Does anyone here know Linux?

[Eagle]

It's F2 that gets me into BIOS Setup. I'll give a try with ESC and F8, if neither of those works I'll try every other F# key. If that doesn't work, it's off to the scrap heap.

 

It's not for me. It's just that I'm a cheap S.O.B. and I hate to discard something that someone might be able to use. I have adopted out any number of older computers through the pastor at the church my late wife and I used to attend. It's an inner city church and the good padre knows who a computer. This one hasn't been promised to anyone so it's no great loss if it gets scrapped -- but it hurts my conscience to know that I broke it.

[derf]

12 hours ago, Gojira94 said:

If you're in the emergency console/ shell, GRUB has already loaded the OS bootstrap, you unfortunately didn't interrupt it. Sudo won't get you anywhere- it's a preamble to any command you want to run as root, or literally, the 'super user.' Means 'do' the following command as the 'super user.' Here's an example: sudo systemctl daemon-reload. if you want to change to 'being' that root user itself, the command is su, and you'll be prompted for root's credentials. I mentioned LiLO, because it was the de facto bootloader before GRUB was a thing, back in the Linux kernel 2.x days. It's not a command unto itself.

 

What Big_Mark and I are asking about F8 or Esc are keys that can be struck after the power on self-test ("POST") that the BIOS performs, but BEFORE the BIOS hands off control to whatever OS bootstrap resides on the first track of the hard drive. Special keys programmed into the BIOS allow you to do different things. These key assignments vary by the manufacturer of the BIOS (Award, AMI, some OE like IBM, HP, ASUS write their own or customize an Award or AMI .bin file). Things like stop and specify a boot device manually, boot straight from network, modify settings for an embedded device like a RAID controller, enter the BIOS itself to change settings (which you're able to), etc. The critical keystroke here is the one that will let you select the boot device from a list. In your case, something other than the HDD. Big_Mark and I believe either F8 or Esc will halt the BIOS from handing off to GRUB and let you select USB disk or optical drive (which may require a keystroke of its own to launch a menu- remember "Press any key to boot from CD" in the XP/Vista/Win7 days). If you have an old Vista/Win7 CD you can boot from that and use the command prompt from its menu to do fdisk /mbr (which will remove GRUB). Then do:

diskpart

select disk 0

clean

and your hard drive will be effectively blank from track 0 out to the last sector.

 

One last suggestion, since you can get into the BIOS. Look for a setting like "enable option keys" so keys you can hit to halt the BIOS and do other things are available. Otherwise, there may not be any ability to use "F8" or "Esc" to enter a boot selection menu.

Sometimes it's the Del key, depending on the BIOS manufacturer.

 

But yeah, once in that menu, change the boot order so the CD goes first.

[Eagle]

Gentlemen --

 

The Asus notebook ... it's ALIVE!!!

 

Continually hitting the ESC key while booting to get past the BIOS worked, and I was able to boot from the CD/DVD drive. It turns out my download of Debian Lxqt is totally corrupt. It won't run in live more (from the CD) either. So I tried again, with Debian Xfce, and that worked. It installed, and the computer runs. (Well, "runs" is a bit optimistic. "Crawls" is more like it.)

 

It recognizes the CD/DVD drive and it sees the USB ports. And this distro already includes the LibreOffice suite and Firefox, so it's ready to go.

 

I'm relieved. I really didn't want to leave it knowing that I had broken it irreparably.

 

Thank you guys who came to my rescue. I need to do a bit more to it. Now that I know it runs, I will get some memory modules and bump the RAM to the maximum 2 GB. The machine doesn't have WiFi built in, so I'll try adding a compact USB WiFi dongle. I'll probably need help getting that configured. And I haven't tried connecting the computer to my home network yet, so I may ask for help with that, as well. Now that I know who to call, I use PM for more questions rather than tie up the forum.

 

Thank you again. I appreciate the help and support.

[Eagle]

Gents -

 

Thanks again for saving the Asus laptop from the scrap heap (at least for a little while). There's no way I can explain how elated I was when the thing came to life again.

 

That said, I'm not crazy about the Xfce desktop. I could learn to use it, but my goal here is to adopt this computer out, and to do that I would prefer a desktop that looks a bit more Windows-like. Which is why I was playing with Lxqt. The Lxqt desktop looks a lot more like what I'm accustomed to seeing, and I think it would probably be more comfortable for people to use. It's available as a separate download:

 

https://lxqt-project.org/

 

How hard is it to install the Lxqt desktop on top of the Debian install that I have running now? Is that something you guys can talk me through without breaking the computer again?

[Big_Mark]

Glad you got it sorted! NEVER LET THE COMPUTER WIN!!!

Here’s a decent article describing how to change the desktop environment

 

I only use the shell to configure Linux systems, usually some kind of service with a web interface, so I don’t use any desktop environment.

 

For a daily driver I find linux frustrating so I stick with “the devil I know “…Windows.

 

glad we were able to get you back up and running! Happy tinkering!

[Eagle]

There will be some tinkering. I really don't care for the Xfce desktop, or its wallpaper. I hope I can learn how to install the Lxqt desktop, and I hope that has some better wallpapers.

 

Beyond that, LibreOffice carries with it a metric boatload of useless fonts, all beginning with "Noto ___." Those have to go. And the system doesn't have common fonts like Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier New. There's a pparently a Microsoft Core Fonts package out there that I need to track down and see if I can install. Then I need to install Thunderbird for e-mail.

 

And, of course, I don't know yet if the Ethernet port is live and active. If not, that'll be another big hurdle to overcome.

