Linux General Questions Thread

OK then. I think you are right. We should not spread illegal, or non-original binary of the software anywhere in this forum. It is worth to mention laptopvideo2go is also a bad site to be mentioned at here. It provide all non-original binary drivers for Nvidia/MS IP software.

So, should I say if you google "Ubuntu .deb Lindvd " and you may be surprised whatever it turned? Is this legal?

 

I'm on the linux-pm mailing list, so I know a bit more about this that is necessarily healthy.

Suspend-to-disk, a/k/a hibernate, performs a snapshot of system RAM, saves it off to disk, and shuts the machine off. When the machine is restarted, the entire snapshot is reloaded off disk into a working buffer, and the pages are then copied to their original positions. This implies that, worst case, you will not be able to successfully suspend to disk if you're actively using more than half your RAM, because the kernel won't be able to allocate the needed workspace when performing the restore. There are ways to minimize the need for temporary RAM by using a springboard buffer, but to my knowledge this work hasn't been done yet. (See Documentation/power/swsusp.txt in the Linux sources for more details.)

Also consider, the swap partition needs to have at least enough free space to handle the system snapshot image.

Fortunately, the kernel will try throwing away non-critical buffers (such as filesystem caches) before attempting the suspend, which typically saves a ton of space. And then there's the Suspend2 project, where the rules are different...

That said, the most common rule of thumb is to allocate a swap partition twice the size of RAM. Disk is cheap.

Schwab

 

Actually, the reason not to download LinDVD is because it sucks.

LinDVD is a DVD player officially licensed by the DVD Copy Control Association. That means it has all the copy protection, region lockouts, fast-forward lockouts, broken video signals (MacroVision), and other anti-consumer defects common to regular DVD players. Check out the contract you have to sign in order to be granted "permission" to use the DVD CCA's (former) trade secret (Exhibit C, about a third of the way down).

You are far, far better off using a Free Software DVD player, such as VLC or MPlayer. Both require libdvdcss to play DVDs, but it is trivial to find and install.

Schwab

 

It may be trivial, but it's still illegal in the U.S.

 

I just want to leave some lead to newbies who miss XP so much. I don't have problem with Totem and libdvdcss2. Actually I like Totem better. VLC has problem on some of DVDs and I didn't use Mplayer skin well. So Totem is much simple to me.

 

OK guys, im going to install later this evening. But Id still like a second opinion on the partitions.

As of my understanding, I will:
1. Install XP first
2. Create a partition only for XP (25GB sound ok guys?)
3. Leave the rest as unpartitioned space for Linux
4. When i go to install linux it will create both its own partition and swap partition out of that unpartitioned space.

Im an looking for your opinions here guys. One person mentioned that having an OSless Partition would be good for sharing or backing up files. Does anyone else recommend this? If i were to do it the most i could make it 34GB (with my XP being 25GB, Linux being 50GB, and Swap 1GB). Is it worth it for that ammount of space.

And if i were to make it, i would create that partition when i create the XP partition?

Another question, you guys are all making it sound like watching videos, dvd's, and installing codecs are going to be a pain in the butt. I dont understnd how installing a dvd program can be illegal, or even postinng a link... but i do want to watch DVD, so ill have to figure it out.

Does anyone use Media Player Classic MPC? Dont they have a Linux port. And the Combined Community Codec Pack CCCP that i mentioned earlier. Even if that isnt specifically compatible, no one else has created a pack of nearly every codec you'll even need for Linux!? One install gets you everyhting.

Thanks!

 

The restricted formats page I linked you too gives you the single terminal command for codecs. Hasnt failed to play anything I have yet.

 

aerowinged: an OSless partition is not necessary. XP and Linux can cross read/write each other without any corruption.

 

ohhh, ok i didnt know that. So ill just have one partitoin for XP and 1 for linux plus the swap. Great. Thanks

 

I have been reading up on Fiesty and boy am I excited. One question though. Compiz or Beryl? Feisty has Compiz installed according to what I have read, so all you have to do is enable it. But I have heard it is more buggy and less reliable then Beryl? Beryl isn't terribly hard to install and get running either so I was wondering other pro's and con's of each. Leaning towards Beryl right now. I will have an nVidia GeForce Go 7400 GPU.

 

Compiz is more stable and less buggy, Beryl has more features. This wont matter soon, as the two projects are remerging.

 

I personally don't recommend either to be honest. Neither is really stable enough to use effectively IMO, and with an nVidia card, you will lose the ability to suspend/hibernate with Compiz and Beryl enabled.

 

I like using Beryl, as I can turn it on and off on the fly from the tray icon, which will allow me to do the nifty effects when I'm plugged in, and save battery life when I'm not. I haven't ever gotten the desktop effects to work right with Compiz, and it isn't as pretty, featureful or easy to configure under KDE, so I don't use it.

 

I couldn't ever find the Desktop Effects property when I used the Kubuntu Feisty beta. Was it even in there?

 

I don't think there was a GUI for it. I installed it, but I never got it working.

