Hello All, I am running the latest Kubuntu. I am unable to remove a Directory/file from my Home/Public directory. The directory contains a Windows 7 .vdi file - about 23GB The command line is telling me that the directory doesn't exist but then lists it? Is the problem caused by a space in the name and if so how do I overcome this? Thanks Bob Commands I have tried as root are below: root@Comp-NC:/home/bob/Public# rm -rf Windows 7 root@Comp-NC:/home/bob/Public# ls Aptana Studio 3 winbox.exe Windows 7 root@Comp-NC:/home/bob/Public# cd Windows 7 bash: cd: Windows: No such file or directory

On 17 July 2014 12:06, Bob <forums@wtaustralia.com> wrote:

Hello All, I am running the latest Kubuntu. I am unable to remove a Directory/file from my Home/Public directory. The directory contains a Windows 7 .vdi file - about 23GB

The command line is telling me that the directory doesn't exist but then lists it? Is the problem caused by a space in the name and if so how do I overcome this?

Commands I have tried as root are below:

root@Comp-NC:/home/bob/Public# rm -rf Windows 7

That command instructs to to remove two items, one named Windows and another one named 7. If you wish to irrevocably remove a directory named: Windows 7 and all its contents, one way is use the command rm -rf "Windows 7" For explanation why the quote marks are required, read this: http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashGuide/CommandsAndArguments I highly recommend that wiki.

Bob <forums@wtaustralia.com> wrote:

Thanks Avi and David for your responses.

The file is now removed.

In William E. Shotts, Jr., The Linux Command Line, you'll find a good discussion of quoting in the shell, including an example of spaces in file names. I always make sure that files on my system don't have names containing spaces.

On Thu, 17 Jul 2014 12:58:09 +1000 Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:

On Thu, 17 Jul 2014 12:40:50 Jason White wrote:

...

I always make sure that files on my system don't have names containing spaces.

Best to avoid all punctuation characters other than a '.' or '-' in the middle of a file name (never use a '-' as the first character).

In theory the only character you must avoid in a file name is '/', but in practice almost every other punctuation character than '.' and '-' has the potential to make things difficult. That said a '~' is OK as long as it's not the first character in a name, a '+' is probably OK and a ',' has looking like a '.' as it's biggest problem.

Just out of interest I regularly use '_', and have not had a problem. Russell, is this a character you would say can cause trouble? What sort of trouble does it cause? -- Hugh

On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 7:28 PM, Erik Christiansen <dvalin@internode.on.net> wrote:

On 17.07.14 17:57, h wrote:

...

Just out of interest I regularly use '_', and have not had a problem. Russell, is this a character you would say can cause trouble? What sort of trouble does it cause?

FWIW, my response is "Nah", after using '_' intensively for a couple of decades as a universal replacement for spaces, in preference to '-'.

Incidentally, CVS uses ',' intensively in filenames, without harm. (And I've used that VCS exclusively for a decade or two, in industry, and found it very robust.)

I'd have the same response to someone using _ instead of a space. Why bother? It has been many MANY years since I've found something that doesn't work properly with files with spaces, or any other non [a-zA-Z0-9] characters. People seem to hold grudges against this behavior from decades ago. I don't like replacing characters because it can only ever be a one way transformation. That _ in a filename, is it a space? An actual underscore? Some other character you converted? Any attempt to use the filename to store useful information is thwarted. Just give files their proper names, guys. Give it a shot. For some reason you need a colon or a semicolon or a ! in your filename (and there are many valid reasons), just do it! Tab completion still works, filesystem operations still work, the world will not collapse. Saying that using certain characters (exceptions according to POSIX are NUL and forward slash) in filenames will "cause trouble" smells like FUD to me. If something doesn't work with a legitimate filename, submit a bug! / Brett

On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 8:19 PM, Erik Christiansen <dvalin@internode.on.net> wrote:

On 17.07.14 19:58, Brett Pemberton wrote:

...

I'd have the same response to someone using _ instead of a space. Why bother?

Err ... are you completely unaware of how the unix commandline works?

What do you think separates commandline arguments?

Is this still the thread on which:

$ rm windows 7

failed, because the paths "windows" and "7" were not present? (I've been on several other lists since my last post, so it's possible that my recollection is faulty.)

Of course it did, and the solutions already posted included: rm "windows 7" rm windows\ 7 Perfectly valid ways to deal with the POSIX-OK space in the filename. I'm suggesting that this is fine. As compared to the other suggestions that the file should never have been named that, and should have been windows_7 instead. / Brett

On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 8:57 PM, Erik Christiansen <dvalin@internode.on.net> wrote:

Heck, in personal shellscripts I don't even bother with defensive quoting of arguments, because spaced filenames will never be passed to them.

