Newbie without a clue......
 

Got myself a linux netbook and haven't got a clue.....
There's 2 things in particular i'm looking to find out and after searching on both I can find no answer that takes my ignorance into account!

1, How do I find out what I have; gnome, kde, python, debian etc.
2, I want to add some desktop shortcuts for apps I have downloaded and installed. Can someone help? Right clicking does nothing (on the desktop) and I can find nothing that makes it easy......

First, welcome to the Linux world.

What type of netbook did you get? Did you purchase new? Is there any documentation with it?

Maybe with this info we can guide you a little better.

in a terminal type

uname -a
for the kernel version
lsb_release -a
for the linux version


why don't you install software using the packetmanager?

The command : python -V
will show the version of python, if installed.

startkde
will give a reply.

gnome-about : another reply.

dpkg --get-selections : will list all installed
packages, if it's a Debian system.
....

step by step....
 

it's an asus eee pc 901 - bought new. Documentation is little more than a guide through the applications on it and a "how to set up your email" style.


for this i get: Linux asus-871585029 2.6.21.4-eeepc #6 Mon May 5 11:38:34 EDT 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

for this i get: command not found


installing isn't the issue - i'm looking to customise the desktop by adding shortcuts to apps i've already installed

Python 2.4.4 [date] GCC 4.1.2 Debian
4.2.2-21
But to be honest I haven't a clue what this all means or what these different elements are used for.

command not found

command not found

gives a massive list of stuff and with no scroll bar i dunno how to get it to pause through the list.....


Really, my biggest thing is the desktop shortcut creation thingy

i dunno about debian or what desktop you are running but in fedora using gnome i rite-clik on a file and select make link then i could copy that link to my desktop.

with what little info i have on you, the only standard way to do what you want is to open up a terminal and type

It's a somehow basic way of doing it. Open up a terminal window, change to your Desktop folder ("cd Desktop") and create a desktop file (for example "touch name-of-your-app.desktop"). Open this file in a text editor of your choice (for example "gedit name-of-your-app.desktop", I suspect you have Ubuntu installed, else try "kedit ...") and paste the following in there:

Change the lines with "Exec" and "Icon" to your needs, if you like also "Comment" and "Generic Name", but those two are not that important. There's no need to prefix your binary with /usr/lib etc. as long it is in one of the standard folders.

Then save the file with UTF-8 encoding!! Right after that you should have a new Desktop Icon.

EDIT: This would put the app under "Utilities". This can be changed, too, but for a test this should be fine.

symbolic link
 

ok so in the file man2ager i've right clicked on the file and chosen "create symbolic link" and gotten this popup
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4.../snapshot1.png

So, I'm a bot confused here. Is this asking for an application name and whatever shortcut name I want on it? If so, that still doesn't actually get it on the desktop does it?

A few minutes with Google, and it sounds like your eee uses a customized install of Xandros Linux with KDE desktop. You could try the command "locate kde | grep bin | less" to see if the system lists any files with "kde" in the name that are in a binary (bin) directory.

By the way, to cause pauses in the output from a cli command, do as follows:

mycommand | less

This tells bash to get the output from "mycommand" and send it into the command "less." "Less" is a little program that lets you scroll up and down through a bunch of output. Just hit q when you're done looking.

m00t

It should if you right clicked in your file manager, selected 'create symbolid link' while you were in the /home/username/Desktop/ directory. The link to needs to be the actual path to the program, the link name can be whatever you want.

The version of Linux on the Eee is a modified version of Xandros.

There is a ton of info at:
EeeUser.com » ASUS Eee PC 701, 900, 901, 1000 Blog Forum Wiki Community
http://www.eeeuser.com/

ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Support-
http://support.asus.com/default.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

there is also an irc channel of irc.freenode.net #eeepc

desktop
 

Ok, ow i understand how it should work but i can't see the desktop directory....... just a file called .desktop

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4.../snapshot2.png


craig, thanks for the info on links - will look through those too....

You should have an icon which looks like a small house on your Desktop when you boot. Open it. In the location bar it will show where you are, for example: Location: file:/home/username, you should see a directory called Desktop, click on that to open it. So what happens when you click on the "Desktop" image in that directory, blue one with pad/pencil?

desktop
 

It's the .desktop directory and it when opened has 2 files:
.directory
Home.desktop


To be honest i think i'll just set the thing up on XP,,,,,,

As I wrote, change to your .desktop folder, create a new file in there from file manager or from a command line window, call it "name-of-my-app.desktop", edit this file with a text editor and put in the stuff I wrote above.