[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Good books

"..." wrote:
> 
>      I'm a total newbie with linux. I downloaded Debian, and put it on my
> second hard drive, total capacity about 435 meg. I partitioned it to
> reserve 100 meg for dos, put about 10% of the remainder aside for swap,
> and the rest is for linux.

My rule of thumb: swap should be no larger than 125MB, (as set using cfdisk,
fdisk, or equivalent) for small harddrives, you might try 64MB, 32MB, 16MB, or
even go without swap. Depends on the amount of physical memory in your machine,
and what level of memory intensive apps you plan to run. Some apps are
intelligent and check for memory before trying to use it, and some apps just
crash (segfault) when the memory runs out. For your system, I'd probably go with
32mb or 64mb swap. Not based on any kind of scientific analysis, just gut
intuition. :)

>      This being kind of small, when I installed Debian, I just installed
> the Standard package, Dialup, and Small XWindows.
>      The "man" command doens't appear to be active, and the /usr/doc files
> don't have a lot of information. Most of it seems to be changelog and
> copyright, so I'm thinking of deleting all of it.

Hmm. Dunno what's up here. Maybe you installed from the first CD only? Somewhere
in the installation process (it's been a LONG time since I installed debian...
which is good, because it says it never crashes. ;) You have to slap in the last
CD in the set instead of the first, which tells the monster you wanna install
from both CD's not just the first.

>       What sort of how-to books would be helpful? I'd like the equivalent
> of the old Understanding MSDOS and Supercharging MSDOS books, published
> by QUE, I think.

"No B.S. Guide to Linux" looked pretty good. A friend let me borrow that book
and it seemed to look well organized, and seemed to have very good info.

There is a book about Debian specifically, called "The Debian Linux Users
Guide". I don't know the web address, but I'm sure you can find it if you
*really* want it. ;)

> I want to learn how to get a color screen at the root
> level

In the file /root/.bashrc :
(for the prompt)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
export PS1="\[\033[0m\][\[\033[31m\]\w\[\033[0m\]]\n\[\033[31m\]\u\[\033[0m\]@\[
\033[1;30m\]\h \[\033[0m\]\\$ "
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
(all on one line though)

Read the 'bash' shell manual page entry to see what other goodies you can do...
"man bash | less"

Also in /root/.bashrc :

(so when you do "ls" you get COLOR!)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
eval `dircolors`
alias ls="/bin/ls --color=auto -F -C"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
(two separate lines)

>, set up and optimize FSTAB,

Here's mine:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# /etc/fstab: static filesystem information.

#<device> <mount>         <type>   <options>                      <dump><pass>

proc      /proc            proc    defaults                           0     0

/dev/hda5 none             swap    sw                                 0     0
/dev/hda6 /                ext2    defaults,errors=remount-ro         0     1

/dev/hda7 /solaris         ufs     defaults,ufstype=sunx86            0     0

/dev/hdb1 /dos             vfat    defaults,errors=remount-ro         0     0
/dev/hdb5 /2gig            ext2    defaults,errors=remount-ro         0     0
/dev/hdd1 /6gig            ext2    defaults,errors=remount-ro         0     1

/dev/fd0  /a               vfat    defaults,noauto                    0     0
/dev/fd1  /b               vfat    defaults,noauto                    0     0
/dev/sda4 /zip             vfat    defaults,noauto                    0     0

/dev/hdc  /cdrom           iso9660 defaults,noauto                    0     0
------------------------------------------------------------------------------



> and ultimately, if I have enough with
> the system I've got, to install and use Netscape for UNIX and STAR Office.

I'd give up on StarOffice unless you have 144 meg of ram and a FAST CPU. 'cause
my experiences with StarOffice were SLOW and HUGE MEMORY FOOTPRINT.

> Thanx,
> Frank Starr
> http://i.am/franksnewage

Hope some of this helps.

Brock

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Native America: We are still here. We are still alive. We have survived.
We will continue to survive, as a proud people.
http://www.powersource.com/gallery/ http://205.214.169.126/
Reply to: