understanding the os

[jindiaz]

hey everyone., im new to linux, obviousky, and need some help with stuff, understanding stuff mainly.

ok, so i did a straight install from the kubuntu 5.10 cd, did the updates and all that.

so whut i need help in understainding is
1) why cant i see my main drive, which lkubuntu is installed on, in my medis storage thing? i pressed slash and yah i thnkn that brought it up. but not sure.
2) what is the optimal way fo setting up this system. im quite the organized person, so when i download new things, like games and all, where should all those files be saved? do they all have to go into the home section? or can it be anywhere?
3) how do i navigate the system, like whut is up with the /dev and all that. like the partions, whats the deal with that? i know the first three or for the kernel and swap space and all. o and yes, how do i increase the swap space to 512? if its not alreayd there.
4) how do i add places to adept, like the universe and things like that? i tried getting a movie player and all, because i NEED a vast variety of codecs for the amount of media i have, so no one could tell mne of an installer, like ace mega codecs pack for linux, which sux, but whutever, so i need to be able to get all codecs, and apparently need to get onto the univers or whutever.
5) how is dual monitor support? and which media player supports it just wondering cause i use it intensely and need it to be supported.


i think thats all for now, i just need to get my system up and running and understand how to navigate it and properly set up wehre to download files, how to organizer them and stuff like that.

my specs, if you need them, are:

asus p4p800-e deluxe mobo
p4 2.8ghz 1mb cache
coolermaster aquagate r80 custom modded with a thermal take spark 7+ fan (any overclocking advice??)
200gb main drive
(920gb total space available, 4 drive)
1.0gb ram
ati radeon 7500 video card, with the dual monitor support. (next upgrade..... i know..lol.)
MSI tv @nywhere master (hows support for that?? anyone know? mythTV perhaps??)
enermax noisetaker 485W PS

i guess thats all the important stuff. if anyone can help me with this i would seriously appreciate it. these are the main questions that are killing me in this transition from my old time arch nemsis microsoft who consistantly wishes to have wars with me, to my soon to be savior system linux and kde.

thanks again

[analyticalman]

Re: understanding the os

Where you put things is really up to you, although there are conventions. Configurations and personal stuff that you wouldn't want to lose if you changed your distro are put in your /home. This gives you a taster of other stuff. http://www.linuxnovice.org/main_focu...=VIEW&t_id=126

Not sure what you mean about your drive.

To update your repositories just add Universe and Multiverse at the end of the appropriate source lines in the etc/apt/sources.list file. You may need to uncomment some lines if you haven't been in this file. The file itself contains instructions on how to do this. You need to use the sudo command e.g. sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
You may also want to consider installing automatix-kubuntu to get a lot of the stuff you need.

If you want to increase the swap space size you'll need to use a partitioning tool like QTparted. I wouldn't bother unless you know you need to.

[mchuskie]

Re: understanding the os

By "new to Linux", I guess you've just come from Windows... good on you!

Windows addresses its drives as A:, C:, D: etc. Linux doesn't do this. With Linux/Unix systems, the hard drive is split into partitions, and each has a mount point somewhere. For example, the "main" partition is where most of the OS data is held, and it is mounted as / (your root partition). Your CD drive, rather than being D:, is likely to be /media/cdrom0.

Here's a slightly confusing bit. The root partition on the hard drive is also /dev/hda1 (say). And the CD drive is also /dev/hdc (say). Basically, /dev is part of the filesystem and also a list of the devices available. Your (IDE) hard drives are /dev/hd* and the partitions on them are /dev/hd*1, /dev/hd*2... etc. Your serial port (if you have one) is /dev/ttyS0 and the terminal screens (Ctrl+Alt+F1 - F6 to get there, then Ctrl+Alt+F7 to get back to X) are /dev/tty1...6. And so on.

You won't need to up your swap space to 512MB, I don't think, with 1GB of RAM. I have that much memory and it barely uses the swap partition at all!

By default the only area a normal user has read-write access to is their /home/user directory - think of this as sort of My Documents-plus. Most Windows users get jittery about this at first... "But it's my hard drive! I want to be able to write to all of it!" Fact is most of the other places in the filesystem are either system settings (mostly in /etc) and so stuff you won't want to change most of the time, or devices that aren't really files in the true sense. I've created an extra partition mounted as /resources as I like to keep all my music, video etc seperate. I've also given all users r/w access to it.

Programs are installed to /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin, and you don't generally need to worry about that because bash (the command shell) looks in these places to find the programs. Just type the name of the program from wherever (if you're using the commandline). Again, that's something Windows users take a while to get used to - the command prompt is your friend!

As for MythTV... Unlike Windows, just about all device support relies on the kernel and not "user-space" applications like Myth. In Windows, the question would be, "Does this program support my TV card?" In Linux, you need to ask "Does the kernel support my TV card?" In your case, I can't tell... though it looks like it has a Conexant chip. A quick Google suggested http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/.../msg00692.html - and as Kubuntu is Debian-based it might help. Myth itself sits on top of everything else and does a mighty fine job of it; it's not MythTV that directly talks to the TV card.

Oh, BTW, when I talk about Windows users - I speak from experience, I was one once...

Hope this helps you to get to grips a bit better with how Linux is put together. Keep fiddling - as long as you're not root (or sudoing every command!) you can't do much harm... and "like whut is up with the /dev and all that" - a brilliant quote, thank you!

[ericesque]

Re: understanding the os

to compound on what James said (very nice rundown, btw) you have to understand that Linux, no matter the flavor, is setup as a hierarchy. Much like the tree view you might be familiar with in Windows. Let's get a bit graphical here:

/ ------
|
|------bin
|------boot
|------dev
|------etc
|------home
| |
| *userName*
|
|------lib
|------proc
|------temp
|------root
|------usr
|------var

Okay, so each of those items to the right of the vertical line are directories (or folders in Windows terms). When using Linux, it is far more common to use multiple partitions. I, for example, have set up a root partition, a boot partition, a swap partition, and a home partition. As you can see, I have 4 partitions. Each of those partitions is assigned to a certain directory of the Linux filesystem. If you don't create a separate partition for each directory, the unspecified directories will be created in the root partition. The only two partitions that are absolutely necessary are the root and the swap. It seems you already know what a swap partition is, so we'll leave that be.

Now, every partition you have is a mount point. So I have 4 mount points which consist of partitions, and I have a dvd drive which is another mount point. As James mentioned, these mount points typically exist in the /dev (for device) directory.

For navigation, you can do this graphically or from the terminal-- also called the console or commandline.

the command for navigating in the terminal is

cd /your/path/here

so say I want to get to my user directory in my home directory. The command would be

cd /home/usr/

note to remember the cd command-- cd = change directory


one final note on navigation--

say you've navigated to a file using the graphical interface only to find that you don't have permission to edit that file. CRAPPER!

it's okay. Alt+F2 will bring up the terminal. Use

kdesu konqueror

to open a graphical interface window with su (super user) permissions. Then simply copy the path from your previous window to the new window and you can open the file.


That's all I have time for. 5 hours till class. Before I started using Linux, I used to get to bed at a reasonable hour. It's 4am here... and I'm really not even sleepy. DAMN YOU EXCITING LINUX!