A couple of newbie questions

[williamklee]

First question: The only way I can get the screensaver to kick in is to go to System Settings --> Monitor & Display --> Power saving & check "Enable power saving" So far, so good, but it doesn't stick - every time I reboot, I have to go back and set it again. I'm clicking the Administrator Mode button, so I *think* it should stick, but it doesn't. Any ideas why it's not?

Second question: Now that I've got the system working pretty much the way I want it, I naturally want to scrub the HD & play with some other distros. Of course, I want to be able to put it back the way it is now, more or less. So, this question is: is there a way to make a list of the apps/programs/packages installed without going through the K-menu or one of the package managers and writing them all down by hand?

<edit>
Almost forgot: partitioning. I figure a separate partition for / & /home, but I'm not sure about swap. I'm on a Dell laptop with 2 GHz Core 2 Duo & 2 GB RAM. Does this config *need* a swap partition? Some of the stuff I've read in various forums says yes, and some says no, so I'm rather confused. As I understand it, swap is for swapping contents of RAM onto the HD when you've a bit short on RAM. More RAM = less need for swap?

And if I do set up a swap partition, how big? I've read 1x physical RAM, 1.5x, 2x and 2.5x. More confusion.
</edit>

[marshallbanana]

Re: A couple of newbie questions

For the second question, it you do create a list off all the packages that you add then its very easy to install them with a command such as the following

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts

(This installs the 3 packages relating to java that I install, but you can write any number of packages here and it will simply install them all.

[Snowhog]

Re: A couple of newbie questions

Dell laptop with 2 GHz Core 2 Duo & 2 GB RAM. Does this config *need* a swap partition?

Probably not. Swap is useful if you have don't have a lot of RAM - you have plenty. If you aren't intending to run memory intensive applications, you can, if you want, dispense from establishing a swap. But it is up to you.

[Fintan]

Re: A couple of newbie questions

Does this config *need* a swap partition?

You are very happy to try and install linux without swap. I have tried but didn't get very far.

No swap=no linux.

is there a way to make a list of the apps/programs/packages installed without going through the K-menu or one of the package managers and writing them all down by hand?

There is aptoncd:
http://aptoncd.sourceforge.net/

Or have a look here:
http://www.arsgeek.com/?p=564

As for your screensaver. I don't use one so I can't help you there. Sorry

[Master Chief]

Re: A couple of newbie questions

I have a 2 GB swap. Unless you're REALLY hurting for HD space, you'll probably just want one. Falls into the "why not" category.

[dibl]

Re: A couple of newbie questions

First question: The only way I can get the screensaver to kick in is to go to System Settings --> Monitor & Display --> Power saving & check "Enable power saving" So far, so good, but it doesn't stick - every time I reboot, I have to go back and set it again. I'm clicking the Administrator Mode button, so I *think* it should stick, but it doesn't. Any ideas why it's not?

Just right-click the desktop and "configure desktop" and set your screen saver that way. Half the stuff in "System Settings>Monitor & Display" doesn't work.

Second question: Now that I've got the system working pretty much the way I want it, I naturally want to scrub the HD & play with some other distros. Of course, I want to be able to put it back the way it is now, more or less. So, this question is: is there a way to make a list of the apps/programs/packages installed without going through the K-menu or one of the package managers and writing them all down by hand?

Yes, I concur with the others that aptoncd is the most popular and reliable way to document your installed packages.

Almost forgot: partitioning. I figure a separate partition for / & /home, but I'm not sure about swap. I'm on a Dell laptop with 2 GHz Core 2 Duo & 2 GB RAM. Does this config *need* a swap partition? Some of the stuff I've read in various forums says yes, and some says no, so I'm rather confused. As I understand it, swap is for swapping contents of RAM onto the HD when you've a bit short on RAM. More RAM = less need for swap?

And if I do set up a swap partition, how big? I've read 1x physical RAM, 1.5x, 2x and 2.5x. More confusion.

Fintan has said it correctly. However, you can safely do like me and make it 0.5GB in size. If you happen to get adventuresome with audio or video encoding, you might actually use some of it.

