Anybody with some Linux knowledge here?

[M6NEN 2]

Hi everyone,

Today I took a certain plunge.

I have an old Asus laptop with a small Hard Drive and a small amount of RAM, so I thought to myself "why go through the expense and trouble of upgrading, why don't I put a lightweight version of Linux on there"?

And indeed, I had guessed right.

I went for Lubuntu 18.10, it installed without any glitches it is on there and although it contains a web browser, a complete Office Suite and good ness knows what else, I have about 90% of Hard Drive space left.

So far, everything seems to work flawlessly, I obviously have more testing to do, since I never really worked with Linux before, and to be quite honest, I must admit I am quite ignorant when it comes to Linux, hence my post here.

 

One thing I have not been able to figure out, all my other machines run Windows 10, and so far I have not been able how to connect this particular laptop to the network.

It did connect to the Internet without any problem, but the network seems to be a different kettle of fish.

I have tried the Ubuntu forum, but that is a kind of nightmare to search.

So, if anyone here would be able to help me further, I would be very grateful.

 

I must say, on the other hand, if any one has on old, and hence slow, laptop or PC sat in a corner gathering dust, do not throw or give it away, do not waste mone on upgrading it, try giving it a new life with Linux, and that is advice from a nearly 100% happy first-time user.

 

[yordan 10]

You are right, for standard things like surfing on the web, Linux is the best on small machines.

However, if you absolutely need Microsoft Word, then you need Windows 10.

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It did connect to the Internet without any problem, but the network seems to be a different kettle of fish. It did connect to the Internet without any problem, but the network seems to be a different kettle of fish.

.../...

So, if anyone here would be able to help me further, I would be very grateful.

Sorry if I did not understand what you are saying, but... What do you want us to help you for ? What are you trying to do ?

What do you mean by "networking", and what are you not able to do ? Are you talking about disk sharing or filetransferring ?

Concerning filesharing, maybe this could help ?

http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2015/02/share-a-folder-in-ubuntu-14-04/

shortly said,

Quote

How to Share A Folder in Ubuntu 14.04 (Local Network)

1. To get started, right-click on the folder you want to share and choose the “Local Network Share” option.
2. When the 'File Sharing' dialog opens, click the box to enable 'Share this folder' option. ...
3. Re-do step 1 to open the 'File Sharing' dialog for any folder.

Of course, Windows firewall and Linux firewalls will prevent you from doing a lot of things.

And of course, you should obtain "putty" in order to easily open a command line window on the Linux system from the Windows system keyboard.

Regards

Yordan

 

[yordan 10]

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You are right, for standard things like surfing on the web, Linux is the best on small machines.

Unfortunately, most of popular games today are not ported on Linux yet. That's a big problem when private people want to install Linux on a computer, they will probaly not be able to play the same games as their friends!

[M6NEN 2]

1 hour ago, yordan said:

Quote

 

You are right, for standard things like surfing on the web, Linux is the best on small machines.

However, if you absolutely need Microsoft Word, then you need Windows 10.

 

Oh, goodness gracious mee, I do not ABSOLUTELY need MS Word.

The thing is, I do have MS Office installed on one of my laptops and it does what I want it to do, but on a Windows PC I have LibreOffice (the one that came with Linux too), and it does as good a job as Mr. Gates' stuff and the two have some degree of compatibility in exchanging files too.

Like I said, I am not that familiar with Linux (yet), but I know it goes further than just surfing the net, I know there are some very good programs for Linux like DTP, drawing, video editing etc. which do a great job (on Windows anyway, so I assume they will be no worse on Linux).

Quote

 

Sorry if I did not understand what you are saying, but... What do you want us to help you for ? What are you trying to do ?

What do you mean by "networking", and what are you not able to do ? Are you talking about disk sharing or filetransferring ?

Concerning filesharing, maybe this could help ?

http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2015/02/share-a-folder-in-ubuntu-14-04/

 

Oops, was I so unclear?

Maybe I was more concentrated on singing the praises of Linux. ?

However, yes, filesharing was included, and the main thing was, getting the laptop to be seen on the network.

There are 3 laptops, 1 PC and 1 NAS on the network, and on any location I am working, I can see them all on the network bar this one.

I know how to connect a computer to the network if eg. it has just been formatted or the OS has just been installed, but that goes for Windows.

However, I have had a quick glance at the site for which you sent me the link, I'l have a proper read in a minute, who knows, I might find what I am looking for there.

Quote

 

shortly said,

How to Share A Folder in Ubuntu 14.04 (Local Network)

1. To get started, right-click on the folder you want to share and choose the “Local Network Share” option.
2. When the 'File Sharing' dialog opens, click the box to enable 'Share this folder' option. ...
3. Re-do step 1 to open the 'File Sharing' dialog for any folder.

Of course, Windows firewall and Linux firewalls will prevent you from doing a lot of things.

And of course, you should obtain "putty" in order to easily open a command line window on the Linux system from the Windows system keyboard.

 

That top bit might help too, although it seems to be for an older version.

I'll look into that option too, and then, try to add "Putty", although I am not familiar with the Linux commands, but a bit of research might help.

Anyway, thanks so far.

I'll go on my merry way to do some exploring.