And that's the kind of dangerous situation that manually sanitizing filenames leads to. If you don't program (even for personal use) to cater to all possible inputs, you're going to have issues at some point. Never make assumptions about user input. Even your own. I'd consider that a much bigger risk than spaces in filenames, personally. YMMV / Brett

On 17/07/2014 8:48 PM, Russell Coker wrote:

On Thu, 17 Jul 2014 20:19:24 Erik Christiansen wrote:

...

Is this still the thread on which:

$ rm windows 7

The irony here is that Windows 7 (as with pretty much all versions of Windows) creates directories with spaces in the names such as "My Programs" and uses them for important things. This combined with the fact that Windows in a default configuration doesn't have any sort of filename completion functionality is a PITA when you want to use a cmd.exe session.

Actually Windows uses junctions and links as well as desktop.ini files to handle directories in strange ways .... what you see is not necessarily what it is. And other things are /adjusted/ from registry values. Here's an example "location" value for "My Pictures" C:\Users\andrewm\Pictures C:\Users\andrewm\Pictures>type desktop/ini The syntax of the command is incorrect. C:\Users\andrewm\Pictures>type desktop.ini [.ShellClassInfo] LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21779 InfoTip=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-12688 IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-113 IconFile=%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll IconIndex=-236 So, as a directory in cmd, it is just "Pictures", but in Explorer, it presents as "My Pictures" due to the content of the desktop.ini file. And this shows the "Documents" directory using a junction to allow access via either name: C:\Users\andrewm>dir/a|grep -i documents 27/05/2014 05:26 PM <DIR> Documents 15/06/2012 06:28 AM <JUNCTION> My Documents [C:\Users\andrewm\Documents] [and yes, I have GnuWin32 progs installed] The junctions come in to play to cater for different file locations in different Windows versions -- you could use the *new* location directory tree or the old one and they both work (just link sym links). There's even another concept for storing directories and/or files in VirtualStore directories that can be confusing if you don't know what is going on. In Windows you can create a directory or file in areas that you shouldn't be able to create such nodes, if you run the dir command, then you won't see them, but you can still operate on them. Windows silently stores them in the VirtualStore -- this has to do with 32 bit programs vs 64 bit programs. For instance you can create files with gpg (32 bit program) at the top level of the C:\ volume, you cannot see them there, but you can read and write from/to them. C:\>cd \Users\andrewm C:\Users\andrewm>copy con aaa.txt aaa bbb ccc ^Z 1 file(s) copied. C:\Users\andrewm>cd \ C:\>gpg --symmetric -a -o c:\aaa.gpg c:\users\andrewm\aaa.txt C:\>dir c:\aaa.gpg Volume in drive C has no label. Volume Serial Number is 88E2-2CCE Directory of c:\ File Not Found C:\>dir c:\Users\andrewm\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\aaa.gpg Volume in drive C has no label. Volume Serial Number is 88E2-2CCE Directory of c:\Users\andrewm\AppData\Local\VirtualStore 19/07/2014 08:31 AM 227 aaa.gpg 1 File(s) 227 bytes 0 Dir(s) 43,772,989,440 bytes free C:\>gpg -d c:\aaa.gpg gpg: AES256 encrypted data gpg: encrypted with 1 passphrase aaa bbb ccc C:\> NB: the created gpg file was operated on at the c:\ level, but the file was actually /stored/ in the VirtualStore folder. Cheers AndrewM

Andrew McGlashan <andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au> wrote:

Copy file from arbitrary location to the VirtualStore directory, now you can access that file from anywhere you like ... sort of like a PATH environment for *any* file ... but it only works for 32 bit programs.

Here's an example:

C:\>copy C:\Users\andrewm\Downloads\test-fax000041829.pdf \Users\andrewm\AppData\local\VirtualStore\ 1 file(s) copied.

C:\>vim test-fax000041829.pdf

C:\>dir test-fax000041829.pdf Volume in drive C has no label. Volume Serial Number is 88E2-2CCE

Directory of C:\

File Not Found

C:\>

The vim worked on the file, even though it wasn't located at: c:\test-fax000041829.pdf

that's weird behaviour indeed. The above output reminds me so much of MS-DOS. Apparently though, Microsoft now have a new shell - windows PowerShell - which is said to compete with Linux and UNIX command line interfaces.

On 19/07/2014 19:19, Andrew McGlashan wrote:

On 19/07/2014 10:18 AM, Jason White wrote:

...

Apparently though, Microsoft now have a new shell - windows PowerShell - which is said to compete with Linux and UNIX command line interfaces.

Yes, but it is pushed on to users and powershell scripts can be very dangerous ... given exception to run without checking by AV and other protections!!!! To me, powershell is another great big security problem just wanting to be exploited, which is a real pity considering MS has otherwise taken pretty giant strides in the right direction on safety and security matters overall in recent times (there are other exceptions of course).

I've read some pretty dumb FUD about Windows in the past, but I think that takes the cake. Do you actually have any logical and well-thought-out reasons for why PowerShell is a security issue? If so, it may be helpful to state them, as such a claim requires quite a bit of substantiation. Specifically, I'm wondering whether you have any reasons why PowerShell is worse than any other arbitrary executable or the cmd.exe interpreter that you may happen to execute when you already have administrative privileges.

On 20/07/2014 2:48 PM, Jeremy Visser wrote:

On 19/07/2014 19:19, Andrew McGlashan wrote:

...

On 19/07/2014 10:18 AM, Jason White wrote:

...

Apparently though, Microsoft now have a new shell - windows PowerShell - which is said to compete with Linux and UNIX command line interfaces.

Yes, but it is pushed on to users and powershell scripts can be very dangerous ... given exception to run without checking by AV and other protections!!!! To me, powershell is another great big security problem just wanting to be exploited, which is a real pity considering MS has otherwise taken pretty giant strides in the right direction on safety and security matters overall in recent times (there are other exceptions of course).

I've read some pretty dumb FUD about Windows in the past, but I think that takes the cake.

Do you actually have any logical and well-thought-out reasons for why PowerShell is a security issue? If so, it may be helpful to state them, as such a claim requires quite a bit of substantiation.

I did read something, somewhere, but I can't recall enough details to find it. I do recall something about AV not checking the scripts, but again, I can't find that detail now. :( This article, albeit a little oldish now, seems to dispel my fears quite well at this time: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.01.powershell.aspx Cheers A.

On 17/07/2014 8:48 PM, Russell Coker wrote:

The irony here is that Windows 7 (as with pretty much all versions of Windows) creates directories with spaces in the names such as "My Programs" and uses them for important things. This combined with the fact that Windows in a default configuration doesn't have any sort of filename completion functionality is a PITA when you want to use a cmd.exe session.

So Windows makes the problems worse by bad default directory names and then offers nothing to alleviate the problems such as TAB for filename completion.

Rubbish on filename completion too. C:\Users\andrewm>dir Doc[tab] .... gives you C:\Users\andrewm>dir Documents And if there are other matches, then repeatedly tabbing gives the other options. If you create three directories, such as aaa, aab and aac, then you can type "cd aa" and repeatedly hit tab and it will cycle through those names (plus any others that might start with aa). Cheers A.

Hello Brett, On Thu, 2014-07-17 at 19:58 +1000, Brett Pemberton wrote:

I'd have the same response to someone using _ instead of a space. Why bother?

Those who forget the past are condemned to relive it, and it is usually painful. There is a classic example, in the way that MS DOS was a bought out QDOS which was a CP/M semi-clone. They did not learn from the past, and made a ripe mess, which still continues with that malware infested ecosystem.

It has been many MANY years since I've found something that doesn't work properly with files with spaces, or any other non [a-zA-Z0-9] characters. People seem to hold grudges against this behavior from decades ago.

There was a reason for not using the space, and methods of coping. It was considered bad form from very early, it goes back to roots of Unix. Know and understand!

I don't like replacing characters because it can only ever be a one way transformation. That _ in a filename, is it a space? An actual underscore? Some other character you converted? Any attempt to use the filename to store useful information is thwarted.

It has significant use in filenames, replacing a space is an excellent example, delimiting the words that make it up, without delimiting the filename. There are other characters that can also be used that way, but also have other uses.

Just give files their proper names, guys. Give it a shot. For some reason you need a colon or a semicolon or a ! in your filename (and there are many valid reasons), just do it! Tab completion still works, filesystem operations still work, the world will not collapse.

Just because it does not fall in a heap does not make it a good idea. That is like the marketing monkey attitude of clicking every link on a web page, and then taking no responsibility for the malarkey that happens.

Saying that using certain characters (exceptions according to POSIX are NUL and forward slash) in filenames will "cause trouble" smells like FUD to me.

If something doesn't work with a legitimate filename, submit a bug!

