Thinking of Moving to Ubuntu

[CorporalClegg]

^
Well. In most of those cases it's because the command line fix is the easiest one. By learning how to do it now, you're saving pain and heartache later.

Really, they're doing you a favor.

 

[Alaedhros]

But you can go without command line in Ubuntu for a couple of versions now.

Somebody should tell that to the Linux experts who post responses to noob questions then.

We're quite well aware of it, thank you. Like I said here, we just find typing a handful of words a hell of a lot easier than guiding you through using a GUI. And, really, if you find copying and pasting a couple commands into a terminal to be difficult, then you're probably incapable of using a GUI and should go buy one of these.

 

[Seraphim]

Although I'm sure you'll get some good replies here, you might have gotten a better response had you posted this in the Science and Technology forum. Good luck with the project, if you decide to go ahead with it.

Nice Sig Mallory! Great shot!

 

[Sheep]

But you can go without command line in Ubuntu for a couple of versions now.

Somebody should tell that to the Linux experts who post responses to noob questions then.

We're quite well aware of it, thank you. Like I said here, we just find typing a handful of words a hell of a lot easier than guiding you through using a GUI. And, really, if you find copying and pasting a couple commands into a terminal to be difficult, then you're probably incapable of using a GUI and should go buy one of these.

You can copy and paste into terminal? Every time I tried that I got the stupid characters that show up when you use ctrl-V and ctrl-C. I suppose that would've made things much easier.

 

[Psion]

Terminal doesn't copy and paste using ctrl-c and ctrl-v by default, if I recall correctly. You have to edit your preferences within terminal to associate those keystrokes with those actions. However, there are copy and paste selections in the edit menu, so you can copy text from a website (using ctrl-c as you'd expect), then go into terminal and use the menu Edit -> paste to paste the text into a terminal line. You'll do this once or twice, then get annoyed and edit your preferences so you can just do ctrl-v.

However, there is still room for more gotchas ... not all distributions and configurations are alike. The locations and names of configuration files *might* be different on your system than they are on other computers. I start and stop my DNS daemon with "sudo /etc/init.d/bind start" for example, but some Ubuntu texts insist I should be able to do that with "sudo /etc/init.d/named start". In fact, my Red Hat install on an older box, does use named for DNS.

However, the good news about this is that you aren't likely to do any harm executing a command that may not exist on a file that doesn't exist. You'll just get a command or file not found error, at which point you do a little more reading to find out why a command that everyone else says should work doesn't. In the process, you unwittingly learn more about the OS.

 

[Alaedhros]

Terminal doesn't copy and paste using ctrl-c and ctrl-v by default, if I recall correctly. You have to edit your preferences within terminal to associate those keystrokes with those actions. However, there are copy and paste selections in the edit menu, so you can copy text from a website (using ctrl-c as you'd expect), then go into terminal and use the menu Edit -> paste to paste the text into a terminal line. You'll do this once or twice, then get annoyed and edit your preferences so you can just do ctrl-v.

Trufax. If we're talking about GNOME's terminal, the default is Ctrl-Shift-C/V; I usually do Alt-E, Enter. Additionally, you can right-click anywhere inside the terminal and select copy/paste.

However, there is still room for more gotchas ... not all distributions and configurations are alike. The locations and names of configuration files *might* be different on your system than they are on other computers.

Also true, which is why the person giving the directions needs to double-check files and such if the other person is using a different distro.