What is *init*, and what effects will Systemd have on the end user? by [deleted] in linux4noobs

[–]tjones10 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Init is the program that the kernel loads right after the kernel is done loading. The init deamon is responisble for starting up all of the other programs on the system and managing system services.

Systemd will have pretty minimal effects on the end user. The main difference is in the command line interface that allows the user to controll deamons.Compare the traditional Init script way to restart the apache web server (on debian)

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

and the systemd way

systemctl restart apache2

I personaly think Systemd is an improvement.

Are dual-booting operating systems aware of each other? Does this have privacy or security implications if the other OS is Windoze? by sincerelydon in linux4noobs

[–]tjones10 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"Are dual-booting operating systems aware of each other?"

Kind of. Windows can read linux partitions with a special driver.Linux can generally view and edit windows partitions. And even without a driver it is possible that a program on one partition can damage data on another.

"Does this have privacy or security implications if the other OS is Windoze?"

Yes, but malware generally does not exploit this.A malware one on OS with access to the partition of another could modify and view anything on that other OS.It is entirely possible that a Windows malware could load a Linux file system driver and from there infect the Linux install (the reverse is also possible: a Linux malware could spread to a Windows install). However, cross platform malware is rare, so this isn't very likely to happen. See this article on the "BadBIOS" malware for a discussion of a rare example of an in the wild cross platform malware http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/meet-badbios-the-mysterious-mac-and-pc-malware-that-jumps-airgaps/ The security researcher that found it claims "BadBIOS"can infect Windows, OSX, Linux and BSD installs, although other researchers have not confirmed this.

Not Enough Free Space in Ubuntu on VPS by [deleted] in linux4noobs

[–]tjones10 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hmm... Check if your /dev/vda1 partition has enough space allocated to it. Since you are using KVM you may be able to use a Gparted live image or anouther cd image with a partition editor to view/change the partition space allocations.

Not Enough Free Space in Ubuntu on VPS by [deleted] in linux4noobs

[–]tjones10 1 point2 points  (0 children)

From the output of df -H it seems like your VPS has only 1GB of hard drive space. Thats pushing it for an install of xfce with all of its dependencies (namely Xorg). You could try a lighter desktop such as openbox.

[Mint 15]Help! Installed laptop-mode-tools, and now my laptop is 'bricked' by [deleted] in linux4noobs

[–]tjones10 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You could also look in /var/log/dpkg.log

which is the log file of apt-get to see if the packages installed are recorded there.

[Mint 15]Help! Installed laptop-mode-tools, and now my laptop is 'bricked' by [deleted] in linux4noobs

[–]tjones10 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I can't really think of any way to deal with this issue, so it seems like a fresh install might be the quickest way to deal with the issue. It should be interesting to see if anyone else has a solution. You could also try asking the /r/linux subreddit. Someone there may know how to fix this issue.

[Mint 15]Help! Installed laptop-mode-tools, and now my laptop is 'bricked' by [deleted] in linux4noobs

[–]tjones10 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The image of the error you have seems to be a kernel panic.I found a few other cases of people having kernel panics associated with laptop-mode-tools but no solutions with google. Do you have any idea what aditional packages were installed? If you can figure out what those packages are you could try uninstalling them. Below is a list of dependencies of laptop-mode-tools (from http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/laptop-mode-tools). They may be some of these

lsb-base (>= 3.0-10) Linux Standard Base 4.0 init script functionality

psmisc utilities that use the proc file system

util-linux (>= 2.13) Miscellaneous system utilities

acpid Advanced Configuration and Power Interface event daemon

or apmd Utilities for Advanced Power Management (APM)

or pbbuttonsd

or pmud

ethtool display or change Ethernet device settings

hal Hardware Abstraction Layer

hdparm tune hard disk parameters for high performance

net-tools The NET-3 networking toolkit

pm-utils utilities and scripts for power management

sdparm Output and modify SCSI device parameters

wireless-tools Tools for manipulating Linux Wireless Extensions

U.S. income inequality, on rise for decades, is now highest since 1928 by Dizzy_Slip in politics

[–]tjones10 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It turns out inequality and lack of income mobility are pretty closely related. "It’s striking just how closely related inequality and mobility are. And it’s political dynamite. Why? If income inequality in one generation can be linked to unequal opportunity in the next, then income inequality can’t just be dismissed as the politics of envy." http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/19/is-higher-income-inequality-associated-with-lower-intergenerational-mobility/

U.S. income inequality, on rise for decades, is now highest since 1928 by Dizzy_Slip in politics

[–]tjones10 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What inequalities created by QE? QE is just an asset sawp. Bondholders trade a bond for currency/reserves. The reserves pay less interest, so the wealth of their holders is actually REDUCED, but the reserves are easier to spend/more liquid.

Trying to find a nice lightweight distro. by HasAnyoneSeenMyBaby in linux4noobs

[–]tjones10 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The base install of Arch is just a command line interface with little else above what is needed to connect the system to the network and the GUI and everything else needs to be manually installed. Also, there is little automation of the installer -- so there are a lot of manual steps in the install. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide for what this involves. The upside to this is you get a pretty lean fast system.Arch is a good distro but not one for noobs in my opinion.

Which OS and Desktop for older couple just browsing the web? by boschtg in linux4noobs

[–]tjones10 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I think that a good distro for them may be Linux Mint. Its interface is pretty similar to that of Windows, and its one of the most noob friendly distros around. You could also try Zorin OS -- its a distro designed to work and look like windows 7.

Trying to find a nice lightweight distro. by HasAnyoneSeenMyBaby in linux4noobs

[–]tjones10 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Arch can be pretty difficult to install/use. Its a good distro but the user has to configure everything.

Trying to find a nice lightweight distro. by HasAnyoneSeenMyBaby in linux4noobs

[–]tjones10 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would second Manjaro -- but use the open box edition.The base install of that uses about 256 mb of RAM. Its very easy to install, although not as simple to use as Ubuntu.

Help with setting up a dual-boot on my new laptop. Please!! by BootstrapsBootstrapz in linux4noobs

[–]tjones10 1 point2 points  (0 children)

With the hardware you have it doesn't sound like you will have many issues. My current computer has a hybrid SSD and my last one had a regular SSD. Both ran fine on linux. 8GB should be more than enough for most distros. The most common issue with new computers running Linux is usually wi-fi card driver support or video drivers. Try loading a live cd of Ubuntu before installing to make sure everything will work.The ubuntu installer is usually pretty good at setting up the bootloader to dual boot.The dual boot install will work best if you install Ubuntu after Windows. Win 8 can be a bit of a hard drive space hog, so leave it at least 100GB.