That says stuff the conventions, which had excellent reasons at their foundations, for cosmetic and transient benefits.

/ Brett

Regards, Mark Trickett

On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 9:35 PM, Daniel Jitnah <djitnah@greenwareit.com.au> wrote:

...

I'd have the same response to someone using _ instead of a space. Why bother?

May be because:

danyj@git-deb7-64:~/test$ touch windows danyj@git-deb7-64:~/test$ touch 7 danyj@git-deb7-64:~/test$ touch windows\ 7 danyj@git-deb7-64:~/test$ ls -l total 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 danyj danyj 0 Jul 17 21:23 7 -rw-r--r-- 1 danyj danyj 0 Jul 17 21:23 windows -rw-r--r-- 1 danyj danyj 0 Jul 17 21:23 windows 7 danyj@git-deb7-64:~/test$ rm -rf windows 7 danyj@git-deb7-64:~/test$ ls -l total 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 danyj danyj 0 Jul 17 21:23 windows 7 danyj@git-deb7-64:~/test$

Sorry, I'm honestly at a loss as to what you were demonstrating there. Let's do the same thing, but with underscores. brett@capsid:/tmp/space$ touch windows brett@capsid:/tmp/space$ touch 7 brett@capsid:/tmp/space$ touch windows_7 brett@capsid:/tmp/space$ ls -l total 0 -rw-rw-r-- 1 brett brett 0 Jul 17 21:50 7 -rw-rw-r-- 1 brett brett 0 Jul 17 21:50 windows -rw-rw-r-- 1 brett brett 0 Jul 17 21:50 windows_7 brett@capsid:/tmp/space$ rm -rf windows 7 brett@capsid:/tmp/space$ ls -l total 0 -rw-rw-r-- 1 brett brett 0 Jul 17 21:50 windows_7 brett@capsid:/tmp/space$ In both cases, it did exactly what we asked it to. Spaces had absolutely no bearing on anything. / Brett

On 17/07/14 21:51, Brett Pemberton wrote:

On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 9:35 PM, Daniel Jitnah <djitnah@greenwareit.com.au> wrote:

...

...

I'd have the same response to someone using _ instead of a space. Why bother? May be because:

danyj@git-deb7-64:~/test$ touch windows danyj@git-deb7-64:~/test$ touch 7 danyj@git-deb7-64:~/test$ touch windows\ 7 danyj@git-deb7-64:~/test$ ls -l total 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 danyj danyj 0 Jul 17 21:23 7 -rw-r--r-- 1 danyj danyj 0 Jul 17 21:23 windows -rw-r--r-- 1 danyj danyj 0 Jul 17 21:23 windows 7 danyj@git-deb7-64:~/test$ rm -rf windows 7 danyj@git-deb7-64:~/test$ ls -l total 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 danyj danyj 0 Jul 17 21:23 windows 7 danyj@git-deb7-64:~/test$

Sorry, I'm honestly at a loss as to what you were demonstrating there.

Ehm, he is demonstrating that bash command line utilities become easily confused then using files with spaces in their names. What was asked? 1.) to delete the file windows 7 What happened? 1.) the files windows and 7 were deleted See, it does matter! cheers Robert

Let's do the same thing, but with underscores.

brett@capsid:/tmp/space$ touch windows brett@capsid:/tmp/space$ touch 7 brett@capsid:/tmp/space$ touch windows_7 brett@capsid:/tmp/space$ ls -l total 0 -rw-rw-r-- 1 brett brett 0 Jul 17 21:50 7 -rw-rw-r-- 1 brett brett 0 Jul 17 21:50 windows -rw-rw-r-- 1 brett brett 0 Jul 17 21:50 windows_7 brett@capsid:/tmp/space$ rm -rf windows 7 brett@capsid:/tmp/space$ ls -l total 0 -rw-rw-r-- 1 brett brett 0 Jul 17 21:50 windows_7 brett@capsid:/tmp/space$

In both cases, it did exactly what we asked it to. Spaces had absolutely no bearing on anything.

/ Brett _______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list luv-main@luv.asn.au http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main

On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 03:46:34PM +1000, Brett Pemberton wrote:

The command in question wasn't confused at all. The user was.

yes. and that's exactly the problem with spaces in filenames - it's easy to forget to properly quote or escape the filename, especially for novice shell users. things that tend to confuse users are worth avoiding. and it's far too easy to use 'find ... | xargs' or similar and forget to use -0 (or not have a -0 / --null-terminated option available). novice users wouldn't even know that such options are available on some programs, or what they're for and why you'd want to use them.

