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A Division of Tacoma Area PC Users Group (TAPCUG)
WASHINGTON STATE, USA

Bring your used computer equipment for free to A+ Computers,
2724 Pacific Ave E, Olympia, WA 98501 (exit 107 North off I-5) the
home of rebuilt computer systems
(computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse) starting at $149 (speakers $10).

We are Linux distribution neutral and try out all sorts of Linux distributions.
Our focus is to get all proprietary Windows and Mac users switched to open source Linux.
We encourage trying out different Linux distributions since they all bring new ideas to
the community and there is no one size fits all distribution.

We have Linux CD/DVD's that can either be run live in your memory or
installed to your hard drive.
You have the option of shrinking your Windows (or other) partion to make room for your Linux partition(s).
We suggest selecting the XFCE desktop and the XFCE classic menu style.
If you come to a Linux SIG meeting, you can have one of these new CD/DVD's.

Linux file system.

Introduction to Linux here.

Check back often for the latest updates.
http://Linux-Now.us
http://www.tapcug.org

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News

   Get started with Linux now!

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Events (date format MM/DD/YY)

05/06-07/2017 LinuxFest Northwest, Bellingham, WA

  

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Howtos

1. Changing to Linux: Most Linux CD's or DVD's will boot live on your computer running in memory and give you an option to (1) install alongside your existing operating system (2) replace your existing operating system or (3) manually install on partitions you created earlier. If you have another operating system already installed on your hard drive, you could use GParted (partition manager such as that on Puppy Linux) or the KDE partition manager to shrink that partition and make a new partition for your Linux operating system. In the future you could always expand your original operating system back to original size if necessary.

If you use a bootloader like GRUB (Grand Unified Bootloader) to boot multiple operating systems, you need to be fully prepared and have a good understanding of what you are doing. Being prepared includes defragging proprietary, unstable operating systems like Windows and having a backup of your operating systems along with the appropriate rescue disks. If possible, use a secondary computer that you don't rely on for critical day to day use for your first install. You can easily copy your documents, photos, etc. from the old system to the new using Puppy Linux. The above described Linux distributions have the ability to resize partitions, including Windows, with partition editors such as GParted so you have room to install Linux. Do the custom partitioning to be sure the install is what you want. A typical dual boot configuration for a 40 GB hard drive would be 1 GB on sda3 (or hda3) for Linux swap, 30 GB on sda2 for Linux and 9 GB on sda1 for Windows. Kubuntu Linux can also be installed on Apple computers so that you have a better operating system.

You could have separate hard drives, flash drives, etc. for different systems on your computer and use GRUB to boot any combination of systems. You can change your GRUB menu by going to boot - grub - menu.lst in your home directory in whatever partition you are booting from. When modifying GRUB, you could just copy an existing menu, paste and change the details accordingly. Let's say your computer is currently booting from (hd0,2), also called hda3 (the third partition on your first hard drive), & you want to boot from (hd0,1), also called hda2. In your Konsole command line enter the following as root (your admin account). You can use the konsole on a live CD including Puppy Linux, Mepis Linux, OpenSUSE Linux, etc. Often the easiest option is to boot Puppy Linux live to change the root partition, copy boot menus, etc. This tells your master boot record where your root partition (the one that boots your computer) is. Note that the Linux count starts at zero so (hd0,1) = hda2:
# grub
> root (hd0,1)
> setup (hd0)
> quit
----------------------------

A typical multiple boot menu (/boot/grub/menu.lst) would look like the following:

timeout 10
color cyan/blue white/blue
foreground ffffff
background 0639a1

gfxmenu /boot/grub/message

title Kubuntu 11.04 64-bit at sda11
chainloader (hd0,10)+1

title MEPIS Linux 8.5 64-bit at sda5, newest kernel
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda5 nomce quiet splash vga=normal
initrd /boot/initrd.img
boot

title MEPIS Linux 11 64-bit at sda6
chainloader (hd0,5)+1

title Puppy Linux 5.2.5 at sdb1
root (hd1,0)
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/sdb1 ro vga=normal
initrd /initrd.gz
/boot

You may want to change vga=791 to vga=normal if you are getting an undefined video mode message. In this case, Puppy Linux 5.2.5 is on a usb drive which is seen as a second hard drive. A second partition on the second drive would be sdb2 and so forth. Note that sdb1 = (hd1,0).

Partition Magic with Boot Magic, which sells for around $80, can be installed on Windows but then you are relying on Windows to boot your computer. Note that a Windows Vista partition must be resized in Vista by right clicking on Computer, opening Storage, then Disk Management and right clicking on the partition. Partition Magic does not work in Vista. In Mepis Linux you can do this at Start - System - File System - GParted. In Puppy Linux you can do this at Start - System - GParted. In OpenSUSE Linux you can use Start - System - YaST - System - Partitioner to alter partitions after the install.

Recently we have migrated to Linux Mint KDE because of a more recent kernel and more functionality, especially with Google hangouts, and multimedia which customers are now asking for. Linux Mint KDE uses grub2. Web site to get started is here. For a color background install grub2-splashimages , find an image you like at /usr/share/images/grub and then put that address in wallpapers at /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme . A handy Kubuntu cheat sheet is here. To change your Grub2 boot menu, go to /etc/grub.d

You can remove old kernels with Synaptic. Search for linux-headers and completely remove the old ones. You may want to keep the one before the current as a fallback in case the current doesn't work correctly.

2. Restore grub2 from your live CD/DVD: Enter the following in the terminal once you have booted live:
sudo -i
mount /dev/sdaX /mnt (where X is your partition number)
grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda
umount /mnt

If that doesn't work, try Rescatux.

3. Booting an external hard drive or SD card: This is similar to howto #1 except that you would first install Linux to the external hard drive using a live Linux CD with initrd checked. Then still running the live CD, enter "fdisk -l" as root in the konsole to see how the external hard drive is recognized. It will likely show the first partition in your external hard drive as something like /dev/sdb1. If this is the case and you want to boot from the first partition of your external hard drive, you would have root in howto #1 be (hd1,0) which means the first partition on your second hard drive. If you want to boot from your existing internal hard drive menu, you would need to copy your new install's portion of the /boot/grub/menu.lst from your external hard drive to your internal /boot/grub/menu.lst. Other commands would include "ls /media/usbdisk" to check if the mount point or directory for the device has been created and "cat /etc/fstab" to check if the system has entered your device in fileystem information. Note that your computer's BIOS must be capable of booting an external hard drive. Some older computers may not have this capability. Your feedback on this and attendance at the Linux SIG meeting is encouraged.

Many netbooks and laptops have a port for an SD card which could boot a Linux distribution such as Puppy Linux. The problem is that the boot system on the SD card is different from the Grub boot on the hard drive or SSD drive so your Grub menu ( /boot/grub/menu.lst ) needs the following changes which can be done graphically using the home directory as follows. In this case Puppy Linux was on the 2nd partition of the SD card (Swap was on the first partition):
title Puppy Linux 4.2.1 (on /dev/sdb2)
root (hd1,1)
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/sdb2 ro vga=normal
initrd /initrd.gz
/boot

The biggest noticeable change was kernel /vmlinuz instead of kernel /boot/vmlinuz . This is big because we can buy16 GB SD cards for less than $20 and greatly expand the capability of the netbook.

4. Use your Rescatux CD to restore Grub2: Details at http://www.supergrubdisk.org/rescatux/

5. Restore your Network Manager applet in Linux Mint XFCE: If Network Manager disappears from the panel go to Start - All Settings - Session and Startup - Application Autostart and click Add. The name is Network Manager and the command is nm-applet.

6. Live evaluation Linux CD's: Linux distributions can be tried live in your RAM without affecting your hard drive and then permanently installed on your system if you wish. Bodhi Linux, Mepis Linux, Puppy Linux & Kubuntu have live/install DVD's or CD's and can be downloaded at the links listed above.

7. Adding Linux installation sources: Most Linux distributions have repositories you can add for a greater selection of software.

8. Terminal, console (or konsole in KDE): Linux gives you the capability to use a powerful text based interface that interacts directly with the underlying operating system. This is usually located under system in your start menu or you can use the find function to locate it. Entire books are available for its use. Most general users may never have to use it but the capability is there.

9. DVD/CD video playing can sometimes be improved by installing codecs or libdvdcss. For Puppy Linux, install the codecs in PupGet.

10. Networking to the internet with Linux: The easiest and probably most practical way is to get a router. You can get a broadband/wireless router for less than $100.

11. File systems: Whereas systems like Windows have data scattered all over, Linux stores data neatly in file systems. That is why you don't have to defrag Linux. For example, your documents would be at home - username - Documents, photos in home - username - photos in your home directory. Details here and here.

12. Linux for old computers & small appliances: There is a growing demand for Puppy Linux to run inexpensive laptops, older computers, flash drives, etc. You can get surprisingly good desktop performance on an older computer! For these mini distros you need a CD player, at least 60 MB of hard drive space (& you can download a boot floppy if needed).

13. Use Firefox browser: Due to security concerns, if you are not already using Firefox, download & install it from http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/ . Firefox is much more secure than browsers like Internet Explorer (details here) and has much more advanced features. We also advise setting your Edit - Preferences - Privacy - Cookies in Firefox for the originating web site only and to only keep the cookies until you close Firefox so your system doesn't accumulate a lot of cookies. Recommended addons for Firefox include Adblock Plus, Web of Trust.  pdf download and possibly flash-aid. Google's Chrome browser or Chromium browser are good options too. Computer users are being warned to dump Internet Explorer now, details here . Internet Explorer usage has dipped below 50% while Firefox and Chrome usage has greatly increased for a good reason.

14. Wireless laptop internet connection: If the driver for your wireless card is not in your current Linux distribution, you need to copy the Windows driver into Linux so ndiswrapper can adapt to it. Make sure you have ndiswrapper and kinternet installed. Our experience is that kinternet gives you the best control over all your connections. Let's say you copied the WLAN folder containing the bcmwl5.inf driver on the CD to your tmp directory. You would enter ndiswrapper -i /tmp/WLAN/bcmwl5.inf in the command line followed by ndiswrapper -l to check the install followed by ndiswrapper -m to write the configuration. You can view your current wireless configuration by entering iwconfig.

15. Linux system security: Everyone knows that Linux is much more secure than closed, proprietary systems like Windows. A big part of the reason is that Linux uses iptables , netfilters and non-root operation so that malicious attacks can't get through. Linux by nature is also much more secure because it was designed from the start to be a multi-user system. However, certain prevention measures are still advised. Be sure that your updater, usually an icon at the bottom of your KDE screen, stays current. If it has a green arrow in it or not the usual color, there are usually patches our updates that need to be installed by clicking on the icon. The open source ClamAV or KlamAV (for KDE) can be added for further protection.

16. Autologin: If you are the only person using your computer, the autologin feature saves you from having to log in each time you use the computer. The automatic login settings need to be changed if you change users. In Mepis Linux, click on Start - Control Center - System Administration - Login Manager - Convenience. If you don't want autologin, leave it blank.

17. Downloading ISO files. You could right mouse click on the .iso link and save it where you want. Once you have downloaded, you can click on the iso file in your home directory and K3B will launch to make a copy in your CD or DVD writer. When K3B appears on the screen, click on start and your DVD or CD will be created. K3B is excellent software. In SUSE Linux go to Multimedia - CD/DVD Burning - K3b.
Note: Directly copying an .iso file will just create another .iso file but not the end product DVD or CD.

18. Manual CD burning: If you wanted to copy files on your hard drive to a CD using the command line, you would first gather up the files to a temporary ISO-9660 file (CD-ROM data format) on your hard drive using the following command:
mkisofs -o /tmp/user.cd /home/user/files (where user = your name & files = your files)
Then you would figure out the location of your CDRW by entering:
cdrecord --scanbus
If the results say that the scsi device is scsibus0, device 0, you could insert a blank CD into the drive & enter the following to copy your CD image to the CD: cdrecord -v speed=4 dev=0,0,0 -data /tmp/usercd . Burning with K3B is much easier but this is an option.

19. Make free or very reasonable phone calls with Google Hangouts: The video and voice quality is excellent, there were no delays, it is better than talking on a regular phone and how nice it is to see who your you are talking to on full screen. How nice it is to see who you are talking to in full screen mode! First you need a web cam and a Google Gmail account at http://mail.google.com . Then in Gmail, click the little wheel in the upper right corner, then Mail settings - Chat - Learn more to get your video plug-in, then Verify your settings to make sure everything is working. You can also launch your video at http://google.com/ig . Voice over IP or VOIP will be a huge industry in the near future. Avoid Skype if possible.

20. Untarring: Deb files or RPM is much easier but if you need to untar:
tar is used to create a Tape ARchive. The resulting file is known as a tarball. It's pretty much the same concept as a ZIP file, if you know what they are, but without the compression. To get the files out of a tarball, you can use the following commands in your konsole command line:
tar -xzvf filename
If the tarball has also been gzipped (compressed), you can use the following command: tar -xvfz filename.tar.gz where -x means extract, -z means the file should be gunzipped, -v means verbose & -f dictates that the previous options are to be performed on the file that follows the -f. Drop the -z if you don't need to unzip.
If you only want certain directories from the tarball, do this: tar -xvzf filename.tar.gz */dir.you.want/*
If you have a .tar.bz2 file, then you need bzip2 installed, and you issue this command: tar yxf filename.tar.bz2

21. Domains, E-mail, etc.: Go to http://www.epicdomains.com

22. Libre Office: You may need to download Libre Office for free to read spreadsheets, documents, etc. at http://LibreOffice.org . Note that in Tools - Extension Manager you can install software that lets you modify .pdf documents. LibreOffice works with even the latest proprietary office software so no need to spend your hard earned money on proprietary office software.

23. Photo archives & best deal on prints: See https://picasaweb.google.com . This is the best place to create albums so friends can view your photos.

24. Security: (A) Never click on any E-mail links to update information for Ebay, credit cards, etc. because these are most likely frauds. Go to the trusted website if you need to. (B) Don't put your E-mail links on your website because there are bots that search for these. Use just the text E-mail address instead. (C) Update passwords and password questions on a regular basis (D) Avoid unsafe OS's like MS Windows and use Linux (E) Be sure you have a firewall (F) Forward the fraudulent E-mail to the appropriate fraud departments such as Spoof@ebay.com , Spam@uce.gov , etc. (G) Remember that you are under constant attack and need to be prepared at all times. For Windows users, we have found that AVG Free and Avast have become riddled with pop-ups, toolbars, upgrade tricks. We recommend open source Clamwin together with Clam Sentinel to keep you safe from viruses, worms, trojans, etc. which so often infiltrates Windows. While Linux is inherently safe from viruses, it is not a bad idea to install ClamAV and KlamAV.

25. Receiving phone calls while on modem: Catch-A-Call allows you to receive calls while online via dial-up modem, details here.

26. Build your own computer with generic, Linux compatible parts: Once you see how easy & inexpensive it is to build your own computer, you will never go back to buying high priced, proprietary computers. For example you can buy a motherboard for under $60.00 or a flat panel monitor for under $130 here. Of course there are online vendors such as Newegg, Amazon or Tiger Direct. You will be amazed how inexpensive and easy it is to build your own computer the way you want.

To assemble, read the manual that comes with your motherboard. Basically attach the motherboard to the back of the case making sure it is spaced properly & the screws are not overtightened. Then connect the power supplies, IDE-floppy cables & jumpers. Insert whatever PCI or AGP cards in their slots. Inert your hard drive, DVD, CD, etc. & connect. Once your computer is assembled, make sure your BIOS is set to boot your install DVD or CD ahead of the hard drive & then insert your Linux Mint XFCE DVD to install. In about 45 minutes you have the world's best computer system..

27. Web page construction. We have found the the best and easiest way to construct web pages is to use Kompozer, install instructions here. LibreOffice Writer does a good job of error trapping, structuring, etc. You see how your web page will look while you work on it (wysiwyg) and there is an option to look at the source code too.

28. Geneology records: For building family trees, we recommend GRAMPS & FTree. Both can import files from and export files to other standard geneology software.

29. Flight simulator: Linux flight simulators are rapidly being developed. These include FlightGear and X-Plane.

30. Virtualization: We really liked VirtualBox which can virtually run any operating system including Windows, Mac without special CPU virtualization capability. You may be asked to enter "/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup" in your konsole as root (admin) if you are setting up VirtualBox in your user account. You may also want to add your username to the vboxuser group so you can run VirtualBox in your user account. Having Windows virtualization capability means you can easily run those few remaining programs on Linux that are not yet written for Linux. Another excellent virtualization program probably more suitable for commercial applications is Xen.

31.Using ImageMagick: If you need to convert an image such as a .jpg file to a .pdf file, you can enter in the konsole command line 'convert yourimage.jpg yourimage.pdf' (without the quotes). This works for lots of other conversions too such as .pdf to .png, etc. ImageMagick internally uses Ghostscript so you could also use Ghostscript directly if you want.

32. Setting up a new unrecognized digital camera: Sometimes you get new equipment, such as a digital camera and Linux doesn't yet recognize it. The fix is fairly easy. For a digital camera such as our new Canon Powershot SX 110: Plug the camera in via USB, and get a digital camera icon on the desktop - and a prompt to start digikam. But when digikam is started, the camera is not recognised (as a USB PTP Class Camera), so it can't be accessed - either via digikam, or even in konqueror (by clicking the desktop camera icon). However - the system sees it - because it's listed in infocenter, and if you run digikam as root (open the konsole, type kdesu digikam), you can access the camera.

