Fedora 10

[Ham]

Anybody else play with it?

My first impression.. I like it.. far better than Vista.. I loaded the 32 bit version on an old computer first. It was sluggish, but functional. But on a newer 1200 mhz celeron setup it flies..

Now. What can I do with it? I'd like to do some C or C++ programming and such with it.. but where's the C? It seems to have command line tools in the terminal. I'm quite acquainted with the file systems and commands for dos. Are there any substantial differences with lynix?

And I'd like to look at the root file system. Even though I know the root password, it won't let me do it..

no, I'm not going to shoot myself in the foot. At worst, I'd have to reload the operating system..

finally, the wireless usb card. Is there any hope of getting it to work? I have a linksys dual band plugin unit, along with an appropriate wireless router..

and I have a physical drive D I'd like to do something with. During installation, it asked if I wanted to format the media. I chose both drive C and D (from DOS terms) and I don't seem to be able to access drive D. From the desktop, Fedora tells me there are no media that I have the privileges to mount. What's up with that?

Maybe more questions later..

[bulwinkl]

I've been playing with it for about 10 years. Although I'm not too familiar with Fedora I've generally stuck to Debian and SUSE. programming in Linux can be a tad different. Some people just use an editor such as emacs or vi to create a file then compile it with gcc if you written it in C or g++ if you wrote it in C++. I suggest using a graphical editor to start with personally I like scite. Next

most people can look at the root filesystem if you want to do it from a command line and have midnite commander installed just type mc at the prompt. another way to look is at command prompt type ls (think list) and it will show you the files in that directory. to see the directory up the tree type ls ../. O h that's another thing in linux directories are separated by a backslash not forward slash.

and lastly Hardware can be a problem to set up in linux although it has gotten much better. there are lot of sites on the web I can point you to, one place to start might be linuxquestions.org

Have fun and just play around with it.

[Ham]

cd ../

cd root

and I get:

Permission denied. Any other directory I can view the files.

Shouldn't I be able to log in as a super user or something?

[RumRunner]

I've been a poster child for Linux for longer than I want to admit. Unfortunately I have house painters coming in a few minutes so I will reply in more detail later. Nothing wrong with Fedora, nor really with any of the mainstream Linux releases. Fedora is a spin off from RedHat and hence has a good "lineage." You might also look at CentOS which is another good RedHat spin off. Suse is very good - very popular in Europe.

Give me until tomorrow and I'll send you answers to your above questions.

[bulwinkl]

Shouldn't I be able to log in as a super user or something?

Yes you can

the command is su or sudo then root password.

sudo is a temporary way to run programs as root. su is a way to log into as root

I suggest looking at the man (think manual) pages for each. you do that by typing man program name at prompt.

Edited May 14, 2009 by bulwinkl

[Ham]

Thanks..

well, it was rather depressing..

I mean.. all in root was a couple of startup log files.. what in the friggin world does anybody want to "protect" that from little old me..

Learning dos was fun. This is weird.. weird, but still a little bit fun..

[RumRunner]

Now. What can I do with it? I'd like to do some C or C++ programming and such with it.. but where's the C? It seems to have command line tools in the terminal. I'm quite acquainted with the file systems and commands for dos. Are there any substantial differences with lynix?

C and C++ can be invoked from the command line (assuming you have a source file named hello.c) with either cc -o hello hello.c or gcc -o hello hello.c. g++ and c++ work for C++ source file. The link part is "automagic" for simple files. We can talk about Makefiles and additional files later. By default the executable output of cc is a file named a.out. The =o option specifies the name of the output file; with the input source file listed last on the command line.

And I'd like to look at the root file system. Even though I know the root password, it won't let me do it..

Nothing interesting in / or /root unless your are a kernel hacker. The configuration stuff is located mostly in /etc/...and below. System binaries in /bin and other binaries in /usr/bin.

finally, the wireless usb card. Is there any hope of getting it to work? I have a linksys dual band plugin unit, along with an appropriate wireless router..

Should be no problem. Linux as a plethora of scripts to help auto configure hardware. Odd that the installation didn't detect it and fire up the driver for it unless your distro doesn't have it - then you have some work digging around the net.

and I have a physical drive D I'd like to do something with. During installation, it asked if I wanted to format the media. I chose both drive C and D (from DOS terms) and I don't seem to be able to access drive D. From the desktop, Fedora tells me there are no media that I have the privileges to mount. What's up with that?

Must be root (superuser also affectionately known as stupiduser) to mount hard drives. Look for a file in /etc called fstab. It should have both drives although you will not see them called C:/D:. You will see them listed as a device driver file - like /etc/dsk/c0t0s0 so some such - again depends on your distro. However to be sure they are not already mounted either look in /etc/mtab which will show you mount points that are active or use df -kl and it will show you mounted partitions with used/free space.

Maybe more questions later..

[bulwinkl]

if you had more users on your system each user would have a home directory, as does root. As a user I cannot look into another users directory. Since linux is based on Unix they both are multi user systems. it wasn't untill windows NT i think that windows had the ability to be multi-user. what can I sat they are a tad slow on the upbeat.

[pawtucket]

I just took the plunge with linux, mainly as a media server. I'm using Ubuntu. There are plenty of online resources. And the linux community has just about anything that you would want, most for free.

[Ham]

I'm half inclined to put it on every computer in the house.. completely abandon vista, windows 2000, etc..

[Ham]

I almost put it on the laptop. I was there, DVD in hand.. I thought, I'll try just ONE LAST TIME to get windows to download updates..after fifty failed attempts, darn if it didn't do it..

I'm not kidding.. forty-nine big updates were pending.. it was cranking for at least three or four HOURS..

So if your Windows machine misbehaves.. apparently this is the cure. Acquire a Lynux install CD.. wave it close enough in a threatening manner..