I need Linux help!!!

[sr71blackbird]

Help! I got a new laptop cheap and I think I got fucked. Its an eMachine and it has Linux on it. I trid starting up and cannot get past this command:

[root@localhost /]#


I tried searching this command and got nowhere. No matter what I type in, it says "command not found"

Anyone have any ideas?

I tried calling the company and got some douche in India and when I read that command prompt, he suggested I buy Windows and install that, or learn Linux. Duh! He had no idea what to do. I got this on Woot and they wont take it back.



Thanks!






If not, I a willing to sell this brand new machine cheap if anyones interested! $200, I paid $305 a week ago.

[Bigwils]

try typing "startx" if a gui is installed it'll start up

[sr71blackbird]

try typing "startx" if a gui is installed it'll start up

It say "Command not found"



Now what??

[Bigwils]

that means it doesn't have a Windows like interface, you're screwed find a friend with windows xp and install it on that bitch.

[SatCam]

Well it sounds like you have a problem. The first question I have is what distribution of linux is installed on the machine (ubuntu, redhat, debian, etc.)? Next is there a boot menu that gives you options on what you want to boot into (like a command line vs. gui versions of the distro)? If not, then either a) something is messed up with your machine (most likely) or b) they installed a barebones version of linux onto the machine that either wants you to type a command to log into the GUI or has no GUI in the first place

[sr71blackbird]

Well, I bought it on Woot, and they have a no return policy. I believe it is "Lynpix" Linux. No boot menu as far as I can see, nothing works that I type in. I do not see any way around this "command not found" statement. Its brand new. I do not have a Windows disk, and if I pay for it, it is an additional loss. Assuming I had the Windows disk, would I be able to install it anyway with that command issue? How can it be formatted assuming I had it if I cant get beyond that command?

[SatCam]

Well, I bought it on Woot, and they have a no return policy. I believe it is "Lynpix" Linux. No boot menu as far as I can see, nothing works that I type in. I do not see any way around this "command not found" statement. Its brand new. I do not have a Windows disk, and if I pay for it, it is an additional loss. Assuming I had the Windows disk, would I be able to install it anyway with that command issue? How can it be formatted assuming I had it if I cant get beyond that command?

If the laptop has a cdrom drive you could install any OS you want. The computer would boot to the CD and not the HD so the command prompt wouldnt be an issue. You could also just burn a CD for another linux distribution to avoid the cost of Windows. Ubuntu is a good distro.

BTW I couldnt find any information about "Lynpix". I dont think that's the name of the distro. Do you have the laptop model number?

[sr71blackbird]

This is how it was described:

eMachines LXN070C008 Widescreen Notebook Celeron 2GHz, 1GB, 120GB, 15.4", Webcam, DVD-RW, Linux OS



I might have misread the lynpix thing.
If anyone wants this cheap, let me know.

[boosterp]

71 posted this in a thread no to long ago and I remember not finding info about the distro either. 71, just download Ubuntu or another distro, burn it to a CD/DVD, and boot it from the lappy's dvd/cd drive. It will also be a nice learning experiment.

[SatCam]

It turns out it's "Linpus". I have no idea what the deal is with it, but it definitely comes with a window manager.

Your two options are install a better distribution or sell it on ebay. I would go with the first option. It's not too hard to do either. They even have a "windows style" installer for Ubuntu.

[Death Metal Moe]

$200 bucks? Hmmm, that sounds mighty tempting. Can you link the specs from the Woot!site again?

But don't give up TOO easilly man. Seriously. It's not that bad.

[Death Metal Moe]

This thread has made me VERY interested in Ubuntu, I'm downloading it now.

I've always wondered about these alternate operating systems. I've always just .....bought..... a Windows OS and installed it.

I'm gonna at least run it off the CD and check it out for a little while.

[Death Metal Moe]

Nevermind, I found your old post about this laptop. Here's what's in it:

* Linpus Linux Operating System
* Intel Celeron 2.00GHz Processor 575 with 1M Cache and 667 MHz Front Side Bus
* 15.4-inch WXGA high-brightness (200-nit) TFT LCD with 1280×800 pixel resolution
* 1GB Dual-channel DDR2 SDRAM (capable of 4GB)
* 802.11b/g Wi-Fi Certified network connection
* Mobile Intel GL40 Express Chipset with integrated 3D graphics
* Weight: 6.17 lb
* High-definition audio support with two built-in stereo speakers
* DVD Drive, DVD-RAM/R/RW
* 120GB hard drive
* Lithium-Ion 6 cell battery

Interface/Ports:

* DC-in jack for AC adapter
* External display (VGA) port
* Two USB 2.0 ports
* Headphone/speaker/line-out jack
* Microphone-in jack
* Ethernet (RJ-45) port

Webcam:

* Built-in microphone
* Integrated webcam
* Enhanced technology for low-light environments
* 310K-megapixel resolution

Optical Drive: 8X DVD-Super Multi double-layer drive

* Read: 24X CD-ROM, 24X CD-R, 24X CD-RW, 8X DVD-ROM, 8X DVD-R, 8X DVD+R, 6X DVD-ROM DL (double-layer), 6X DVD-R DL (double-layer), 6X DVD+R DL (double-layer), 6X DVD-RW, 6X DVD+RW, 5X DVD-RAM
* Write: 24X CD-R, 16X CD-RW, 8X DVD-R, 8X DVD+R, 4X DVD-R DL (double-layer), 4X DVD+R DL (double-layer), 6X DVD-RW, 8X DVD+RW, 5X DVD-RAM

Special Keys and Controls:

* Easy-launch button: WLAN
* 88-/89-key keyboard with inverted “T” cursor layout, 2.5 mm (minimum) key travel)
* 12 function keys, four cursor keys, two Windows keys, hotkey controls,
embedded numeric keypad, international language support
* Touchpad pointing device

Power:

* 48.8 watt 4400 mAh 6-cell Li-ion battery pack: 3.0-hour battery life
* ACPI 3.0 CPU power management standard: supports Standby and Hibernation power-saving modes
* 3-pin 65 W AC adapter

In the box:

* Users Guide
* Battery
* eMachines LXN070C008 Notebook
* Power Adapter

Nice.

[boosterp]

This thread has made me VERY interested in Ubuntu, I'm downloading it now.

I've always wondered about these alternate operating systems. I've always just .....bought..... a Windows OS and installed it.

I'm gonna at least run it off the CD and check it out for a little while.

That's the best thing about it, and it's fun to play with it off the DVD because you can not fuck anything up.

[ToiletCrusher]

mount everything. just as simple as that. keep mounting shit until your computer goes nuts or you contract HIV.

[Death Metal Moe]

I'd actually feel very guilty buying this laptop off him for 200 bucks because I'd just put XP right on it and make it my audio editing laptop I've been looking for ever since I found out Vista doesn't have the same internal audio controls XP does.

You have a laptop that will work very well for you bro, you just hit a bump. It is VERY easily fixable.

[SatCam]

You have a laptop that will work very well for you bro, you just hit a bump. It is VERY easily fixable.

this is the truth. you bought a $300 laptop what did you expect?

[Death Metal Moe]

this is the truth. you bought a $300 laptop what did you expect?

We discussed this with him in the thread he brougt it up in too. He saved 100 to 150 by NOT having Windows on the laptop. This is what happens.

Dude, for real. It's an easy fix. If it was mine (and it MAY be, tee hee) I'd just put my "copy" of XP on it, find what drivers I could and work with it. It's gonna work out great man.

[Death Metal Moe]

Ubuntu almost downloaded. I'll burn it and check it out tomorrow. Nice thing is it's a small enough file to fit on one CD-R, very quick burn.

I wonder if it will double as an installer if I wanted it to.

[sr71blackbird]

I expected it to boot up!

I just sold it. No more worries! :) Thanks anyway everyone.
I wish I had patience for this stuff. As I was talking to the ass clown in India I was getting furious and my mind won't open to new ideas when I get like that. I am sure if I had waited a day and burned that disk as described it would have solved my problem. Is Linux less likely to get a virus than windows? How does it compare to Mac
?

[Death Metal Moe]

You sold your laptop at a loss instead of trying a couple more options?

OK man, if that's what you really want.

[sr71blackbird]

I'm sorry Moe. I jumped too quick. I put it on eBay and got a quick bite.

[Death Metal Moe]

I'm sorry Moe. I jumped too quick. I put it on eBay and got a quick bite.

You don't have to be sorry man. It's your money. I was seriously considering buying it, you'd have saved on shipping, I'm local, I'd have picked it up.

Or better yet, I or someone here could have probably helped you get an OS on the laptop so you could use it.

[Death Metal Moe]

In my Ubuntu desktop right now. Of course it's kinda different and nothing is installed but I could get used to this.

[sr71blackbird]

Shit, I feel like an idiot. I see how easy it would be to dowload that OS and burn it. Damn

[boosterp]

Shit, I feel like an idiot. I see how easy it would be to dowload that OS and burn it. Damn

That is what we were trying to tell you. Not every forum is harassment and piss jokes.

[liposuctionguide]

Book author, Jonathan Corbet, talks about the current state of Linux device drivers, where he thinks they might be going in the future, and the process the Linux community embraces to develop new ones.

[styckx]

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/20090409/tc_pcworld/netbooksandlinuxacomplicatedstory

[Death Metal Moe]

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/20090409/tc_pcworld/netbooksandlinuxacomplicatedstory

Good article.

