Re: Newbie comments & queries
Hi,
A progress report.
I will stay in the console mode as suggested by Karsten. So no
more queries on Xfree at the moment.
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2001 at 10:17:34PM +0200, Ian Balchin wrote:
> > device = /dev/ttys0 as now have a plain serial 2-button on COM1
> > type=ms repeat_type=ms3 (or raw)
>
> It is case sensitive. You probably want /dev/ttyS0 (tee, tee, why,
> capital ess, zero)
>
Right....... must get used to this case business.
Brenda, I did install the newbie help files, now it would be nice
to be able to turn some of them into hard copy. I note that the
files in /usr/doc are the same as in /usr/share/doc (writing this
from memory, hey) except that the former seems to catch the
documentation packages when you install something new (like I did
Joe last night). So can I dump the latter?
Well last night I got the ms mouse going nicely, corrected
gpm.conf, and a great moment of joy as it floated across the
screen in mc (well, the cursor, not the mouse itself).
Then I wrote a 'hello world' file and following instructions in
the howto actually got it to print out. Oh frabjous joy! I was so
chuffed that I rushed out the back door to shout the good news to
my attractive neighbor Carmen, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Yesterday I could not spell linux guru, now I are one!
Seriously, I will try to make the PS2 mouse go just now.
Karsten & Lance, twin sounds interesting, will perhaps investigate
that when I am a little more proficient.
What do I use to do some word processing, like a la WordPerfect
5.1 ? Tex? Emacs? Short of Star Office, are we restricted to
'editors' which in my terminology mean text-only, no bold, no
underlining, no nothing?
Tonight I must follow the instructions from Paolo and see if I can
get the.gz files into a format that can be printed. Is there no
way of printing direct from this format, after all they can be
read. I can experiment with something like zcat file > /dev/my
printerwhateveritiscalled
I will read the print howtos, and see if any of the alternatives
look better then the default lpr. Command line printing went out
on dos a decade ago, what gives? Do applications allow you to
print from them direct? Even mc does not have a Print command in
its menus which suprises me. There must be a reason for this
route.
I seem to have stacks of stuff loaded according to the screens
that wizz past on bootup. What is the linux equivalent of the
autoexec.bat file, can I rem some of this stuff out for a while?
Is there a command like the dos "mem /c /p" or something that will
indicate resource useage?
As I read between the lines, some of the stuff got compiled into
the kernel at install time (like lp). Some stuff is configured to
be loaded as modules when booting up. Modules can be added and
subtracted and are installed seperately from the kernel. I presume
that they are listed for processing seperately in a .conf file
somewhere. Please tell.
Lastly, linux has been up and running continuously (but not doing
anything much) for some days now. Considering that my W95/8
machine has probably never run for 24 hours without a reboot over
the past 5 years (it locks up when it wakes up even) this is
nothing short of amazing to me. Still, I suppose we should not
compare a linux console to a windowing environment, I see plenty
of hassle-posts starting with X.
I have asked my colleagues in the out of print book trade if they
have any linux books. Let me wait and see. it goes against the
grain to buy a new book in my position!
I will be back.
Ian
Ian Balchin
Grahamstown, South Africa.
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