alright, i know nothing about Linux, absolutely zero. the liberal use of acronyms and obscure language is frightening. i tried fumbling through on my own, tried to install some stuff, have no clue what i'm doing. consulted a slew of tutorials and still nothing. essentially what i'm trying to do is install the baghira theme and learn how to manage the hard disk. if the mood strikes you and you reply keep in mind i haven't a clue what you're talking about and if you can convey instructions to me in a meaningful way in which i can comprehend, well then you should consider making a fortune off writing Linux help guides for the 90+% of us that use windows.
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Re: I'm an idiot
I wouldn't mine helping you. I do need to know more information about what it is you are trying to do.
1) What Baghira theme are you trying to install (one from kde-look.org, one from Adept)?
2) What do you want to manage on your hard disk?
Mike -
Re: I'm an idiot
Also keep in mind, superlouis, that there was a learning curve even on windows......its just such a standard now that we forget. The steeper learning curve on linux tends to reflect the amount of power in freedom in unix systems.
You wont get it all in a day or a week.....or a month....try, as Matt Welsh points out in his excellent book "running linux" to learn through (and im paraphrasing a bit here) 'time, experience and grace'......you have a road ahead of you but when you first were presented with a windows 98 screen you had a road then too....take time, learn, enjoy
cheersComment
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Re: I'm an idiot
these are excellent points you outline, and i realize it wont come over night. however i just wanted to be able to do a couple things 'off the bat' so to speak. as it is, i think it points to the excellent job the developers have done on this particular distro that someone like myself can get on and at least navigate and perform the everyday tasks without having to know code or anything.Comment
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Re: I'm an idiot
monte, i'd really appreciate your help. thanks for the offer. essentially, at this early stage, i'm trying to get the baghira theme from kde-look.org up, specifically 0.8. now, i would like to know/learn what the adept version is, as i see there is the adept installer and wonder if this has anything to do with that. for that matter which is easier to deal with. i understand i'm missing some components for running the theme. initially i tried to get the tar.bz2 and extracted that, then i used the terminal to ./configure then make install, but i'm sure theres more to it. keep in mind i just installed kubuntu this morning, so i'm sure i'm missing a ton of stuff. as for the hard drive i was just wonder how to create an icon for it on the desktop so that i can easily keep track of its usage and access files. i hope these are pretty basic things. thank againComment
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Re: I'm an idiot
louis,
Regarding Baghira, the version available in the repositories (where the files come from in Adept) is 0.7a. The version 0.8 only has minor bug fixes etc. It would be easiest to install Baghira using Adept.
Regarding the hard disk:
Right click on the desktop,
Create New>Link to Device>Hard Disc Device... <--Select this
Under 'General' you can give the disc a name (home, data, jack, rita...)
Skip 'Permissions'
Under 'Device' select the disc you want to use from the drop down list.
Click ok.
Now you have an icon on your desktop to quickly access that drive, or you can right click and select 'Properties' to see usage, etc.
Mike
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Re: I'm an idiot
mike,
alright, so i got the link for the hard drive but when i click on it it says 'could not mount device' otherwise properties works. regarding adept, i open the adept manager but how am i to find the theme, after which i assuming adept will install the package for me? once again thanks for your help, but also bare with me.Comment
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Re: I'm an idiot
About those guides. I am a fellow noob, and here's me sympathizing...
But for now, in the beginning, forget general Linux tutorials. Learn Kubuntu specifically; the desktop guide can be found here https://help.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/desk...e/C/index.html
Apologies if you've read it already.
For me, 33.3% of the frustration in learning is the way many guides are written.
Let's say you are learning to install software. You read a guide on some web page. It says to use the add/remove software in the K menu. Somewhere else it says to go directly into the graphical frontend for Apt. Some other guide tells you to do everything in the console, as if KDE or Gnome or Xfce didn't exist. Well, finally you figure all that out, but now you want to download files from websites and install them. After all, if you want an applet to do something, all you have to do is type it into Google. Apt is not very helpful here as you can't just type "minimize all windows to the desktop" into it -- the applet might be called Kminwin. How the
? are you supposed to know that? So you use Google. And you find an applet!
But it is an RPM file. So you hit another guide. You see that you need something called an "Alien" for installing something called an RPM, but a DEB installs no problem. Why is that? Well, the answer is a Google search away. The original tutorial doc you're looking at doesn't have a link to some other page explaining why. You're on your third or fourth Linux tutorial and all you wanted was to minimize all windows with one mouseclick.
And God help you if you post in some (other) Linux forums "how can I minimize everything in one mouseclick?" You'll get screamed at for not using Google, even though you started Googling on Friday and it's Sunday night. Thank God that is not the case here in kubuntuforums, where these guys are very very patient.
