The noob question thread

[Kasyx]

For some reason, getting involved in any online community can be hard. There seems to be a level of elitism in many places (though I do not refer to the MyBB Linux section, which always proves helpful), which often leads to people not understanding something that is considered to be really basic, yet being too afraid to ask for fear of being chastised for one's apparent "noobishness". I think this is ridiculous, so I decided to start a thread where you could ask anything you may wish to know about Linux, no matter how trivial, or basic it may seem. I will do my best to respond to any questions, and I would appreciate it if some other Linux veterans would be able to assist.

So please, ask away without fear of looking stupid.

 

[hawker]

A good move I think, well done!

 

[NeonNinja]

Can viruses affecting Windows cross platform as my friends say? (Dual boot). Or damage programs, data etc on Linux partition?

 

[phoneJunky]

Well in theory it should be able to damage the linux partition itself, but it will a little far fetched (though not impossible) to damage a linux program. And no, I don't think they virus will cross platform. But nothing is impossible, just highly unlikely.

 

[hawker]

Dwpends, if you download a windows virus in Linux and then open Windows you could still get infected.

Thats probably the main reason anti-virus exists for Linux, to stop virii from spreading to windows/across nwtworks/email etc.

Hope this helps as this is how I understand it.

 

[Kasyx]

Can viruses affecting Windows cross platform as my friends say? (Dual boot). Or damage programs, data etc on Linux partition?

In general, I would say no. Obviously viruses that affect your system outside the OS (e.g. attacking the Master Boot Record, or the hard drive partition) will still have an effect under Linux, however it is unlikely a Windows virus would cross over to Linux and cause problems, however, as has been mentioned, downloading a virus in Linux could cause it to spread to Windows. Take an emailed trojan or worm for example - you could open it under Linux and, unless it is tailored for Linux (which is rare and pretty damn difficult to do), it will have no effect. However, if you were to download the virus attachment to your PC, then dual boot to windows and open it, **** would hit the fan.

I'm not 100% sure on this, so don't quote me, but generally a virus has to be tailored to the OS it is to infect - it will attack system files and exploit vulnerabilities that are unique to that OS, and thus the virus will not have any effect under an OS that it is not tailored to.

 

[shaunvw]

I've got quite a few noob questions.

1. When you partition a hard drive do you have to format it before?
I've got plenty of space on my hard drive to make a partition but I don't have extra storage to back up for a format.

2. Does the install inside windows option work well?
and with the disk performance been reduced will it affect windows or only linux? Because I'm not to worried about linux, I just want to mess around with it. While windows I need good performance.

3. Where can I find all the command prompt (UNIX) commands and what they do?
Hopefully in an ebook format that I can look through as I want, instead of having to be on line.
I've tried searching in google but most of the links have been deleted, or the one I did download turned out to be a virus, so If you know where I can get this please help. (also if you know where I can get the same for the windows command prompt ).

4. How does the virtual emulator work?
The one person I spoke to has a linux partition but runs it with an virtual emulator. So what exactly does the emulator do, because if you have a partition for it why not just run it normally.

Thanks a lot for your help

 

[ponder]

For some reason, getting involved in any online community can be hard. There seems to be a level of elitism in many places (though I do not refer to the MyBB Linux section, which always proves helpful), which often leads to people not understanding something that is considered to be really basic, yet being too afraid to ask for fear of being chastised for one's apparent "noobishness". I think this is ridiculous, so I decided to start a thread where you could ask anything you may wish to know about Linux, no matter how trivial, or basic it may seem. I will do my best to respond to any questions, and I would appreciate it if some other Linux veterans would be able to assist.

The problem is people asking questions that have been answered a 100 times before. Learn how to use google or search forums.

Ubuntu has a very good community but their forums suck imho. Noobs asking the same schit over and over and other noobs responding with schit solutions. Ubuntu has very bad documentation, if you use a Debian based distro I suggest you look at the Debian documentation. Arch & Gentoo also have excellent documentation on their wikis which could be applied to other distros, same goes for FreeBSD & OpenBSD if you are into BSD.

If you have researched your problem properly and state that followed by what you have tried people generally have a lot more tolerance for you. Secondly you don't learn much by just doing XYZ some other noob told you in a forum without knowing the underlying basics. Ubuntu is probably one of the hardest distros to fix if something goes wrong as everything is becoming more hidden from the user, kinda like windows these days where you just format & reinstall. I have post on Ubuntu forums that nver got a satisfactory answer and I suspect the cause is due to lots of noobs and the high traffic they generate, 1hr and your post is three pages back. I think this is where a lot of the animosity comes from in the online community.

I've been crucified on some BSD forums by a few individuals (others were much nicer) before and I don't blame them in retrospect because if I had read their wikis I would have solved the problem in a wink. Whatever problem you have has already been sorted by someone else.

So if you are the type of person that just nags and likes to be spoon fed linux is probably not for you, go buy a Win7 license

 

[Tacet]

The problem is people asking questions that have been answered a 100 times before. Learn how to use google or search forums.

