except I've already been researching new software to install, and the first thing they said was, "If you're running Fedora, do <instruction>, if you're running something else, do <other instruction>." At which point I threw my hands in the air, logged off, and went back to my WinXP desktop.

Cynthia

Ah, okay. Another new world to explore . . . later . . .

PS: Quick, run upstairs -- oh rats, they're Moffatt Daleks!

Try Alt-Ctrl-T Or Alt-T. I forgot. It may be on my EEE pages: http://fruttenboel.verhoeven272.nl/EEE/index.html

The 3 finger salute is not required. In the worst case:

press Ctrl-Alt-SysReq and KEEP depressed
Press S and release
Press U and release
Press B and release

Now you bring your system to a CONTROLLED halt.

SNES sound like a super mario brothers thingy?

[QUOTE=DavidMcCann;3975915]Pressing Ctrl-Alt-Backspace will probably log out and present you with a log-in screen. Ctrl-Alt-Delete will usually give you a choice of shutting down, hibernating, or re-booting.

Try pressing F1 and see if you get Help. QUOTE]

Okay, Ctrl-Alt-Backspace works as a logout/login, as does Ctrl-Alt-Delete (it must have been in mid process when I tried last time), F1 the netbook sits there and stares at me.

Cynthia

The skytex site is less than helpful.
Can you get any sort of menu? Right-clicking on the screen? mousing near the edge?
LittleLinuxLaptop might help. They seem to think there is one factory producing the same product under squillions of brands, all with a stripped out and gutted version of linux.

Hang in there, you won't regret it. Quite possibly you'll end up wanting to choose a different distribution. Ubuntu is often recommended for beginners, because most things "just work" (compare Windows "just don't work"). Knoppix is good for old hardware. In either case,you will need to download a CD (or DVD) image, burn, and boot, but you can then play with it as long as you like before committing to an install. Check you can get the internet working (including Wireless if you need it), and read up on the distribution online, and generally fiddle.

It's all very *empowering*.

Good luck!

If you can't find it in the menus where it might be called terminal, try Alt+F2 which is the equivalent of Windows' WindowsKey+R, enter xterm and press Enter. xterm is a terminal emulator and will give you a command prompt. Most desktops come with their own terminal emulator but the venerable xterm is available on most Linux-based graphical systems.

Alternatively Ctrl+Alt+F1 (or F2 ...) will probably switch from the graphical screen to a virtual terminal where you can log on. You can get back to the graphical screen using similar, usually Ctrl+Alt+F7 but you may need to try others.

One at a command prompt you can probably identify your distro by followed by inspection of the contents of the file(s) shown. You can use the cat command (cat filename) to display the contents without having to use an editor.

Good luck and welcome to the party :)

Supposing that your GUI is Gnome, the "About this computer" link should be in your System menu. Your menus are often in the upper-left hand corner and instead of the "Start" button, you can try Alt-F1.

To find out more about your OS, first log into a terminal. If you can't find a terminal (look for gnome-terminal, Terminal, Konsole, or something similar),in your menu, usually in Applications somewhere, you can usually get to one by using Ctrl+Alt+F2 and then get back by using either Ctrl+Alt+F7, or on some distros Ctrl+Alt+F1.

Once on the command line, type "uname -a" and enter. Then, post the output here. In Linux, unlike Windows/DOS, you can do almost anything from the command line, even surf the internet, chat, etc. Every Linux distro isn't right for everybody. If you don't like what you have, try another one. It will help to install it yourself so you can know what everything is.

As stated above, Linux is totally customizable. There is no guarantee that the person who owned the computer before you didn't reconfigure everything. This goes for everything from which GUI to use all the way down to whether or not you want to use a keyboard. In Linux, it's not a question of can it be done, but one of how do you want it done. Therefore, your computer may not be stock.

When an app crashes in Linux, you don't use Ctrl-Alt-Del.

Some (but not all) window managers (including Openbox, which is the one I use) are helpful enough to alert you if a window is not responding and offers to kill the process.

Or, open a terminal and type "killall name-of-program".

The "top" command lists the top recourse-hogging processes.

Also, there are many GUI task managers available, usually bundled with desktop environments.

That will identify the kernel and the processor family but not the distro.