The Linux User Show #004
The Linux User Show #004 (MP3 – 22MB – 65min 13sec)
Programs, programs: where do you find them; how do you install them; how do you find them once they’ve been installed; how do you delete them…it’s all here in this week’s show. It’s a long show, but it has to be. There’s a lot to cover!
Enjoy!
Wikipedia article on Linux Distribution here
How to find files:
- Websites
- know whether your running a Debian, RPM, or other based distro
- know your CPU incase there are i386/586/686 packages
- New 64 bit processors too
- APT-GET (sources)
- YUM (yum.conf)
- Any interest in CVS? (Content Version System?)
Types of files ytou’re going to see:
- *.rpm
- *.tar.gz
- *.deb
- not sure what a file is? Use the file command here
How to find files:
- RPM Systems (Red Hat, Fedora, and others)
- Use YUM to find and install packages (including dependencies) that you don’t have an RPM for yet
- /etc/yum.conf file
- tutorial here
- Debian Systems
- Debian based distro list here
- Use APT-GET to find and install packages (including dependencies) that you don’t have a DEB for yet.
- Tutorial here
- From websites like Sourceforge or vendor/author sites
- Probably tar balls but some sites have package maintainers and will provide DEB and RPMs.
How to manage (install, remove, etc) them:
- RPM files
- RPM - Use whenever possible - dependency hell
- Quick and dirty up and running tutorial here
- DEB files
- APT-GET - Use whenever possible - dependency hell
- Debian equivalent of YUM and RPM put together (will find and install *.deb files)
- sources.list file
Can also use it on local *.deb filesI lied. Must use dpkg -i ‘program’ on local *.deb files. Thanks Justin!- Tarballs
- Configure
- Make
- Make Install
- Really Linux article here
- Forum post here for file.tar, file.tar.bz2 , file.tar.gz, file.tgz
Where did they go?
- Unlike Windows, the typical Linux application only has one file, or perhaps one and a configuration file rather than its own directory filled with 100 files. This can make the program hard to find.
- When installed from a package manager, probably will show up in desktop menu somewhere, but all vendor dependent
- Whereis
- Locate
- Find
CLUG Newbie site here
Kelly Penguin Girl’s website
Mirror Shades (intro and outro music)
Show Correction: Clint stopped by to set me straight.
In one of your shows (#4) you said i586s are AMDs and i686s are Cyrix chips. That is incorrect.
I486 = 486sx/486dx
I586s = Pentium
I686s = Pentium Pro+ (Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium IV, etc)Clones fall into those categories. An AMD Athlon XP 3000+ for example would fall into i686. Beginning with the 586 they dropped the number for a marketing happy word, “Pentium”.
June 29th, 2005 at 7:41 am
I wish this would’ve been available three years ago; I’d still be using Linux if I had a guide like this.
June 29th, 2005 at 9:20 am
Hi Geoff,
Thanks for the kind words! There’s a growing response from the Linux community to new users but there’s a long ways to go yet.
The other really good Linux resource I would recommend is the website http://www.reallylinux.com. Mark Rais (the editor or Really Linux) is a huge supporter of the podcast and his site has some really, really good information for new users.
Jon
June 29th, 2005 at 11:30 pm
Hi,
Great casting! Make it friendly. :)
If you can identify a laptop which can run on Linux for longer than 3 hours, let me know. OS X is claiming my attention these days.
Cheers,
nickf
June 30th, 2005 at 12:56 am
Ni Nickf,
Thanks, glad you like the show!
You kind of lost me on the ‘longer than 3 hours’ part. Every distro I’ve tried has either behaved reasonably well out of the box, or totally failed out of the box. I’ve never had one that worked for a while and then crapped out. Is that what you mean?
On my Dell Inspiron 1000 I’ve had the most luck with Fedora Core 2 and 3. I’ve been playing with an Ubuntu live CD a bit and it looks promising as well. My major problem is my wlan card. Even though it’s an acx100 chipset, it’s the Texas Instruments version of the acx100 chipset which means it just doesn’t work out of the box on any distro (so far). There’s a D-Link acx100 chipset wlan card out there that appears to work out of the box for many distros…but I digress.
I’m seriously considering moving to Ubuntu but two things have to happen first: I have to find the time (which is at least a week away) and I have to figure out what’s the best way to get KDE on Ubuntu. I like Gnome, but I like KDE better at the moment and in any event I like having the ability to switch at will.
I know that I can undoubtably just install KDE on Ubuntu, but there’s a distro out there called Kubuntu which is…you guessed it…Ubuntu with KDE. I need to investigate why someone bothered to make Kubuntu. I suspect there’s more to it than just adding KDE, but I really don’t know.
Edit: I have since investigated Kubuntu and direct from the Kubuntu FAQ: Kubuntu is a completely supported part of Ubuntu. Installing Kubuntu is exactly the same as installing Ubuntu, installing KDE, and uninstalling Gnome.