If you have researched your problem properly and state that followed by what you have tried people generally have a lot more tolerance for you. Secondly you don't learn much by just doing XYZ some other noob told you in a forum without knowing the underlying basics. Ubuntu is probably one of the hardest distros to fix if something goes wrong as everything is becoming more hidden from the user, kinda like windows these days where you just format & reinstall. I have post on Ubuntu forums that nver got a satisfactory answer and I suspect the cause is due to lots of noobs and the high traffic they generate, 1hr and your post is three pages back. I think this is where a lot of the animosity comes from in the online community.

Very true. I've solved >90% of my linux problems by searching for the answers on the wikis and forums. I have posted one or two problems before (generally my problems are noobish enough to already be documented!), in which case the community was very helpful. It does help if your post shows that you've searched for answers without finding any.

Maybe elitism isn't a bad thing. Example: someone asked for wireless drivers on this forum recently. I responded, but as I'm really not an expert, I could only help to ID the device chipset and the correct driver. I don't know how to install those, but I've installed several wireless drivers before with the help of wikis, how to guides and forums. With too many people like myself responding with half-hearted replies, it will be much more difficult to find the true gems of answers among the rest.

 

[ponder]

Maybe elitism isn't a bad thing. Example: someone asked for wireless drivers on this forum recently. I responded, but as I'm really not an expert, I could only help to ID the device chipset and the correct driver. I don't know how to install those, but I've installed several wireless drivers before with the help of wikis, how to guides and forums. With too many people like myself responding with half-hearted replies, it will be much more difficult to find the true gems of answers among the rest.

That is 80% of the solution which is a good good thing. Now one would expect someone to take that info and do some searching but no some people need to be spoon fed.

In retrospect I have been hammered a few times before but I never took it personally and if anything it pushed me further in my knowledge so I'm thankful to those who tore me apart
Thing is once they give you the treatment you go out and look for solutions and when you come back with a log of the many things you have tried they offer you some respect and try to help, some even apologise for their harshness.

It's a learning curve and at the end of the day you have to remember that linux is not windows and it never intended to be.

 

[Nod]

I don't have a problem to help people, if it would help that person to help them self in the future. The person asking the question is doing so to learn, not true? That said, there is nothing like someone trying to get spoon fed to make me ignore them. At least show that you want to learn, by showing me what you have found on your own. In this way, I can see if you're thinking in the right direction, even if you don't know what to do with the information you are seeing. But, if you have nothing, it only shows me that you have no interest in learning anything, and only wants the solution.

 

[CataclysmZA]

I've got quite a few noob questions.

1. When you partition a hard drive do you have to format it before?
I've got plenty of space on my hard drive to make a partition but I don't have extra storage to back up for a format.

You can only partition a drive once the formatted partitions are deleted, and there's raw drive space available. Windows 7 and Vista both offer a nifty feature whereby you can re-partition a hard drive so long as it has free space towards the end of the partition. Make sure you defrag before you do this, as random files in sectors at the end of the drive mess up the amount of space you would have been given.

2. Does the install inside windows option work well?
and with the disk performance been reduced will it affect windows or only linux? Because I'm not to worried about linux, I just want to mess around with it. While windows I need good performance.

Near as I can tell, installing over Windows is fine, but getting it off might be a bit iffy. I've never tried, as I've always dual-booted or run Linux in a virtual machine. Windows performance is unaffected, but Linux does drop a slight bit.

3. Where can I find all the command prompt (UNIX) commands and what they do?
Hopefully in an ebook format that I can look through as I want, instead of having to be on line.
I've tried searching in google but most of the links have been deleted, or the one I did download turned out to be a virus, so If you know where I can get this please help. (also if you know where I can get the same for the windows command prompt ).

Command-line parameters are available in the documentation for each distro, but really one needs to find the commands for the kernel that the distro is based on; e.g. Ubuntu is based on Debian, Fedora is based on Red Hat.

This is a start. Its not comprehensive, but its better than taking a 3-month course to effectively learn nothing but how to best alienate yourself from OSS. The Ubuntu server guide is also quite useful, if a bit limited.

I'd actually go as far to say that Ubuntu is the one distro that requires the least terminal commands, especially the absolutely perfect 10.4 LTS edition. Linux Mint follows in second place for being the easiest to use out of the box.

Also, on the subject of emulators. I use Virtual PC 2007 at work and at home. It creates a gigantic file on your PC thats only used by Virtual PC, and that's what the OS running under VPC uses as storage space. You can configure it to any size you want. Getting Linux, any version of Linux, onto a virtual PC is quite cumbersome, but doable. At the end of the day, you basically have another PC on your network. Only its not as functional, or as fast. And not as easy to use, either.

Crappy picture here, but its a good example: Picture related

 

[Nod]

You can only partition a drive once the formatted partitions are deleted, and there's raw drive space available. Windows 7 and Vista both offer a nifty feature whereby you can re-partition a hard drive so long as it has free space towards the end of the partition. Make sure you defrag before you do this, as random files in sectors at the end of the drive mess up the amount of space you would have been given.

