GNOMEREPORT: Linux's Long Way

Welcome back, Gnomies! My word, how Linux has matured! My fiance brought home a book on Linux she picked up - it looked brand new, but was published in 1998. Wow! The book covered Red Hat 5.1, Caldera OpenLinux Lite 1.2 and "StarOffice." I've thumbed through the book and can't help feeling exhausted - the book covers Apache, sendmail, dns, routing, shadow passwords, tape drives, and much, much more. If I just wanted to read e-mail, even in 1998, I'd have dropped the book and gone straight back to Windows. Sometimes I wonder how I've survived on a diet of Linux with KDE as my only desktop. But here I am, and here it is. Linux has come a long way...

Happy Linuxing,
Steve Lanpher

STARTERS: More GUI FTP! The List Grows On...

Scott P. recommends that we add axyftp to our list. If compiling a program is a bit daunting for you - so daunting that you refuse to try - you might not be using wxftp anytime soon. However, if a quick little compile doesn't scare you away, grab this little prog and check it out. Does the job as well as any FTP program for Windows.

This now leaves us with 4 strong GUI FTP programs:

axyftp,
KBear,
gFTP,
and
IglooFTP-Pro

Whew!

TOOLS: top info man (Not A Superhero, But Close!)

TOP (or, uh, 'top') - lowercase, most likely, unless you've changed the name as the 'main page' states specifically that you are allowed to do so under the terms of the license if you so choose.

I digress. Not graphical in the way of Task Manager, but it does the job, quite well in fact. Check it out:

From your Linux Task Manager, open a terminal: xterm or eterm or gterm or whatever-term you want and type in the command 'top'. Up comes a nice display of processes in going on inside your system and other info: uptime, load average, number of tasks, memory, CPU usage and more. You even can _kill_ (see man://dir | User Commands | kill or 'man kill') processes from here, a bit like End Task. Various are the ways of viewing information within top. I find myself using top when my system slows to a crawl - quite often I find that a program is taking too many CPU cycles, and, as long as I am the owner of that process (which top will tell you), I'll kill that process and get back to work. Just hope I saved that document in oowriter.

Info Man To learn more about top, open another *term and type 'man top' Or, if top is still open, press 'q' then type 'man top'. And even still, if using KDE, open the man pages by typing this in Konqueror's address bar: man://dir. Navigate to "User Commands" and then click on 'top'. Then read. At least act curious.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to know how to look for - and find - information. And yet, it is so easy! There is so much available at our fingertips if we only know what keystrokes to type. And man and info can help. They are your friends. Get to know them. In fact, read them before you ask questions. They explain programs to you - what they are for, how to use them, and even information about bugs. So learn to use them. Man and info. And if you still cannot figure out what you need to do or what you may be doing wrong, you are now armed with more knowledge and can ask better questions!

ADVANCED: Bashburn and Burncenter

Burn CDs? Try Bashburn and Burncenter. Remember the old DOS menus? That's what these are like. What's not alike is what's underneath: a cdrom writer, various utilities, a fast processor, huge hard drive, and Linux. These powerful programs use scripts and menus to tie together lots of commands, flags, and environment settings, allowing the user to concentrate on burning CDs. Wonderful programs! And, dog-gone-it, burning CDs with Linux is a joy. It just works. It may not be as fast as usual, as extra CPU cycles are being used, but I still can browse the Web while burning a CD. If you are backing up critical data, though, I suggest letting that system do its job - backing up data. Save the browsing for later or use another system. But while you're ripping that latest Poison or Zamfir CD? Browse away.

FILE SYSTEMS: AVB USB Key Installation Continued

Last week I started talking about my AVB USB key I received for Christmas and some words about getting that installed. To start a more detailed look at it, from readying the system to plugging it in and copying files to it, Scott A. took time out of his day to explain why the drive should be mounted in /mnt - not in one's home directory.

