[Twiggz]

After Unsuccesfully trying to install ubuntu and kubuntu i went with knoppix and i like it pretty well though im still a stranger to linux and have many questions....
So far i've managed to install macromedia flash 6 and updated FireFox to 1.0.7 though commands in a shell are as foreign to me right now as learning german i usually navigate through home directory to the folder then open a terminal session in that folder to accomplish stuff and then all i have to type is ./firefox-installer Lol other than that i cant do much yet
I do have a few questions though about linux... Where is the Hardware Manager ? is there one ?
Also do i still have to manually install ati video drivers in linux ? ( my max resolution atm is 1024x728 )
And Lastly is there anyway i can set this up so that i can just double click install files for them to load ? ( like windows ) or do i have to use shell commands.

[jnev_89]

you shouldn't have to use the terminal to get apps to open.. check your kmenu, the apps you want should be there...

as for your res, i'm not sure if knoppix uses xfree86 or xorg. go to /etc/X11/ and check if you have xorg.conf or XF86Config-4. open whichever one you ahve and go down to your monitor resolutions. then just enter whatever the native resolution is in the spaces provided.

[klingens]

There won't be anything there if he installs apps like his firefox with ./firefoxinstaller.

Twiggz: learn how to properly install software with apt-get and dpkg, it will save you a lot of hassles in the future.
Of course you can't avoid serious hassles one day when it won't work anymore at all, since knoppix is made for LiveCDs and not hdd installs. Debian repositories will break sometime in the future for your knoppix version.

[MRD]

While Knoppix is a wonderful LiveCD, you may run into problems using it as a hd installed OS as it is not really designed as such. It does have the ability to be installed to your HD, but that is really something of an afterthought.

I'm not saying to not use it, just that it may not be ideal, and as klingens says, things may behave unexpectedly.

Pure, plain vanilla debian actually makes a great desktop OS. Some really easy to use options include MEPIS and Xandros OCE. These are all debian based and work similarly.

I personally agree with you on ubuntu. While many love it and swear by it, I have yet to get it to install successfully (it's the only distro I haven't gotten to install, and I've tried 20+). Sometimes ubuntu's installer is just temperamental, and it doesn't seem to like me.

[Twiggz]

Yea im not to worried right now about knoppix potientally breaking because i Do have ALOT to learn and im sure by the time it does break ill move on to a better distro but a question that never got answered was.. Is there anything like a hardware manager ? where can i go to see all my hardware and the drivers for it ?

[Gnufsh]

That information shoul dbe accessable through /sys, I believe.

[Twiggz]

Cool deal I took the klingens advice and figured out apt-get and was able to install gaim that way cool linux isnt so bad i feel i've made leaps in one day time

[TheGreySpectre]

Im just wondering, why 3.9 instead of 4.0?

[klingens]

Is there anything like a hardware manager ? where can i go to see all my hardware and the drivers for it ?

In KDE there is something called "kde control center" I believe. It will at least let you look at your current hardware and drivers. Doubt it will let you change anything, especially in knoppix which likes to autodetect everything

That information shoul dbe accessable through /sys, I believe.

Wth is /sys? I'm an old codger who likes is mostly monolithic kernels, MAKEDEV and /proc but I never ever heard of /sys
There is some info under /proc of course. but strictly read only at least for hardware info, nothing to change

[Gnufsh]

AFAIK, /sys was added in the 2.5/2.6 series of kernels.

Code:

dan@langley ~ $ ls /sys
block  bus  class  devices  firmware  kernel  module  power
dan@langley ~ $ ls /sys/bus
i2c  ide  pci  pci_express  platform  pnp  scsi  serio  usb
dan@langley ~ $ ls /sys/bus/pci
devices  drivers
dan@langley ~ $ ls /sys/bus/pci/devices/
0000:00:00.0  0000:00:02.0  0000:00:06.0  0000:00:09.0  0000:00:0c.0  0000:00:18.0  0000:00:18.3
0000:00:01.0  0000:00:02.1  0000:00:07.0  0000:00:0a.0  0000:00:0d.0  0000:00:18.1  0000:01:09.0
0000:00:01.1  0000:00:04.0  0000:00:08.0  0000:00:0b.0  0000:00:0e.0  0000:00:18.2  0000:05:00.0
dan@langley ~ $ ls /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:09.0/
bus    config  irq         modalias  resource   resource1         subsystem_vendor
class  device  local_cpus  power     resource0  subsystem_device  vendor

Mostly you can't change anything, but things like cpufreq now interface through /sys.

