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The "Linux questions (and other stuff)" thread

argedion said:
how do you install media codecs in mageia?
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Do you mean install media codecs once it is installed on the hard drive or from the Live disc? I would think live disc would have it included, but not sure it's been a long time since I've used one.

If you install Mageia and then want to install Media codecs, you just include the appropriate repositories, which is non-free and tainted.

The link below can explain much better.
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Install_media_in_Mageia_for_beginners
 
argedion said:
I like OpenSuse over any of the *buntu distro's. I have pretty good luck with it and its gotten all my hardware.

On another note. I have stopped dual booting from the same hard disk. Reasons being that if something happens to the hard drive then I can not access either OS. This is not good. Yeah I can always boot a live cd to backup what I need to if the drive is cooperating. So I started using an external usb drive to run other distro's from to see how they work with my stuff. This is really good for trying out beta versions of my favorite distro OpenSuse. Also if something does happen to my main system I have a backup system to allow me to try and fix what is ailing my computer or atleast backup everything so I can do a reinstall.
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Decided to try OpenSuse today. Got it booting from a thumbdrive currently. I'd like to install this to a WD external USB hard drive and I THINK I could do that from live disc but the install/partitioning options were confusing. Any thoughts on that?

Perhaps I should just place the iso on the external hard drive and try to boot from that. May be a more straightforward install? I don't think I spotted the external drive as an install location option when attempting install from the live disc.
 
iowabowtech said:
Decided to try OpenSuse today. Got it booting from a thumbdrive currently. I'd like to install this to a WD external USB hard drive and I THINK I could do that from live disc but the install/partitioning options were confusing. Any thoughts on that?

Perhaps I should just place the iso on the external hard drive and try to boot from that. May be a more straightforward install? I don't think I spotted the external drive as an install location option when attempting install from the live disc.
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Ok, I ended up getting it done. Had to unplug the external HDD and it detected it ok. Up and running and I'm liking KDE, been some time since I've been in this environment. Reminds me of what I think of as old skool Linux...just my interpretation tho.

I must say, I can't really recommend OpenSuse to noobs. There was an effort to auto configure hardware/peripherals but it wasn't particularly successful. Had to set up my network connection although it was easy due to being a dynamic IP. Basically that's all I had to select...kinda surprised it wasn't successful in that effort without user intervention. Also, the printer is still not set up right, tried both of the "recommended" drivers and both do attempt to print but it just cues up the page and prints a few words, then stops and I have to manually remove the paper to reset the printer.

I'm going to play around some more. It's a fun experiment thus far and I'm looking forward to logging some hours and who knows...may even come to prefer it. But for the average noob, I'm still recommending Ubuntu. It's smooth as silk and it detects the vast amount of hardware out of the gate.
 
When you have the time/effort, give Mageia a try. Only thing is, stable version is 3 and they're working on version 4, so it's still beta. Check out mga 3 if you're up to it.
 
Ah jeez, I've incurred a glitch out of this. My Grub screen changed. It's ok as long as I have my external HDD on...I can then select between OpenSuse, Ubuntu or Windows.

BUT...

If I have the power off to the external HDD, I instead get an error in Grub..."no such device (exernal not recognized) and it goes into "Rescue Mode".

grub rescue >

Not liking this at all. If my external HDD shoots craps, I'm not going to be able to boot into my previously dual boot config of Ubuntu/Win7 or at least not easily. Ugg. I have the boot order set such that it should be calling for my internal HD first.

So...any ideas on how to sort this out so that my internal HD gets grub priority as before? When I set this all up, it said that would be the case too, that's what's bugging me most. This is not a good thing, I'm hoping to find a workaround and soon.
 
You probably will need to have Ubuntu's grub as the default bootloader. It should be a way to rerun it in Ubuntu and it should pick up all OSes installed, including on the ext. drive. I haven't used Ubuntu in ages so I can't say how to do it.
 
That may be sorta my fault I was not specific in stating that I have grub start from the hard disk its using. So With my default setup Grub is on the internal harddrive and only offers opensuse. When my computer is booting up I press F9 and choose which disk i want to boot to then that grub takes over and boots up the OS I want. In this case I have one hard drive with Saybayon 14 and One hard drive with Magiea 4.

Each disk has grub loaded on it. I did it this way so if I have to use the disk on another computer then I don't have to worry about grub not being there to load the OS.