Some people's reaction to this hypothetical problem is "Don't use spaces in filenames, then you won't accidentally remove the wrong files when you tell rm to rm the wrong files" My reaction is "Don't tell rm to remove the wrong files".

my reaction is: "why cause potential hassles for yourself and others?" my second reaction is: "deal with spaces etc via proper quoting in your scripts/one-liners but avoid creating filenames with them because they're a PITFA".

However treating this hypothetical by arbitrarily choosing a subset of POSIX-OK characters in filenames is a silly response, in my opinion. Yours may vary, and that's fine.

The fact that you can do something (like have spaces and other annoying characters in filenames) doesn't mean that you should or that it's a good idea. craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>

On 18/07/14 15:54, Brian May wrote:

On 18 July 2014 15:38, Robert Moonen <n0b0dy@bigpond.net.au <mailto:n0b0dy@bigpond.net.au>> wrote:

Ehm, he is demonstrating that bash command line utilities become easily confused then using files with spaces in their names.

What was asked? 1.) to delete the file windows 7 What happened? 1.) the files windows and 7 were deleted

It is perhaps worth noting that "rm windows 7" gets translated by the shell into:

execve("/bin/rm", ["rm", "windows", "7"], [/* 59 vars */]) = 0

So as far as "rm" is concerned, there is no confusion.

Sorry, that was indeed a bad choice of words on my part, but I was just describing what was meant by the hypothetical proposed. What I meant really is that the user becomes easily confused by the bash shells handling of certain characters some other OS users seem to take for granted. I take it the hypothetical was proposed for this reason. I saw on looking at the result immediately, that what had happened is that "windows" and "7" were provided as separate inputs to the rm command, so they were treated as separate filenames. This is obvious to a linux user, but not so obvious to a new linux user migrating from windows. cheers Robert

On Unix, it is the shell that is responsible for splitting the arguments, and it gets confused easily (i.e. it can't always tell exactly what is required). Last I checked, this is different on Windows. -- Brian May <brian@microcomaustralia.com.au <mailto:brian@microcomaustralia.com.au>>

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-----Original Message----- From: luv-main-bounces@luv.asn.au [mailto:luv-main-bounces@luv.asn.au] On Behalf Of Erik Christiansen Sent: Friday, 18 July 2014 5:21 PM To: luv-main@luv.asn.au Subject: Re: Unable to remove file

<snip>

OK, if interworking with that other OS, e.g. via NFS or samba, then all bets are off, and one survives as best one can. I've only ever gone as far as serving read-only files, so safe naming was assured.

ISTM that the problem would go away if NFS and samba provided filename translation between OSs.

Unfortunately that doesn't work either. "File Name", "File_Name", and "File-Name" (sans quotes) are all valid file names under Windows. So if Samba or NFS et al replace the space with another character, you would need a plethora of characters to replace the evil spaces, slashes, backslashes, dashes etc. along with a way of reversing the process to return the original filename back to the originating platform. Consider the following translations with character substitution active: Windows -> Samba -> Windows File Name -> File_Name -> File Name (Desired result) File_Name -> File_Name -> File Name (Borked result) Substitute any character you like for the translated character and there remains a translation failure mode. Unfortunately I can't see any way of keeping track of all of the possible ways that filenames could be munged ensure reliable two way translation.

Erik

Morrie.

Unfortunately that doesn't work either.

"File Name", "File_Name", and "File-Name" (sans quotes) are all valid file names under Windows. So if Samba or NFS et al replace the space with another character, you would need a plethora of characters to replace the evil spaces, slashes, backslashes, dashes etc. along with a way of reversing the process to return the original filename back to the originating platform.

Consider the following translations with character substitution active:

Windows -> Samba -> Windows

File Name -> File_Name -> File Name (Desired result)

File_Name -> File_Name -> File Name (Borked result)

You could have instead File_Name -> File__Name -> File_name (ie: 2 underscores in Samba in case that was not obvious on the screen. Admittedly it's ugly!) Daniel.

Substitute any character you like for the translated character and there remains a translation failure mode.

Unfortunately I can't see any way of keeping track of all of the possible ways that filenames could be munged ensure reliable two way translation.

...

Erik

Morrie.

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On Thu, 17 Jul 2014 17:57:22 h wrote:

Just out of interest I regularly use '_', and have not had a problem. Russell, is this a character you would say can cause trouble? What sort of trouble does it cause?

