This item is for discussion of the GNU/Linux system originally written by
Finnish (then) student Linus Torvalds.  Linux has since grown to be the
premier open source project, running on a huge number of machines with
thousands of contributers and perhaps millions of users.  Many distributions
of the basic Linux kernel and GNU utilities exist, and Linux is unique in that
"Linux" refers to the system's kernel which is maintained separate from any
specific distribution.  The Linux kernel is available free (with source code)
under the GNU Public License, and is often bundled with GNU utilities leading
the distributions to be frequently referred to as "GNU/Linux."

79 responses total.

Does Linux support external Firewire devices such as hard
disks, DVD-RAM drives and camcorders?  Does it support IP
networking over Firewire?

Can today's Linux connect to an 802.11g LAN that uses WPA
with a private shared key?

I imagine it depends on the exact distribution used, but I have a hard time
believing that the answer to all of those questions is not `yes' for the major
distributions.

 Linux has had firewire disk support for quite some time.  PC BIOSes may
 not support (in fact, usually do not support) booting from Firewire,
 however.  

 CD and DVD burners are a little more complicated, because it depends on
 the application software.  My understanding (which is limited) is that
 handling of Firewire peripherals is done through a sort of SCSI emulation
 layer and that handling of CD and DVD burners is *also* done through a
 sort of SCSI emulation layer, so I would recommend testing first or asking
 someone who has a configuration similar to the one you have.

 As far as video cameras are concerned, I don't know.

 The laptop I'm typing this on currently is connected to my 802.11g WAP,
 which uses a WEP key (I know it's not secure.)  The version of Ubuntu
 which I am using has a nice little GUI configuration widget to enter
 the key and everything (though of course I'm sure there are also command
 line equivalents..)  And my Ubuntu distro is more than a year old 
 (I'm running 5.10, I believe) and things have probably been refined
 further since then.  Nowadays, for example, I believe there are native
 drivers for the Broadcom chipset my Dell laptop uses, which eliminate the
 need to use the awkward (but better-than-nothing) ndiswrapper utility
 to load the Windows drivers.

I can see DVD-R, DVD-R/W, DVD+R, DVD+R/W, CD-R and CD-R/W
being dependent on application software, but DVD-RAM seems
to present itself to the host system as though it were a
hard disk with 2K sectors.  I don't anticipate using any
'burning' software with that, although I suppose I would
need it when using DVD-R media in the same drive.

 OK, I haven't used a DVD-RAM device.  If that's the way they work you'd
 probably be able to use them under Linux fairly easily.  A 5-second Google
 search could probably give you a real answer, though, rather than a guess.

So far the only thing I have needed Windows for is to run Win32 modem upgrade
programs from USR.  Linux could probably do it with Windows emulation.
I write CDs and play DVDs but have never seen a DVD-RAM.

I would be surprised if Linux granted that kind of hardware
access to an emulated environment, although if it were an
external serial modem it might still work.  I have three DVD
-RAM disks and a borrowed DVD-RAM drive.  It doesn't work
with NetBSD, probably because of the 2K sectors.  It might
work with -current.  I'll test it if I can get -current to
build.

As far as wireless goes, I recommend staying away from Linksys, and doing the
same with Broadcom (or supplementing inbuilt laptop broadcom with something
that works (for Linux/BSD values of "works"). (I never had any joy with
NDISwrapper.))

I shudder at the thought of NDISwrapper.  Native binary
drivers are bad enough without resorting to that kind of
evil.  I suppose binary drivers are a fact of life in Linux
though.  :-/

Linksys WPC11 ver. 3 works with hermes and orinoco drivers, and kernel 2.4.
Cisco aironet 340 works with kernel 2.4 or 2.2 and has better range.

Ignoring the moral rhetoric of evil, you will find a much easier time by
using a wireless board that is known to work natively in your
environment. I believe Orinoco wireless boards are known to work well,
as are older Aeronet boards (though the Cisco webpage will lead you
around in circles when you go to look for the Aeronet drivers for
Linux). 

You may want to look on your vendor's webpage to see if there is a list
of wireless boards known to work well. 
 - SuSE Linux Enterprise:
http://en.opensuse.org/HCL/Network_Adapters_(Wireless)

 - CentOS (If there's a Y at the end of the line, the driver is compiled
into the kernel itself, if there is an M at the the end of it, the
driver is available as a module.):
http://wiki.centos.org/HardwareList/centos4-config?action=AttachFile&do=g
 et&target=config-2.6.9-42.0.2.plus.c4

 - Slackware refers you to a generic Linux Hardware Compatibility
booklet: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO/

 - Debian refers you to the same document that Slackware does.

 - RedHat's webpage is currently down for maintanance

 - Mandriva maintains a searchable Hardware Compatibility database for
its Mandrake Linux product: http://www.mandriva.com/en/hardware

 - I can't seem to find any useful information on TurboLinux's webpage

 - Ubuntu (Intel):
https://help.ubuntu.com/6.10/ubuntu/installation-guide/i386/hardware-supp
 orted.html


If you use a different version of Linux, you will need to search the
vendor's site for more informaiton

You really have to be careful with wireless cards.  Manufacturers 
frequently change the chipsets inside them without changing the model 
number.  I still find them to be pretty hit-or-miss in Linux.

unlucky

don't use firewire but WPA/PSK works for me with a netgear card and madwifi
drivers + wpa_supplicant. also had it working with some intel/broadcomm
chipsets.

Thanks for the data point.  I have a wireless card working
on a beta of NetBSD 4, using wpa_supplicant. I haven't tried
Firewire since upgrading.

Has anyone tried using apt-get/dpkg with Linux - Is there a way to
select between file:/ and http:// while installing a pkg?? 

I have copied deb iso's 1-4 to disk and made them accessible to apt-get
via file:/whatever, in sources.list. I also have the http:// lines.

Most times i want to install from CD but sometimes i need to install
from the net, which is why i have retained the http:// lines. Now if i
do a apt-get install something, most times because the online repo's
have the latest copy, apt will download the package!! So i keep the
http:// lines hashed out BUT then every time i unhash them to DL
something, i need to apt-get update - that re-downloads the meta-data
and i lose around 5-6MB/event! Also un-hashing is a pain in the butt!

Can't i tell apt to just use the disk files or to ignore the
latest-version??? I DON'T want to use dpkg -i because it involves a lot
of typing (long path and then i have to hunt for the pkg-files on disk)!

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Also, is there a decent color picker tool for Linux. I'm not running
KDE/Gnome because it's way too slow! I want some sort of stand-alone app
that is light and can support ANSI, RGB, Hexadecimal notation. It should
also show how things look for some sample text. Anything??

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Any way to unload all the kernel modules that debian loads? I don't use
USB/Parallel Port/Thermal/Processor/rtc/pcspkr/ and many more. I googled
it and some sites suggest blacklisting, but the man pages seem to
indicate a different purpose (man modprobe.conf)??

-------------------------------------------------------------------

I've already asked on USENET (they are slow as molasses) and
IRC/local-LUG (they didn't know). Any decent online resources??

 It looks like that might be something you can accomplish with
 apt preferences (man apt_preferences)

Re #17: Working :) Not quite what i wanted, but good enough i hope.

Package: *
   Pin: origin ""
   Pin-Priority: 999

If it's a completely new package that's not on disk then it will do a
net install; also, if the pkg exists on disc and the net has a newer
version it will do a disc install which is great! BUT, what if i want
the latest package that is on disc?? I'm generally content with a old
version of emacs/xmms/WM, BUT i do want the latest xchat/browser
packages.

Found a great color picker in xcolors! But, the clicking to scroll up
and down is a pain (it has no "drag the scrollbar"). You have to right
and left click, to move up and down. WTH is Linux brilliantly elegant in
some ways and totally f! in other ways! Grr!

kernel modules: apparently blacklisting is the correct way but the
syntax is weird: install module-name /bin/true .

Thanks mcnally.

PS: Time is acting weird!! hwclock --localtime --systohc sets the time
okay in Linux but in Windows it's gets completely broken! If i use
nisttime.exe in windows, then Linux gets broken! I think windows is
using utc whereas i'm setting localtime on Linux. FUD! <sigh> (But I'm
liking Debian - it's almost perfect. 

Re #18: time got fixed. Windows uses localtime, Linux was using UTC in
it's config file and hwclock --systohc --utc was breaking because of the
UTC value in the cfg file (and it's undocumented to boot Grr!)

NONSENSE!

"This item is for discussion of the GNU/Linux system originally written
by Finnish (then) student Linus Torvalds."

Linus Torvalds wrote the Linux kernel - not the GNU/Linux system. Shit!
Give Eric S. Raymond some credit for founding GNU and the FSF, and the
GNU developers for making Linux possible FOR ONCE!

I realize that GNU is credited elsehwere as being seperate from Linux in
the post BUT the first line is still utter nonsense.

Good point.

 re #20:
 > Give Eric S. Raymond some credit for founding GNU and the FSF, and the
 > GNU developers for making Linux possible FOR ONCE!
 
 Umm.. speaking of "NONSENSE!"
 Do you want to take another shot at that?

*cough*Richard Stallman*cough*

Yeah, don't mess with him or he'll come after you with his katana.

it is very interesting.But i facing my problems while writing programs.
It is very difficulty to remember commands.

dude, just do ls /bin /usr/bin /usr/sbin to find command names and then
man cmdName for more information on the command. Eventually with usage,
you will remember. You can also press the Tab key to auto-complete if
you use the bash shell. So: ifc<Tab> should auto-complete the command
for you. If it doesn't press <Tab> again and you should get a list of
commands that match the letters ifc.

I use lines like:
alias net-pf-10 off

in /etc/modprobe.conf

Generally I don't bother with things like USB and lp and such as they
are so tiny.  A Few hundred K out of a few hundred M isn't worth the
effort.  I do disable various kernel modules for security reason.  I
would disble USB if people stealing data on USB keyfobs were a worry for
me on that system, or IPv6 when I don't want to have to chase firewall
rules and daemon configs when IPv6 won't be used anyway.

This could happen to you...

http://xkcd.com/456/

remmers, that's true!!

Are people still actively using GNU/Linux around here?

I just left working for the Free Software Foundation after four years,
but remain a GNU developer -- GNU FM and GNU social are my two projects,
and I found Grex because I am looking to set up a Backtalk system for
some fellow GNU developers.

Hello.

    My daughter's PC runs Qimo and (the machine that is
theoretically) my primary desktop PC runs Xubuntu.

My suspicion is that a lot of people are probably still running GNU/Linux (and
yeah, I messed up saying that the entire system was written by Torvalds; I
should have proofed better before publishing).

Well, to answer whether or not people use GNL/Linux, in the scope of free
software it has the largest market share.  As for folks around here, I'm
guessing that more advanced users have opted for a BSD variant?

I know a guy who is very interested in unix systems and he recomended
DragonflyBSD as his personal favorite.  I actually have a USB stick with an
installation image from 2011, but as a new user I don't feel ready to venture
there yet, as ubuntu has a ton of community support for people like me who
are still learning.

Re. #33: I run NetBSD on some production servers.

Interestingly enough, I also use the Xubuntu distribution of Linux primarily,
as with post #31.  This is probably related to the unusual choice by Canonical
to ship Ubuntu main version with an unconventional Desktop Environment.

One of my recent hobby projects is to get an SGI O2 machine up and running,
able to compile software.  An experienced Unix admin suggested I get NetBSD
onto it, rather then try to compile with the proprietary OS that it came with
(IRIX) which is obsolete.  It will be my chance to become more familiar with
NetBSD.

My current level of knowledge is such that it doesn't make much of a
difference which OS I am working on, whether it be Linux or BSD variant.  Bash
scripting should be the same for simple scripts.  I have a plan to check out
the three oldest Linux distributions, in order of increasing difficulty:
Ubuntu, then CentOS(RedHat) and finally Slackware.  What I will be able to
practically do with that knowledge is not determined, but I have little
planning in my life and a person has to start somewhere.

And finally, I suppose I will rise up to the level of knowing the importance
of differences between the OSes, and I can check out OpenBSD here, NetBSD on
my O2 (if I ever get it running) and FreeBSD somehow.  FreeBSD seems to be
the OS of choice for many free shell accounts out there, so it shouldn't be
a problem to find one for tinkering with, though for me right now I'm only
starting with bash scripts, so it doesn't matter which OS I am working with
right now... as long as I can script without fear of erasing my important
files with some silly mistake.

YOu can get a free NetBSD shell account at http://sdf.org.
Very reliable and a good internet connection but sometimes things get a bit
clogged.  I often have to wait 20-30 sec while writing emails.  $1 or so to
get verified gives you the use of a lot more programs (one time fee).

There are a lot of linux live CDs.  

Grex's span of life on OpenBSD is coming to an end: the new hardware will run
(indeed, is already running) FreeBSD.

Can you explain why the change?

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss