Linux Basics --For those new (or relatively new) to Linux

[Ed_P]

Sorry you had a bad experience MGracia. Is the computer you're using a laptop with a touchpad for the mouse movement? If so your palm is touching the touchpad when you type causing the mouse to move. It's also possible the mouse is jumping to where it was last while your typing has moved past that point. I have both these problems and I believe the fix is in tweaking the touchpad's synclient settings. Unfortunately I haven't done that yet for my 5.0rc3 system. For my 4.0 system my settings look like this:

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# https://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=5096&p=37761#p37761
synclient PalmDetect=1 PalmMinWidth=4 PalmMinZ=100
synclient MinSpeed=.2

# Acer 722
#synclient LeftEdge=30   RightEdge=1385 TopEdge=0    BottomEdge=600

# Acer Aspire One
#synclient LeftEdge=0    RightEdge=1408 TopEdge=0    BottomEdge=640

# ?
#synclient LeftEdge=1472 RightEdge=5888 TopEdge=1408 BottomEdge=5218

# Dell Inspiron 13 
#if [ `uname -r` == "5.10.5-porteus" ]; then
#   exit
#fi    
synclient  LeftEdge=30   RightEdge=6942 TopEdge=0    BottomEdge=5218
synclient RightButtonAreaLeft=3471 RightButtonAreaTop=4062
#synclient RightButtonAreaLeft=3914 RightButtonAreaTop=3918 
#synclient HorizEdgeScroll=1  RTCornerButton=0  RBCornerButton=9  LBCornerButton=8
#synclient TapButton2=2 TapButton3=3 MaxDoubleTapTime=180
synclient MaxDoubleTapTime=180 
synclient VertTwoFingerScroll=0
synclient TouchpadOff=2 TapButton2=0

As you can see different machines have different settings.

[Rapha_]

Updated to include information from Captain Picard's links/guide post here: http://www.slax.org/forum.php?action=vi ... ght=nvidia

The page is archived here :
https://web.archive.org/web/20121119114 ... ntID=23220

General Linux Info that is helpful for newbies:
.....
http://www.linux-tutorial.info/modules. ... pageid=224, from linux-tutorial.info
http://www.linux.org/lessons/
http://linux.about.com/cs/glossaries/a/aglossary.htm, a glossary of linux terms

The pages archived :

(linux-tutorial.info)
https://web.archive.org/web/20130117161 ... pageid=224
http://www.linux-tutorial.info/?page_id=167 (new site)

(http://www.linux.org/lessons/)
http://web.archive.org/web/200206040209 ... ?PageID=14

(http://linux.about.com/cs/glossaries/a/aglossary.htm)
https://web.archive.org/web/20060110041 ... ossary.htm

[Ed_P]

Rapha_

[Rava]

(http://www.linux.org/lessons/)
http://web.archive.org/web/200206040209 ... ?PageID=14

While it gives some overview, it is also outdated. E.g. I looked at http://web.archive.org/web/200206040209 ... ?PageID=14
While it lists /proc it does not explain it.
Many Linux internal workings are even to be found in Wikipedia: e.g. /proc or more precisely named procfs: procfs
Or Magic SysRq key aka REISUB

[Rava]

A very helpful command can be lsof ("list open file(s)") when you cannot umount a device. Example:

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guest@porteus:/tmp$ umount /mnt/sdc1
umount: /mnt/sdc1: target is busy.
guest@porteus:/tmp$ lsof |grep sdc1
bash       2068                      guest  cwd       DIR          \
     8,33    16384 1601991 /mnt/sdc1/boot/syslinux

lsof without the |grep DEVICE gives you the complete list of all current file and that is not what you usually want. In my current case:

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guest@porteus:/tmp$ lsof | wc
  27487  298108 3539096

27487 newlines, 298108 words, and 3539096 bytes overall. who in their sane mind would want to review 27487 lines for only one line of interest (in my example case):

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guest@porteus:/tmp$ lsof |grep sdc1|wc
      1       9     118

[Nikole]

Thank you very much for this information!
I'm one of those new to Linux

[Rava]

Thank you very much for this information!
I'm one of those new to Linux

Hopefully you will learn that the command line and terminal is not bothersome, but that the CLI (command line interpreter) is much much more powerful than any GUI or DE can ever accomplish.
And could be there comes the day you start coding shell scripts that do work on ever repeating tasks. While it might take some hours or even a day to create your very first useful script, from then on it only takes a second to execute the script and it does all the work, be it just 2 commends or be it a dozens of commands, from then on you have much less work to do for the same task.
And originally all PCs are meant o be that way, not some GUI where you have to do every single task yourself - be it tiny and repeating or complex and rarely done, but it was meant to be a system custom-made for you so that all repeating menial tasks are automated. That is what computers do best.

[Nikole]

Yeah, I hope I can pull it off. I'm working hard for it!

[Rava]

Yeah, I hope I can pull it off. I'm working hard for it!

Ravas coding goodies (Post by Rava #95879)
HTH!