There are some GUI programs that display file names in a box and make '_' and ' ' indistinguishable, but then if you never use spaces that won't be a problem. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

On 17/07/14 13:23, Roger wrote:

On 07/17/2014 12:06 PM, Bob wrote:

...

Hello All, I am running the latest Kubuntu. I am unable to remove a Directory/file from my Home/Public directory. The directory contains a Windows 7 .vdi file - about 23GB

Since you are using Kubuntu, doesn't deleting a file with a space in the name still works in a GUI filemanager,eg Dolphin or Konqueror?? Daniel.

...

The command line is telling me that the directory doesn't exist but then lists it? Is the problem caused by a space in the name and if so how do I overcome this?

Thanks

Bob

Commands I have tried as root are below:

root@Comp-NC:/home/bob/Public# rm -rf Windows 7

root@Comp-NC:/home/bob/Public# ls Aptana Studio 3 winbox.exe Windows 7

root@Comp-NC:/home/bob/Public# cd Windows 7 bash: cd: Windows: No such file or directory

_______________________________________________ You could try rm -rf Windows\ 7

You could try rm -rf windows\ 7 The backslash is important where there are spaces in a file name. Out of curiosity you could also ls -aFl windows\ 7 to view the files, the ownerships and permissions. Roger _______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list luv-main@luv.asn.au http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main

On 23/06/14 22:09, Lev Lafayette wrote:

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all your help; latest Ubuntu installed fine.

Windows 8 is really horrible tho'. No wonder people are still using XP.

Thats interesting!!! ...confirms that the Mint installation routine is actually broken!.. In fact I also had some issues installing Mint 17 (Ubuntu based) on a machine with Nvidia graphics - but as your machine has a Intel card and you are using Debian version, I did not think it was the same problem, which I had attributed to the Nvidia card. But now you are confirming that the problem could be a Mint installation issue. Daniel

Excellent! Well done! At least you are back in familiar waters! Take care, D. Balder On 23 Jun 2014, at 10:09 pm, Lev Lafayette <lev@levlafayette.com> wrote:

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all your help; latest Ubuntu installed fine.

Windows 8 is really horrible tho'. No wonder people are still using XP.

-- Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GradCertTerAdEd (Murdoch), GradCertPM, MBA (Tech Mngmnt) (Chifley) mobile: 0432 255 208 RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt

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Hi Rohan, On Tue, June 24, 2014 3:01 pm, Rohan McLeod wrote:

a naive/beginner's question if I may; received wisdom in the Windows world is often to NOT attempt to" back install" to laptops; that is for example to NOT attempt to replace win 8 with say XP; I had always assumed the issue was drivers?

That is indeed true; and security issues as well (e.g., available patches). Also, for the love of all that it is holy, it's a thirteen year-old version of an operating system.... (But let's drop this topic on this mailing list...)

How much of a problem is this with Linux laptop installs generally ? I take it there were no driver issues in the above Ubuntu instal ?

Well, I'm the sort of person who upgrades personal hardware once in a blue moon, so not really the right person to ask. Historically with the newest and greatest hardware sometimes manufacturers are not always as helpful as they could be and problems can arise. I haven't noticed any problems (yet) with this Ubuntu install on this particular laptop.. All the best, -- Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GradCertTerAdEd (Murdoch), GradCertPM, MBA (Tech Mngmnt) (Chifley) mobile: 0432 255 208 RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt

Russell Coker wrote:

On Tue, 24 Jun 2014 15:46:58 Lev Lafayette wrote:

...

...

How much of a problem is this with Linux laptop installs generally ? I take it there were no driver issues in the above Ubuntu instal ? Well, I'm the sort of person who upgrades personal hardware once in a blue moon, so not really the right person to ask.

Historically with the newest and greatest hardware sometimes manufacturers are not always as helpful as they could be and problems can arise. Laptops are particularly difficult in this regard. For a desktop system you can use expansion cards to replace most built-in hardware that lacks driver support. Sometimes with laptops it's just too much pain to get hardware working properly so you just live with a system that isn't fully functional. Thanks Russell much appreciated; I suppose the bits of integrated hardware on a particular laptop will be a very small demographic; so the laptop company will have even less motivation to develop a Linux driver and presumably Linux driver developer's priorities will be 1/ getting their own hardware working 2/ writing drivers for the most common hardware ?

thanks Rohan McLeod

Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:

However a lot of senior Linux developers (including people who are paid to do kernel work) take pride in owning the latest laptop hardware...

Thus it's a good idea to buy a model of laptop likely to be owned by such developers. http://www.linuxlaptops.org/ used to be (and probably still is) a very good resource.