A possible solution is to su to root in the konsole and run lsusb to get the camera output. For the Canon Powershot SX110 we got:
ATTRS{idVendor}=="04a9", ATTRS{idProduct}=="3192", MODE="0664", GROUP="plugdev"
Next, navigate and open (as root) the file /etc/udev/rules.d/025_libgphoto2.rules . Add a new line right at the end using same info from the lineabove it - but change the details to match your camera.
Save the file and reboot. In your Synaptic package manager, search for photo, camera and install everything photo or camera related. Your camera should be recognized in your user account and you should be able to proceed as normal. Update Jan 2015: The Thunar file manager in Linux Mint 17.1 XFCE recognizes cameras as another file so you can copy from that file to where you want.

33. Setting up computers with a cloned hard drive image: Clonezilla works well for copying all your partitions plus the Grub bootloader from one computer to another saving you a lot of time. You could also copy from one partition to another. You can copy proportionally from a smaller hard drive to a larger one but not from large to small.

34. Keeping panel icons intact in KDE4: Right mouse click on your power panel and make sure your widgets are locked to avoid losing them. If you lost the right side of the panel, for example, you could restore it by adding System Tray in widgets. When done, be sure to lock the widgets.

35. Video configuration: In Kubuntu Linux you may need to update your drivers (Start - System - Update Drivers) to avoid video problems with old drivers. Programs such as Google Earth may need mscorefonts installed by your package manager to be readable.

36. Sound configuration: Kubuntu has gone to a pulse audio sound system. Adding pavucontrol, paman and padevchanger in your package manager helps with configuration of pulse audio. If you are using a separate usb webcam for Skype in Kubuntu, the most direct way to get it working is going to Start - settings - system settings - multimedia - phonon and putting your webcam or simultaneous first in line on top. Where the webcam is part of the computer such as on our Asus 1000HA netbook, the outgoing sound already works on Skype and Google video chat.

37. Unfreezing your system: In the rare situation where your system freezes, you can unfreeze and reboot by holding down the Alt and SysRq keys and slowly typing REISUB. Details are here.

38. Fixing flash problems: If you are having problems with flash not working right, install Flash-Aid along with Web of Trust and Adblock Plus in your Chrome or Firefox addons. It worked for us and solved flash problems in not only Firefox 4 but Chrome and Rekonq as well.

39. Ideas to set up a company that markets web sites for small businesses:
A. Have financial transactions handled by a financial institution such as http://www.becu.org/small-business/services.aspx . This should greatly reduce the risk of fraud and turn it over to a professional designed to handle this. The small business just needs records of cash in, cash out for financial statements and contact information for customers.
B. For secure communications within the company, set up a virtual private network. The best solution for this appears to be OpenVPN together with Kvpnc . When we run the Kvpnc wizard, there does not yet seen any way to 'Choose the OpenVPN config file *.ovpn *.conf'. Any hints on this would be appreciated.
C. The best accounting system appears to be SQL-Ledger which runs on secure Linux operating systems, allows for multiple locations, has capability of bar coding, has capability of secure remote access, and much more.
D. This way the company only has to concentrate on producing and marketing web sites that increase the productivity of targeted small businesses. Most jobs are created by small businesses and helping them to be more successful means creation of more US jobs.

40. PPP dialup: If your power goes out but you still have landline phone access, being able to connect by dialup can be a valuable asset. The battery in your netbook or laptop can let you access valuable information such as our http://sam.pse.com . Install gnome-ppp now and test so you have dialup capablilty when needed. On our Asus eee 1000HA which has no internal modem, an external usb dialup modem worked well. We could dialup for free at http://NoCharge.com .

41. Using remastersys to create your own DVD, CD or flash drive:  1. Install programs you want on the stock distribution of Linux Mint XFCE (and probably other Linux distributions). 2. Install remastersys from http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=36322 . 3. In Linux Mint XFCE enter sudo-remastersys-dist in the command line. 4. Create your new remastered DVD or CD. Another option is Ubuntu Customization Kit, http://sourceforge.net/projects/uck/ but it did not work as well for us.

42. Change your Linux password: The easiest way is to open a terminal and enter sudo passwd . Enter your new password twice and you are done.

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