I really really hate Windows and I really really want to use Linux but boy is it complicated.

I've already had some applications lock up on me (Traceroute for example) and nearly everytime I log in and run Evolution email then I have to go through the whole setup thing. It never seems to remember my pop3 details or anything to do with my email account and I have to reenter the details every time.

In addition, once the email application is running and I try and check mail then I get a message about there 'not being enough space' to check mail. I can't understand why this would be the case at all.

I'm completely stumped with the email application. I can't seem to get it to work at all and I have to admit I'm tempted to go back to Windows again because at least I can check my email there!

Does anyone have an idea why I might be having such strange problems?

Welcome to LQ, Matt.

If you could run these programs from the command line and post any error messages that may be displayed, that'd be very helpful.

Cheers.

Umm.....I really am showing my newbie colours! How do I run things from the command line?!

OK. Open up the thing that looks like the ol' Dos prompt from Windows... I think konsole is a good one. Then type the name of the program you want to run... such as evolution (in little letters) and then see what happens.

Right I see. Well at the $ prompt I typed 'evolution' and the application booted up okay although with an error message pop up box. Not sure what that said because it dissappeared too quick to read it. There was no error message in the terminal.

I sent myself an email from Mozilla and then checked mail with Evolution and all was fine (this time). I then clicked on calendar (because I thought I saw something about 'calendar' in the previous error message) and I get two errors:

Could not open the folder in 'file://home/matt/evolution/local/Calendar/calendar.ics

Could not open the folder in 'file://home/matt/evolution/local/Tasks/tasks.ics

When I closed down the command line terminal then evolution closed too - which I guess makes sense seeing as that was where I was running it from!

Another dumb question but using the command line I can go into directorys with the cd command, like with DOS but how do I go backwards or back up a level?

cd .. and cd -

please... learn to love consoles, they save SO much hassle when you get to grips with them.

You can also just type the path to the directory you want to go to.

Like to get back to / , you would just type cd /
Say your in /usr/local and want to go to /home/user/files, you would just type cd /home/user/files

Ah I'm beginning to understand I think. I did try cd / but it didn't take me anywhere but I'm logged in as myself so I guess that's why. I suppose that if I was logged in as root and was in the /matt/home directory and then did cd / it would let me up a level.

Thanks.

No..
You filesystem is organised as such:
/ = the bottom level
/home = where the users stuff if kept
/home/matt = where your stuff is kept

Now, if you were in the directory /home/matt, and you typed cd .., that would take you to /home. If, however, you typed cd /, that would take you to /. And, if you were to type cd /usr/share/sounds, that would take you... yep! /usr/share/sounds.

Have you read this? It's (quite) good for those that are very new to Linux. It does, somewhere, give an overview of moving around the filesystem.

Thanks, that's a useful link.

Also you can use cd .. (that is dot dot) to go up one directory. Just wanted to show that I learned at least one thing about linux.
Also you can type pwd to find what directory you are in. pwd = present working directory.

Good luck from 1 newB to another.

SeanBoz

pwd = print working directory