[Death Metal Moe]

That is what we were trying to tell you. Not every forum is harassment and piss jokes.

And fuck the Linux forums, we'd have helped you in here. I think we could have helped you through the initial stages of getting Ubuntu set up so you could get it to work on par with Windows so you were comfortable with it.

[SatCam]

He could have run a live cd, run different utilities, installed a new OS, etc. But the real issue is that it is emachine's responsibility to fix the computer because there were obviously issues right out of the box. Of course woot isnt going to help you because they offer no warranty. But why give up after ONE bad phone call with an indian guy? well too late now.........




I am having my own "bad" experience with a linux netbook. I bought a Dell Inspiron Mini with Ubuntu. It was working fine, but then on one boot last week I got an error that seemed to stem from the filesystem check it does every 20 startups. "Read-only filesystem" it is telling me. I booted onto a USB flash drive with DSL linux (there is no cd-rom) and I had no luck CHMODing the files/directories. Also a filesystem check using fcsk comes up with a ton of errors. So I'm thinking the partition is bad, or the SSD is bad (which is odd....... I just got it and I didnt really install ANYTHING, just browsed the web). Im going to call Dell tonite and get this resolved (hopefully they take it back no problem and replace the SSD)


BTW Moe, you can install Ubuntu from the live cd. But dont judge the performance of the distro just by the live cd, because it is basically running off your RAM. it's probably slow. Install it and see how you like it (the boot loader GRUB automatically detects other OSes like Windows so dual booting is no problem. You might have to repartition if you didnt leave any extra space tho.

[Death Metal Moe]

OH no, I won't judge Ubuntu by the CD I burned. I realize it isn't even close to how it will act on a machine. I heard it accessing the CD a lot as I tried to do different things in it and I didn't install anything.

My question is am I completely out of Window's programs if I get Ubuntu? I mean I understand it's not the same OS but is there a way, like a Windows emulator or something? I'm completely new to it.

I'm curious but not ready to jump from Windows just yet.

[SatCam]

OH no, I won't judge Ubuntu by the CD I burned. I realize it isn't even close to how it will act on a machine. I heard it accessing the CD a lot as I tried to do different things in it and I didn't install anything.

My question is am I completely out of Window's programs if I get Ubuntu? I mean I understand it's not the same OS but is there a way, like a Windows emulator or something? I'm completely new to it.

I'm curious but not ready to jump from Windows just yet.

Yes, there is Wine (http://www.winehq.org/) but the fun part of linux is finding programs that do the same task as a Windows program. If I absolutely needed to run Windows software I would just use Windows.

[sr71blackbird]

What is it like Moe? Is it easy to move around with it etc? Satcam, is the Linux OS less likely to get a virus than a Windows OS?

[Death Metal Moe]

What is it like Moe? Is it easy to move around with it etc? Satcam, is the Linux OS less likely to get a virus than a Windows OS?

It wasn't Windows, that's for sure, but that's not a bad thing. It has Firefox as the preloaded browser. It has Open Office preloaded for those kinds of jobs.

I mean it wasn't bad and it was FREE. I'm sure installed it's a lot better. I'm not sure what kind of driver support it offers, but on lower end machines it seems like it would be a nice, free way to get an OS on a machine.

Or if you're just too timid to pirate Windows OS.

As for viruses, it's probably a lot like Apple. Windows and Apple both can get viruses but because Windows takes up the lion's share of the market, people who make viruses aim at them 99% of the time. So you will probably run into less viruses just because you're using an unpopular OS. But that's just a guess.

I kinda want to put it on a spare machine to try it out now. Gonna read up more about it 1st.

[Death Metal Moe]

I'm downloading Kubuntu now too. Seems to be an Ubuntu variant. Gonna check out Wine too.

I'm really considering finding an old comp and trying this out now an experiment.

[boosterp]

Interesting Linux site. (http://distrowatch.com/)

Find Linux compatible software. (http://sourceforge.net/index.php)

Another great version (distro). (http://www.pclinuxos.com/)

[SatCam]

What is it like Moe? Is it easy to move around with it etc? Satcam, is the Linux OS less likely to get a virus than a Windows OS?

ummmm I guess. I dont think I have any viruses I dont have a virus scanner or anything. I have No-script in firefox but firefox is fairly un-exploitable in the first place. I dont even know if any viruses are targeted at linux (you'd have to make a virus specifically for the OS to do anything interesting) I do download a lot of software but I trust linux developers (to be honest, not necessarily to be successful programmers)

Dont you use a Mac anyway?

[boosterp]

As with what Moe stated; the majority of viruses are targeted at Windows because of market share. Linux and Unix (Apple) occasionally have a virus targeted at their kernals. OSX is more frequently attacked versus Linux due again to popularity/market share. But, the attacks on non Windows OSs are very seldom and usually only try to exploit something like the browser (simpler) to steal info.

