Linux and XP

I installed Ubuntu on a second drive with XP on my C: drive. The ubuntu looks good and works well apart from a few little glitches like not being able to use USB headphones but it's ok. The problem is that I can access files on my C: drive from the Ubuntu drive but not the other way round ie. in Windows XP the ubuntu drive is invisible and it doesn't have a drive letter. Is there any way I can get at the second drive from the C: drive. Hope this makes sense as I don't have much idea about partitioning etc.

I suspect that the Ubuntu format is a linux native type, like Ext3, which XP cannot read by default.

The solution is to install a driver for it - this looks like a candidate. Be warned that I haven't tried it, it could be malware, it could hose your system. Read up on it first.

Incidentally, I've recently downloaded Ubuntu myself - only running Feisty in liveCD mode so far though. Something's wrong with the networking... I've configured it with my IP/subnet/gateway/dns, but it doesn't connect to the outside world. Still trying to work out why... Pinging 127.0.0.1 works, pinging the IP of the machine doesn't.

Would help if there was a troubleshooting flowchart for it. Ubuntuforums looks useful, and surprisingly helpful, but I want to try and fix it myself. It's giving me a migraine trying though - not least because it's the network that doesn't work ;)

Thanks Lan, I'll try that. I managed to get the wireless connection ok once I'd discovered that my Belkin adaptor has a Broadcom BCM4318 chip! All fascinating stuff.. Works perfectly now, in fact better than XP which has an annoying habit of disconnecting if I leave it unattended for more than an hour. Good old Feisty Fawn stays connected with no worries. It's growing on me. If only they did PS CS2 for Linux..

You might be able to use Crossover Office - check.

As for XP, desktop or lappy?

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<hr>Is there any way I can get at the second drive from the C: drive.<hr></blockquote>

Try this. Works great...

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<hr> Something's wrong with the networking... I've configured it with my IP/subnet/gateway/dns, but it doesn't connect to the outside world. Still trying to work out why... Pinging 127.0.0.1 works, pinging the IP of the machine doesn't.<hr></blockquote>

It's not connected to your Windows network, or not to the Internet at all? I'm on Ubuntu 6.06 and I am able to just plugin to a Windows network and navigate to the machines through Places > Network Servers... no setup required.

If it's an Internet connection problem, try clicking on the network icon in the taskbar (top right of screen). Click on your network interface. Disable it. Click OK. Then go back and re-enable it. Then click OK. That usually works in Dapper. I'm not sure about Feisty because I've been too busy to upgrade...
:S

Thanks again, that could be the way if I'm to be ruthless. I suppose I need to know what is the equivalent of the killer app for Linux compared with Windows. For the moment I'll keep the two running until I'm convinced of an advantage. In some ways the UI reminds me of an early version of Windows although I guess it's what's happening behind the scenes that's more relevant.

It's just on a desktop for now.

Thanks for the link boatcrew. I shall look at that one. I'm definitely a noob here. Like navigating through directories is puzzling me right now.. I'll stick at it though :)

boat: internet connection - well actually just all network connections, it won't ping itself or anything else (except for 127.0.0.1), nor can it see the internet. i'll try the disable/re-enable trick, see if that works. it may just have been "one of those things™". it's frustrating because it's the one thing i can't search for solutions to - if the gfx were stuck at 640x480, i'd be able to google it, but as it stands i have to drop out of ubuntu to return to vista to look for answers ;)

now i know to use lspci to find out what pci devices ubuntu is seeing, and that "ip addr show" is similar to ipconfig. it's all fairly logical, but it's just too different for me to be able to guess.

thanks!

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<hr>I suppose I need to know what is the equivalent of the killer app for Linux compared with Windows. For the moment I'll keep the two running until I'm convinced of an advantage. In some ways the UI reminds me of an early version of Windows although I guess it's what's happening behind the scenes that's more relevant. <hr></blockquote>

When I first started with Linux it was an older version of Knoppix. There was no anti-aliasing on the fonts. It didn't look good to me. I eventually moved to Fedora and then Ubuntu. After using GNOME (Ubuntu) for a while I can't go back to Windows. Windows fonts look terrible to me now.

What do you use computers for? Maybe I could recommend an app that you would really like.

Some suggestions:
Try Amarok for music player. It's great.

Browse through Synaptic for new programs to download. There are thousands of free programs.

Learn the GNOME keyboard shortcuts, like Alt-F2 (launch program), Alt-F9 (minimize window), Alt-F5 (unmaximize window), Alt-F4 (close window), and many others...

Learn how to use virtual desktops. For example, Ctrl-Alt-[arrow] moves you to a different "virtual desktop" (see the bottom right corner of the screen). There are 4 by default, but I configure it to use 6. Each virtual desktop can hold an arrangement of programs. I keep Firefox on the first desktop. FTP goes on #4. Email clients go on #6. Graphics programs on #2... etc. To grab a window and move it to another desktop, use Ctrl-Shift-Alt-[arrow].

* If you do any kind of information processing, learn the terminal. The scriptable shell is amazing.

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<hr> navigating through directories is puzzling me right now<hr></blockquote>

Are you navigating with the GUI or with the terminal?

If using the GUI, hit ctrl-l (lowercase L for "location") and type in the file path.

The symbol for your home directory (like "My Documents") is ~/

A slash (/) is the symbol for a directory (this is also true in URLs on the Internet, which is based on Unix).

