Suggestions for a new Linux user.
Some suggestions for new users of Linux and thoughts on modern Linux distributions. Linux is very annoying in various ways.
Some suggestions for new users of Linux and thoughts on modern Linux distributions. Linux is very annoying in various ways.
The Radio Shack TRS-80 computer shown here is the first computer I ever used. It has a massive 4K of RAM, upgradeable to 16K, a cassette tape drive using standard audio cassettes with programs on them such as games and utilities as well as a monochrome monitor and of course a very good keyboard. It … Read more
New Gentoo based Linux distribution There is a new Gentoo based Linux distribution. This is called Clover OS. It comes with a basic TWM desktop window manager and is very fast to boot. No SystemD bloat. The Live CD will load a default TWM desktop. But there are options after login to install another desktop … Read more
I have just installed Gentoo hardened Linux on my laptop. This distribution is far more hands-on than Ubuntu and Linux Mint, but it was enjoyable to install. I have not built and installed a desktop environment yet, I am just using the framebuffer console and this suits me fine. Once the system is installed, the … Read more
The emerge -atv emacs command will tell you what packages will be merged when installing a copy of Emacs on your Gentoo GNU/Linux system. ec2-user@ip-172-31-30-35 ~ $ sudo emerge -atv emacs * IMPORTANT: 8 news items need reading for repository ‘gentoo’. * Use eselect news to read news items. These are the … Read more
Using the shellshock bash bug on an iMac. iMac04:~ admin$ env VAR1=’me() {echo "hello"}\ ‘ /bin/echo "hello" helloiMac04:~ admin$ env VAR1=’me() {echo "hello"}\ ‘ /bin/echo "hello" hello Getting free hard disk space easily. iMac04:~ admin$ df -Hla Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity iused ifree %iused Mounted on /dev/disk0s2 89G 64G 25G 73% 15757422 6089307 72% … Read more
Some useful links and bits of information for budding Linux users. Bash cheat sheet. http://www.catonmat.net/download/bash-history-cheat-sheet.pdf. This is a very useful bash cheat sheet that will greatly assist you when you are learning the bash shell. (PDF). The .bash_history file may be blocked by using the unset HISTFILE variable in your .bashrc file. Read more about … Read more
It is really amazing that the new Windows Powershell is moving Windows Administrators back towards the command-line instead of using the GUI for everything. Powershell has some very good features; but the difficulty I have experienced installing extra cmdlets is very grating indeed. It is better to use the BASH shell, as it is very … Read more
I am installing Gentoo again. I have decided to try out this source based Linux distribution one more time and see whether I can use this distribution on my computer again. I erased the contents of a spare bootable partition and I unpacked the Stage3 tarball into it and then I unpacked the Portage tarball … Read more
I have had someone come to my website looking for help on how to copy an Ubuntu kernel over to a Gentoo installation. This is not too hard to do. Let us say the kernel is version 2.6.35-14-generic. Then you will need to copy the /lib/modules/2.6.35-14-generic folder into the /lib/modules folder on your Gentoo installation. … Read more
Compiling software in a distribution such as Gentoo, being part of the way the distribution works, makes it a fun task to do. Compiling the Linux kernel with genkernel all is very fast and simpler than the old way of having to compile the kernel with make -j4 && make modules then typing make modules_install … Read more
This is the GDM theme I am using on Gentoo, this theme is the best amongst the many themes I got with this ebuild. And it looks very nice and professional. I used the login in a new window option in Gnome which uses Xnest to open a window displaying the Gnome desktop manager to … Read more
Performing a kernel upgrade on Gentoo GNU/Linux How best to upgrade the Gentoo kernel. Installing a vanilla kernel for the Gentoo GNU/Linux distribution is very easy. This is necessary when a kernel upgrade is required. Just install the vanilla kernel source from kernel.org and then unpack the sources into /usr/src/linux as shown below. I am … Read more
My computer is now running Gentoo once again, I installed the x86_64 stage3 tarball and the latest portage tarball and installed the system from within a chroot using my Ubuntu 11.04 distribution. The installation was different from the last time I installed a Gentoo system, I am using newer hardware this time, but now it … Read more
Hello there. I have just finished installing the vanilla 2.6.36-rc6 kernel in my Gentoo installation in a chroot, I tried to boot the standard Gentoo kernel and I got an error after the “Starting Mdev” line that said that the kernel could not find the root block device, but the file-system drivers for ext4 were … Read more