Linux

[The Norseman]

Installing LXDEqt would involve installing a huge amount of software (Qt) that I have no other use for or interest in. If I were an LXDE user, I'd be mighty mad about the switch. But as it is, I mainly use Xfce or FVWM or WMaker (depending on my mood), so it's no skin off my nose, and I think it's nice that KDE users now have a lighter weight alternative that shares a toolkit with their apps.

I've tried Xfce too, though again, I don't remember what I did to switch. All of these DEs and WMs kinda confuse me after a while.

 

[The Norseman]

I think that CrunchBang is well-thought-out and complete--overall a decent, attractive implementation of OpenBox, which I've acquired a fondness for over the years. If you don't like Debian Stable, then it's not for you, but I've defected to Debian again after several years as an Arch user.

I still prefer Xfce, but CrunchBang is a nice, light option IMO.

This is all extremely subjective, of course, and there's no right or wrong answer to any distro, DE, or WM question. Or even to any platform question (I use all three main platforms, myself.)

I think I might just run some of these in VMs to try them out.

 

[Brian-M]

I've just switched over to Debian, and I've got a few questions which I hope someone here might be able to help with.

What's the best way to get a startup sound working in Debian? Should I just put a script in /ect/init.d or is there a better way?

Is there any way to give shortcuts/links specific icons? I've set up some games (so far it's mostly old WAD files running under DoomsDay, but I plan on adding other old games to my games folder, just for the sake of having them there even though I almost never play them), but the links to the shell scripts all look like boring empty-document files. I'd like to be able to give them the icons appropriate for each game.

I've decided to make backing-up easier, and have created some shell scripts to put everything into tar.gz files, and am using the verbose option so I can see the progress, but when I click on the script it runs in the background, with no terminal appearing to see what's happening. Is there any way to make the terminal appear? (Other than opening up a terminal and starting the script by typing. It's more convenient to click a few icons.)

 

[psionl0]

You might consider signing up with http://www.linuxquestions.org/. They have a subforum specifically for debian (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/). The contributors there are quite helpful in the main and you can usually get a quick reply to any question you might have.

I'm into Slackware myself so I wouldn't be much help. However one way might be to run a command like Terminal -x <script>. You would need to find a way to halt the script otherwise the terminal disappears as soon as the script ends. Depending on what you are running you would only see the terminal flash briefly.

 

[Brian-M]

You might consider signing up with http://www.linuxquestions.org/. They have a subforum specifically for debian (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/). The contributors there are quite helpful in the main and you can usually get a quick reply to any question you might have.

Thanks for the link, I've bookmarked it for future reference.

I'm into Slackware myself so I wouldn't be much help. However one way might be to run a command like Terminal -x <script>.

I had a similar idea just a couple of minutes ago. I created a second script to start the main backup script. It only has one command:

xterm ~/backup/scripts/backup_part.sh​

It worked well, it's still running as I'm typing this.

You would need to find a way to halt the script otherwise the terminal disappears as soon as the script ends. Depending on what you are running you would only see the terminal flash briefly.

Googling it, this seems pretty simple to do. I might just add another line to the backup script like this...

read -n1 -r -p "Done! Press any key to continue..." key​

 

[GodMark2]

Brian-M,

Your icon and 'show script execution' questions are both dealing with the desktop environment. Which one are you using (the main likely ones are KDE or Gnome)?

Your Startup depends on when you want it to play. If you want it as soon as you hit the switch, using an init.d script like

aplay 'StartupSound.wmv' &

If you want the sound after login, the desktop environment can probably select a sound in a system configuration GUI somewhere, again depending on which one you use.

 

[Brian-M]

Brian-M,

Your icon and 'show script execution' questions are both dealing with the desktop environment. Which one are you using (the main likely ones are KDE or Gnome)?

Your Startup depends on when you want it to play. If you want it as soon as you hit the switch, using an init.d script like

aplay 'StartupSound.wmv' &

If you want the sound after login, the desktop environment can probably select a sound in a system configuration GUI somewhere, again depending on which one you use.

I think I'm using Gnome.

The startup sound I want to play is a WAV file from 2001: A Space Oddessey, where Hal says "I'm completely operational and all my circuits are functioning perfectly", so ideally I'd want it to play after the destop environment has finished loading and is ready to use. (I used to have it set up to play on a Windows 98 machine.) It's not important in the slightest, but it'd be cool to have again.

I haven't found any way to set up sounds, but maybe I could put a script for it in "Startup Applications". I'll try that soon, and see if it works.

Next I'll have to figure out how to get the WAV file of Hal saying "My mind is going. I can feel it." when I shut-down.

 

[Brian-M]

Yes, that did the trick. And with a little Googling and some trial and error, I finally got the shutdown sound to play by modifying /etc/gdm3/PostSession/Default

(Trying to achieve it by adding a script into /etc/rc0.d didn't achieve anything.)

 

[AgeGap]

RMS did a talk recently which I was fortunate enough to attend. There was a Q&A session at the end. This is one guy who really walks the talk.
Bragging over.

 

[Tony99]

Any suggestions on partitioning a 1T hard drive?
Got a larger faster drive for the new laptop running Mint 17.1 (Rebecca)
Pretty basic user stuff for the wife and I, nothing heavy. Will also be used to share media files on the home network before archiving to the NAS.

This is what I was thinking:
/....20GB
/swap....16GB (8GB memory)
/home....100GB
/Data....all the rest. (shared music, video, files, some backups, whatnot)

seem reasonable?
(Too much static to ask on the Mint forums. You get everything from go with the instal default to you should create extended partitions for each music genera based on decade.)

 

[commandlinegamer]

I think the swap = 2 x actual RAM rule went bye-bye over a decade ago. There might be certain cases where having more swap than actual may be of use, eg hibernation, but for general purpose use I wouldn't bother too much. I do stick my swap partition on a separate disk, where one is available.

These days (and I did a clone from a 160GB to 250GB drive recently) I have a similar partitioning scheme to the one you've outlined (though also with a Windows install in the first partition). I was going to go with a single Linux partition, but then I figured I might still want to do a clean install when the next version of Slackware came out, keeping /home intact.

 

[Tony99]

I think the swap = 2 x actual RAM rule went bye-bye over a decade ago. There might be certain cases where having more swap than actual may be of use, eg hibernation, but for general purpose use I wouldn't bother too much. I do stick my swap partition on a separate disk, where one is available.

These days (and I did a clone from a 160GB to 250GB drive recently) I have a similar partitioning scheme to the one you've outlined (though also with a Windows install in the first partition). I was going to go with a single Linux partition, but then I figured I might still want to do a clean install when the next version of Slackware came out, keeping /home intact.

Thanks for the reply. The swap 2x ram has always just been a rule of thumb I never gave second thought, even as memory increased and improved etc.
I will drop that down.

I do like having a /home on its own as I do tend to monkey around with new versions and distros and generally sabotage a good install when things a running well

I do appreciate the long term support for Mint 17. Now if I could only get dual monitor support (extended desktop) on a docking station/port expander.
Something to do with Intel graphics and MST support: https://01.org/linuxgraphics/node/358

 

[Blue Mountain]

Any suggestions on partitioning a 1T hard drive?
Got a larger faster drive for the new laptop running Mint 17.1 (Rebecca)
Pretty basic user stuff for the wife and I, nothing heavy. Will also be used to share media files on the home network before archiving to the NAS.
<snip>
/Data....all the rest. (shared music, video, files, some backups, whatnot)

seem reasonable?

It seems quite reasonable. Just being nitpicky here ... a Linux purist wouldn't create a top level partition called /Data; he'd be much more likely to put /var or /var/local on its own partition. However, it's your computer, and you're free to put any directories you want under your root.

 

[commandlinegamer]

It seems quite reasonable. Just being nitpicky here ... a Linux purist wouldn't create a top level partition called /Data

Quite, he/she'd call it /data.

FWIW, I think the filesystem layout is a bit more complicated than it needs to be. /bin, /sbin I see the point of; /usr, /usr/local also. But when you get into the details of stuff like /usr/doc versus /usr/share/doc it starts to make one's eyes glaze over.

In any case I do have a top-level mount point for data such as pictures, music, videos, etc, that might be shared between different users. I could stick it in /mnt, but I prefer that for temporary mounts only. /media doesn't feel right, nor does /var.

 

[Brian-M]

In any case I do have a top-level mount point for data such as pictures, music, videos, etc, that might be shared between different users. I could stick it in /mnt, but I prefer that for temporary mounts only. /media doesn't feel right, nor does /var.

How about /home/guest or something similar?

 

[Blue Mountain]

Thinking of which, I suggest /srv might be a good home for such data. It's not a perfect fit, but close enough.

From the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard:

Purpose: /srv contains site-specific data which is served by this system.

Rationale: This main purpose of specifying this is so that users may find the location of the data files for particular service, and so that services which require a single tree for readonly data, writable data and scripts (such as cgi scripts) can be reasonably placed. Data that is only of interest to a specific user should go in that users' home directory.

The methodology used to name subdirectories of /srv is unspecified as there is currently no consensus on how this should be done. One method for structuring data under /srv is by protocol, eg. ftp, rsync, www, and cvs. On large systems it can be useful to structure /srv by administrative context, such as /srv/physics/www, /srv/compsci/cvs, etc. This setup will differ from host to host. Therefore, no program should rely on a specific subdirectory structure of /srv existing or data necessarily being stored in /srv. However /srv should always exist on FHS compliant systems and should be used as the default location for such data.

Distributions must take care not to remove locally placed files in these directories without administrator permission.

 

[eerok]

How about /home/guest or something similar?

I've been using /home/data for shared data for many years now. By "shared data" I mean that on a single machine I might have a few distros, each on their 20GB partition, and they'd all share /home/data. (This data would include photos, themes, fonts, icons, wallpapers, documents, music, videos, configs, etc.)

It made sense to me when I first did it because /home is a user-centric directory that's largely unpopulated. One could also create a /usr/local/data, but I think that, even if there are some definite wrong answers here, there's not an obvious right one.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Just installed Xubuntu 14.04 on my Chromebook via Crouton. It uses chroot to magically make it run along with Chrome OS. I have no idea how it works, but it is sort of like virtualisation, as you can switch between OSes with a keystroke... but it isn't. Very cool.

 

[This is The End]

Just installed Xubuntu 14.04 on my Chromebook via Crouton. It uses chroot to magically make it run along with Chrome OS. I have no idea how it works, but it is sort of like virtualisation, as you can switch between OSes with a keystroke... but it isn't. Very cool.

That is very cool.

 

[Childlike Empress]

Finally switched over to Linux on my desktop computer two weeks ago. Linux Mint Debian Edition. Very cool. Just played an hour of SuperTuxKart^WP where all the heros of open source software fight each other in a Super Mario Kart-like race. I drove the little GIMP character, who I learned is named Wilber (and won, needless to say).