So there you go.
So, in short…try Fedora core 2 or 3 (4 broke for me, possibly because of the 2.6.11 kernel, but it might work for you) or Ubuntu. Ubuntu at least comes in a Live CD so you can get a feel for how well it’s going to run before taking the plunge.
On anothe note, Linspire users swear by its ability to pick up hardware, but it’s a pay distro so I’ve never touched it.
Hope that helps…
jon
July 1st, 2005 at 12:00 am
Hi Jon,
wanted to comment on your intro. It is good. I do take a little bit of offence to your inuendo that Professional software isn’t developed Passionately. I know its a throw away line and poetic license and all that, but I think a lot of the most passinate software is produced in a professional environment.
Just have a look at the features and the products coming out of Progress Software (progress software) and see what passion of not an overly big development team can do.
JMTC
Molly
July 1st, 2005 at 1:11 am
Hi Molly (do I call you Molly?);
I thought about that line in the intro before deciding to use it. I mulled over the possibility of offending someone, and I thought about how I would feel if I were a software developer and I heard that line. In the end I decided to use it.
I’ve been in the high-tech industry for over a decade now and every company I’ve worked for has developed software to some extent. I feel pretty solid in taking the position that most commercial software is driven by deadlines and budgets, and not passion.
Many, perhaps most, applications are released lacking features that were originally intended to be in the product but didn’t make it because of time or budget constraints. I would argue that the most common comment heard around design reviews these days is ‘we’ll get that in the next version’.
I’m not hacking commercial software, I’m just stating the obvious: business is about business - it’s not about passion. If businesses were run on solely on passion then nothing would ever get released. It’s a completely satisfactory business decision to freeze the design at a certain stage in order to get onto the business of actually building and marketing the thing.
My point about passion is that most Linux software (OSS in general) is created by individuals on their own time and is driven entirely by passion. They release their wares only when they are completely happy with the feature set and how it behaves. There is no real concept of deadlines or budgets and therefore the author, for better or for worse, can focus entirely on the end product. However, this doesn’t mean OSS is all cherries: because the software is released based on how the author feels about it, many OSS packages have sporadic release dates, inadequate support, and non-existent documentation.
At the end of the day though, I prefer using a software package that I know a guy like me sweat over on his own time just because he wanted to. It’s much the same reason why I chose to use Linux: I’m supporting an idea, not an operating system.
Hope that clears up what I meant by that :)
July 1st, 2005 at 7:55 am
Hi Jon,
Sorry, I should have specified that I meant battery life for linux laptops. :) My last laptop was an ASUS L3800. I successfully ran Fedora Core 1 and 2 on it at various times. I had erratic success with the DVD player on the combo drive but the real gripe I had was with low battery life - I think the longest running time was around an hour.
This blog pretty much states the case for linux laptops in general - http://the.taoofmac.com/space/blog/2005-04-15 .
So, while I’d love to use Linux with my next laptop I think necessity might dictate a powerbook.
I’m curious if you know of distros on laptops which can show a decent battery life. What kind of battery life do you see with your Dell?
Cheers,
nickf
July 4th, 2005 at 3:44 am
Hi Nickf,
I would have to agree with you that battery life sucks on my Dell. I get about an hour or an hour and a half out of a charge. Since I mostly use my laptop around the house, or take it to places with power this isn’t a big issue for me. But I can see how it would be a big issue for someone who needs that functionality.
To be fair, I put Linux on this laptop almost immediately so I can’t really state if it had better battery life under the OEM Windows load it came with.
Excellent blog entry you point to. I enjoyed the read.
Jon
July 19th, 2005 at 1:01 pm
Kelly penguin girl was commenting about installing software via the terminal.
Looking from a different point of view,
If the software isnt mature enough to have installation using deb or rpm packages (via apt or yum) then the software probably isnt mature enough to be used by “normal” people.
Although I am not a Linux newbie as I run a small Linux server in a production sence and use Ubuntu on my main work computer I love listening to the show. It is helping me understand how to convert newbies and Im learning a few things I never knew.
July 19th, 2005 at 1:26 pm
Hi Jeff,
I totally agree that mature software would likely have a deb or rpm package and whenever possible that’s the one to grab. However, I think the ability to know how to deal with a tarball is a critical Linux survival skill. If there is no package for your distro, you’re gonna have to tarball it :)
Glad the show is interesting for you. I always find that when I take in some info on a topic that I already know a lot about, I usually end up learning a thing or two anyhow.
Thanks for the comment!
November 20th, 2005 at 8:17 am
I’ve just started listening to the podcasts one by one. I’ve been using Linux for over a year and still find your podcast really informative.
I’d just like to point out that you only have to become root to do “make install”
That is:
After you run “make” become root then run “make install”
Keep up the great podcasting :)
November 20th, 2005 at 8:20 am
Thanks for the info, Chris.
Wow…that show was a long time ago :) Did I really say that?
Jon