The Linux Distro Thread (maybe)

[ej-solutions]

Thought I'd start this one off, rather than continue on another thread.

As a quick catch up for others:

Have a look at Unetbootin, as a means to try out different versions of Linux, without producing numerous coasters (unwanted CDs).
I haven't tried the method of installing to hard drive, only the USB flash drive method (so far).

---

Just skimming the surface

Opinions/guidance expressed are intended to benefit the reader (mostly) but no responsibility should be assumed for the accuracy and no warranty is implied/expressed or given - so eBay may pull this post

[ej-solutions]

2Gb! Jeez, I'm in the wrong business. 😞
I'd go for a 1024Mb /tmp and 2048+64=2112Mb swap (if you wish to use hibernate), otherwise a 1024Mb swap partition will be more than ample, probably 512Mb will hardly/never get used.

---

Support VulcanToTheSky

Firefox "Safer Browsing" pack available: follow my page for the link to my website.

[ej-solutions]

For the curious/inquisitive:
The 'wee bit' extra to the partition is to ensure that rounding at the cylinder boundary doesn't create a partition that is slightly smaller than RAM. With a spot of Googling, you could no doubt find out the exact amount of space to 'over allocate'. It's likely that a smaller amount of space could be used but life's too short to worry about tens of Mb on a 100Gb disc, especially in a home PC environment. I just use a lazy broadbrush power of 2 amount - nothing scientific, sorry.

Disc cleanup for Ubuntu & variants:
1. Using your favourite filemanager (normally Nautilus), go to /home/user
2. Menu, View, Show hidden files
3. Navigate to .thumbnails
4. Delete whatever you find in their.
:)
[Or for the brave]
In a terminal (replacing user with your own login name):
rm -R /home/user/.thumbnails/*

---

Support VulcanToTheSky

Firefox "Safer Browsing" pack available: follow my page for the link to my website.

[ej-solutions]

"their"=there - d'oh! :|

---

Support VulcanToTheSky

Firefox "Safer Browsing" pack available: follow my page for the link to my website.

[*scyllabub*]

It's rotten not being able to edit posts here 😞

I won't be back for a while (maybe not quite in Oates mode) because I cannot set up the wifi on this printer, I even thought of starting a thread here but have got Bro on the case, except he's trying on his own HP laptop. Sorry to digress :_|

Huh, he's connected up without probs ?:|

[blackburn_stevie]

Posting a Screenshot ... a tutorial of sorts for otherego. (no charge)

You will need ....
A PC with a keyboard,
A Photobucket account (or similar of your own choosing)
A picture editing prog such as Irfanview, Paint shop pro or even just Paint from the standard windows portfolio.

This is what you have to do.

Get the image that you want to post on your PC screen.
Press and hold down the CTRL key.
Click the "Print Screen" key which is usually next to the F12 key on the top row.

What has just happened now is similar to doing the copy bit of a copy/paste operation. That means that the image currently on your screen has been saved and can now be used in various ways. You can now do whatever you like with your screen because the image that you want is saved.

You now need to use a picture editing prog. Personally, I use Irfanview. It is free and does all that I need with no fuss. Download it, install it and let it work for you here.
Open Irfanview (or your preferred image editing software) and click on "edit" on the top row, followed by "Paste".
The image that you saved will now appear on screen. This is where you can choose an area of the screen that you want to include in your posting. To edit the bit that you want, put your mouse pointer at the top left hand corner of the bit that you want and, holding down the left button on your mouse, drag the mouse down to the bottom right corner of the bit you want to keep. You should notice that a box has appeared around your selected section. Let go of the mouse button and click on "edit" again followed by "Crop selection". Everything except the bit you wanted will now go away and you are left with just the good stuff.
Now you just have to get it to the right size. I have found that for these pages, a size of 600 across the top is a good size to go with for many screens.
To do that, on the irfanview screen, click on "Image" across the top and then "Resize/resample in the drop down box. Then just type in the size that you want your image to be in pixels. If you do one side, the prog sorts out all the rest for you to keep the ratio.
Save the finished image to your desktop or some other place where you won't lose it.

Now open your Photobucket account and upload the image.

To past any such image on these forums, locate the picture in Photobucket and click on the photo. Photobucket seem to be making changes just now so this next bit may not be the same next week but the idea will be the same. You need to click on the text box next to "Direct link" to highlight the text in the box which starts with http://i1008.photobucket.com/albums

Right mouse click and copy that full line of text.

You now need to get the image on to these pages. To do that, type (note the space). Now put your mouse pointer in front of the > and right click followed by "paste".

Job done.

Don't mind me. I just live here :^O

[otherego]

Many thanks for that, Steve - greatly appreciated, and I'll definitely have a play with that.

[otherego]

Everybody finds this so simple - it's driving me barmy.

And why sites like Photobucket can't have simple instructions baffles me. *Sigh*



One more try - I need more coffee.

