"terminal Fear"

[Kyo]

Log in, and issue the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/restart gdm

Err, I think you mean "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart"

Otherwise, a +1 to you in general.

Eep. You're right. I'll fix it. Can't believe I missed that since I proofread the post like 5 times.

Well, except for that there's no gdm on the Pandora. Would be way too huge and slow
We're using slim, so the correct command would be:

sudo /etc/init.d/slim-init restart

Really? That's a shame, I always liked gnome. I guess XFCE is ok too.

 

[Yoyobuae]

Forgot one very important feature of the terminal: It's all pure text.

You can copy the output of any command, hell even the commands themselves for good measure, and paste into posts asking for help. Might wanna be careful not to copy your username, IP addresses, contents of personal directories, etc if worried about privacy. But that's usually easy to delete/replace.

With a GUI on the other hand: "Ok go to the menu item ***->***->***, click on *** tab in the window that pops-up, click on *** checkbox, ...". It just so much more clumsy to give instructions like this. Not to mention copying error messages that pop up in dialog boxes, with text that can't be copy/pasted. <_<

Then guides and tutorials frequently are posted with screenshots to "make it easier", but Google can't search within the text that shows on screenshots. <_<

All in all, finding help about terminal bound tasks is far easier because literal text output from commands are more readily posted. Not to mention people ask for help more frequently too.

NOTE: One of my favorite features since moving to Linux has been the X Window primary selection. Simply put, select some text in a window, middle click elsewhere to paste said text. It works with the terminal, with browser, with everything pretty much. It is so much faster and comfortable than "select text->right click->copy->right click at target->paste".

 

[EvilDragon]

Really? That's a shame, I always liked gnome. I guess XFCE is ok too.

Nothing keeps you from installing it, if you want

 

[Kyo]

Really? That's a shame, I always liked gnome. I guess XFCE is ok too.

Nothing keeps you from installing it, if you want

Yeah, I figured. Does it really run that badly?

 

[r00tw00t]

X is heavy. Pretty Window managers are even heavier. I want it as fast as possible and I don't need or want a pretty GUI. Functional is enough

 

[Kyo]

The pandora is pretty powerful, though. I guess it's not exactly recommendable for battery life, though.

 

[conso]

you can run gnome from slim as well as you can run xfce, icewm, kde, etc. from gdm. It doesn't really matter. Slim isn't the most comfortable desktop-manager, but it get's the job done and is really really small. GDM has a lot of dependencies and isn't even properly customizable at the moment, iirc.

As an Xfce/Arch-user I regularly search my package-manager for gnome-dependencies and try to delete as much as possible. That (in combination with some other things) keeps my 10year-old laptop responsive.
And I use the terminal on a regular basis. It's not necessary, but when you get used to it, it's a super-powerful tool. I don't wanna miss it.

The reason why linux-wikis and forums are filled with terminal commands is that they are reliable and easy to submit.
Example: A "cp /etc/example.conf ~/" is a no brainer, but "open nautilus/thunar/konqueror, go to /etc, right-click example.conf, click copy, go to home, right-click somewhere, select insert" takes 10 times more writing AND thought. Additionally, you can't really know which GUI-tools the other person has installed, while the command-line tools are just there, 90% of the time. The overhead gets bigger, the more complicated the job is.

 

[Kyo]

Not customizable? What do you mean by that?

 

[conso]

Well, last time I checked, the tool for changing settings/themes in gdm was missing. Afaik, they made some big changes to gdm with one of the last releases and didn't manage to adopt that tool, yet. Maybe that info is outdated, though. Also, there might be a workaround by editing a config-file or something like that.

 

[davidgro]

Can you Alt-Ctrl-F1 on the Pandora? Is it Alt-Ctrl-Fn-1? Does that even work?

This is my question as well - I know it Doesn't work on a Nokia N800 (with BT keyboard) I would guess it doesn't on the N900 either...

 

[rabidpoobear]

Can you Alt-Ctrl-F1 on the Pandora? Is it Alt-Ctrl-Fn-1? Does that even work?

This is my question as well - I know it Doesn't work on a Nokia N800 (with BT keyboard) I would guess it doesn't on the N900 either...

Keyboard doesn't allow more than 2 simultaneous keypresses so I doubt this key combo will work.

 

[mindlord]

Can you Alt-Ctrl-F1 on the Pandora? Is it Alt-Ctrl-Fn-1? Does that even work?

This is my question as well - I know it Doesn't work on a Nokia N800 (with BT keyboard) I would guess it doesn't on the N900 either...

I don't see any reason why it shouldn't. It's more of a question of will the keyboard behave as expected in that regard because of the FN-1 = F1 functionality - funk. I don't see a reason why TTY wouldn't behave normally. Imagine the terror a total Linux noob would experience if they stumbled on the fullscreen terminal totally by accident. Stuff of nightmares for some people apparently.

 

[mindlord]

Keyboard doesn't allow more than 2 simultaneous keypresses so I doubt this key combo will work.

Untrue - The alt and ctrl keys are on the 3 special buttons in the middle of the Pandora that are exempt from that rule.

 

[verm71]

The real risk of using the Terminal is not taking to time to research what you're doing.

Exactly. I always ask myself "why am I doing this, and could I re-figure it out from scratch in a logical fashion if I were to forget it?