There are users who who (respectfully) disagree with me on this point, but I find that as a long time Windows user, when you compare a task to Windows, you will be told that Windows and Linux are very different. When you complain that things are very different, you'll be told that they're not really all that different. Solution? Give yourself homework and exercises to do. Rip a CD. Install something called Automatix.* Install a video driver upgrade. Doing and failing is a great way to learn, believe it or not, and a virtual PC in windows running Linux helps a LOT since when you botch things, you can reboot and reinstall fast.
(*This sounds easy, but it's actually not, because although the _install_ is a breeze, actually finding the current version is like finding a needle in a pile of needles. There are scores of dead ends out there, threads in forums with links removed, etc)
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Re: I'm an idiot
What is it that you wish to mount the hard drive for? One of the things about linux that is different to windows is you don't really need to access the 'hard drive' directly at its top level. All of your personal files can be kept in /home and everything else (eg. an application) is automatically put into a specific place so that the os can find it whenever it is needed (you can still get at it if necessary). For this reason you should be fine just using the home folder. The partition in which linux was installed can be accessed at / (you can get to it by opening the home folder and clicking up twice, although you will rarely need to do this). The only real reason for needing to mount a partition directly is if you need to access files that are stored on other partitions. To find out how much space is left in / you can just open any folder and right-click in some empty space, then click properties, at the bottom of properties you will see both total and free space.
Summarising, your partition as a home is located a /, however the only parts of it you will ever likely need are /home (where you put your files) and /media (where cds etc appear). The other parts are generally hidden from view but you can get at them if you really need to (generally if you are trying to alter how some application or the os in general works).
A shortcut on the desktop to /home is probably the best idea if you just want quick access to your files. Although you can already get to it from 'system menu' (that icon of a computer in your system tray next to kmenu).
If you are trying to mount another partition a good guide is
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/mountwindows
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/mountlinux
Apologies if this post confuses you, fell free to ask what I'm actually on about.
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Re: I'm an idiot
To install Baghira,
In adept use the search feature at the top to filter the packages available. Type in baghira... the baghira theme should show up.
MikeComment
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Re: I'm an idiot
I feel your pain i tried removing filters and such im only bringing up maybe 200 or so programs and aps in adept i even had trouble finding wine then realised that until i can installl one of the programs and apps i have allready my problem is finding driversComment
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Re: I'm an idiot
mike, thanks for your help, i finally i realized how to enable the repositories (yes i'm that new to this) and found it, installed without a hitch. thanks again. now onto the kxdocker. found it in adept, had it installed but it wont work for some reason. shows up in the k menu, clck on it, wait.... nothing. i'm assuming i'm missing some required packages to run it?Comment
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Re: I'm an idiot
there you go this guy is learning fast
Just look here and there, google, etc. u will manage ways to make the things easier for you
Good Luck
MepisReign
Beware the Almighty Command LineComment
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Re: I'm an idiot
That's too true. But I don't believe it's a problem about guides. It's just that you have hit the heart of the open source movement. All the guides can be correct. There is no one real way to do things. There always alternatives. Some people love adept, others will tell you to ditch it and install synaptic, but some other lover the command line and will choose apt-get...Originally posted by fdv
This could be very confusing for a new user. Choose is in every little corner of the system. But you should understand that this is not something that need to be fixed, or that can be fixed. The open source development model, by itself, promotes elections, differences, and diversity. And it thrives in it. And we love it.
If you really find yourself more comfortable in a more rigid and structures enviroment, then probably, you will never be happy not only with Linux, but with open source in general.
This is insane dificult in Linux. Every distro is build around a package manager. The usual way of working is:Well, finally you figure all that out, but now you want to download files from websites and install them.
-- EASY PATH --
1 Search for a program in google, get it's name.
2 Search for it in the program manager. If it's there install it.
3 If not, search for an alternative, if you find it go to point 2
-- THINGS GET HARDER --
4 Search for a deb file of the progam in google, if you find it install it. Use the package manager to fix the dependencies.
-- THE REAL FUN --
5 if you can't find a deb file, make one with alien or from source. If you are here, you should known quite a lot about computers to be able to survive this steps.
Most of the users should probably not go above point 3.
Downloading programs from web pages and installing them are a difficult task on linux. It's not because any solvable problem, it's just that this way of installing things is completely against the philosophy of the system. Hard to change that without changing the bases.
Javier.Comment
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Re: I'm an idiot
I would tend to disagree just a bit there......even finding a package with few or no deps, or from a cd is pretty easy afer you do one or two......even compiling makes sense a lil bit down the road........
Personally, I find adept frustratingly limited and stick to the old and tried and true syanptic......if it aint broke, why make another pkg system. Syanptic and adept are basically tweaked guis for apt-get...but i always found syanptic to be far more intuitive to things like adding repos, searching pkgs.....and the optional shell you can open let s you see ur downlaod speed and whether there are any problems with the download and setup
i leave adept handle my autoupdates
with all these options and the incredible pkg system in the debian /kubuntu
system, it repays your time and efforts now to master them and have over 1800 possible pkgs at your fingertips.
enjoyComment
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