[otherego]

Good grief.

[blackburn_stevie]

Looks a bit like a screenshot to me, lol

Don't mind me. I just live here :^O

[otherego]

And awaits scathing comments re that partitioning scheme. I'd better explain.

I had Ubuntu and Mint happily dual-booting on a 40GB hard drive. I like a nice, simple partitioning scheme - /root, /home and swap. (And messing about with extended partitions where it helps.)

On purchasing a 160GB drive from my favourite auction site, I decided to be clever and simply clone the contents of the 40GB drive across to the new/second hand one, using Clonezilla. As Clonezilla usefully offers to resize the new partitions proportionally to the size of the new drive, I first shrank the / partitions to just a shade over the data they contained (I thought) - not wanting two 20GB /root partitions on a 160GB drive.

Not a great success - still ended up with a 13.6 GB Mint / partition, for instance.

Worse, however, was the fact that Clonezilla helpfully parked the extended partition containing Ubuntu and swap between Mint's /root and /home partitions.

Looks quite bizarre, but works fine apart from two minor things.

1) Mint no longer mounts the swap partition on start. It has to be commanded (actually, launching GParted, right-clicking on Swap and selecting swapon also works.) I almost never think to mount swap, and Mint seems quite comfortable without it - the computer has 1GB of RAM.

2) Every start is now verbose - masses of white text before the log-in screen.

All something to do with changed partition UUIDs, I gather, and frankly, not enough of a bother to do anything about it.

However, when Mint 9 final is out I plan to copy all the data to an external drive, delete the lot and install Mint from scratch - hopefully with a nice, simple /root, /home and swap partition scheme. I assume that putting them all inside one extended partition will leave options for further playing later - can one just have an extended partition?

That should leave a little space (currently occupied by Ubuntu) to run VBox, rather than multi-booting every time I want to try another distro on the same machine.

Meantime, it'll be interesting to see whether I ever manage to post another screenshot. That one only took an hour and a half.

Steve, thanks again. You don't know what you might have started...

[ej-solutions]

Need at least one primary partition (to boot from).

---

Support VulcanToTheSky

Firefox "Safer Browsing" pack available: follow my page for the link to my website.

[otherego]

I was considering making / the boot partition, putting the rest in an extended partitioning.

But had vaguely hoped that the fact that the extended is seen by Linux/GParted as a primary partition might have made it possible to boot from within it - but hadn't thought about the fact that the partitions within the extended one are of necessity logical.

Thanks for the timely warning - saves a bit of time.

I'm looking forward to Mint9. The RC runs very nicely from a flash drive, and seems pretty stable already, as far as day-to-day use is concerned.

[*scyllabub*]

I understand that Puppy will run from an SD card and then you can save settings 'n stuff, so I've ordered a 4gb. OK?

I'm in Ubuntu at the mo, and have just been to Epson support to look for drivers for SX515W - they recognise that my OS is Linux but I can't get any response from the Drivers & Something link ?:| I wonder if anyone running Linux could check if I should be able to. It's not saying "sorry we can't help you".

http://www.epson.co.uk/Store/Printers-and-All-in-Ones/Epson-Stylus-SX515W/Drivers-Support?supportLandingPage=true

[otherego]

A possibly useful link here - several posts down.

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=51&p=210042

No promises!

[otherego]

I understand that Puppy will run from an SD card and then you can save settings 'n stuff, so I've ordered a 4gb. OK?

Just about any distro will run happily from an SD card.

I'm just firing up the Eee PC - the only computer I have that'll boot from its card reader. The card's a 2GB Panasonic, class 4 - seems more than adequate.

What intrigues me is that 617 MiB out of 1.87 GiB has been used - goodness knows what for. Still 1.27 GiB free, though.

A 4GB card allows sufficient space for a "persistent" install of a larger distro, too. Great fun. And an SD card is less vulnerable than a flash drive/thumb drive, I'd guess - neatly hidden away from harm.

[otherego]

Whoops - meant to say, that's Puppy on the 2GB/1.87GiB card. I think it's one of the Eee specific versions - can't remember for sure.

B****y wireless doesn't work (too lazy to seek out and install a driver - wireless really ain't Puppy's strong point, it seems) - works fine with an ethernet cable plugged in, and boots fine with no need to answer all the usual Puppy questions every time - so it seems to remember settings alright. Wish I had another machine that booted off a card reader to see what happens with other hardware - might try it with an SD card reader, I suppose.

[*scyllabub*]

I think I've got the drivers, but unfortunately I've also got the installation instructions X-( 😉

Thank you, once again, OE :)

[otherego]

Hope it's working, anyway.

Let's see if I can follow Steve's instructions again.

This should be Puppy's desktop on the EeePc:

[otherego]

Hmmm, messed that one up - enough for now...

[otherego]

One more try: