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Sven's tutorials

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Tutorial #1 - Installing and setting up! (scroll down for #2!) Okay, lets start off with a bit of background information about me. I have been using Linux since October 2004, I started off with Mepis (http://www.mepis.org), I then moved onto Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntulinux.org), Swiftly moving to Fedora Core 3 (http://fedora.redhat.org) and finally to Frugalware. I am very adept with computers... I started web design about five years ago, and learned HTML in 6 months and now program Flash, and I also build computers for people who ask nicely and pay equally well. Oh, did I mention I'm 16?</boasting>(!)


Well... what attracted me to Frugalware? The nice screenshots on the website, it was at 0.2 stage and the fact it was available on budgetlinuxcds.com. Also, anything could be easier than installing Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org), which I have been wrestling with for a while. I got it at a staggeringly cheap £5 - about $7.50 ish.. I got it through the post and thought to myself (what a wonderful world!) Goodbye Fedora Core.. Hello Frugalware 0.2! Smiles all round! Repartitioning was a dawdle... I used CFDisk, and thats all good.. Swap file was happy.. I decided to put / - the root of the operating system - on an ext2 partition, not being sure what a journalling filesystem was.

I installed all the packages as I had no clue how to disable them. So, I got through disk one nicely. I installed the bootloader on a floppy disk. Insert disk two.. CRASH! ... bugger... rebooted into Frugalware and didn't get hit with the X server - that grahpical thing you see. Dang! I know of a text based web browser called Lynx - lets try that! So, I typed in Lynx and a message came on screen - cannot find page, meaning I hadn't configured DHCP.

I came to the forum here and i was told to do netconfig, but being ignorant as I just reinstalled it on a reiserFS partition as I had read up on journalling filesystems. All went well, and I cancelled install after disk one. DHCP successfully configured, along with some other crap.

Okay.. next - reboot into Frugalware. Still no X server...Damn. What now? Lynx. Press the key g and type in www.google.co.uk (being in Scotland) and accept all the cookies and look - something reminiscent of a web browser! I'd used Lynx before as I was "Showing Off" my abilities to some folks. So it was okay. In short, I used the right arrow to navigate links till I got to the text input (that big line across the screen) and typed in XORG for FRUGALWARE 0.2. I searched that, and somewhere in the next page appeared a link to the repositories. Select it, and here are all the files for Frugalware! Wow! So... download XORG.. but wait! I need these things called Libs. Hold on a minute buddy! Lets download pacman (mine didnt seem to work) by pressing the d key over it... it will download before you get the option to save. unusual. save it with a memorable name instead of the silly one you get. something original... like, i dunno, pacman.fpm. Exit Lynx by pressing the q key then press the y key. Now type pacman -A pacman.fpm . You should already be the root user. This is signified by root<name of computer as you chose it>:~# In my case, it is root@hibbie@home:~# - to become the root user, you type su and then you will be asked for a password. As you type, nothing will come up. Don't worry.. once its done, press enter. The # shows it is a root console. and the $ shows it is a normal user console. This will install a working version of Pacman. Now you can type pacman -Sy to update the package database, and then pacman -S xorg to download the X server. It will install itself.

Now you need a Window Manager, the thing that brings it all together. These include KDE - my personal favourite or XFCE4 or GNOME or FLUXBOX or BLACKBOX and so on. I recommend KDE for a beginner, or XFCE4 for someone used to mostly command line Linux. To get KDE, I would type pacman -S kdebase which install the base files required for a working KDE interface, and worry about the other stuff later. I couldn't get XFCE to boot, or FLUXBOX. It must be the lack of a login script... which I don't believe is possible. Anyways, I'm waffling, as my teachers say. Once KDE is installed, reboot your machine, login as root,answer a few questions and your running Linux! Hurrah! Now I recommend going to the console, called Terminal Program (Konsole) by pressing the funny K at the bottom right, then highlighting system and pressing on Konsole. This is the K menu, its like the Windows Start Menu and typing pacman -S kde and install it all. It will automatically miss out the stuff you already have. Clever, no?

On the other hand, If you are like me and have an incredibly old monitor which automatically sits at 640x480, you need help. The easy questions need keyboard commands to work - i.e keep pressing ALT and O (at the same time) until that stops working, then ALT and F (at the same time)to finish it. Open up Konsole and type xconfig and keep pressing enter until that finishes. Now logout, press ALT and E (at the same time) to restart X Server. This should switch you up to 1024X768, and if like me it doesnt, repeat until it does. Of course, you can go larger by typing in other numbers at the first xconfig option. I don't know the other resolutions as it doesn't concern me, until I get my new monitor!

Again like me, to read you'll have to do some more things. right click on your new desktop, select Configure Desktop, and then Display. Here you can change the Frequency of the monitor. 75 Hz works for me. Much else? No... not at all! now click the K Menu and go to Control center, then Appearance and Themes and then Fonts. Change the size so the text is nice and readable. I added 2 to each font, that works nicely for me.

After all that, we have a nice working KDE installation of Frugalware. What have I learned this week? How to install Frugalware, and basic Pacman controls: pacman -Sy : Update the package database pacman -S <package name> : Download and install package pacman -A <package name> : Install package from home folder pacman -U <package name> : Download and install update for package

In two weeks is how to intall stuff, and more of my exciting adventures in Frugalware... I hope!



Tutorial #2 :- The solution to the big question "Hmm, how do I install a package?" The below is aimed at KDE, but should apply to GNOME also.

Well, the answer is this my friends! A small program called pacman. What does it do? It installs "binary packages" similar to the Windows setup.exe, but for Frugalware. Instead of .exe they have .fpm. To install these wonderful packages, you must go into a console, be it xterm, konsole, aterm etc... and login as root by typing "su" and pressing return and it will ask you for a password. No letters come up as you type, don't be worried. Press return after that. Now, type "pacman -Sy" to update the database and then "pacman -S pacman" get the latest version of pacman. Then say yes to all the following commands. Thats it, first package installed! Now, to install any other package, possibly KDE or Firefox, just replace the last pacman with the programs name, such as "pacman -S kde" or "pacman -S firefox". It's really as easy as that... Most of the time. Alternatively, you can type "makepkg -l <package name>", replacing <package name> with the program. This automatically does the below for you, and its called Frugalbuild. What if the program isn't in the repositories (where the packages come from)? Is the world going to collapse? Thankfully, no. If you find a program that you really want, and there is no sign of it in the repositories pacman uses, you download the source code, often in .tar.bg/.tar.gz format. Unzip it - KDE has a built in unzip program - to a folder, go to the folder you unzipped it to and press the F4 key. This opens up a terminal. Here, I like to go as root for the whole process. So, type in "su" then return, then your root password, then return. Thats you as root now! Now, to compile the package. From here on in is a generalisation, I suggest you take a look at the readme for specific instructions, but these work on most packages. Type in "./configure" and wait for that to finish. Now, if there are no errors, continue on to type "make". If there are errors, It will say. This is usually package dependencies. Check pacman,google and the frugalware forum/irc for missing packages. The make command will compile the package. Once that is finished, type "make install" - This will install it, again assuming there are no errors. If there are, its usually not being root for me. Panic at the forums if it doesn't work. Once make install is finished, type "make clean" to take out all the excess stuff created upon compiling. Now its done! Test the programme by typing the name, i.e "firefox" or "gaim". Next time, using Alien to convert to .fpm, and doing a pacman with .fpms on your machine!

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