 

Taking it back a page or so, what is the consensus on Linux Swap. My system will have 2 GB of RAM. Some have said that with 2GB of RAM it is fine to do anywhere from 512MB to 1GB of swap, but now it has been said that the hibernation feature cannot be used if the Swap and RAM are not equal? Also, I have read about the problem called thrashing, when you have more than 1 GB of swap and your comp tries to cache data between RAM and swap too much since the swap is so big. Any truth to this? I guess I am just confused on what to listen to on something I thought I already had under control.

Thanks for the help.

 

I would make it at least 1GB to make sure that hibernate works fine. Ideally, I guess you would want 2GB. But if you make sure not to have a ton of stuff going on when you hibernate, you should be fine with 1GB. You'll never use it for hard drive cache more than likely.

 

The main point of a spare partition is to store all your information in case you need to reinstall one of your OS'. I usually would have a spare partition even if I only had one OS (and in fact, it would be more important then) on the machine, that way in case the OS got hosed, I wouldn't run the risk of losing a ton of information.

Also keep in mind that while Linux support for NTFS is good now, Microsoft has no such aspirations to play nicely with Linux's ext2/3. Therefore, the only options that allow Windows to read stuff off your Linux partition is from third party software like ext2fs that you may or may not find reliable. Therefore, if you don't want a third data partition (which I still highly recommend), then you should at least feel more comfortable putting your data on your Windows partition. Of course, the problem with that is that if your Windows install gets hosed and doesn't shut down properly (and won't boot again), you probably won't be able to access the data from Linux.

Like I said, it's just easier to put a third FAT32 or NTFS partition on the disk.

 

The way I have arranged my dual-boot is simple:

<Windows, 25GB> <Linux swap, 1.5GB> <Kubuntu 7.04, 85GB>

I use Windows exclusively for games (w/ 19GB occupied now), while Kubuntu has everything I need as well as all my data. I haven't had any trouble between the two yet, as I have ext2fs installed on XP and the ntfs-g package for NTFS r/w support on Kubuntu, but XP is strictly for games (HL2, HL2:Episode 1, CSS, Civ3, AoK2, and Empire Earth 2).

 

thanks to ext2Ifs,now i can read Linux partition easily in Windows,but i dont know what folder that save Linux personal information (when installing Ubuntu 7.04 there are a immigrate option copied my account from XP to Ubuntu,it's cool )

 

Quick question regarding Wireless cards in Fiesty. Mine should be natively supported since it is the Intel a/b/g one. I have heard of people needing a WEP key to get the wireless up an running? Will I need this and what is it? Thanks.

 

Personal stuff is kept in /home/username.

 

Depends on how your wireless AP. WEP is just another security method. If your AP has no security, then you wont need any sort of key.

 

ok. so let me see if i understand this correctly.

1. Ubuntu does not use NTFS file system.

2.It uses a filessystem called EXT2FS.

3. Linux can read data off XP partition with NTFS filesystem.

4. But XP needs a program to read Linux partition with EXT2fs filesystem.

I am still trying to decide weather to create a spare partition without an OS. Can someone weigh in the pros and cons of both.

Thanks guys, youve all been a great help so far. In the past i have tried linux and switched back to windows very quickly. This time i want to stay with linux... which means i need knowledge.

 

Correct.

Actually, it's more complicated than that.

The filesystem in widest use on Linux is ext2. ext3, a more reliable version of ext2, is gaining in popularity, and is often the default on recent Linux distributions. However, those are not the only filesystems Linux can use. Among others, Linux is conversant in:

• FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 (DOS, Windows),
• NTFS (Windows NT, 2K, XP, Vista (READ-ONLY)),
• HFS (Macintosh),
• ISO-9660, UDF (CD-ROMs and DVDs),
• ReiserFS,
• XFS,
• JFS,
• Amiga FFS,
• BeFS (read-only),
• BSD FFS,
• About twenty others.

Linux's hallmark is interoperability.

Correct. Writing to NTFS is also claimed to be supported but, since Microsoft refuses to document the filesystem structure, any such support came from reverse-engineering, which is necessarily incomplete. Thus, I would be very careful writing to an NTFS volume using Linux, at least for a while.

Sort of. You can install ext2fsd on Windows, and your Linux volumes will show up under Windows as if they were any other disk. However, writing a filesystem driver for Windows is extremely complex, so much so that almost no one outside of Microsoft has done it.

My laptops have been Linux-only for at least five years, so I don't have a lot to contribute on this one. It might be useful to have a spare couple of gigs laying around, formatted FAT32, just in case.

Schwab

 

So if i make a spare partition, formatting it in FAT32 will ensure that everythin can be read and written from either an Linux partition or XP partition. And theoretically, NTFS should be fine... but its not recommended.

How does FAT32 perform in terms of speed? and will it make the space bigger or smaller than ext2/3 or NTFS?

 

You should be fine with either FAT32 or NTFS. The most common Linux NTFS driver (ntfs-3g) just went out of beta a month or so ago and is included in Ubuntu Feisty. It is at version 1.0 and is quite stable. FAT32 support is much better in Linux and has been out of beta for a really long time. It has been easy for several OS' to use FAT32, and it is quite a common filesystem, and is even used on most if not all USB flash drives.

But the real kicker with FAT32 is that it is old. It is limited to 4GB files or clusters. If you try to move anything larger than 4GB onto or off a FAT32 partition at one time, you'll end up with broken files. On top of that, it is slower than NTFS. And going one step beyond that, it's formatting will leave a bunch of unused space on your drive. For instance, I allocated 25GB to my FAT32 partition. But because of the formatting, it only shows up as 24.1GB.

 

Remember kids, WEP is bad. Use WPA or WPA2 (WPA2 requires a patch to be installed on Windows machines that use the same network)

 

While WEP is not as secure, it's easier when it comes to Linux. Sure, we have network manager now. But that is still not in a final released form, and gives several people problems and crashes. Not to mention, it still doesn't work with my University's WPA network. I even tried configuring wpasupplicant, but to no avail.

 

FAT32 also has a tendency to become very fragmented over time. Since defragging is not necessary in Linux, will I be able to defrag a FAT32 partition on my hard drive using a Windows application?

 

Yes, you can use the built in Windows defragmenter to defrag other partitions as long as that are natively read by Windows (as NTFS and FAT32 are). This I assume is also possible if you want to defrag a USB flash drive.

 

Ok well i have a 160 GB USB/Firewire External Harddrive formatted in NTFS.

Is this going to be a problem connecting to ubuntu for reading and backing up data.

Since i have this, is there really a need for me to have a spare partition. I am fairly regular with backing up important data to this external HDD.

 

No; that should be perfect. In fact, I would say that this is your best option, and leaving it NTFS will be fine as well. Ubuntu 7.04 includes ntfs-3g by default, so it should be able to read the drive as soon as you plug it in.

 

Gotta set up ntfs-3g with the correct options to make it readable as a USB drive. `apt-get install ntfsconfig` will put the ntfsconfig program in your menu, which will allow you to enable NTFS auto-mounting on USB drives.

 

Is there an application to check that my ISO image downloaded correctly for both GParted and Ubuntu that works in Vista.

P.S. My laptop arrived, dowloading now

 

Md5sum should work.

 

Ok, and the Feisty ISO fits on one CD-R correct?

 

yup, its around 697MB.

 

Wow, is all I have to say.

I just experienced Ubuntu for the first time via the live cd. It was brilliant, absolutely shined. I haven't had alot of time of late but man, I CANNOT wait to get this OS on my laptop.

Wireless worked without a hitch, it recognized my native screen resolution, it was simply terrific. I am thoroughly impressed. Thanks for all of your help. I will be installing Ubuntu next week for sure when I get done with finals and such.

 

It is great. However, keep in mind that after you install your graphics drivers, you'll probably lose your native resolution. All the proprietary drivers have problems with this (though the open source drivers work fine strangely enough ). You will find good ways around this in Lysander's guide at the top of the page. Glad you enjoyed the experience though, and we're glad to have you as a user!

 

Don't say "probably". That's only for some setups. Mine worked perfectly with an `apt-get install nvidia-glx`, no resolution hackery needed.

 

Maybe it's a problem with the Quadro card then? Or perhaps with certain chipsets (mine is based on G71)?

 

Yeah. There's a known problem with Dell's relating to that, I believe. I think it's an ACPI or DDC issue of some sort.

 

I installed Ubuntu Feisty 7.04 on my desktop to experiment with Linux but now I need the HDD space Ubuntu Linux took up on my desktop for Windows so I pose this question:

How do you uninstall Ubuntu Linux?

 

Use gParted (it's on the LiveCD) and format the partition in your choice of format. Then put your Windows disk in, go into rescue mode, and run the fixmbr command.

 

I would do it the other way around personally. Just in case "fixmbr" doesn't work, you won't have a broken system. I don't see why it wouldn't work, but it's never a bad idea to err on the side of caution.

By the way, if you don't have a Windows disk in, if you don't mind having GRUB around, you can put /boot on its own partition (it'll only need like 50MB at most), and edit /boot/grub/menu.lst accordingly. That will allow you to recover almost all of your disk space, and still boot into Windows (almost) normally. Of course, it's much easier to do it with the Windows disk, I would only do this myself if you couldn't access a recovery console to run the "fixmbr" command.

 

I noticed XP seemed to have problems for other people on the C90. I want to get a C90, and I was wondering if GNU/Linux would have any issues (i.e. buggy, won't install properly)? Thanks

I really don't want to have the Vista big brother installed.

I'm just starting to move past my end-user understanding of computers.

 

Is there a way to change the size of the partition I originally allocated for Ubuntu Linux? I do not have an internet connection in Ubuntu due to wireless problems I dont want to get into right now.

Also, I'm not sure if this is even possible, but is there a way to view all the partitions on your computer (my Ubuntu partition, Windows XP Partition (C and D drives)?

 

gparted, it should be pre-installed with Ubuntu, if not, it's in the repositories (though, I guess, if you have no internet, it would be difficult to get anything from the repositories.........).

 

Is there a site I can go to download gparted? I can view my Windows partition while booted in Ubuntu, so I figure if I download it and then boot into Ubuntu, I can find a way to resize the partition.