Multiple Questions/Topics - Newb Issues

[SMix]

Ok so I decided to make the switch. Unlike many people I decided to just find the thigns I would need on my new system to get by and then just dump my windows. I am working on installing a VMware server of my old box for things I can't do yet etc. I am having many more issues that I thought I would ever have though having switched over. The following is a brief list that I can think of at the moment, which will probably be updated within no time. So without further ado:

1. CTRL+ALT+DEL? I know it obviously doesn't do the same as windows. Is there an equivalent to this type of Process Manager? The other evening I was trying out Picasa for linux which apparently uses Wine. I plugged in my camera memory card and then I could not choose to eject it from the system because wine was utilizing it. After closing picasa wine would still not give up. I couldn't figure out a way to get it to stop. So I had to restart the machine. Is there a system manager sort of program that would have allowed me to stop the service from running?

2. Universal font sizing. This is my biggest gripe as of right now. I can not for the life of me figure out how to set the system to have universal font size everywhere. While I appreciate this ability to change the font sizes everywhere, I just want normal fonts. The main issue is programs that did not come with my release of Linux, and whenever things require roots priveleges, or some other random boxes, the text becomes so small I can not even read it. I am using a 32" LCD TV for my monitor and the max resolution supported is 1280x768. I actually was using Windows with a larger resolution. I would be scared to even try that on this system with these fonts being so small already. The other issue in font sizing I am noticing is with Kopete, when I type in an IM box the text is so small I can barely make it out, and when it comes through in the IM window, it is suddenly huge. I'm so lost on this setting.

3. Running a program. How do I run a program if it doesn't appear in the K Menu? I installed VMWare but can not find a file to run. I tried searching the computer for VMWare and have not been able to find a file that ... "runs" per say ... I found directories that I don't even really know what they are used for, I didn't even know where to look folder wise to find a folder where the program was installed to.

4. Sound card issues. I know this may just be a driver thing, but I'm sure there must be something else as well. I have a single sound card (on-board HP Desktop) which also has the support for multiple channels. Side, Rear, C/Sub, and the regulars. It also has the digital audio port. My receiver has a R/L audio input. So I took an ipod cable that splits the ipod audio into R/L audio and used that originally in windows to connect to the receiver. Now in Linux when I try to play something it sounds all distorted. After playing with it for awhile I basically found I could move the sound around between the front L/C/R speakers. When I was in windows my sound would play beautifully in all 5 surround speakers. Anyway to fix this?

5. Copying settings over to new Linux distro. I have been reading about a release of openSuSe 10.2 which is supposed to be much better than 10.1. I like SuSe for its complex amount of utilities and programs etc installed off the bat, as well as it's support for RPM's, and the nice look and feel it has. Now my question is, do people just scrap their system everytime they upgrade to the next new distro? I mean if I had to reconfigure all my settings, reinstall all my programs, and backup all my files everytime I wanted to upgrade, I would just never upgrade. LoL. I figure there must be a better solution than this.

6. YaST. I have been reading everywhere I look at articles about openSuSe that the main complaint is how horrible YaST is. What exactly is so bad about it? What is "broken"? What alternatives are there to this system and how can I go about installing them?

7. Dependencies. How do I solve this issue? I just tried to install an RPM of Firefox 2 from a SuSe RPM repository and was confronted with the issue that it said something about failed dependencies. Again as I can not read the small print (as stated above) I'm not sure what it was all about. Say it was simply a library file or something I needed, how do I go about obtaining whatever dependency is missing?

8. Installing source files, binaries, etc. I know this is the dreaded question every linux user hears from Newbs. I have read as many articlas as I can about installing from source files. I have downloaded two source file TarBalls as everyone calls them. One of which is libgpod which is a library I believe that Amarok needs to sync to ipod. The other was the firefox source from their website. The basic instuctions I see everywhere are about "./configure" "make" "make install". None of these commands are working. I will paste the output of what I have tried. Keep in mind I have tried this on almost all of the files in the direcotires including the sh files and the bin files. This is all I end up with:

