Just installed Suse 9.1 on my laptop dual booth with XP. Whats Next?

[HKSturboKID]

Well last night, its time for me to try out a new linux distro on my laptop.

I have a piii 600 laptop with 256mb ram and 16gb hd.
I've used 8gb for Windows
I've fedora 2 on the the 8gb.

So what I did was use my xp cd and boot into recovery console.
Use FIXMBR to fix the Master Boot Record to overwrite Grub.
Boot into XP and delete all the fedora partition.
Restart PC and boot up with the Suse DVD in drive.
Leave everything at default and let it do its stuff.
After about an hour everything installed.
Use YAST to update the system.
Downloaded and Installed Firefox
System is up and running.

The question I have is everytime I login, it keep telling me that my Monitor is not setup correctly with x and y axis. since this is a laptop, I don't know what this means as everything works fine without needing to configure this. It take me the the X and Y configuration screen. Do I have to do anything or just click cancel everytime I login. I am running 1024x768 with 70mhz refresh rate.

Also, will apt-get work with SUSE 9.1?

The only other thing is what to do or can I do with it.

I also have Fedora Core 2 setup on one of my desktop with SAMBA file sharing with my windows machine.

What are some of the fun stuff you think I should do and learn in Linux.

Thanks for everyone's help to help me get this far.

 

[drag]

There are versions of apt-get for Suse, but I think that Yast can perform a similar function. It's been a while since I messed around with Suse, but I think it's possible.

The x and y thing, I don't know about. Sounds like GUI config tool brain-deadness. If it doesn't bother you then you can just click thru it.. I think it's something specific to Suse. I haven't seen it anywere else. Maybe there is a save, or autoconfig option. Maybe try playing around with the monitor settings or something. Not sure.

One thing I like to do is edit my ssh servers and clients to allow X to tunnel thru them. So I can ssh into another machine and then open up applications as if it was native to my local machine. I check my e-mail that way using my laptop. I also have a mpd (music player daemon) service installed on my desktop that is hooked up to my stereo. mpd

It's basicly a backgound proccess that only does one thing: plays music. You create a playlist for it and copy it to a specific directory and then you play that playlist. That way if you log out, or switch terminals then it just plays music. You don't need any apps running or anything to have music. Then if you want to change a sound you can use a front end tool like gmpc or mpc to signal the daemon to play a different song or playlist. Before that I would do things like ssh into my desktop and open xmms on my laptop and play music on my stereo and have remote control that way.

You could setup a internet mp3 server with icecast. Or you can stream a dvd to your laptop using VLS (video lan server) so you can play it on a VLC (video lan client) on your laptop. Or rip dvds and stream the rip.

Or maybe just play around with programming simple little stuff. I donno.

 

[HKSturboKID]

Thanks Drag.

I'll look into the things that you mention and see if I can get it to work (mp3 or vlc or SSH).
Now in regards to setting up SSH when you can open applications that seems like its actually running on your laptop locally. Is that similar to citrix? In another words, you don't need the application to be install off the laptop and run it off the server. If you can provide me with some more info that will be great.
Also, what are your thoughts on WINE (running windows apps).

As always you and the Anandtech community has been a great help.


Thanks.

 

[drag]

Well what it is is that X windows is realy a network protocol, not a GUI per say. (X windows is realy confusing at till you get used to it).

X Server is the GUI. X clients is what runs on the X Server... Your Server is the part that controls the keyboard input and the mouse and the monitor output. X clients can be run on any computer remotely or locally. It's all part of X Windows. It's like Http, it you can browse your local files or browse internet files.
Http vs X Windows:
Mozilla browser = Xorg X Server
jpeg images/html/gifs/etc/ = X clients
Http server = remote machine or local machine.

X clients are like the panel, or the window manager, or the file browser, or your xterm, or OpenOffice writer, or whatever else you want to run on your X server. And all this can be done with complete network transparency.

However X Windows has 2 major flaws as a network protocol: It's a bandwidth hog and it's insecure.

So OpenSSH clients and servers support tunnelling the X Windows protocol thru a SSH connection. Like a virtual private network, but just for X (although you can create a full VPN network using ssh), but it's disabled by default. You have to enable it...

So what you do is edit your configurations. See the man files for details. (also find a text editor you can live with. Try nano, advanced users tend to use Vi and Emacs, you can use a GUI text editor, but the command line is convienent)

The ssh server is called sshd (d for daemon). So the configuration file is:
/etc/ssh/sshd_config

Edit it on your server (may be a good idea to copy it for safe keeping, if config files get messed up by a hamfisted move, just copy your backup over them, also use the 'su' command to become root) find the line:
#X11Forwarding no
Then turn it into this:
X11Forwarding yes

Then restart your sshd server..
/etc/init.d/sshd restart
(may be slightly different for Suse from Debian, which I use)

Then on your client machine you edit:
/etc/ssh/ssh_config

Turn this:
# ForwardX11 no
to
ForwardX11 yes

Now you should be able to ssh from your client to your remote machine and then go
echo $DISPLAY

and get a response like:
:0.0

Then that means that everything is working, or should be working.
Then try to start a program from the command line in your ssh session, like xterm...
xterm

And it should open up a xterm. You go to it and do a ls it should show the contents of your remote machine. Close that out and you should be able to open up most any gui program on your desktop and have it displayed on your laptop. It's not perfect, but it works most of the time.

Also instead of editing your ssh_config you can use the -X switch with ssh client, but you still need to edit the sshd_config on your remote machine.
ssh -X your.remote.machine

summary:
remote machine:
edit your sshd_config, make sure that you have the line:
X11Forwarding yes
/etc/init.d/sshd restart
(or you can just reboot, if you want to do it windows-style)

Now from your local machine ssh into your remote machine:
ssh -X remote.machine
or edit the ssh_config and make sure that you have this line
ForwardX11 yes
And then you can go:
ssh remote.machine

Then:
echo $DISPLAY
and it should output something like:
:0.0
or
something:0.0
if you only have a blank line instead of something, then it's not working.

Then you can run X applications over ssh.
xclock


There are a few howtos if I am confusing you.. (I am about ready to goto bed now, so I am beginning to loose concentration...)
http://cosi.clarkson.edu/knowledge/faq/xforwarding.html

Search google....

 

[HKSturboKID]

OMG!!!! This is amazing.

At first after reading the first few paragraphs, I was Confused 😕 As I read on, it all started to make sense. I'll definitely try it tonite when I get home. Thanks for all your help DRAG.

Have a good nite.