On 25/06/14 21:13, Mark Trickett wrote:

Hello Lev,

On Mon, 2014-06-23 at 23:09 +1100, Lev Lafayette wrote:

...

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all your help; latest Ubuntu installed fine. Be interesting to know whether Debian would install.

...

Windows 8 is really horrible tho'. No wonder people are still using XP. Reminiscent of uproar over the Unity interface on Ubuntu. At least there is more real choice under Linux. I am not liking where Gnome has gone, and still trying to work out which graphical desktop is most effective for me. I am used to some of the Gnome applications, and LXDE looks good, but missing a few little "features" in the standard applications. The best way for me to try is from magazine cover disks as I am on dial up.

Yes, Win8 is 'orrible. How many clicks just to shut the thing down? Obviously it thinks you wouldn't want to shut it down, ever. It's like trying to find the plans for a hyperspace bypass. I tried Unity for awhile. It wasn't overly bad per se, but trying to remember the name of programs, without the aid of a logical menu system could get frustrating. I'd dock them on the sidebar, when I found them, but the fact I had to jump through hoops in the first place was not a positive experience. Computing shouldn't be unnecessarily difficult (especially for the end-user trying to navigate). Now I've settled on using Xfce which is simple and elegant - and works well on my low powered hardware! I'm not sold on the new Whisper menu in Xubuntu 14.04, which I find to be somewhat reverse-polish, so I've re-enabled the previous 'Applications Menu'. Had to tweak a few other things to what I'm used to (such as having a panel at the bottom). That's how it is in Slackware by default, and I notice also Fedora 20 has a similar layout that I'm familiar with. There's been some noise about Mint Xfce recently so I might check that out shortly too. Definitely good to have all these options in the Linux world =] Crispy.

No need for a script, it's an option in the settings. On Jun 26, 2014 11:25 AM, "Davor Balder" <dbalder@ozemail.com.au> wrote:

I just wanted to add that one does not have to use Unity to use Ubuntu.

You can use any of the other options available (hence, Unity is really a non-issue).

What I would cordially recommend is running a script on Ubuntu to prevent data collection (I believe data are sent to Amazon and I believe this happens automatically).

A Google search should get you there. I believe Canonical does not want you to know about this but this script/workaround exists in Ubuntu world…

We could debate Canonical practices forever, but… let’s just be practical in this one instance and just apply this little script … :-)

Cheers,

Davor Balder dbalder@ozemail.com.au

On 26 Jun 2014, at 11:11 am, Tony Crisp <supervoc@arc.net.au> wrote:

On 25/06/14 21:13, Mark Trickett wrote:

Hello Lev,

On Mon, 2014-06-23 at 23:09 +1100, Lev Lafayette wrote:

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all your help; latest Ubuntu installed fine.

Be interesting to know whether Debian would install.

Windows 8 is really horrible tho'. No wonder people are still using XP.

Reminiscent of uproar over the Unity interface on Ubuntu. At least there is more real choice under Linux. I am not liking where Gnome has gone, and still trying to work out which graphical desktop is most effective for me. I am used to some of the Gnome applications, and LXDE looks good, but missing a few little "features" in the standard applications. The best way for me to try is from magazine cover disks as I am on dial up.

Yes, Win8 is 'orrible. How many clicks just to shut the thing down? Obviously it thinks you wouldn't want to shut it down, ever. It's like trying to find the plans for a hyperspace bypass.

I tried Unity for awhile. It wasn't overly bad per se, but trying to remember the name of programs, without the aid of a logical menu system could get frustrating. I'd dock them on the sidebar, when I found them, but the fact I had to jump through hoops in the first place was not a positive experience. Computing shouldn't be unnecessarily difficult (especially for the end-user trying to navigate).

Now I've settled on using Xfce which is simple and elegant - and works well on my low powered hardware! I'm not sold on the new Whisper menu in Xubuntu 14.04, which I find to be somewhat reverse-polish, so I've re-enabled the previous 'Applications Menu'. Had to tweak a few other things to what I'm used to (such as having a panel at the bottom). That's how it is in Slackware by default, and I notice also Fedora 20 has a similar layout that I'm familiar with. There's been some noise about Mint Xfce recently so I might check that out shortly too.

Definitely good to have all these options in the Linux world =]

Crispy. _______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list luv-main@luv.asn.au http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main

_______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list luv-main@luv.asn.au http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main

… unless we are talking about Ubuntu 14.10, in which case this may not be required… once bitten, twice shy… Arch should run too on Toshiba, but that is a different story… ;-) On 26 Jun 2014, at 4:20 pm, Davor Balder <dbalder@ozemail.com.au> wrote:

I will disagree.