8)

[williamklee]

Re: A couple of newbie questions

As for swap, when I went to school a couple years back to get my associates in computer programming, we had a couple of quarters with linux (learning unix by way of linux, and basic & advanced linux networking, IIRC) and the book we had said to set up 1.5x RAM for swap, while the instructor said 2.5x RAM would work better. Of course, the school computers had 256 MB RAM at most, running Win2K, so they might have been light on RAM.

OK, time to fess up: I might not be a *real* newbie, since I've been playing with Linux since about '98 or '99. Of course, at that point I didn't know enough to get it to work, but I bought Yellow Dog Linux sometime around '01 or '02, and ran that on my old Pismo PowerBook, now since departed. Since that time, I've been running some flavor of linux or another on and off, and I've been using it full-time for the last couple years. The only reason I'm using a Mac now is because I got one for my birthday, a week after I bought my Dell with pre-installed Ubuntu (lovingly titled delbuntu). I've installed some form of linux on several of my friends' computers, usually Ubuntu and/or Kubuntu, with Edubuntu in one case. In all cases but one, they preferred 'buntu to Windows - that one case was because their computer wouldn't play sound under 'buntu, but it turns out it doesn't play sound at all.

The reason I put this question in the newbie section is because these sound like newbie questions to me.

[williamklee]

Re: A couple of newbie questions

Just right-click the desktop and "configure desktop" and set your screen saver that way. Half the stuff in "System Settings>Monitor & Display" doesn't work.

That's how I set the screensaver, but it still won't kick on unless I go into the Monitor & Display and enable power saving. Looking at the screensaver tab of the desktop config window, I don't see anything that'd do that. Something under advanced options, maybe? The only thing there that looks like it might help is priority, and I've tried all three settings to no avail. I'm not seeing anything on the other tabs that looks to have anything to do with this.

Yes, I concur with the others that aptoncd is the most popular and reliable way to document your installed packages.

Both methods Fintan mentions look like they'd work, but for what I actually want, the second method might be closer. Naturally, I'll try them both.

Re-reading my initial post, I see I wasn't quite as clear as I should have been. I don't necessarily want to reload *every* package currently installed, since a lot of them I've only looked at once, or, in fact, never looked at at all after installing them. I do, however want to be able to restore what I consider necessary functionality, such as DVD playback, mp3 playback and the ability to burn mp3s with k3b, so I will be saving my modified sources list. That's the biggest reason I want a list of installed packages, so I know which libs to reinstall.

Fintan has said it correctly. However, you can safely do like me and make it 0.5GB in size. If you happen to get adventuresome with audio or video encoding, you might actually use some of it.

8)

I personally favor 1.5x RAM for swap, but I don't *know* what the best size is, or even if there *is* a best size. I strongly suspect there *isn't* a single, one-size-fits-all "best" size for swap. In fact, I'm certain that there isn't, but again, I don't *know* for sure.

[john14424]

Re: A couple of newbie questions

The one (of many) things I disliked about Windows machines was the pagefile.sys file. The read/write time from memory versus from a hard drive are quite different. Because of that fact, since my last upgrade a few months ago to 4 gb of ram, I have not installed a swap partition on any distro. Currently, with Kubuntu 7.10, I do not have a swap partition either. I had ran without a swap partition since my memory level was over 768 mb and have not noticed any performance problems at all. I decided to make this switch to no swap only because after keeping an eye on my swap last year, I noticed Linux never touched it. It was just wasted space and decided I could use just a bit more storage. I have put it ( my current 4 gb ) to the test by running Amarok, Firefox, Audacity, Adept / YaST, GIMP, Kopete and Krita all at once without any problem at all. With the amount of memory out there now a days, a swap partition is getting to be useless.

Given all indications from my testing, swap formulations for a COMMON system are as follows :

S = 1 gb - A

Where A = installed memory and S = Balance of swap needed

Swap formulations for a COMMON system with shared memory :

S = 1 gb - (A - M)

Where A = installed memory, S = Balance of swap needed and M = Shared video memory

Swap formulations for a SERVER system are as follows :

S = 4 gb - A

Where A = installed memory and S = Balance of swap needed