Small help and recommendations

[Les Gray]

On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 04:13:48 +0930
Trias <aussietrias at gmail.com> wrote:

> ok thanks now i see me how do i keep the show hidden toggle set permanently?

It should stay on until you turn it off, even if you close the program. At least it does on the file browsers I use - Konqueror and Thunar (xfce4). You're using Nautilus, right? It should stay toggled there, too, but have a look through the preferences just to make sure there's no setting like 'don't keep show hidden files on permanently' or some such.

> great i can find it now in terminal and in gnome as well.  i'm getting the
> feeling i need a commands list or something.

Try this - http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/cmd/ . Bear in mind that on modern Linux distros nearly everything a home user would want to do can be done through a GUI. But improving your knowledge of the command line is a useful thing to do nonetheless.

You may also want to buy a linux intro book if you haven't already. There's loads of them out there, designed for people used to Windows and which don't assume any knowledge on your part.

The book I started with is called 'Moving to Linux' by Marcel Gagne. It's a bit cheesy (like all this kind of books) but I found it to be a pretty handy intro to Linux.


> ok i did that but in install instructions here
> http://java.com/en/download/help/5000011400.xml#install
> 
> 'su' said this.. "su: Authentication failure
> Sorry.
> "
> 
> i only know one password and i used it correctly.

On Ubuntu that should be 'sudo' not 'su'. 'su' ('switch user') is the traditional method of switching from your regular user to the root user, for admin purposes. Ubuntu (and many other distros) have 'sudo' enabled by default ('super user do') instead, which allows you to run commands as root while still being logged in as a regular user. It's a generally more convenient way of doing things.

The drawback is that for some rare tasks you still need to actually switch to root. To do that, run 'sudo -s -H' and you will see that the terminal prompt becomes 'root at wherever'. You can then do what you need to do, and switch back to regular user with 'su your_username_here'.

In any case, you're better off installing Java from Synaptic or Add/Remove, because it's easier. Downloading and installing from Sun is only necessary if you need the absolute latest version of their Java.



> > > 6) How do i safely change the partition so the windows one shrinks and
> > > linux one grows?
> 
> 
> 
> OK this issue will be delayed.

The message from Lisa looked like a good option??

HTH