I found some time to find the script.

Here is what is required: https://fixubuntu.com

There is a lot of material on this online.

This is important if you use Unity… I always apply this anyway…

Enjoy!

I tried this for a few months and this is what I found then…

From the website:

Why do we need this?

If you're an Ubuntu user and you're using the default settings, each time you start typing in Dash (to open an application or search for a file on your computer), your search terms get sent to a variety of third parties, some of which advertise to you.

Ubuntu should protect user privacy by default. Since it doesn't, you can use the code to the left to disable the parts of Ubuntu which are invasive to your privacy.

Note: This privacy problem only affects Unity. If you use GNOME (sudo apt-get install gnome-shell) or any other desktop environment, or if you run an Ubuntu derivative like Linux Mint, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, etc., you won't have this problem.

Website:

-> https://fixubuntu.com <-

On 26 Jun 2014, at 3:29 pm, thelionroars <thelionroars1337@gmail.com> wrote:

...

No need for a script, it's an option in the settings.

On Jun 26, 2014 11:25 AM, "Davor Balder" <dbalder@ozemail.com.au> wrote: I just wanted to add that one does not have to use Unity to use Ubuntu.

You can use any of the other options available (hence, Unity is really a non-issue).

What I would cordially recommend is running a script on Ubuntu to prevent data collection (I believe data are sent to Amazon and I believe this happens automatically).

A Google search should get you there. I believe Canonical does not want you to know about this but this script/workaround exists in Ubuntu world…

We could debate Canonical practices forever, but… let’s just be practical in this one instance and just apply this little script … :-)

Cheers,

Davor Balder dbalder@ozemail.com.au

On 26 Jun 2014, at 11:11 am, Tony Crisp <supervoc@arc.net.au> wrote:

...

On 25/06/14 21:13, Mark Trickett wrote:

...

Hello Lev,

On Mon, 2014-06-23 at 23:09 +1100, Lev Lafayette wrote:

...

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all your help; latest Ubuntu installed fine. Be interesting to know whether Debian would install.

...

Windows 8 is really horrible tho'. No wonder people are still using XP. Reminiscent of uproar over the Unity interface on Ubuntu. At least there is more real choice under Linux. I am not liking where Gnome has gone, and still trying to work out which graphical desktop is most effective for me. I am used to some of the Gnome applications, and LXDE looks good, but missing a few little "features" in the standard applications. The best way for me to try is from magazine cover disks as I am on dial up.

Yes, Win8 is 'orrible. How many clicks just to shut the thing down? Obviously it thinks you wouldn't want to shut it down, ever. It's like trying to find the plans for a hyperspace bypass.

I tried Unity for awhile. It wasn't overly bad per se, but trying to remember the name of programs, without the aid of a logical menu system could get frustrating. I'd dock them on the sidebar, when I found them, but the fact I had to jump through hoops in the first place was not a positive experience. Computing shouldn't be unnecessarily difficult (especially for the end-user trying to navigate).

Now I've settled on using Xfce which is simple and elegant - and works well on my low powered hardware! I'm not sold on the new Whisper menu in Xubuntu 14.04, which I find to be somewhat reverse-polish, so I've re-enabled the previous 'Applications Menu'. Had to tweak a few other things to what I'm used to (such as having a panel at the bottom). That's how it is in Slackware by default, and I notice also Fedora 20 has a similar layout that I'm familiar with. There's been some noise about Mint Xfce recently so I might check that out shortly too.

Definitely good to have all these options in the Linux world =]

Crispy. _______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list luv-main@luv.asn.au http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main

_______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list luv-main@luv.asn.au http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main

_______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list luv-main@luv.asn.au http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main

On 06/26/2014 06:14 PM, thelionroars wrote:

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/linux-and-open-source/how-to-change-your-pr...

On 26 June 2014 16:25, Davor Balder <dbalder@ozemail.com.au <mailto:dbalder@ozemail.com.au>> wrote:

... unless we are talking about Ubuntu 14.10, in which case this may not be required...

once bitten, twice shy...

Arch should run too on Toshiba, but that is a different story... ;-)

My daughter is running Ubuntu on her Toshiba, she just deleted Windows and overwrote the partition with Ubuntu. Has not had even one glitch and it gets driven mercilessly day and night with Blender, Inkscape and other high demand applications, all pretty much at the same time. Suggest not go to 14.10. 14.04 is LTS so it's good for seven years before the next major upgrade. Roger