Re: Newbie wants it all and wants it now!

From: Clive Dove (chdove_at_rogers.com)
Date: 09/27/04 

Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 07:36:14 -0400

Q852913745 wrote:

>>You may find yourself some day with a damaged system in which the
>>basic console and the vi editor are the only tools you have available
>>to fix the system.
>
> I 'personally' have always opted for regular backups and if/when a
> problem arises I just perform a fresh re-install of windows.
> (Although, installing Mandrake did destroy ALL of my windows backups!)
>
>>Also, using the command line is actually easier and gives a better
>>command over the system once you have gotten used to using it.
>
> I have looked through a few books on using linux commands and it does
> 'seem' like a rather large subject, and surely if not used regularly
> you (I) will forget
> many of the command combinations.
>
> I will try to 'appreciate' some of the basic commands, maybe 'why' I
> need them, will become clearer as time goes on.

If you have done the default install in Mandrake and allowed Mandrake's
installer to choose the partitioning scheme, the /home sub-tree will
have been put into one partition and the rest of the tree (mounted as
"/") will have been put into another and a small third partition
formatted as "swap" and not mounted into the tree. The / partition can
be totally re-formatted and re-installed without having to format
the /home partititon and following the install the user accounts in
the /home tree will simply access the re-installed root tree (no
register to complicate things).

The /home tree consists entirely of the user accounts. The Mandrake
installer makes it the larger of the two because it contains all the
profiles, preferences, bookmarks and workproduct of all the users and
is therefor the part of the tree most likely to grow. What I do is to
back up the /home tree on a regular basis to cd disks. I do the
back-ups with a crom burner running as root user because each user has
his own permissions for his part of the tree and only the root user can
access all of them without having the passwords for the other users.

The mandrake installer will have mounted the windows partition (C: D:
etc into the tree under sub-tree /mnt. the linux system can read a ntfs
partition but not write to it (yet) and can read and write a vfat
(fat32) partition, so I have set up a small vfat partition to act as a
file exchange between the linux partitions and the windows ntfs
partitions.

Configuring a linux system is really a process of editing standard ascii
files, most of whom are in the /etc sub-tree. This means learning how
to use a standard ascii editor. The kwrite and kedit editors are two
of a host of editors that will be familiar to people migrating from
windows. The vi editor is less intuitive for a windows user but geeks
still keep familiar with it as it is the only editor that is standard
in all unix/linux systems including very limited systems such as those
found on rescue floppy disks.

There are a lot of commands available but you don't have to learn them
all at once. I certainly don't know them all. Most commands have a
manual page that you can refer to by use of the "man" command. For
example, to see the use of the ls command which is used in linux
instead of the "dir" command that you most likely use in windows, enter
this command at a root prompt:

man ls

Of course, the man pages are meant for people who are used to the linux
conventions and so their authors do not go to the trouble of writing
them for the benefit of newbies. However, you will quickly become
familiar with the conventions used.

Linux users, like windows users, can stick to gui applications and never
stray off the desktop and for most non-techie users that is quite
adequate. Those users will get the same benefits from linux as they
would from windows, but if you really want to have full use of any
system you have to be able to depart from the desktop and learn how to
work at lower levels. This also applies to windows.

Even in windows which I venture into rarely (usually to clean out
malicious code that accumulates while my son is using the system) I
have a desktop icon for a terminal window in each user account and in
the "administrator" account desktop so that I can work from a command
prompt.

Clive

Clive

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