shawnmix@mix-network:~/Documents/Downloads/firefox-2.0.0.1/firefox> ./configure firefox
bash: ./configure: No such file or directory
shawnmix@mix-network:~/Documents/Downloads/firefox-2.0.0.1/firefox> make firefox
make: Nothing to be done for `firefox'.
shawnmix@mix-network:~/Documents/Downloads/firefox-2.0.0.1/firefox> make install firefox
make: *** No rule to make target `install'. Stop.
shawnmix@mix-network:~/Documents/Downloads/firefox-2.0.0.1/firefox> make firefox-bin
make: Nothing to be done for `firefox-bin'.
shawnmix@mix-network:~/Documents/Downloads/firefox-2.0.0.1/firefox> run firefox-bin
bash: run: command not found
shawnmix@mix-network:~/Documents/Downloads/firefox-2.0.0.1/firefox> install firefox-bin
install: missing destination file operand after `firefox-bin'
Try `install --help' for more information.
shawnmix@mix-network:~/Documents/Downloads/firefox-2.0.0.1/firefox>

And even the method of finding an RPM instead hasn't worked since I found one for my distro as well and it will not install either. I'm getting so stressed out over this system now. I know it's going to be ruff learning everything, hopefully soon enough I will be up and running full front. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me!!!

PS --> I am running SuSe 10.1 X86_64
Currently downloading SuSe 10.2 X86 after reading the lack of advantage to 64-bit linux systems on this site.

[SMix]

9. See I knew I would forget something. Setting up printer sharing. I have a windows network at home with 2 shared printers. I tried to use the utility in here to find the two printer but with no luck. Any suggestion on where to look for that sort of help?

[devils casper]

1. Ctrl + Esc, or gnome-system-monitor or ksysguard

2. open Control Center ( kcontrol ) -- Appearance -- Font. change Font size
OR set correct resolution. boot up in command line mode and execute 'sax2'.

3. all executable binary files are stored in /usr/bin folder. check this link. press Alt+F2, type program name and hit Enter key.

5. if you have separate /home partition, upgrade will be painless and settings will be preserved.

6. Yast is not horrible at all. there are a lot of alternatives though. i would suggest you to try Yast yourself first and check it.

7. install Firefox through Yast. it will take care of dependency issues.

8. you are executing wrong commands. no need to configure firefox. its pre-compiled package. open extracted folder and double click on FireFox file. FireFox 2 will pop up.

4 and 9. left for someone else to reply.




Casper

[rong]

Item 4: I'll venture a guess that you'll have to figure that out on your own

Itme 9: Samba is the solution to sharing with windows, printers, etc. You can find numerous howto's by searching around this forum and/or googleing. You'll find the basic Samba setup in YAST > Network Services. It does take some work to get it set up but it does the job.

[techieMoe]

1. CTRL+ALT+DEL? I know it obviously doesn't do the same as windows. Is there an equivalent to this type of Process Manager?

The console commands top and ps -aux will list running processes for your system and your individual user, respectively. Most distributions have a graphical version of these as well. GTop comes to mind, but I'm sure there are more out there.

The other evening I was trying out Picasa for linux which apparently uses Wine. I plugged in my camera memory card and then I could not choose to eject it from the system because wine was utilizing it. After closing picasa wine would still not give up. I couldn't figure out a way to get it to stop. So I had to restart the machine. Is there a system manager sort of program that would have allowed me to stop the service from running?

If your camera has a USB interface, there's no reason why you should have to reboot to release it. You can find out what processes are running with top and then kill them using kill -9 PID where "PID" is the process ID you obtained using top.

The main issue is programs that did not come with my release of Linux, and whenever things require roots priveleges, or some other random boxes, the text becomes so small I can not even read it. I am using a 32" LCD TV for my monitor and the max resolution supported is 1280x768. I actually was using Windows with a larger resolution. I would be scared to even try that on this system with these fonts being so small already.

Your max resolution depends on the graphics driver you're using and the contents of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. What graphics hardware do you have? SuSE usually defaults to either the "vesa" or "vga" driver if it doesn't have native display drivers for your hardware. This is usually the case for Nvidia and ATI cards. If you install their respective commercial drivers, your available resolution should be higher.

The other issue in font sizing I am noticing is with Kopete, when I type in an IM box the text is so small I can barely make it out, and when it comes through in the IM window, it is suddenly huge. I'm so lost on this setting.

