Comments on: Installation

By: Xiong Chiamiov

Xiong Chiamiov — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 06:00:47 +0000

I find it much more intuitive to put things wherever I want them, rather than having them in some obscure location. For instance, I can simply go to the “videos” directory in my home directory to find my videos, even though they are on another drive (or even on a different computer!).

Your particular example was for applications installed through Wine, which has nothing to do with Linux’s organization, as Wine has to duplicate Windows’ file structure somewhere inside of your pre-existing Linux one.

Also, many, many times have I found someone needing to access things (in Windows) that they don’t know how to, because they have no idea that their “home directory” is C:\Documents and Settings\[username]. Want to change your Programs structure so that you can actually find something? It’s really just a folder of folders of shortcuts, but nobody knows that, whereas in Linux, not only are they already grouped by category, but in most window managers, you simply right-click edit menu.

By: Arnold L. Johnson

Arnold L. Johnson — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 02:52:37 +0000

Get yourself a large jump drive, say 4 to 8GB, download onto it a live-CD Linux version, I like Xubuntu myself. Then go into the computer setup and select boot from USB device if you can. There is no need to disturb a MS Windows install, in fact there is no need for a MS Windows install. You can use your whole hard drive to store files.
A large jump drive could hold a couple of distros, grub and applications. If you want to swap to another OS simply unplug one jump drive and plug in another, reboot. The idea here is that data is not stored on the same hard drive as your OS, so if your OS crashes or gets corrupted, the data is safe. Although Linux is safer than other OS’s, an added layer of safety is good. Plus you can swap and upgrade without tampering with your data files. Some distros have a DVD size iso, it will fit on that large jump drive so you don’t have to have a DVD burner. Jump drives can save you from a whole stack of burned disks that will get tossed on your next upgrade cycle.

By: jag_1506

jag_1506 — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 12:25:52 +0000

here you can download the latest ubuntu version http://www.ubuntu.com/ by the way talking about distros I think the more you play with any distro you install you’ll get it work the way you want but you need to install more than five of them to really find the one that met all your needs, i’ve been installing linux since 2000 and a really like how debian works but when its sun came to light (ubuntu) wow what a wonderful work this guys made although the final debian distribution is good to go now has hw detection improves i installed yesterday for the first time opensuse and wow what a good features and easy gui to install i really recommend it for newbies so as ubuntu, the hardest i tried to install are slackware and freebsd although this last is most a unix one. mandriva, fedora core are easy to install too but i really prefer debian and let see what happen now after testing opensuse ill let you know guys. I decided to install opensuse because i was configuring a friend server running under opensuse and was really easy to configure samba and give all the users privileges and put all the things working fast and painless.

By: nirmalh

nirmalh — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 03:40:14 +0000

A good website to learn how to start and involve in Linux. I was searching for such a site when i was a newbie. Now the trend has changed completely. If you have internet, learning Linux has become so simple and the latest kernel is becoming unbreakable day by day.

By: Robert Pogson

Robert Pogson — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 18:38:32 +0000

A really neat way to install Linux on a machine with that other OS is to click on this link:
goodbye-microsoft.com

An .exe runs and installs Debian from the web.

The only cautions are that you should back up files you want to save and have an installation/live CD handy in the unlikely event the installed system does not boot (rare).

By: Jack

Jack — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 04:32:28 +0000

well i need help with installing linux im tryign to install ubuntu. Iv downloaded it and when i click start this browser starts and i dont know wat to do and i tryed burnign it on a dvd and makign it a bootable dvd and its not working. I dont understand.

By: Allan

Allan — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 13:25:47 +0000

i dont agree that the GUI often makes applications easier.
if you were to open a app with the command line options from memory, you can often have the program operating well before someone of the same knowledge can with the GUI app.
sure for beginners its essential that apps be as easy and intuitive to the lay user as possible, but it should not be the goal for the linux console to be removed in the same way that M$ went about removing DOS support from windows.

i understand that there is always going to be a “in at the deep end” moment for windows only users shifting across but Linux IS a solution for windows problems but it takes a parralel jump in thinking to the different architechture.

/home/user/.. isnt so hard to understand at first, but only if the user remembers they dont need to understand what goes on below that in / .
once they do start to understand the rest of the system by installing and following tutorials’ and how-tos’ then the understanding of /etc and the rest will follow gradually.

By: Corvidae

Corvidae — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 00:48:27 +0000

I think the point Azhar was trying to make is that Microsnot went through the trouble of integrating the entire OS functionally. The simplistic browse/map to a drive letter they use makes for a very easy way for anyone to grasp what they’re doing. I have a network drive mounted on my Ubuntu box right now, and I honestly have no idea where it mapped to. The general disassociation of physical drives and tree mappings that Linux uses, makes it difficult to figure out where programs are installed, let alone drives are mapped to. If I run out of space somewhere I’m gonna be screwed for hours just trying to figure out what else is on that partition. Or was that another drive?

Consider, wich is easier when your trying to find a file. Remembering it’s in D:\Eve or that it’s in /home/username/wine/drive_d/Eve. And don’t forget it’s case sensitive either. Network paths can get even uglier. Windows goes out of it’s way to hide and obscure long path names as much as possible for just this reason.

Personally I think the real goal for Linux programmers should be to not only make it not only unneeded to open the console, but also unwanted, since there is some graphical tool to do the job easier/quicker. And just maybe along the way, some kind of abstraction for the tree structure so no one needs to look at it anymore.