Kubuntu first impression (Linux noob)
Hey everyone I've been lurking here for a week or so reading the answers to most of my questions (I can use a search function), and took the plunge into Linux for the first time last night. I thought I'd post my thoughts from a complete Linux noob coming into the Linux world.
(First how I installed in case any other people are looking at this thinking about installing, if you have linux going already skip down below the numbers) 1) Installing onto a home built desktop, Abit IC7 mb, Intel 875 chipset, 2.4C processor, 512 PC3200 DDR1, Nvidia TI4600, Seagate 120 GB IDE HD, onboard sound, some generic lan card, Lite on DVD+RW/DVD-RW, Lite on 16x DVD-R. 2) I started by backing up all of my movies/music/word documents onto some DVD with Nero Backitup, took about 6 dvds. 3) Burned a dvd .iso of Kubunto 6.06, easy enough up to this point. 4) Changed boot order to floppy->cdrom->harddrive 4) Rebooted with the Windows XP Pro cd in, deleted all partitions, made a new NTFS partition that was 30 gb in size. Installed windows, installed Nvidia driver, chipset driver, sound driver, firefox, nero, and winrar in case I had any problems with linux. rebooted a few times after installs - you know the drill 5) rebooted with kubunto DVD in drive, live version of kubunto loaded up fine, clicked on install (actually double clicked on install and opened it twice, realized you only need to single click in linux) 6) Manually made my paritions 60 gb FAT32, 23ish GB Ext3, and 2 gb Swap, making sure to click the format button on the page 7) Finished linux install and loaded up kubunto for the first time. ----------------------------------------------------------- Up until here, everything went better than I expected. No hiccups on the Linux install, despite what I had been warned by some people asit being a pain in the ass. Once Linux was open I tested the fat32 partition by saving some stuff on it, and opening it in windows, so that works well. Anyway - I really like the way the KDE desktop looks, how customizeable it is, how fast it is in comparison to Windows. I am trying to use the console a lot, i.e. I edited a few things (like GRUB to make windows my primary boot path so if anyone boots up my PC they don't have to do anything and they will be in their normal envirement). My feeling is that the boot is a LOT slower now. I understand there are more steps, but before I could boot from off to Windows XP very quickly, now I add in Grub and the Kubuntu boot/shutdown seems pretty slow. I'm sure I'll get to making it faster eventually. Also, it is counterintuitive how you install things. Adept works great, but when I tried to install the Nvidia driver, and the website gave me a command to type, I typed it in the console and nothing happened. A little confusing (although I'm sure I will be ablet o work it out). Not necesarily a bad thing, but a little jarring. I spent a lot of time yesterday just cruising through the file system getting used to it. My main concern right now is how do I make the jump from Kubunto user to Linux user. I have found my way around the KDE desktop fairly well, but I want to learn how to use the console well and start programming a bit on Linux. My questions as of right now - what types of things go through the console and what do you use the graphical internface for? - I have seen lists of console commands online, but then some of them don't work, for example medit didn't work, until I installed the medit software. Is there a group of console commands that is linux kernal specific or is it distrobution specific. - What program are you guys coding in. I have the C#.net suite right now on Windows, what is the best program for that on Linux. - For people migrating, do you find yourself using linux primarily or windows? Aside from games (which I don't play much of) most of my time is email/word/internet which I can do in Linux. I already know I will have to boot up Windows for Autocad, Inventer, Maya, Photoshop, and the few games I have, but what about Itunes? I have all of my music in Itunes format and that is a big stubling block for me becuase I play that most of the day. Thanks again. |
The commands you can access depends entirely on which programs you have installed. As far as I know you never call the kernel directly. I've certainly never done so.
You might find synaptic (apt-get install synaptic) easier than adept. There are a lot of programming tools on Linux, and I think one of Linux's main strengths is as a programming envrionment. There have been threads on this in the past, you could try searching for people's recommendations. Personally the only language I know is C++, and I've tended to write code in a text editor such as Kate, and then compile from the command line using make. If you're looking for an integrated development type tool, try eclipse, kdevelop or a whole bunch of other. I don't know what it's like in Ubuntu, but there is a Linux project called Mono which is to do with C#. After starting using Linux a couple of years ago, I almost never use Windows any more. There is an image editing program called the gimp which you might find of interest. It's not quite as good as Photoshop but still very good. As for music players, there are xmms, beep media player, and a whole load of other. Have you enabled the universe and multiverse repositories in Ubuntu? These allow you access to a lot of extra things, such as mp3 and aac plugins for xmms. Incidentally, when ripping music in future, you could consider ripping it to ogg vorbis format. As for the transition to a "full-blown Linux user", I'd say that this is mainly a matter of time and perserverance, but trying out different distributions may well help the process. You begin to see which things tend to be consistent across different distributions, and which things are specific to a particular version. |
Well, I think you may be able to use Wine to do iTunes but am not sure. If you are a C#.Net enthusiast definitely try Mono. If you have an iPod then try using "gtkpod". I have used it and it works great. Lastly, Welcome to the Linux World! Cheers.