Much appreciated.

[yordan 10]

Also, maybe you should know some facts that are not really obvious. Teachers explain this at school and at university for future IT people.

Linux is a kind of Unix operating system. Unix operating systems already existed more than twenty years ago. At this time, graphic terminals were rather expensive, that's why Unix networking was mainly remote terminals for command line, and file transfers.

Today, as soon as a Linux system is able to surf on the web, it's ready for connecting to other linux systems in command-line mode, and for file transfers. In order to do this kind of linux-to-linux networking you need nothing more than the basic linux install.

In order to communicate the same way with a linux system from a Microsoft Windows keyboard, you need communication tools. I recommend this for the command-line    

and this for the file transfers.

Rather strangely, these two ways for networking are the only ones considered as really safe, that's why they are the only one automatically installed and allowed on newly installed systems. And they are also the only one allowed by the security people in professional computer rooms.

If you want to use remote desktop and Microsoft filesharing facilities, you will have to disable stand protections on the Unix as well as on the Windows side. However, computer security is another very vast subject, I will not talk any more about this here.

Just my two cents on this kind of subject

Regards.

Yordan

 

 

[M6NEN 2]

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5 minutes ago, yordan said:

Also, maybe you should know some facts that are not really obvious. Teachers explain this at school and at university for future IT people.

True, but it has been quite a while since I sat in a university hall listening to a lecturer, and the other way too. ?

Yes, there are certainly similarities between Linux and Unix, unfortunately, Linux still (although it has become a lot better) relies heavily on command line use.

(I can still remember the times when I was cursing the archaic MS-Dos).

Quote

10 minutes ago, yordan said:

Today, as soon as a Linux system is able to surf on the web, it's ready for connecting to other linux systems in command-line mode, and for file transfers. In order to do this kind of linux-to-linux networking you need nothing more than the basic linux install.

Well, yes and no, because a very experienced Linux user helped me out, and, thinking back of the link you put down in the previous post, the information there was completely correct, but unfortunately it was for an older version, so it no longer worked for what I had.

And yes, the basic Linux install was enough, but some components had to be installed first (via a command line ?).

The first thing was nautilus-share (although I am not sure whether that was relevant for my version as it didn't work) and the second thing, which did work immediately was samba, which seems to be especially for filesharing.

Just to be clear, I will post what I was advised here (also for the benefits of others who might face the same problems at some stage:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install nautilus-share

 This was for nautilus-share.

When that didn't work, I got the next bit of advice:

sudo apt install system-config-samba
sudo touch /etc/libuser.conf
sudo system-config-samba

With the following instructions:

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Use the green +, for Add to browse to a folder to share. Check off Visible and also Allow access to everyone.

This works here from Ubuntu to Ubuntu. I have no experience with Windows.

I then rebooted, went to my Windows 10 machine, clicked on "Network", refreshed, and lo and behold, there was the Linux machine in all its glory.

Mind you, I could NEVER have done it without that expert advice.

The thing is, it probably would have worked the way you explained it too, using PuTTY and/or WinSCP but I am not sure how user-friendly those programs are.

No matter what, someone else had advised one of them as well, as you quoted in the previous post.

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24 minutes ago, yordan said:

Just my two cents on this kind of subject

So, they might be worth a lot more than that. ?

Thank you very much for your time and effort.

 

 

 

 

[yordan 10]

sudo apt install system-config-samba
sudo touch /etc/libuser.conf
sudo system-config-samba

Yes, that's the standard way for installing samba.

Just for sake of completeness, remember that samba is only useful for communication with Microsoft Windows system. And also it's known to be unsafe, Microsoft recommends not to use it. And of course it's forbidden on real computer centers when the security people do correctly their job :)

[M6NEN 2]

Right,

communication with a Windows system is what I wanted.

Regarding security, the data do not go outide the walls here, so that should not be a problem.

And, Microsoft often recommend things, I think I'd better not finish that sentence. ?

Anyhow, for now I have a solution that works, the main objective is to do some experimenting with Linux, get to know it and see it strngths and weaknesses, and in the mean time test out some software which is of interest to me and which has a Linux version too.

Thanks for all the help and information, but we'll probably have a sequel on this conversation.

Kind regards.

 

[yordan 10]

On 1/13/2019 at 7:09 PM, M6NEN said:

 the data do not go outide the walls here, so that should not be a problem. 

 

That's the biggest problem today. If your (Linux or Windows) computers are able to go outside the walls, surfing on the web for instance, then outside computers can enter insidide your home computers. Ethernet links work on both directions, out-wards and in-wards.

[M6NEN 2]

Well, yes.

Good point, really.

Fortunately I am reasonably well protected (Firewall and all that stuff).

However, you are right, Ethernet and WiFi do, of course have their vulnerabilities when connected to the Internet.

That's why I try to be protected to "alien" attacks. ?

 

On the other hand, hadn't I predicted there would be a sequel to our conversation? ?

Fret not, lots more to come.

 

[yordan 10]

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On the other hand, hadn't I predicted there would be a sequel to our conversation? ?

Ha-Ha, yes, you predicted that!

[M6NEN 2]

Just trying to demonstrate and prove my psychic powers.

Who knows who might need my services in the future.