Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[john biles]

Hello Everyone,
Even those you'd think would know everything there is to know about Linux and Puppy might not know or remember even what you'd call the "Linux Basics" even a newbie would know that!

Here's an example I'd forgot about ldd what is ldd well if you open a terminal in a folder with say libflashplayer.so ldd will tell you what dependencies libflashplayer.so requires to work correctly.

Forum members dawnsboy and Michalis reminded me of that and this got me thinking "Knowledge is Power" lets get these little what you might call simple tips down in a forum post for everyone to read and learn.

Lets say that new forum member "boo" reads your tip and discovers through learning and experiment like I did how to get an app working, gets the satisfaction like I did and gets hooked and searches to learn more here on the forum as well as on the web and other forums.

Now a year or two pass by and "boo" has become quite the Linux expert and through a twist of fate answers a post you have made providing you with the required fix you need all because of the simple tip you posted.

So lets get posting and improve everyone's knowledge including your own.

[omskates]

I'm just posting a reply to boink up this thread because its great

I don't have a tip though Wait...quick file managing for the gui lover: Open up multiple file manager windows for easy drag & drop. Learn your file pathways.

[sc0ttman]

yes, this thread is a good idea...

I have no real tips, other than something i learned recently..

to get and use variables from files in bash or the terminal, type

[G0XAN]

I think my favourite tip about Linux is that just about everything appears in the filesystem. There is some useful stuff in there!

For example, /proc gives access to a load of system info. This knowledge allows me to monitor the DC input to my elderly laptop with very unwell battery and pop up a dialog box to warn if the power lead falls out, before the battery dies.

Second tip is to put this script in /root/Startup/ - any executable in this directory will run when the system starts.

This script may be specific to this Toshiba laptop, but digging around in /proc/acpi/ should reveal where the useful parts are for your system.

[01micko]

Hi

Many people don't know how to upload a text file to the forum quickly and easily. Consequently we often get some very long posts. The forum will accept .gz and .zip files as attachments. So the quickest and easiest way I find to compress a single file is with gzip.

To gzip a file open a terminal (usually rxvt or urxvt in Puppy). If your file is in your "/root" directory type:

[droope]

Sometimes, we execute files just by tiping, for example, "firefox" on console. When we need to make a shortcut, sometimes we need the full path.

In those cases, instead of searching manually, one can do the following:

in console

[linbie]

I asked the question in the beginners forum here about a shortcut for power off button on the desktop.

It works well

[/img]

[linbie]

Right click the browser icon

Select "edit item"

If you add the website address to the "arguments to pass" line then the browser will open at that website.

I have two browser icons - one labeled "browser" which opens to my home page (i.e the arguments line is blank) and the other is labelled "google docs" and opens directly into google docs

Unfortunately the executable file is the same for both (or more) and as such the icon is the same.

The example in the attached image would open the browser directly to E-Bay

[DMcCunney]

[OverDrive]

G0XAN, That is a *dandy* little script you got there. I was looking for a answer to that problem a few days ago myself. I had to modify the path to the state file for my laptop config and extended the test period to 10 minutes, after that it works like a champ! Here is my version in case anyone wants to see the differences for their own tweaking.

[prehistoric]

Here's a tip I posted some time back. The original purpose was to get spell checking with Sylpheed, which had been compiled without built-in spell checking. This is useful as an example of a work around for other purposes. You don't have to use options like the external editor hook in Sylpheed for the original purpose. (Of course, you must install the aspell dictionary for the language you want to use.) For most people this will be useful only as an example of how to launch a program which runs in a terminal window.

At present, I'm on a machine fast enough to use Abiword for spell checking. You simply install the dictionaries you use under Abiword, and select the option for automatic spell checking. Then you define Abiword as your external editor. Because Abiword is part of standard Puppy this is a quick hack for getting spell checking if you replace Seamonkey mail with Sylpheed. (Seamonkey mail has its own spell checking, using a different program and dictionaries.) I haven't used the older hack in a while, because Abiword is good enough, on this machine, even if it doesn't know to ignore links in email.

On older versions of Puppy, there is a Gtkspell package that works, and has less overhead, but it hasn't been updated to work with Puppy 4 series.

[prehistoric]

Suppose you are using an rxvt console to get debugging information by running a command that is producing error messages. How do you get those messages into a text editor?

[prehistoric]

Here's an exchange I just ran across. The original problem was putting the wrong link in the box for pwget. (A link to a directory, not a file.) This is explained further down.

In the process, we learn about a robust command for downloads. Before I found Puppy Linux, I used this method to build an entire system from source, before I got the GUI working. If the Linux system you're on doesn't have wget, it probably has serious deficiencies. In the world before flash drives, Tom's root/boot floppy got me many things this way, even on machines where very little worked.

BTW: notice that "Roy" uses 'the old center click trick' described above.

[yarddog]

I am fairly new to linux and spend a lot of time trying out new versions which I was burning to CD-R's. This created quite few coasters or frizbees, therefore, I began using CD-RW's to burn the new versions.
This has worked great for me. If the version is not a keeper, I simply use pburn to blank the CD-RW and reuse. Some of these have been reused 10-15 times and so far, no problems.
Hope this helps someone.
yarddog

[chrissy]

I expect this seems obvious but it took me about a week to work out

I install my puppy to external usb hard-drive.
Sometimes I make a complete mess of things and cant get back in after spending all day setting things up.
So now I install it all, get to the point where it is working just the way I like it,then boot from a live CD with the hard-drive turned off(so i don't confuse which drives are which),turn on the hard-drive and copy the save file to another location (partition or second hard-drive) then if I make a mess of things, I can just go copy the saved file back over the messed up one.
This is handy for the files that I download too .
I have a folder called saves where I put my downloaded files after I install them and that gets backed up on its own.
I dont think it really needs to be a harddrive, I think you could easily back up to dvdrw or cdrw instead.
Saves hours of putting everything back and means I'm not afraid to try a new application.