Q. Thanks to the Yahoo Linux Community, i took my first step and installed Linux Mint Helina into my system. I play around with it a little and really like it but I do not have any knowledge on how to install any drivers.
I tried to install pcwizard so that i could see my system information but unfortunately the software is not compatible with Linux. I not sure what i need to do, its totally a new environment for me.
A. A couple of things you need to know about Linux and *nix environments.
First, Linux is not Windows, so nothing that runs on Windows runs on Linux. There are exceptions. Some popular Windows apps have Linux versions (Firefox, Thunderbird for mail, Adobe Acrobat Reader). There's also a tool called Wine that allow you to run Windows programs from inside Linux. But stick with just Linux for now.
One doesn't install drivers for Linux the way you do in Windows. Most hardware is automatically detected and configured in the installation process. Anything exotic might need to have a module or library installed, but you can nearly always do that through the software manager. Check at the Mint or Ubuntu forms for any assistance on this.
Also. look on the system menus. There are lots of tools that will provide all the information you need about your system.
Also, from the console, there is no one tool that tells you everything. Linux and similar systems include a wide variety fo smaller tools and programs, each of which handles a specific task. For example:
ps -ef (this will give you a list of all the currently running processes).
lspci (gives a list of all the hardware on various system interfaces)
mount (gives you a list of all currently mounted drives and storage devices.
When a list of things goes beyond a screen page, you can "page' the output by piping it through a pager tool like "less":
ps -ef | less
This presents the information a page at a time, and you press the space bar to read the next page.
How to open my Linux because it asks me a password ?
Q. I made a mess with my Linux and now it asks me a password at start-up which I don't know. Is there any method to regain my Linux ?
A. Welp, yes, it's a bit trixy, but it WILL work.
Do NOT |#u(K this up though.
Go ahead a boot up a live CD, it should mount your hard disk, so you can see files in it. I believe with an Ubuntu live it will be mounted /media/hda but look around, you'll find it.
anyway once you find your drive, you can directly edit the the /etc/passwd file.
Now, you need to understand what it is you are editing, and what to do, because if you pooch it... well, it's pooched then isn't it?
You are going to replace the x in the line that corresponds to your username, with a new password. The x stands for "use an encrypted password from /etc/shadow" we are going to tell the computer to use a non encrypted password. So open up a terminal, and hit it with;
sudo nano /media/hdb/etc/passwd
(path might be different depending on how the HDD mounted)
find the line about your username. It'll look like this:
elizabeth:x:1000:1000:
elizabeth,,,:/home/elizabeth:
/bin/bash
That will all be on one line but Y!A has issues...
what you want to do is replace the first x with a short easy to remember password, (at least 6 letters though) and change NOTHING ELSE about the file.
elizabeth:mypass:1000:1000:
elizabeth,,,:/home/elizabeth
/bin/bash
we changed the x to mypass.
now save the file: (ctrl +x, Yes, Enter)
and reboot the machine. (not to the live CD)
you should be able to get in now with your user name, and the password you changed to.
Once you are in, you should really
sudo su yourself, and change the password back to an x
in /etc/passwd
then while still in su issue the command :
passwd myusername
(obviously replace this with your real user name)
and enter a new password twice.
Now you are back to being encrypted, AND you know your password. YAY!
How can I tell if my Linux install is in its own partition?
Q. I have a Gateway netbook with Windows 7 starter. I installed the Ubuntu 10 version of Linux. But I don't think it installed on it's its own partition, because it never asked me about the size or anything of a partition or which partition to use. So, I followed some instructions on the internet to put Linux on its own partition, but how do I know its really on there?
A. It did, but if it will make you feel better, do this:
Boot into Linux.
Open a console shell
Type 'df -h'
The partitions will be displayed. The information on the right will tell you the mount point. The one marked '/host' will be the windows partition. On the left the host partition will be /dev/sda1. All the rest are you Linux partitions.
If you want to know more about /dev/sda1, type 'fdisk -l' (be careful with fdisk).
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