Linux Programs/Guides

[[oC]pingu]

Here is some stuff I found helpful.

First of all, linux distros. There are so many of them, but I would recommend these:

Unbuntu (http://www.ubuntulinux.org/)
SuSE (http://www.opensuse.org)
Mandriva (http://wwwnew.mandriva.com/en/community/)
Fedora (http://fedora.redhat.com/)
Slackware (http://www.slackware.com/)


When you are installing, it will ask what kind of enviroment, most popular is GNOME and KDE.

GNOME - Mac Like
KDE - Windows Like

Now for some programs. Most stuff comes pre-installed, but in case not, here are some good programs for Linux.

Browser - Mozilla Firefox
IRC - Chatzilla (Firefox plugin)
Media Player - Real Player or XMMS
Instant Message Client - GAIM (its like trillian for Linux)

Some helpful guides for Linux:

ATI Video Card Driver Setup (http://www.cosmicpothole.com/Linux/ati.php)

Search around http://www.cosmicpothole.com/Linux/ for more guides.

And of course, video games. You can always install Wine or WineX to run windows games, but your best bet is to run a native linux port. Some games I like to play:

Unreal Tournament 2k3/2k4
America's Army 2.5.0
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
Quake 3 Arena
Quake 4

Thats all for now, feel free to pin this.

[luck777jojo]

and of course it's possible to see almost all the free linux distros (and get links to the downloads) from: http://distrowatch.com/

[Naem]

Mandrake is very good for black hats and white hats alike

[scruie]

How would members here like a section for Alternative OSes, such as Linux? This way any problems, recommedations and guides like this would get better exposure?

[megamanx]

What is the best Linux? I want to get but I don't want it to overwrite windows.

[luck777jojo]

get fedora core, it's free, it's easy to use and install, and it's rather stable

[No1uKnow]

nice info ota, thanks bro ;)

cya

[scruie]

A linux stickie....

Post all your Linux stuff here;

[[oC]pingu]

What is the best Linux? I want to get but I don't want it to overwrite windows.

Mandrake is so easy to install that even a child can do it.

[JAvEX]

@megamanx. There are too many Linux OSes to decide which is the absolute best. Kind of like asking which Linux is the best for gaming... If you are looking for ease of use, I would probably recommend getting the on-cd version of Ubuntu, and then if you like it, use Ubuntu. It is the most user friendly(I think), and is probably an easy adjustment for someone who has always used Windows.

Right now I mainly use Suse... Good OS, works for everything, and I've never had a single security issue with it. It has never crashed, and everything is quite simple. I've been using it for a few years now.

[ArkticWolf]

Here's some useful commands you may want to keep for reference

Commands.

poweroff - Self explanitory.
startx - Starts X-Windows with the last graphical desktop that you ran, like KDE or Gnome.
kdm - K-Desktop manager. Boots up the graphical login box for KDE.
gdm - Same as above, but for Gnome.
grep - searches for a string and returns the line with the string in it.
Example: ls -lA / |grep bin - Returns the line with 'bin' in it.
wget - Ugly, Small and very powerfull multi-protocol downloader for all *nixes and win32. Capable of restarting, resuming, and recursive downloading. You can mirror a whole site with this app.
Example: wget http://www.server.com/file.zipp
ifconfig - Displays information on the current network interfaces running and displays some useful information about them
man - Probably the most useful thing for users on *nix. man is the manual interface for most of the applications that run on linux. Use this command if you're not sure about how anything works.
Example: man grep - displays the manual page for grep.
vi - VImprived console based text editor. Very handy.
mount - mount an external filesystem into your root filesystem under a directory. NTFS is supported if you have windows partitions, but read-only. FAT32 has full support.
ln -s - Symbolic linking, read up on it on man ln.
ls - Lists all files/folders in the current directory.
su - Switch user.
Example: su [to go to root], or su - username [to go to specified username]

Tips

- Use the Tab key in the terminal. You'll soon find out why it's one of the best things to hit linux shells.

- Start programs with the . prefix, . stands for this current directory.
For example, ./wget instead of /usr/bin/wget.
If you get permission denied error then you need to make it readable.
- su to root,
- run 'chmod 777 <file>'

That's all untill I get more sleep :P

[Jesus Claus]

Another one of my favrate distros is damn small linux. Its 50mb and pretty damn fast since its slimmed down a lot. Its the fastest linux distro I could find. Only down side is wine wont work with it.