10 Mistakes Linux learners should avoid

If you are a Linux learner, this is definitely for you.

I’m not talking about non-geeks, People who don’t care or don’t want to know how their computer works. Today, Linux distributions are getting more and more popular, specially Ubuntu. Many ‘technical users’ of Microsoft Windows are showing interest in using or trying out Linux, but they repeat some common mistakes.

Which are,

Ignoring the official help documentation provided by distribution.

e.g. Ubuntu fresh install will have a blue question mark icon in panel, after Firefox icon. Ubuntu help center is not useless, Its there to help you. honestly how many people have used the official help documentation.

Rushing to forums or IRC for spoon feed or quick solution.

Don’t just don’t do that without searching on Google or any other Search Engine. Google is your friend. specially try http://www.google/linux for custom Linux searches. Don’t ignore Wiki documentation its contributed by community members and its easy to understand.

Ignoring the messages or errors thrown by system.

In GNU/Linux every error does not tell about crash or panic, If you read the error carefully you can find out what is wrong. for example… If apt-get finds packages with broken dependencies it will tell you that “There are ‘n’ broken packages” but it will also tell you use “apt-get install -f” to fix that.

Avoiding the use of "root".

You can't learn or get friendly with Linux until you don't know how to use root privileges. Play with the system, mess it up. Its the best way to learn. If you are too conscious, you can install GNU/Linux on Virtual Machine and keep a working snapshot as backup.

Over expecting.

Don’t over expect, GNU/Linux can’t perform like 3000% faster than Microsoft Windows, but still its a lot better. Its very stable that does NOT mean that, It will be completely error free.

Relying on Wine too much.

Wine is good way to run Windows applications on Linux, but you can’t run every application on Wine. Wine isn’t perfect. Instead of that find the native alternatives to Windows applications. So if your application is not working don’t shout, find a work-a-round.

Finding for a perfect distribution match.

You’ll never find one! DistroWatch isn’t a matrimony service. Choose a distribution which is a closest match. and start to customization, there is no particular distribution which will provide “everything” out of the box you need. No one is preventing you from spinning off your distribution, So make a good one and share it with others!

Start from CLI.

Many people may have disagreement on this, but I think its really not needed. To use GNU/Linux you don’t have to be a CLI geek. You only need to know the basic idea of CLI and its syntax. Learn the basics only if you are using Linux on your Desktop. There are a lot reference material available for Linux and BASH commands you can refer to it when its necessary. If you are learning Linux for server implementations you have no option to CLI.

Blaming it on Linux.

If you are a IT expert, and you are having troubles with Linux, then note this – “You should not think you are an expert”. I really don’t care if you are student on Microsoft IT Academy, but there is already too much anti-Linux stuff on Internet. I have seen many ‘expert’ bloggers blaming Linux for their mistakes. By the way Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, so the blame-game isn’t fair.

These are just 9?

Well here is the 10th.

Giving up on Linux.

Were you a Mac OS or Windows pro when you born? absolutely not. There is nothing you can perfect in just one day. even the simplest tasks in our life, like walking needs practice. So does Linux. Learning Linux is not a challenge or critical mission in your life, its just an OS.

Its just a misunderstanding that Linux is hard to learn, think its easy, so its easy for you.

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e-Book Collection Management on Linux

Image via Wikipedia

Having trouble sorting out hundreds of e-Books? No troubles for me, because I don't have much e-Books. But some people do have huge collection of books. If the collection is too big, its really not friendlier to find a book by file name. We need something like Book Shelf to keep them in order, that is what e-Book Collection Managers are, but they are a lot flexible than our real life Book Shelves.

I have already lied to you, I do have a e-Book collection, and the e-Book manager I use is eKitaab. There are not too many applications available in this category, few available applications are.

1. Calibre
2. eKitaab
3. Bibshelf

Calibre

Calibre is quite popular tool for e-Book management. Its not just a manager, It can be used as.

• News Reader
• e-Book format converter
• Sychronization client for e-book reader devices.
• and e-book organizer, Calibre can detect and fetch e-book information tags using it’s ISBN number.

eKitaab

eKitaab (“Kitaab” = book), is a simplified one, The only thing it can do is to maintain a catalog of all the books, and download their information from Amazaon using thier ISBN number. Its lightweight, Its small, and Its clean. The only thing that bothers me is the ugly (very ugly) Java GUI.

Bibshelf

This thing, doesn’t do anything, but its still there, I guess this software is still in development (not actually current version is 1.6.0). Bibshelf does not deal with any e-book, in-fact it just shows a table or catalog of the books we have. (We have to enter the information manually, Bibshelf won’t detect the books automatically.) But lets just give this application time to evolve. :)

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Screen Sharing with Linux

If you use screen sharing on regular bases you might know TeamViewer and Skype, two very popular services (and software) that provides screen sharing feature. Unfortunately both of these does not work on Linux.

But as always, Linux got some alternatives.

Note that only free and tested services are listed, if you have a suggestion, leave a comment.


Yuuguu

Yuuguu is a screen-sharing software which uses Instant Messenger like interface, Yuuguu allows clients to view host's screen in a browser, that means no download. with Yuuguu you can login into IM services like MSN, GTalk, Yahoo, ICQ, which allows your clients to view the shared screen without registering to Yuuguu. However host will need to download a client and register.


Yugma

Yugma is another screen-sharing software which is cross-platform, However the Linux client is still beta.


Vyew

Vyew is quite different than all of these services. It is completely browser based, developed as a Java applet. Vyew provides some good presentation features. The performance wasn't so impressive, still not too bad!


Gitso

Gitso is a classic VNC solution, but reversed. Its not a service, Its a software. that means you may require proper routing, If you are behind a router or firewall.

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How to build .deb package from tar.gz

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Often newbies (not so new) complain after installing a package from source. It's actually easy to install a package from source, but you may face some troubles while un-installing those. especially when you delete compiled directory from where you execute "make install" command.

Method 1

The common method is to use dh_make and dpkg-buildpackage to create a .deb package and install it. This is how we do it.

Install required packages.

sudo apt-get install dh-make fakeroot build-essential autotools-dev

Step 1. Extract the contents of Tarball

tar -xvzf source.tar.gz

Step 2. Change directory to source folder

cd /path/to/source/folder

Step 3. Create control files, selecting the attributes of package.

dh_make

Step 4. Finally compile the package.

sudo dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot

Step 5. Install all the packages, created by dpkg-buildpackage

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Method 2

Another method is to use checkinstall, which is quite easier.

Some packages may use different build tools, or you may want to build application with qmake, cmake or something else instead of make. Or just wanted to be able to remove package without troubles. Use checkinstall

Step 1. Install required packages.

sudo apt-get install checkinstall

Step 2. There are no harder steps. Build your package first, your build method may differ.

./configure && make

Step 3. At the end, replace the sudo make install command with following.

sudo checkinstall -D make install

Check install will also allow you to create package with custom meta-data, It will also create a deb package which you can keep for later use.

Technorati Tags: Linux, Deb, Tar.gz, Open Source, Ubuntu

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