I generally know my way around a command line, and I've read a few man pages in my time. But what turns me off is reading through 10 screens of manpages and having a hard time deciding "do I really need this switch, this option, or that switch?". For instance, what the fluff is the difference between -xzvf? -xjvf? -czvf in tar? From memory, I'd have a hard time explaining it. The manpages are, like, ick, if present at all on the Pandora. And telling me "don't question it, just use it" is like handing me a paper bag of something and saying "you don't need to know what's in it, just take it across the border".

Untar file with .tar.gz

tar -xzvf <file.tar.gz>

Untar file with .tar.bz2

tar -xjvf <file.tar.bz2>

Tar a directory

tar -czvf <file.tar.gz> <Directory>

 

[conso]

yeah, I hate the tar-switches, too. That's why I use unp to untar and thunar's context-menu to tar something up Most oftenly, though, I don't tar at all but 7z

 

[mindlord]

I generally know my way around a command line, and I've read a few man pages in my time. But what turns me off is reading through 10 screens of manpages and having a hard time deciding "do I really need this switch, this option, or that switch?". For instance, what the fluff is the difference between -xzvf? -xjvf? -czvf in tar? From memory, I'd have a hard time explaining it. The manpages are, like, ick, if present at all on the Pandora. And telling me "don't question it, just use it" is like handing me a paper bag of something and saying "you don't need to know what's in it, just take it across the border".

This is where the trust issue comes in. You basically have to trust the other person not to give you crap information, and to trust they know what they're doing. But, then you're an inquiring mind, that wants to know the hows and whys, and that's good. Not everyone will care, they just want their game to work.

The man command is all fine and good, but searching for commands on the web will sometimes give more verbose documentation that isn't all "ick". I do agree that tar is a beast.

 

[WizardStan]

I generally know my way around a command line, and I've read a few man pages in my time. But what turns me off is reading through 10 screens of manpages and having a hard time deciding "do I really need this switch, this option, or that switch?". For instance, what the fluff is the difference between -xzvf? -xjvf? -czvf in tar? From memory, I'd have a hard time explaining it. The manpages are, like, ick, if present at all on the Pandora. And telling me "don't question it, just use it" is like handing me a paper bag of something and saying "you don't need to know what's in it, just take it across the border".

This is where the trust issue comes in. You basically have to trust the other person not to give you crap information, and to trust they know what they're doing. But, then you're an inquiring mind, that wants to know the hows and whys, and that's good. Not everyone will care, they just want their game to work.

The man command is all fine and good, but searching for commands on the web will sometimes give more verbose documentation that isn't all "ick". I do agree that tar is a beast.

If you also have a basic idea of what the command does, it goes a long way to trust. You know 'untar' extracts stuff, so even if you don't know all the switches, you can still be reasonably confident that it'll help do what you're trying to do.
On the other hand, someone sends you a command which includes "rm" or "dd", you know these commands remove and overwrite files respectively, so you stop to consider if these are commands that will help you or not.

 

[emil10001]

The real risk of using the Terminal is not taking to time to research what you're doing.

Exactly. I always ask myself "why am I doing this, and could I re-figure it out from scratch in a logical fashion if I were to forget it?

I generally know my way around a command line, and I've read a few man pages in my time. But what turns me off is reading through 10 screens of manpages and having a hard time deciding "do I really need this switch, this option, or that switch?". For instance, what the fluff is the difference between -xzvf? -xjvf? -czvf in tar? From memory, I'd have a hard time explaining it. The manpages are, like, ick, if present at all on the Pandora. And telling me "don't question it, just use it" is like handing me a paper bag of something and saying "you don't need to know what's in it, just take it across the border".

Untar file with .tar.gz

tar -xzvf <file.tar.gz>

Untar file with .tar.bz2

tar -xjvf <file.tar.bz2>

Tar a directory

tar -czvf <file.tar.gz> <Directory>

The flags for tar are as follows:
-c = compress
-x = extract
-z = gzip
-j = bzip2
-v = verbose
-f = file

The man pages are useful, but there is some reading involved.

EDIT: Oh, and of course there's always google.

 

[Rathum]

sudo cat /dev/mem > /dev/sda1

More fun:

sudo cat /dev/urandom > /dev/mem
sudo cat /dev/zero > /dev/mem
sudo cat /dev/urandom > /dev/audio
sudo cat /dev/urandom > /dev/input/mouse0

What each do (for noobs who may want to actually try them):
atomicthumbs' writes the content of your memory to your first partition instantly destroying your computer.
My first one right random data to your memory which will most likely result in a crash, but can cause hilarity for a bit.
My second one will replace the entirety of your memory with null and will crash your computer.
My third one should output random sounds on your speaker.
My fourth one will make your mouse go batshit (only if that's the address of your mouse). You can do the same to your keyboard if you wanted.

All of mine can actually be fixed by a reboot, but atomicthumbs' will wipe out that partition. DO NOT DO THAT UNLESS YOU WANT TO LOSE EVERYTHING.

Fun one that won't do any harm:

ddate

Also, ctrl+shift+v is paste.

 

[mindlord]

Suprisingly all these "don't try these" unless you want to fsck (it's a command, AND a clever way to say FU**) your computer. Are educational to any noob that happens in here, because it will teach them the commands NOT to try.