A hello to Linux, SUSE, and all of yous!

English Open Chat
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I wrote out a little epic explaining a life since 4 years old on Mac OS, discomforts with Mac OS (and Apple’s image, including a quick lament imagining a disappointed Jeff Raskin).

I gave a detailed account of trying SUSE KDE, adventures in partitioning, Mint 9 Main, a few minutes of Simply MEPIS, and a triumphant return to SUSE Gnome.

777 words actually, but that’s all been summarised to the above, thank God.

I want to say hello to you all, you’ll be hearing from me when a few search approaches don’t yield a solution to any problems I may face using openSUSE.

Which I LOVE by the way! opS feels like a solid operating system, like it was cemented to my Macbook 2,1. Mint was a like/fear relationship, never knowing when I’d next have to reboot or log out to solve something. It felt like a buggy program, not the firm foundation an OS should be. (This is my personal experience, I don’t mean to pretend that Mint isn’t a wonderful project). opS KDE is unexplored because I simply cannot connect to the internet under KDE, and any solutions would be a nuisance to enact due to the lack of connection.
However I am very happy with Gnome, I think the menu et al are hard to improve on.

So thank you to the creators for this operating system, I hope in time I can give back anything might learn in my time with it! :slight_smile:

-John

– Oh, a small niggle which has actually been a blessing as far as forcing me to learn more terminal commands and procedures; many folders that sit within the File System directory, /bin, /etc, /usr and all, are read but not write. So I either open a terminal window, login as root, and then tell things exactly where to go or copy or delete, or (only done once, I realise it’s riskier) open the file browser with root privileges.
In Mint I could right-click and ‘open as root’, much like the second option.
But what I’d rather, is that these directories were enabled for creating files etc.
In Mint I brashly used a terminal command to set everything in these directories and downwards to be owned by my account not root, and to be readable and writeable - and broke Mint.
I don’t want to do that again, but I expect there is a non fatal way of doing what I fool-hardedly planned to? If not I may, if the job is fiddlier than command lines have time for, use the root-file-browser approach in a worried way…

Unless of course my fear is unjustified and I can just do that whenever required.

Thanks!

EDIT: By the way, I’ve loved that chameleon from the start, great mascot! Sooner Tux or a chameleon than glossy polygons and other less personable symbols!

2

Welcome here.

By changing the permissions of the folders in the root, you may bork your system quite easily. Like you did with Mint. The system depends on permissions. You as the user can play around with the desktop what ever way you want. The system makes that possible.
If you’re sure root permissions are needed on certain operations, f.e. edit a root owned file with kwrite, use “kdesu kwrite” or “gnomesu kwrite”. SDB:Login as root - openSUSE might be a good read for you.

Enjoy, welcome in the open world

3

So as a new user here I welcome you to the openSUSE forums. If you have any questions about using openSUSE, you need only ask.

I do know that the tasks of editing system files as root can seem bewildering, but it all is normal in that when you are installing new hardware or software, or making system wide changes, those need to be done as root. Once you get your computer configured as you want, using your computer for mail and internet and so forth seldom requires you to do more than just log in as a normal user when you startup openSUSE. Of couse as Boot_Boy, maybe you want to get into the inner workings.

Thank You,

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Welcome - it is different but it will be worth it in the end.

5

Welcome! We’re friendly people here and the community spirit is one of the things we like about FOSS. Have a lot of fun and don’t hesitate to ask for help if you are stumped.

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Welcome! We have a friendly community on the forums so please don’t hesitate to ask for help. I hope you are enjoying openSUSE!

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:slight_smile: Thank you all for the welcomes.

Thank you Knurpht for the link, it was a good read. I find that ‘the system depends on permissions’ very interesting, as with my user-only understanding of computer’s I don’t really get why. I often wondered in the past while repairing disk permissions etc what the real implications of it were, why -rw-rw-rw was so fundamental? I’ve a lot to learn about computers, but that’s what I’ve been enjoying so much.

I haven’t had a ‘username’ other than my real name as my email for some time, so I was stumped joining the Mint forum for a username (I didn’t want to use my real name, and thought it’d be fun if I could base an avatar on the name choice). I was in a hurry, and my impression of Linux at the time resolved a lot around partitioning and startup, so I picked Boot Boy. Although my use of Linux most likely won’t be more than domestic, my interest in how it all works and knowledge for the sake of it / helping others means I do hope to learn a lot about it.
A poor analogy I guess would be that I’m a guy who found taking the bus dull, so bought a car. I may still just use it to get to work, but I’ve got a real unexplained interest in the mechanics, I want to know it’s potential, how to fix it, how it works, etc.

:slight_smile: Thanks again for your help and welcome!

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Start a thread in Install-Boot-Login, or search the forums, there are loads of very interesting threads where lots of users each add their own bit of information to users asking questions like this. A first start:

rwxrw-rw- should be read as ReadWriteExecute for the owner, ReadWriteNoexecute for the owning group, ReadWriteNoexecute for the rest of the world if it concerns files
rwxr-xr-x should be read as ReadWriteAccess for the owner, ReadNowriteAccess for the owning group, ReadNowriteAccess for the rest of the world if it concerns folders.

If you enjoy your unexplained interest, open source is the things for you. Since you can find out how things work about literally anything in open source software (you can study the sources), knowledge of potential and how to fix things are within reach. IME these forums are the best place to find what you’re looking for.

See ya

9

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