Re: Help, windows dummy has bought one. I need it for a job or 100
On Wed, 8 May 2019 14:09:16 -0400
Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> wrote:
>
> I'm also well pleased that I'm not being chastised for winders here,
> thank you very much for that.
On the whole, Debian is for grown-ups, not the Linux nutters. I've
earned a fair bit of money from Windows in the past, and I still need a
portable Windows machine for a few external peripherals and to run my
government's tax software. I actually have two now, but the netbook was
explicitly bought to be a Debian machine and I'm just mildly happy that
Win10 still runs, mostly for occasions like this.
Simplest way now to get a command prompt:
Right-click the white Windows symbol at the left end of the taskbar,
select Run, type cmd and Return. It's a bit primitive compared to a
*nix shell, but it does a few jobs fairly well. If you do need more
oomph, higher up on the same right-click menu is Windows PowerShell,
which I've only ever needed to use on servers.
Also further up on the same menu is Network Connections. Open this and
towards the bottom right is Change Adaptor Options. Click here, then
right-click over the Ethernet entry, and Properties will give you the
protocol selection and configuration box you haven't found.
The first Windows user *still* is root, so it should let you straight
into the Properties. You want the Windows, right-click menu again for
Settings, then Accounts, which will let you as root create new accounts
and (*after* you set up another administrator account) will let you
demote your current user to unprivileged. That's a one-way street, of
course, you'll need to login as the administrator if you want to
promote it again. Most commands can be given from an unprivileged
account, when you will need to enter administrator credentials for the
kind which would require root on *nix. It isn't sudo, it doesn't have a
timeout, you need to re-enter credentials for each task.
If you left-click on the Windows icon, you get the dreadful Win8 tile
thing, but at least it has a program list on the left. Down near the
bottom are a few Windows directories, including Administrative Tools. An
unprivileged user can right-click on these programs and select Run as
Administrator, then give credentials. It is possible to do almost
anything (finally) as an unprivileged user if you know the admin
password. Even Win7 needed an admin login to do quite a few things.
Best of luck. Just don't ever say 'yes' to anything it offers to do for
you. Even Firefox on Windows is...pushy... it wants you to set up an
account and all that nonsense.
--
Joe
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