Multiple Users
 

I just got mandrake 7.2, and man is this true power... so many options. Anyway... i made accounts for everyone in my family, but the problem is, they arnt all locked. Some of them can be accessed by any acount, while others can only be accessed by the account user and root. Whast wrong here?

Access != write.

I remember back in old days the school had unix and I could see what my friends had on their accounts. *grin*

One root should take care of it. Then

login as root
cd /home
chmod 700 -R *

thanks, that was easy... is it just me or is linux only quasi stable. It is certainly better than windows, but i just installed it today, and have had 3 third party programs crash, Koffice twice, and netscape. I was expecting better from the operating system that i had heard so much about. It also seems, buggy, maybe its just the initial complexity of multiple users, but at times things just wont load, once netscape wouldnt open, it would start loading, and then close. And yahoo messenger wont load at all. The link to open it is in root, and it works when i log on as root, but when i try to move it to another users access it doesnt work anymore. One last complaint, way to many freaking folders, how do you expect anyone to find anything, Usr, Bin, Sbin, Local, they all sound the same, and mean nothing to the average person. If anyone is like in charge of some linux distro, why dont you make a standard folder for all programs. thanks.

Unfortunately not all programs work brilliantly. However, netscape (version 4.7 is the worst) crashes a lot and always has done (even in windows). Koffice is still not complete yet (as far as im aware) so probably has a few bugs in it.

What version of the distribution are you using? Older ones come with older programs with more bugs in. Mandrake is at about 8 nowadays with 9 on the way. The more mature the distro the better the people who make it are at stitching the many components together. So if possible try upgrading stuff.

It is possible that the way you machine is configured is just a bit more unstable than others. You should try and learn how to compile your own kernel since this could be the problem (though only possibly). It will also teach you a load of stuff in the process.

the folders are a bit of a bugger to start with but they get easier to understand.

remember that folders called bin hold binary files or in other words programs.
lib holds libaries of some description (these are only really needed when compiling programs).
sbin stands for super user binaries and holds programs that the administrator will want specifically, for example, the disk checker fsck is there.
/usr holds stuff relating to you (but not your home directory). So programs that you install will probably end up in a subdirectory here.
in /usr/local there are the programs and libraries that are specific to your machine (technically most of the other folders could reside on another machine and just grafted onto the file system when the machine is booted). programs that you compile from source will usually be put here somewhere by the make program.
/etc holds configuration files for a lot of things. So Xfree has its config file here as well as a lot of the internet things.
/home holds user information. So your personal directory will be under home (with the same name as your user name) but you may find some other things here as well depending on your distro.

im assuming that these short directory names came from the fact that it saved space?

hope that helped some (and weren't too basic). iff you need any more help just say.

Alex

If you want to find something you can use a several means of doing it. Try using "find", "whereis" or "locate" (there is also "slocate" which is more or less the same as locate).

Also if you need a hint for a command try using "apropos" following by a keyword.

The nice thing about Linux is this, when a program does crash, it doesn't take the whole system down with it. You can stop and restart services without a reboot... etc. Its not the OS that crashes that often, like you said, you would have to blame it on the program you were running..

Wow, trickkid always beat it to me. :) I was gonna say that you can't blame Windows for Office crashes.

Bad idea, you mean the same conversion as Windows' c:/Program Files? Mac's is way better. Cuz if you're fed up with a proggy, drop the folder in trashcan. Try that in Windows and you'll be warmly welcomed by a error dialog box and even BSOD in extreme case.

To find something, this works for all distros

find / -name myfile.ext -print

Change / to /home or /mnt/win_c to cut down the time it takes to search. BTW, KDE and Gnome both have Konqueror and Galeon, respectively, as their file managers that happen to have search/find function.

Tools> Find file.

Ya, that clears up most of my questions, now it is just a matter of getting used to everything. It would be nice to get my AC 97 Sound card working. I am running mandrake 7.2 How would I configure a sound card?

there is currently a thread running on this (i think).

see here.
Is this your soundcard?

There's more than just that thread, that Sound card has generated many threads here, try performing a search if that particular thread doesn't answer your questions or does not work for you.

thats my sound card, but i dont really want to mess with it right now. Are there any emulators available for linux that will allow me to play windows games? Or any good linux games out there?

Ah, why cant i check my e-mail from linux. I just downloaded the new netscape and it still wont work. My e-mail is right here at linux questions.net, of all places.

start a new thread on it if you are stuck (and is it netscape or mozilla?)