Making the switch to Linux.

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Making the switch to Linux.

Post by Hobbyist » Wed Mar 11, 2015 3:57 pm

A large amount of the software designed to run on Linux systems is distributed in a language like C. You need to compile and "build" the component packages and then the final software "package". Since You are using a compiler that is associated with your specific version of Linux you get a result that runs on _your_ system. I have found there is surprisingly little software for any variation that you can just _install_ like you do with windows
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Making the switch to Linux.

Post by Dude » Thu Mar 12, 2015 1:13 pm

I have kind of decided that Tiny Core Linux seems to be the best one for the old computer I have, it boots up and has a program called "Apps",
I click on that and then click on apps > cloud > browse

and then around 2400 files come up,
if I click on one it downloads and puts it in my menu,
then then click on the file name and it runs the program.

This seems to work quite well, and I only need a few pieces of software on this computer anyway. I was able to download firefox and the chrome browser this way so it is pretty painless and only takes a few seconds.

The version of firefox I got was an old version, so I clicked on update and it installed a 2nd version of firefox which is the latest version,
I liked this because I don't like the new one it is much larger and slower and the old version seems to do everything I like, but I now have my choice of which one I want to run.

The larger distributions are suppose to have many many times the number of programs that run this way, if I can't find what I need here I would probably just switch to one of the larger Linux distributions, and use it for the software I need.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world,
those that understand binary and those that don't. 

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Making the switch to Linux.

Post by Dude » Tue Feb 13, 2018 9:34 am

I have been using Linux about 3 years now and I still really like it,
there are several advantages over windows.
it does have some issues, for example I am trying to install Telegram and it does not seem to work, I have tried a couple different ways then I ran across this:
In your terminal type these commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/telegram sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install telegram
after typing those commands the program showed up works fine and also it put an icon in the launch bar.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world,
those that understand binary and those that don't. 

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how to unzip files bigger than 4GB

Post by Dude » Sat Aug 04, 2018 10:23 pm

I have removed windows from my computer because it crashed and was not working, I have been printing less stuff lately and that was all that I really used windows for.

I did just run into a problem where I downloaded some pictures in a zip file and it was 5 gigs.

So my problem is how to unzip files bigger than 4GB?

You can either use javas jar, or (in my opinion) even better: 7-zip.
Most distros allow for it to be installed from repos, so you can use for example (on ubuntu):
sudo apt-get install p7zip-full
7z x huge.zip
Note how the command is not p7z or p7zip, but only 7z. Also the x option has no preceding -.

This worked like a charm and I got my large picture file unzipped.

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Permanently and Securely Delete Files in Linux

Post by Dude » Mon Aug 06, 2018 12:08 pm

I have a file with passwords and a lot of other personal information in it that I wanted to delete, but when you delete a file Linux just moves it to another folder, windows at least changes the name a tiny bit and hides the file.
But if you really want to get rid of a file you need to over write it so that it's really gone.

Linux Ubuntu comes with the shred command installed

Shred overwrites a file to hide its contents, and can optionally delete it as well.

Code: Select all

$ shred -zvu passwords.list
the options:

-z – adds a final overwrite with zeros to hide shredding
-v – enables display of operation progress
-u – truncates and removes file after overwriting

it also has the option to write over the file more than 3 times,
but 3 is the default and it's good enough for me.
and I don't use the z parameter because I don't care of people know I am shredding my files.

This is how to Permanently and Securely Delete ‘Files and Directories’ in Linux.

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