[oldladyfacepuncher]

As with what Moe stated; the majority of viruses are targeted at Windows because of market share. .

That's really not true. There are plenty of targets out there running a *nix variant - servers, desktops, Apple products, cell phones, etc that should warrant a ton of viruses.

There's more to it than that. Its the way the whole system works. *nix is a true multi-user enviroment where programs/users/procosseses can be restricted,configured, and customised so that they only have permission to access files, directories, and memory that they need and even then they shouldn't have write-access to anything but their own resources.

The patch/update process is much much faster in the OSS world. The original code is always there for anyone to look at, so exploits and vulnerabilities are caught right away and fixes usually get submitted just as quick.

[Death Metal Moe]

That's really not true. There are plenty of targets out there running a *nix variant - servers, desktops, Apple products, cell phones, etc that should warrant a ton of viruses.

There's more to it than that. Its the way the whole system works. *nix is a true multi-user enviroment where programs/users/procosseses can be restricted,configured, and customised so that they only have permission to access files, directories, and memory that they need and even then they shouldn't have write-access to anything but their own resources.

The patch/update process is much much faster in the OSS world. The original code is always there for anyone to look at, so exploits and vulnerabilities are caught right away and fixes usually get submitted just as quick.

Hmmm, that's very interesting. I was just taking a stab at it, I have had no experience with any other OS besides Windows before.

[sr71blackbird]

Are these exploiters monitored and how would a user get access to any fix? Wouldn't you basically have to be on top of this OS 24-7 then?

[boosterp]

That's really not true. There are plenty of targets out there running a *nix variant - servers, desktops, Apple products, cell phones, etc that should warrant a ton of viruses.

There's more to it than that. Its the way the whole system works. *nix is a true multi-user enviroment where programs/users/procosseses can be restricted,configured, and customised so that they only have permission to access files, directories, and memory that they need and even then they shouldn't have write-access to anything but their own resources.

The patch/update process is much much faster in the OSS world. The original code is always there for anyone to look at, so exploits and vulnerabilities are caught right away and fixes usually get submitted just as quick.

I will look for hard facts but I know that I read number wise MS pc/server products are still the largest targets.

[oldladyfacepuncher]

Are these exploiters monitored and how would a user get access to any fix? Wouldn't you basically have to be on top of this OS 24-7 then?

They are. I get updates about everyday. It's all done automagically. Your computer checks the repositories as often as you want it too, and makes sure everything you have installed is the latest version.

Anyone who finds a bug or hole in a program is encouraged to notify the developers. It's easy to do and there are programs that can detect a crash, grab any errors generated from that crash and send that information off to the developers for you. (I think MS as this to some extent too). Anyone who who comes up with a fix can submit it to the developers. Submissions to the official repositories are audited and tested before they are made availible to everyone.

Remember, it's true multi-user. User also means programs. Multiple programs are combined to do a task. For example, email, I use fetchmail to download my mail, postfix processes the system's mail it and sends it to the right user, procmail filters the incoming mail it gets from postfix, and I then use mutt to read it.

So anyone of those small indepandant programs which are maintained by different people may get updates at anytime. Additionally, a bug or a fix in postfix won't effect mutt because they are competely independant programs that do different things.

It's probably a horriblly simplified example, but I think you get the point.

I will look for hard facts but I know that I read number wise MS pc/server products are still the largest targets.

I'm sure they are, but my point is that there are more than enough *nix systems deployed that there should be plenty of viruses around according to that theory. The argument that there are no *nix viruses only because no one uses it doesn't work.

[Space Edge]

I installed Ubuntu on my mac using a parallels virtual machine to check it out, now what ?

[leefromtx]

I installed Ubuntu on my mac using a parallels virtual machine to check it out, now what ?

Uninstall it.

[Death Metal Moe]

I installed Ubuntu on my mac using a parallels virtual machine to check it out, now what ?

Check it out, install some of the freeware, see if it's for you. I'm going to take an old comp I built for my grandma and install Ubuntu or Kubuntu on it sometimes this week or next week just to fuck around with it.

[Space Edge]

Check it out, install some of the freeware, see if it's for you. I'm going to take an old comp I built for my grandma and install Ubuntu or Kubuntu on it sometimes this week or next week just to fuck around with it.

I have an old PC lying around that I might install Linux on that but I figured since I use parallels on my mac to run a windows virtual machine I would check out Linux since I have seen it discussed here and a few other sites recently.

[Death Metal Moe]

I have an old PC lying around that I might install Linux on that but I figured since I use parallels on my mac to run a windows virtual machine I would check out Linux since I have seen it discussed here and a few other sites recently.

I feel ya. I'm just going to use the old Dell I built my grandma because I have it. I really want to test an actual full install to check it out.