BTW I never meant to say that OpenSuse was noob friendly. There still a bit of work left for it. but I do hope you stick with it. I find it to be very good once things are set up and working properly. However I still check out other distro's just to play around :)
 
argedion said:
That may be sorta my fault I was not specific in stating that I have grub start from the hard disk its using. So With my default setup Grub is on the internal harddrive and only offers opensuse. When my computer is booting up I press F9 and choose which disk i want to boot to then that grub takes over and boots up the OS I want. In this case I have one hard drive with Saybayon 14 and One hard drive with Magiea 4.

Each disk has grub loaded on it. I did it this way so if I have to use the disk on another computer then I don't have to worry about grub not being there to load the OS.
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Not at all, it was my fault I knew better. I saw the bootloader going to the internal HDD and I paused but went ahead and did it that way anyway. I didn't think about the potential for Grub failing altogether if not recognizing a drive until afterward. So I tested the theory and sure enough.

I'm not quite sure how to get out of this tbh. I suppose as a last ditch scenario I could backup my /home in Ubuntu, create another live disc for it and reinstall it over the top of itself. That'd probably get it's Grub back into the lead. But it seems kinda like using a chainsaw to cut a toothpick.
 
Ok frogman, I owe you one. This OpenSuse is killer. Fast, feature rich and excellent graphics are the first thing I'm noticing. Still picking around but I might not leave if I don't get out of here pretty quick. :D
 
Any clues on getting youtube vids to play? I have shockwave flash plugin installed (11.2 r202) but still not working. I notice in the native Firerfox browser there's no option to enable java at edit > preferences > content. Is that strange? I've found that option there before?
 
here see if installing the multimedia codecs helps. I have no issue playing youtube video's. I also only use chrome every now and then i fire up firefox but its a rare occasion.

Codecs
 
argedion said:
here see if installing the multimedia codecs helps. I have no issue playing youtube video's. I also only use chrome every now and then i fire up firefox but its a rare occasion.

Codecs
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Still a no go but Chrome is working fine so I'm switching for the purpose of this distro. Thanks again.
 
iowabowtech said:
Still a no go but Chrome is working fine so I'm switching for the purpose of this distro. Thanks again.
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This is because chrome has its own flash plugin, "pepperflash", installed and used by default. It has a much higher version (11.8? Can't remember exactly) than the generic 11.2 version compiled for Linux.
 
argedion said:
So With my default setup Grub is on the internal harddrive and only offers opensuse. When my computer is booting up I press F9 and choose which disk i want to boot to then that grub takes over and boots up the OS I want. In this case I have one hard drive with Saybayon 14 and One hard drive with Magiea 4.

Each disk has grub loaded on it. I did it this way so if I have to use the disk on another computer then I don't have to worry about grub not being there to load the OS.
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Can you or anyone else provide details on how you go about this at install. In the last several days I've been reinspired to try some more distros. I've done OpenSuse, Mint and most recently Kubuntu. In each case, I see the option to use the guided install and a manual install. The guided install allows the disc destination but it defaults the bootloader to my primary (internal) drive each time while I'm installing Linux to an external hard drive.

The manual option DOES have a separate option for bootloader destination but at the same time, it lists all my current partitions and installs. I'm struggling to figure out how to set that all up so I don't affect my primary drive in any way.

To be a bit more specific, my internal drive is dev/sda. My external is dev/sdg. So when I highlight dev/sdg as the desired location, it says I need to build a partition table. I can't seem to figure out how to do that and additionally, I'd be curious how much space to allocate for each partition that is needed.
 
keep-calm-and-get-slackware.png
 
Anytime you do not want to have a new install bootloader as the default, put the new installation grub in it's root partition. Not /dev/sda but in the ext. drive partition, /dev/sdg1 or whatever it is.
 
saptech said:
Anytime you do not want to have a new install bootloader as the default, put the new installation grub in it's root partition. Not /dev/sda but in the ext. drive partition, /dev/sdg1 or whatever it is.
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Well I don't so much mind whether or not its default in this case because I'm dealing with Ubuntu and Kubuntu right now which both use a very similar version of grub2. But what I'm wanting to know is how to install the bootloader to my external drive, along with the distro install so that its in essence its own environment, completely set apart from the internal drive yet totally bootable if I ever need it...say if my internal drive crashed altogether and I lost access to my only other bootloader as a result.
 
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