Scott writes:

Using /mnt to attach removable file systems is merely a convention. This is evident by the fact that mount is used to attach various file system devices (ie, hda1, hda2, ...) to /, /boot, and /root and in some cases /home, depending on how the system was created.

My biggest reason to use the /mnt directory is that I can go to any machine and know what is mounted where. If an entry is made in /etc/fstab I can cat it and know what actual device is being addressed. If you've ever supported a user by phone you will know how valuable a standardized file system is. I would say if a user were in need of access to /mnt/usbdrive in their /home directory it might be best to create a softlink to the device mountpoint in /mnt in their home directory.

Scott's explanation is lucid and logical. I concur with his explanation. Folks, I understand that everyone wants everything to be graphical and I really want that for you! But the fact is: if one is to learn Linux, there is no way one can avoid using 'su,' some commands and text editors. And as a Windows administrator, I know that DOS prompts and knowledge of various commands are necessary. So I won't shy away from instructing on the use of a cli (Command Line Interface); in fact, since it is necessary, we *will* cover cli use. But if there is a GUI way to do it, let's find it. Thank you, Scott.

ANSWERS: Archiving Headaches In The 21st Century!

Gnomie Samir would like to see a Question and Answer section. Let's start one this week! I'll begin:

Q1: Looking forward to a standardized format?

A1: Me, too! Look for it.

Q2: (Frank M.) How do I search through past issues of Lockergnome?

A2: Currently, we're working hard to get everything into an archive, but it's taking time (thousands of newsletters are being squeezed into the new format). For now, though, you can just change the date in the filename (20031216.phtml, for instance, refers to December 16th, 2003. Other dates can be recalled by their appropriate numbers) for any of the following newsletters:

Windows Fanatics
http://channels.lockergnome.com/windows/backissues/20031216.phtml

IT Professionals
http://channels.lockergnome.com/it/backissues/20031216.phtml

Web Developers
http://channels.lockergnome.com/web/backissues/20031210.phtml

PC Downloads
http://channels.lockergnome.com/downloads/backissues/20040107.phtml

Mobile Lifestyle
http://channels.lockergnome.com/mobile/backissues/20040106.phtml

OS X Fanatics
http://channels.lockergnome.com/osx/backissues/20031222.phtml

Linux Fanatics
http://channels.lockergnome.com/linux/backissues/20040107.phtml

DVD Reviews
http://channels.lockergnome.com/dvd/backissues/20031219.phtml

Unwieldy? Yes. But it is on our big list of important things to do. This is the way we currently have to find stuff, too, so you can imagine we have it near the top of that list!

HOW-TO: Xft For Friendlier Fonts

Jeffrey D. Sauer at Linux Journal writes:

So, here I am working on my newly configured machine. After playing around with all of the goodies included in the distribution, I decide to launch the browser and surf the Net for a while. To my horror, the rendered text in Mozilla looked terrible. The rods and cones in my eyes started going bonkers! As can be seen in Figure 1, the characters were difficult to read and full of jaggies. How could this be? Can't Linux do better then this?

Well, it can, with Xft.

Read the rest of this article here.

GUI: kcrontab, gcrontab, and vcron

GUIs for tasks? We'll look at them next week in more detail, but in the meantime, have a look at kcrontab, gcrontab, and vcron. A Linux user can perform fun and even useful tasks such as having disk space usage reports e-mailed each hour or day or week to cleaning up temporary files or just about any command a user would want or need to run!

FEEDBACK: Kernel Compilation Deja Vu!

My gosh, what Lockergnomies remember! I put a link up last week with some instructions on compiling a kernel, but what a waste of a click! Why? Because this has been covered in past editions of Pengiun Shell! Thanks to Wayne O., we are reminded of an *excellent* series in past issues. To learn more about your kernel and compiling it, please check out:

http://www.lockergnome.com/issues/penguinshell/20020624.html

with the final result posted here:

http://www.lockergnome.com/issues/penguinshell/20020906.html