Yeah. If I browse through Xmms I can find files to play from an audio cd at /cdrom but I still can't view the files from a webbrowser. It specifically says that the directory is empty. Also, audio cds are the only thing I can read through Xmms. Mp3 cds just come up as empty.

it probably isn't mounted at all. If it is a minimal linux, it doesn't have automount

@Foamy: To access the CD you must mount it. In windows, when you put a CD in, windows automatically detects that and allows you to view it. Linux, by default, offers no such feature (although some distros, like Ubuntu, do). Instead, you must mount it yourself. Doing so is quite easy, just open up a terminal (xterm is a good terminal program, but whatever is the default is fine), and type "mount /cdrom" (without quotes). Then you will be able to see the contents of the CD at /cdrom just fine

Yay, it worked! Thank you.

I browsed into it through Dillo web browser and it all showed up perfectly. Not thinking, I clicked on one of my mp3 files. It started to open as a bunch of text. Next, my entire GUI disappeared and I got to stare at my command line. I tryed "shutdown -r now" but it said I have to be a superuser.

It just says SCSI bus is being reset for host 0 channel 0.

Should I just hit the power button or will this eventualy go away?




I never knew I could be this much of a n00b...

Basically your computer froze when Dillo tried to load 3-5mb of text in a single window.

What the hell kind of a GUI are you using....

Get a distro that uses KDE or GNOME and you won't have nearly the headaches, a good starting point is Ubuntu. I know you have dial-up, but a small distro often == a hard distro....

See if a friend, relative, or someone who has broadband can download the ubuntu install CD for you....

or, usually a place can ship it to you for a few bucks (I know a friend did that for a number of Live CDs).

The latest Ubuntu is teh pwn for Linux n00bs. It's a free CD, you just pay a buck or two for the shipping.

Yeah, but my linux rig has 32mb of ram, a 4gb hd, and a slow processor.



I'd dual boot on my main rig, but I only have a 32gb hd and only 7gb free. I'd upgrade, but I plan on building a new computer soon anyway. Plus, I have no fear on my other comp. I did things I would never have the...guts... to do on this comp. I would be afraid to get anywhere near my partion table.


Speaking of dual-booting, though. How does that work? When you turn on your comp does it ask you which to load, or do you need to edit your partion table to make one bootable each time you switch?

There's something called a bootloader that asks you which partition you would like to boot from each time you turn the computer on. The most popular ones are GRUB and LILO.

Oh, okay. It asked me to choose one of those when I installed dsl. I think I have Lilo.

K, that's a good one. I'm equally ambivalent about both of them. So anyway, what issues do we still need to solve?

Well... I'm about to go buy a usb flash drive (my other one got stolen ). Am I going to need to mount it, too? And will I need any drivers?

you may or may not have to mount it (depends on if you have auto-mount)

Gah, I don't think it's there. And I don't have a /usb folder like my /cdrom.

*you pay nothing for them to ship it to your house (Ubuntu will ship you CDs completely free)

@Foamy, yes you will have to mount your USB drive, and you will have to edit your fstab file. This is where its going to get a bit tricky....

Here's what you have to do:

open up a terminal and type "sudo beaver /etc/fstab" (hopefully it won't ask you for a password...)

change the file to read:


Code:


save it and quit beaver

then, back at the terminal, type "sudo mkdir /usb" and "sudo chmod 777 /usb"

Now, whenver you plug in your USB drive, type "mount /usb" and BEFORE YOU REMOVE IT type "umount /usb" - failing to do the umount MIGHT corrupt anything you've recently saved to it, as the umount command flushes out the buffers, making sure everything is written so that it can be removed safely.

Ah, I know what the limitation to ordering Ubuntu CDs was then, it was that they take 6-8 weeks to arrive.

Kerm, thats because they usually get big orders. Do an order for just one CD and it only takes like 2 weeks (or at least, thats how long it took for me to get mine)

I should take the time tonight to Download Ubuntu and Knoppix 5.

Quick question, will Ubuntu work on a Silicon Lynx Graphics card? (Debian does)

If debian does all linux distros will, although not necessarily out-of-the-box with hardware acceleration

You will for sure get 2d, but in all likelyhood you won't have hardware-accelerated 2d and 3d, so it would be like fireing up winXP without installing a VGA driver, you just get the "safe" default

ok, thanks for the info.