You should be able to change the default font size for Kopete messages from within Kopete. I'm not looking at a KDE desktop right this second so I can't give you more detail. It can be done however.

3. Running a program. How do I run a program if it doesn't appear in the K Menu? I installed VMWare but can not find a file to run. I tried searching the computer for VMWare and have not been able to find a file that ... "runs" per say ... I found directories that I don't even really know what they are used for, I didn't even know where to look folder wise to find a folder where the program was installed to.

I can't speak for VMWare specifically (never used it) but programs can be run from a console window by typing their name or by going to the "Run Command..." option in the K Menu. Programs in Linux are installed in various places; there is no one "My Programs" folder or anything. However most programs install a symlink (think "shortcuts" in MS Windows) into the /bin/, /usr/bin, or /usr/local/bin directories.

5. Copying settings over to new Linux distro. I have been reading about a release of openSuSe 10.2 which is supposed to be much better than 10.1. I like SuSe for its complex amount of utilities and programs etc installed off the bat, as well as it's support for RPM's, and the nice look and feel it has. Now my question is, do people just scrap their system everytime they upgrade to the next new distro? I mean if I had to reconfigure all my settings, reinstall all my programs, and backup all my files everytime I wanted to upgrade, I would just never upgrade. LoL. I figure there must be a better solution than this.

Honestly, I just wipe and reinstall every time, but a small upgrade from 10.1 to 10.2 likely won't kill anything. A relatively simple way to save your preferences is to zip up your /home/yourUserName/ directory and copy it to a CD, then install your fresh OS and extract the zip into your new /home/ directory. All your personal program preferences will be preserved that way, but you might also run into some issues if the new versions of the program don't recognize their own preference files. I've not run into this *too* often, but it can happen.

6. YaST. I have been reading everywhere I look at articles about openSuSe that the main complaint is how horrible YaST is. What exactly is so bad about it? What is "broken"? What alternatives are there to this system and how can I go about installing them?

I honestly don't know what everyone seems to be complaining about either. I like YaST, and it has always worked just fine for me. If it works for you too, there's really no reason to try anything else at the moment.

7. Dependencies. How do I solve this issue? I just tried to install an RPM of Firefox 2 from a SuSe RPM repository and was confronted with the issue that it said something about failed dependencies. Again as I can not read the small print (as stated above) I'm not sure what it was all about. Say it was simply a library file or something I needed, how do I go about obtaining whatever dependency is missing?

That's where YaST comes in. If you can find a YaST repository for a file you want, that will always be easier from a dependency standpoint than just randomly downloading RPM files. YaST handles all the other RPMs you need on its own, similar to Debian's apt-get system or Gentoo's portage. Another similar mechanism for RPM-based systems is yum.

8. Installing source files, binaries, etc. I know this is the dreaded question every linux user hears from Newbs. I have read as many articlas as I can about installing from source files.

My rule of thumb is to always check and make sure there isn't already a binary (RPM in your case) available for your distribution. Compiling from source should be an absolute last resort. Firefox is available as a binary installable script (.BIN or .SH, I forget) from the firefox website. You DO NOT want to try and compile it on your own, trust me.

And even the method of finding an RPM instead hasn't worked since I found one for my distro as well and it will not install either. I'm getting so stressed out over this system now. I know it's going to be ruff learning everything, hopefully soon enough I will be up and running full front. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me!!!

Is there a specific version of Firefox you're trying to get? To the best of my knowledge SuSE includes Firefox in its default install, and if not it's at least available off the discs through YaST.

PS --> I am running SuSe 10.1 X86_64
Currently downloading SuSe 10.2 X86 after reading the lack of advantage to 64-bit linux systems on this site.

Ah, beat me to it.

[SMix]

First off than kyou all so much for willing to be so helpful. I feel like a complete idiot right now since if you asked me most anything in Windows I could anser or solve your issue. But now I'm in a whole new world. I have os much feedback and response to the things above but will try and post it later. For right now I just wanted to post something quickly about the part of this all that is really annoying the living **** out of me. The following are two screen shots that I took. One with Appearance-> Font altered to all be size 20 font. The second being all fonts changed to size 14 font. If you notice the Kopete messenger does not change size from typed font to the window. If I change that font to a smaller font, they both get smaller, thus making it harder to even see what I'm typing. The second window you can notice is the Install window. That is the size that it always remains at. I can not get the damn thing to change to a larger font. I can't even read what anything says. I even tried putting in a bunch of repositories for YaST and I have apparently 223 updates available, but when I click update, I get an error message I can't even read.


Now the odd part. Last night, everything changed. I do not know of any setting or anything I did, but last night was different. For some reason I could read the install software window font. It enlarged but I don't know what did it. Also it was really annoying because all my fonts enlarged. I had to change the fonts back smaller to a 12 because the words were so big everywhere. HELP!!! LoL

And one other last thing before later. I tried the methods described above for running a program that installed but did not appear on the list. VMWare did not run. There are also multiple different ones with the Gear shape look to them that I tried and none of them did anything. Also I tried the method of ALt+F2 and when I start to type the program it shows the icon, but again does nothing. Any ideas?

[SMix]

Ok I'm back to rattle off some more of what is not going well. And the followup to my earlier post:

1. CTRL+ALT+DEL?

Ok I got this figured out now and understand this. CTRL+ESC and I can "kill" the process. Makes sense. Of course there is much more in that list I don't understand than do. But I found the process I needed and was able to utilize that.

2. open Control Center ( kcontrol ) -- Appearance -- Font. change Font size
OR set correct resolution. boot up in command line mode and execute 'sax2'

This is still my main gripe and I do not understand this at all. As you can see from the screen shots above, it is not something so simple (or so I'm guessing)
I have also checked on the resolution options as well, there is a resolution setting for LCD TV's which is the size my screen tells me to set to when I set monitor resolution outside the proper range. To no avail. This still does not fix the lack of universality in the fonts on the system. I successfully installed a new program and it too appears with the unreadable font in the window.

3. Running a program. How do I run a program if it doesn't appear in the K Menu?

This has been partially solved. I am guessing VMWare is just a more complex program and there must be something else wrong. After I found the other program I installed (KeePassx) I was able to run it from the /usr/bin directory. I was not sure of any of the VMware applications I was choosing anyway. I don't believe it was installed properly. How do I use YaST to install a program that I download the RPM for?

4. Sound card issues.

The sound is still an issue. I am not killing myself with this one yet, as I can't even get half the other things I want working right on my machine. I am trying to get the new version of Amarok to download and install but that is an issue as well.

5. Copying settings over to new Linux distro.

I'm not completely sure here. So if I simply backup my /home/shawnmix folder, all my settings for KDE, programs, personal files obviously, temp files for progs etc, will all be saved and restored into their respective programs and such upon new install? As I have read a fresh install is the best way to go.

6. YaST.

Ok so I won't be biased against it to start with. But does anyone know of a good source for an UP TO DATE howto or tutorial about how to use YaST? I mean openSuSE.org kills me. Half of their tutorials tell you to do something, but don't explain how to do so. Like telling you to install something without telling you how to install it. It's so aggaravating, but I'm still holding on to try and understand and learn it.

7. Dependencies.

Now I guess this really just ties in with YaST. How do use YaST to install or download the software I am looking for instead of going to the website of the software? And in the case that I can't find the software through YaST, then how do I resolve all these dependencies? How do I install a library that a program needs?

8. Installing source files, binaries, etc

Now someone said to always try and use a RPM. Trust me being a newb to linux, I am hoping that every program I want has a RPM and that it works properly. But there are issue with some of the RPM's out there, and on top of it there are many programs that don't have an RPM. And on top of it all, I know it might be hard to install w/o an RPM, but I want to know how so I actually can do it if need to.

Also to update you on what I'm using etc for everything. Here is my system in a nutshell:

HP Pavillion A1438w
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
Logitech MX5000 Bluetooth Desktop (Key+Mouse)
Currently: openSuSE 10.1
Attempting to DL Again: openSuSE 10.2
(I tried last night and the download was only 2.4GB not 3.7 like it was supposed to be)

And the other thing I'm not sure if it will work being in Linux, but the bluetooth desktop I have uses a USB dongle that provided a bluetooth connection on my Windows before. Anybody know of a driver perhaps or a program I can use that will also enable this dongle to be used for Bluetooth connectivity? Thanks again to all who helped! And hopefully for those who help to keep me on the Linux path!