As to the original question, lspci (or lspci -v or lspci -vv or lspci -vvv) will give nice information about devices on the pci bus.

[khiloa]

I have never heard of or noticed /sys myself either.

[Gnufsh]

From wikipdeia:

History

During the 2.5 development cycle, the Linux driver model was introduced to fix several shortcomings of the 2.4 kernel:

* No unified method of representing driver-device relationships existed.
* There was no generic hotplug mechanism.
* procfs was cluttered with lots of non-process information.

Sysfs is designed to export the information present in the device tree which would then no longer clutter up procfs. It was written by Patrick Mochel. Maneesh Sony later wrote the sysfs backing store patch to reduce memory usage on large systems.
[edit]

Technical Overview

For each object added in the driver model tree (drivers, devices including class devices) a directory in sysfs is created. The parent/child relationship is reflected with subdirectories under /sys/devices/ (reflecting the physical layout). The subdirectory /sys/bus/ is populated with symbolic links, reflecting how the devices belong to different busses. /sys/class/ shows devices grouped according to classes, like network, while /sys/block/ contains the block devices.

For device drivers and devices, attributes may be created. These are simple files; the rule is that they should only contain a single value and/or allow a single value to be set (unlike some files in procfs, which need to be heavily parsed). These files show up in the subdirectory of the device driver respectively the device. Using attribute groups, a subdirectory filled with attributes may also be created.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysfs

[Twiggz]

I didnt see a 4.0 knoppix on the website maybe i missed it, when i was installing this one it made me " double check " if i wanted to, saying it was a really new version with possible bugs or whatever.

Ill give that a shot gnufsh

And also yea i noticed that KDE Control Center but yea it seemed kinda ' limited '

[Gnufsh]

Originally Posted by Twiggz

And also yea i noticed that KDE Control Center but yea it seemed kinda ' limited'

That would be because it is. I'm not aware of any programs like the device manager on windows, with a nice GUI for everything. You can use usbview to look at your usb devices.

[Twiggz]

LoL i broke knoppix after ..... 26 hours ? lol so i just reinstalled it with debian based instal instead of the plain multi-user whatever... i noticed it didnt detect my dsl connection so i had to figure out how to set that up, but so far seems to be working fine.

I believe knoppix broke after doing apt-get update apt-get upgrade ( i just had it install anything and everything )
It wouldnt log in it would just revert back to login screen everytime

[khiloa]

It might take some time and work but you can usually fix a "broken" system.

[Stewie]

Originally Posted by Twiggz

LoL i broke knoppix after ..... 26 hours ? lol so i just reinstalled it with debian based instal instead of the plain multi-user whatever... i noticed it didnt detect my dsl connection so i had to figure out how to set that up, but so far seems to be working fine.

I believe knoppix broke after doing apt-get update apt-get upgrade ( i just had it install anything and everything )
It wouldnt log in it would just revert back to login screen everytime

If your DSL uses PPP, chances are you're probably going to need to install a few things to get that up and operational.

[Off Topic]
I say this because I recently had a bout with my Debain box trying to get a PPtP VPN working, and I can incredibly close to achieving, although was never completely sucessful, which included patching my kernel to include MPPE support (that wasn't fun). It seems to me Linux just wasn't meant to be a VPN client.

[Twiggz]

Im going to try to build a kernal today to fit my custom needs.

[Arkaine23]

Try apt-get installing a kernel. You can generally grab one that's optimized for your arch... Use:

apt-chache search kernel

And that will return names of kernel packaes available. You could grab a source package for the rolling-your-own route, or a pre-built binary.

[klingens]

ok, I dimly heard of sysfs once upon a time. Which kernel option is it?