[sf-lug] MONDAY MEETING, UBUNTU 8.04 - SANE QUESTIONS

[Tom Haddon]

On Sat, 2008-06-14 at 10:57 -0700, Mikki McGee wrote:
> Hello, all:
> 
>     I am new to the sf-lug, will be attending the first time on Monday
> at 6 (God willing, the MUNI don't strike.)

Welcome!
> 
>     In chatting with Jim he suggested I tell you all about the issues,
> and interested folk can chose to show up or kibitz.
> 
> 1)    I have been using Ubuntu since June, 2006, with Ubuntu 6.06
> installed onto a desktop and a laptop, both successfully dual boot,
> with Windows XP.  (another person did the installation.)
> 
> 2)    The Fries "Great Quality" laptop recently was converted by a
> friend to single boot U 7.04 with a sane-xsane-Gimp connection, and
> the Visioneer 7300-usb working well  He also did an installation of
> 'wine.'  A memory failure during this process restricted using the
> installation, until adequate memory was re installed.  It works +/-
> fine, now. 
> 
> 3)    I do not wish to upgrade this laptop computer to U 8.04 until I
> am sure I can re-install the 
> Sane-Insane connection, as that is the basic function intended for
> this machine - copying in Libraries. ( I am using it a lot, recently,
> just to get used to it.)  I would rather keep a functioning machine,
> than risk it in upgrading.  
> *********

Probably the best thing to do is boot off a LiveCD of Ubuntu 8.04 and
confirm what's working/isn't working from there. If everything works as
expected, you can either upgrade (which will mean upgrading first to
7.10, and then to 8.04) or do a clean install (after backing up any
data, of course).

> 
> 4)    A friend gave me an "recycled" ACER travelmate 512dx (560 mb) as
> an experimental machine, and this has Ubuntu 8.04 installed
> successfully, and working quite well enough.  I am using it as the
> experimental machine, in fact, to protect data, etc.  
> *********
> 
> 5)    I will be bringing both these machines, mice, power supplies,
> and the Visioneer scanner to the meeting, in the hopes of learning how
> to do such a complex connection myself, make the correct choices in
> the functions, etc.  This is to be attempted on the ACER. the Fries GQ
> machine will be available for seeing how it was done there.
> 
> 6)    I also am interested (more long term) in becoming familiar with
> the Terminal in Ubuntu. 

Excellent. The best place to start with the terminal is to figure out
how to figure things out. In other words, how do you get help and/or
find out things about commands and how they work? We can talk more at
the meeting, but there are a few main ways as far as I see it:

- Understand the overall Unix/Linux concept - small tools that can be
glued together in arbitrary ways to give powerful results.
- Learn how to use manual pages - "man <command>" (and then knowing how
to navigate within a manual page layout. For instance, "ls" is the
command to list a directories/files. Reading the contents of "man ls"
will give you a ton of insight into all the things you can do with ls.
- Learn how to find what commands are available to you, so you can
investigate what they do. "echo $PATH" will give you a list of all the
folders that are searched when you type a command. In other words, the
command "echo" will be looked for in each folder in turn. Using "ls" on
each folder will tell you all the commands that are available to you -
which you can read up on with "man <command>".
- Learn from others - there are tons of scripts on your system that you
can learn from by studying them and how they work. And of course, this
group and Google and any number of other online resources can help you
find the answers to anything you don't understand, if you know how to
ask correctly.

Cheers, Tom
> 
>     I am 71 years old; trained as a biologist; not very well versed in
> computerese. I got into DOS back with DOS 3.3, and Windows cured me of
> loving MicroSoft.  I would not have continued with computers at all,
> but that a friend kept giving me his old computers when they were
> replaced.  
> 
>     I barely remember any of the DOS commands, but once I was familiar
> with batchfiles, DOS online setups, and re-installing all the programs
> when Windows 2.0 and 3.0 had again crashed the machine.
> 
> 
> Bless All
> 
> 
> Mikki
> _______________________________________________
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> sf-lug at linuxmafia.com
> http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/sf-lug
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