In the terminal you can change directories with these commands:

Move to the home directory:
cd ~/

Move up one directory:
cd ../

You can use the TAB key for completion... so to move from the home directory to a subdirectory called music, just type:
cd mu (and then hit the TAB key... if there is more than one directory that starts with "mu", hit TAB twice and the terminal will list them)

If you are learning the terminal, check out the Unix Mages book that I liked to above. It explains the terminal in a creative way.

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<hr>LAN: "ip addr show" is similar to ipconfig<hr></blockquote>

Also try ifconfig -- that is the equivelent to ipconfig. Or iwconfig for wireless interfaces. Documentation is built into Linux, so just open a terminal and type man and then the command you want information on like this:
man ifconfig

Use "q" to exit the man pages. Vim commands can also be used in the man pages, but that is a whole other story... At the bottom of each man page are references to other similar man pages like iwlist, etc...

thanks! i knew about man - the problem was, i had no idea what the ip related commands were called. i tried man by itself, on the offchance it would list all it knew, but sadly that didn't do that ;) couldn't find a list of them in the on disc documentation anywhere obvious either, so had to reboot back out to google some more info. didn't know about q though, thanks for that - i suspect i'd have got there eventually, but knowing in advance is handy. i made the mistake of using an old version of vi once, talk about being trapped... shudder

are there any good flowchart diagnostic type webpages for networking under ubuntu? i feel i'm scattergunning at the moment...

boatcrew. If I can master those navigation commands then there may be another convert here. Thanks.

Lan, you can use man -k to search for man pages that contain a certain topic. For example, to find man pages about networking type:
man -k network

For more about man, type the following in a terminal:
man man

I set Ubuntu to open a terminal with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Alt-Shift-t. That can be set in System > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts. It makes things a lot faster. I also have other custom shortcuts like Ctrl-Alt-Shift-h to open my home directory (equivelent to "My Documents").

The great thing about the terminal is that you can pipe commands together and script in the shell. For example, to find all man pages about networking, save them to a file called commands.txt and view them in a text editor in one shot, just type:
man -k network >commands.txt; gedit commands.txt

Did you try shutting down the network interfaces and then restarting them? That usually works for me. Also, on the DNS tab, delete everything in the "Search Domains" box and try again. One other common problem is interference from a firewall, but unless you installed a firewall it shouldn't be there...

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<hr> made the mistake of using an old version of vi once, talk about being trapped... shudder<hr></blockquote>

Just saw your comment about vi... It's a real pain to learn vi/vim. I struggled with it for months before I figured it out, but now I can't use any other text editor. If you write any kind of code, definitely check out Gvim. It is like being able to talk to your computer...

I recommend playing a computer game called nethack to get a feel for the vim keyboard movements. To install nethack, just open a terminal and type:
sudo apt-get install nethack-gnome

Then to start the game type:
nethack-gnome

or for the terminal version just type:
nethack

:)

FYI. Check out WINE if you wanna run Photoshop CS or other versions, looks like a few people have it running ok. See here. WINE will also run a load of other Windows applications under Linux, check out the database for a full list.

Cheers

I tried Ubuntu not long ago and was amazed how much easier Linux is now than a few years ago. Installation was a breeze, all my hardware worked right away, internet and lan connected automatically. Infact it had less problem connecting to my other XP machine than it did under XP itself.
There are still quite a few annoyances though, there are things that should be much easier and I can't really understand why they are not... like I downloaded a program, installed it no problem with the package installer, but then it doesn't make a shortcut or add it to any menu.

Another one was trying to get Java to work, after hours of messing around with it I managed to install it via the terminal (following a how to guide) then I run Firefox and Java doesn't work still. Very annoying.

These are pretty small problems but they take so much time to resolve so for now I have decided to stick with XP.

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<hr>I downloaded a program, installed it no problem with the package installer, but then it doesn't make a shortcut or add it to any menu. <hr></blockquote>

To add a program, first figure out what the command is. You can do that by pressing Alt-F2 and typing in the name of the program. It will auto-complete and should give you the name of the program.

Then right-click on the task bar at the top of the screen. Choose "Add to Panel". Then "Custom Application Launcher". Enter a name for it. Type the command you used into the "Command" box. Choose an icon. The launcher will then be on your panel (top of screen).

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<hr>Another one was trying to get Java to work, after hours of messing around with it I managed to install it via the terminal (following a how to guide) then I run Firefox and Java doesn't work still.<hr></blockquote>

To get the Java plugin for Firefox, make sure you have the Multiverse repository enabled. There is a tutorial for that here.

Then try this:
Ubuntu Forums - how to install Java plugin

Lan you could have a look at the following (maybe paste the output here?)

open a terminal

sudo su - (so you are root)

ifconfig -a

hobbes:~# /sbin/ifconfig -a
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:FC:EF:ED:0C
inet addr:212.203.xxx.xxx Bcast:212.203.xxx.xxx Mask:255.255.255.248
inet6 addr: fe80::250:fcff:feef:ed0c/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:188806566 errors:0 dropped:19 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:195284077 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:2320233131 (2.1 GiB) TX bytes:3155301654 (2.9 GiB)
Interrupt:3 Base address:0xd800

and probably some more interfaces. Make sure it states "UP" somewhere in there. If UP isn't in there do the following:
hobbes:~# ifup <interface name> probably eth0

hobbes:~# arp -a

too see if the interface sees its gateway (router)

hobbes:~# route -e is also handy to see where the packets are sent to.

One more thing that could break stuff is a firewall. Try iptables -L too see if there are any iptables rules.

thanks sachar - we'll see if any of that does the trick!