It can also be done with ntfsresize+fdisk: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1244058

 

[Drake2007]

I find the biggest issue with Linux is searching for help and hitting on out-dated howto's that aren't entirely relevant to newer distro's.
Being a noob isn't the problem, people only have issue with lamers - huge difference.

How about a list of shell tips to point people in the right direction and avoid having to sieve through the noise? Here's my 2cents, feel free to add to it.

#1: man <command> and also <command> --help. man (manual) will work on most binaries and configuration files in /etc.

 

[shaunvw]

You can only partition a drive once the formatted partitions are deleted, and there's raw drive space available. Windows 7 and Vista both offer a nifty feature whereby you can re-partition a hard drive so long as it has free space towards the end of the partition. Make sure you defrag before you do this, as random files in sectors at the end of the drive mess up the amount of space you would have been given.

Near as I can tell, installing over Windows is fine, but getting it off might be a bit iffy. I've never tried, as I've always dual-booted or run Linux in a virtual machine. Windows performance is unaffected, but Linux does drop a slight bit.

Command-line parameters are available in the documentation for each distro, but really one needs to find the commands for the kernel that the distro is based on; e.g. Ubuntu is based on Debian, Fedora is based on Red Hat.

This is a start. Its not comprehensive, but its better than taking a 3-month course to effectively learn nothing but how to best alienate yourself from OSS. The Ubuntu server guide is also quite useful, if a bit limited.

I'd actually go as far to say that Ubuntu is the one distro that requires the least terminal commands, especially the absolutely perfect 10.4 LTS edition. Linux Mint follows in second place for being the easiest to use out of the box.

Also, on the subject of emulators. I use Virtual PC 2007 at work and at home. It creates a gigantic file on your PC thats only used by Virtual PC, and that's what the OS running under VPC uses as storage space. You can configure it to any size you want. Getting Linux, any version of Linux, onto a virtual PC is quite cumbersome, but doable. At the end of the day, you basically have another PC on your network. Only its not as functional, or as fast. And not as easy to use, either.

Crappy picture here, but its a good example: Picture related

Thanks for the help, busy reading through your links now. With the partition and install, I got impatient so I did the install inside windows option and it seems to be working well. At least for next time I'll know how to do it properly. Thanks again.

 

[Kasyx]

I find the biggest issue with Linux is searching for help and hitting on out-dated howto's that aren't entirely relevant to newer distro's.
Being a noob isn't the problem, people only have issue with lamers - huge difference.

How about a list of shell tips to point people in the right direction and avoid having to sieve through the noise? Here's my 2cents, feel free to add to it.

#1: man <command> and also <command> --help. man (manual) will work on most binaries and configuration files in /etc.

Man files are great, save for those horrible occasions when one needs to type "man mount", however they are a bit terse in their verbiage, and are not exactly noob-friendly.

The real trick is starting with a distro that has excellent online community documentation, such as Arch, Gentoo or Ubuntu.

Noobs, stay away from CentOS; you will hate everything about it. I know I do.

 

[Drake2007]

Man files are great, save for those horrible occasions when one needs to type "man mount", however they are a bit terse in their verbiage, and are not exactly noob-friendly.

Yeah must agree they are terse, I did see somewhere how to get to the specific information in man files quicker, just forgotten how now. Maybe someone here can help?
Which reminds me of one that's not obvious (#2) and helps trawling through man files when configuring in vi.

#1: man <command> and also <command> --help. man (manual) will work on most binaries and configuration files in /etc.
#2: Alt + F1 through F12 for multiple logins

 

[MiY4Gi]

Which Linux Distro has the closest resemblance to windows, or which one would you recommend for someone who's upgrading from windows XP to linux? Which Linux is best for someone to start off with, if that someone has no knowledge of Linux whatsoever?

Edit:

And how do you pronounce SuSE? Is it like "sooz" or "soozi" or "soos ii". Open Soozi sounds cool.

 

[ocky]

Which Linux Distro has the closest resemblance to windows, or which one would you recommend for someone who's upgrading from windows XP to linux? Which Linux is best for someone to start off with, if that someone has no knowledge of Linux whatsoever?

Edit:

And how do you pronounce SuSE? Is it like "sooz" or "soozi" or "soos ii". Open Soozi sounds cool.

This is the closest you can get to Windows. http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/ylmf.html
IMHO just go for the latest Ubuntu or even easier Linux Mint Julia http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-mint-julia.html

 

[MiY4Gi]

I think I'm gonna go with Linux Mint. It looks awesome! I had a look at screenshots from the other distro's and Mint looks by far the best. After a little googling, my choice came down to OpenSuSE or Linux Mint. First I gotta get myself another HDD. Linux has it's own media player right? Can I install the K-Lite Media Package and use that instead? I see WinAMP isn't supported on Linux, so has anyone tried XMMS? What media player is used in Mint?