<<Samoth>> |
Well you obviously know your stuff Method9455 i.e. you did all the things that most new users don't. Somebody already mentioned the possible issue of mirrors/repositories, so I'll post the /etc/apt/sources.list that I use (no it's not my effort - it was linked on digg - but it's been done with the sources selector at ubuntulinux.nl - it mentions it at the top in the comments). It's a very, very, exhaustive list that gives you sources for just about anything you could want - including the nvidia driver (you mentioned a command - which suggests to me that you got it from the nvidia site - if it works, what the hell, but it's very much less hassle to install it through either synaptic (graphic installer for apt-get). So
Code:
# Based on source-o-matic (http://www.ubuntulinux.nl/source-o-matic) list Code:
sudo apt-get update && upgrade Below are some links for relevant stuff - some of them are Ubuntu, as opposed to Kubuntu - thats not a problem, just change any app that might be Ubuntu specific (well thats probably gnome specific as well) e.g. if it says about using a text editor for Ubuntu it might say something like sudo gedit /majordirectory/filename well unless you've installed it, your kubuntu won't have gedit, but it will have vi so just change it - though you might need to google for basic vi commands. http://easylinux.info/wiki/Ubuntu_dapper http://tips.linux.com/tips/06/06/08/...&tid=92&tid=96 http://www.ubuntulinux.nl/source-o-matic http://www.ss64.com/bash/index.html http://www.kubuntu.org/docs/kquickguide/C/ch03s07.html Anyway, well done and good luck on your linux adventure. regards John p.s. Oh and don't forget, most distros don't use sudo for doing admin stuff. Most distros will tell you that you don't have permission to do something, and you have to issue the su command and enter the root password - then cd to the directory that you want to work in. When you're ready to try something a little more advanced, have a look at installing gentoo - it can be a bugger! (I did it as a "stage 3 + GRP - check the gentoo docs, it'll make more sense then) but it's very good, and quite easy to manage. You'd have more than enough reading material at the gentoo forums (what the hell, if you have the motivation, install it alongside the kubuntu). |
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To reduce the start up time for Linux itself, go to "System Settings" in the menu, and click "System Services". Disable any that you don't need. For example, if you don't have any bluetooth devices, right-click bluez-utils, and select "Toggle Start During Boot". Quote:
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I hope this helps --Ian |
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If Vi scares you, try Gvim - it is a graphical version of Vi, that has more functionallity then straight Vi, is more user friendly, has mouse support, etc. It can be installed in Kubuntu using "sudo apt-get install gvim" --Ian |
Thanks for the pointer but I think I'll be giving it a miss. I know enough of the basics to use vi when I'm forced to, and when I'm not forced to there are many other alternatives that I like better!
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I have to say, unlike a LOT of linux users, I really don't live vi. Maybe has something to do with when I was a compleat :newbie: and was following some howto, it sed "open vi end edit (somefile)" so I typed "vi somefile" (no, not actually "somefile" but just some file). And at that point I was totally lost, I didn't even know how to exit the damn thing :p Besides, I mostly use nano if I want to edit a file in the console, first because it had the instructions on the bottom :D but now because that's what I'm comfortable with now.
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I'll agree with the Vi comments. I like to think of myself as a rather experienced Linux user (not a 'guru', not an 'expert' - just a 'hobbyist') and I cannot for the life of me use Vi. I used it to edit some files on a friends computer when I just needed to help him get his 'net up, and he didn't have nano or pico and it literally took me about an hour to make all of the changes I needed. I just don't know it well enough. However, emacs and nano or pico are wonderful.
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Thanks for the help, I've been busy the last few days and didn't even get to fire up my computer for about 3 (shockingly long actually but putting in 12 hour days at work + commute is a bitch).
Anyway, I updated my list of repositories the way you said which is pretty cool. So far not many missteps except when I went to uninstall everything I didn't need (pet peeve - things on my computer I don't use) and took out konqurer thinking it was just a browser, but it is also the file manager. Anyway, got that back in, edited grub sources.lst a bit for my liking, and now I'm going to embark on making the boot a bit faster by disabling things I don't need (pcmcia, bluetooth, raid), then from there just using it. Overall I'm very pleased by Linux, I have to say Ubunto is not what I expected from Linux at all, I expected buggier/uglier/more powerful/more confusing than Windows XP and I got /more stable/prettier/more powerful/probably less confusing. I think if the average person was given a computer for the first time, and could choose between Ubunto and Windows, Ubunto would be easier. The only thing that makes it more difficult is that people are used to the Windows file structure. (although they are very similiar), and the lack of support from certain things. But having a central way to install/uninstall things is great, the installation of the OS was much easier/faster, and having a boot DVD that can run a normal copy of the OS if something dies is much easier. So far I have no complaints which is really suprising, except for the lack of support from certain vendors, but really I can see myself using linux for everything except cad and my tablet PC. |
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Anyways, to me the most comfortable and fully-featured IDE is Eclipse, a Java IDE. Java's quite similar to C#. You'd install the packages sun-java5-jdk and eclipse. NetBeans is another Java IDE. It comes with a superb GUI designer, and lets you create web applications out-of-the-box. BTW, there's also a C# IDE for Linux: MonoDevelop. - Mono is a cross-platform C# implementation, but not as mature as Microsoft's. Moreover, this IDE ain't bad (i.e., there is code completion) but it still lacks of features. After all, most programming in Linux is done using C/C++ (and additionally, eventually, Python - on Ubuntu) - C, which can be extended by scripting languages (using the Glade GUI Designer, Tkl, Python, etc). Nevertheless, I, personally, find this tedious, and if I were to program for Linux (currently, I'm a Windows programmer), I'd be using Java... because of the fully-featured IDEs and the maturity... Quote:
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Yup, I definately decided to stay on Linux. Right now I'm fighting with the Nvidia driver, I'd really like to go with the official binary and it just won't install. I need to iron out exactly what the error is and if I can't figure it out I will post it here.
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For the nvidia drivers, you can install them using apt-get:
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sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx linux-restricted-modules-`uname -r` Code:
sudo nvidia-xconfig I hope this helps --Ian |
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