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Updates from May, 2006 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

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  Andrew 1:00 AM on June 2, 2006 Permalink
  Tags: Linux ( 10 ), WTF ( 4 )   

  Living with Linux: AFP, SMB… WTF?! 

  

  Believe it or not, you’re looking at the result of about a week’s worth of work!

  Getting Linux to connect to the other Macs on my home network has been a real brain-buster, but I finally got it up and running… I think. Kubuntu doesn’t recognize Apple’s AFP protocol (known to people who speak regular English as “sharing”), so I had to install a Samba server on my Dell notebook. That part was actually easier than it sounds; it was all the mucking around with passwords and workgroup domains that really frustrated me.

  I still don’t think I have it configured properly—the “Inspiron” seen the screen grab above is my Linux machine, so why is its address “mshome”?!—nonetheless, now the real test of Linux can begin, as I can transfer over all the docs, pics and more from my Mac and see how Kubuntu handles them…

  Andrew Currie and Matt Rogers are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Matt Rogers 7:07 PM on June 6, 2006 Permalink | Reply

    Easier than SMB is just using SSH. Turn on remote login on the mac, then you should be able to to type fish://”static ip of mac” into Konquerer and have your mac files show up.

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    Andrew Currie 8:52 PM on June 6, 2006 Permalink | Reply

    Hey Matt,

    Thanks for the comment!

    Have to say, though, that I’m not entirely sure that I agree with you—only because I’m not in the habit of memorizing the IP addresses of all the ‘puters on my network.
    

    I’ll definitely try it out, though…
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  Andrew 1:00 AM on May 30, 2006 Permalink
  Tags: KDE ( 2 ), Linux ( 10 )   

  Living with Linux: Installing Apps 

  

  (Detail of Adept, the KDE package manager. Click here or on the image above to see the entire window…)

  Upon my first successful install of Ubuntu my first task was to get the Flash Player working in Firefox—those YouTube videos don’t play themselves, ya know!

  I was a little dismayed to find the following instructions at UbuntuGuide.org:

  sudo apt-get install flashplayer-mozilla

  My biggest fear of Linux was staring me right in the face—that I wouldn’t be able to do much without hammering out a bunch of command-line instructions in a terminal window. How could this be, when everything else on my KDE Desktop seemed so user-friendly?

  Thankfully, a little poking around revealed a program called Adept. This “package manager” performs three critical tasks for a Linux installation:

  1. It keeps track of all the software installed on your system;
  2. It connects directly to repositories of downloadable applications and upgrades;
  3. It will install those apps and upgrades keeping in mind the stuff you’ve already got.

  I used Adept to get my system software up to date and to install the default Kubuntu games package. It’s not quite as convenient as a Mac or Windows automatic software updater, but it does give the user more control over the process.

  Now you can still go out into the wild and download whatever you like off the web, but unlike Mac or Windows it is most certainly not a drag and drop affair. As an example I tried to install the new Linux version of Google’s Picasa. I downloaded a package with a clickable Debian installer, but opening it brought up an error that a critical system component was missing.

  My only other choice was to go back to the command-line, as per Google’s instructions:

  If that doesn’t work, save the file in the /tmp directory, then open a terminal window and install with a command like

  $ sudo dpkg -i /tmp/picasa_2.2.2820-5_i386.deb

  or

  $ su

  1. dpkg -i /tmp/picasa_2.2.2820-5_i386.deb

  1. exit

… And that didn’t work either.