[Gojira94]

I've been AFK since Friday, just seeing the updates now. Very happy you got into it and got the disk sorted out. I was always fond of KDE (KDesktopEnvironment) but getting it installed on most major distros that have left it out of their source repos these days make it more trouble than it's worth. I'm not fond of Gnome but I got used to it on my RHEL laptop. For older systems, finding the distro that works well on the hardware with minimal overhead, with decent performance, with a desktop system you can tolerate is the formula for ultimate success. Sometimes it takes a while to find the one you like. Changing wallpapers in graphical mode can be done by downloading or copying in wallpaper images you like and switching to them in the settings.

[Eagle]

5 hours ago, Gojira94 said:

Changing wallpapers in graphical mode can be done by downloading or copying in wallpaper images you like and switching to them in the settings.

 

Easy for you to say. Downloading or copying them to where? Remember, I know NOTHING about Linux. Even the file manager doesn't look like what I' accustomed to from Windows and MS-DOS.

[Gojira94]

Windows: C:\Users\<your_username>\Pictures

Linux: /home/<your_username>/   (depending on Linux distro, may have a 'pictures' dir, you may have to make one)

 

Linux built in wallpapers is usually /usr/share/wallpapers. 'usr' is Unix System Root, and though it makes your brain think "user" that's not the case. Things in the /usr folder are usually restricted to being modified by the user 'root' or another user or group of local users that can act as root with sudo, or by giving them write permissions to the folder on that directory (not advisable). A normal user has full permissions to make whatever files and directories it wants in its own home dir ( /home/<your_username> )

 

If you want to know the path of where you are at any time, type pwd in the shell.

 

/   is the equivalent to C:\  (the topmost directory on the filesystem containing the OS).  /usr would be like C:\Windows.

To make a new directory, just like in Windows you'll use mkdir, i.e. mkdir /home/<your_username>/pictures or if you're already in /home/<your_username> (the default when you open a shell as a normal user) you can just do mkdir pictures.

 

Avoid the temptation to use a leading capital letter for files and directories. Linux is case-sensitive and Pictures is not the same as pictures. Windows is not case-sensitive so you can't have both on the same path. And having to type that leading capital letter become tedious quickly. 

[Eagle]

Back again ...

 

Progress, of sorts. It's running on the Xfce desktop. I don't like it, but it may be more than I can handle to change it.

 

I have determined that the LAN port is active, and I can open and use Firefox to access the internet. This computer doesn't have built-in WiFi. I have one of those USB WiFi dongles -- they are plug-and-play in Windoze, but will Debian recognize and configure it if I just plug it in?

 

I would also like to install some "universal" fonts, such as Arial, Calibri, and Times New Roman. I know Debian and LibreOffice include equivalents, but I think people coming from other platforms might not be happy having those fonts available. There's a package called MSCoreFonts that's intended specifically for this purpose. However, when I tried to install it, I got an error message that I don't have rights to run sudo. So how do I get myself set up with admin rights?

 

I would need the same thing to install an alternate desktop, so this is important.

 

For now, I have the user password cleverly set as "password." If I'm going to adopt the machine out, there's no sense in me setting something more secure. How would an end user change the log-in password?

 

Thanks, gents.

[derf]

A USB wifi dongle should work without too much effort.  At least with a modern version of linux.

[Eagle]

1 hour ago, derf said:

A USB wifi dongle should work without too much effort.  At least with a modern version of linux.

 

Doesn't work. The dongle is a TP-Link. Comes with a CD/DVD with drivers, but the instructions only discuss Windows and MacOS. I think I'm out of luck.

[Eagle]

I have figured out how to log in as "root" so I can install programs. I tried to install Thunderbird, but it's not available as a package in this distro of Debian. So how do I get Thunderbird onto this computer?

 

I also found a reference to a TP-Link USB WiFi dongle that has a Linux driver. How would I install that driver to see if it will work with the dongle I have?

[derf]

6 hours ago, Eagle said:

I have figured out how to log in as "root" so I can install programs. I tried to install Thunderbird, but it's not available as a package in this distro of Debian. So how do I get Thunderbird onto this computer?

 

I also found a reference to a TP-Link USB WiFi dongle that has a Linux driver. How would I install that driver to see if it will work with the dongle I have?

First, you need to download it probably. 

 

Maybe on another computer and use a thumb drive to copy it over.

[Eagle]

3 hours ago, derf said:

First, you need to download it probably. 

 

Maybe on another computer and use a thumb drive to copy it over.

 

And then what?

 

Remember -- I don't know ANYTHING about Linux. And Linux ain't like Windoze ...

 

If I can find the drive rand put it on a USB stick, then what?

[derf]

13 minutes ago, Eagle said:

 

And then what?

 

Remember -- I don't know ANYTHING about Linux. And Linux ain't like Windoze ...

 

If I can find the drive rand put it on a USB stick, then what?

Usually the driver download site should have instructions. 

[Gojira94]

Linux likely sees the wifi dongle but hasn't done anything with it, or has put it in its list of network devices already, and you just have to find it. Run lsusb in a shell (first letter is a lowercase L). This will enumerate all the USB devices attached to the system, by what it sees at the base firmware level. If it's in the list of USB devices, do    nmcli dev status    in the shell to see if Linux has added it to networking devices.

 

Xfce may have the GUI version of network manager installed by default. From the shell, try    nmtui    and you may see a rudimentary GUI you can use to enable/ configure the USB wifi. Xfce may also have a settings widget somewhere in its desktop environment that includes configuring network devices, display settings and more, kind of like Gnome and KDE, and many other window managers. For everyday use on the internet, you'll want all devices to have IP addresses assigned by DHCP, DNS server assignment set to auto, or bound to what the DHCP server assigned for DNS. DNS is what resolves website domain names to IP addresses on the internet.

[Eagle]

4 hours ago, Gojira94 said:

Linux likely sees the wifi dongle but hasn't done anything with it, or has put it in its list of network devices already, and you just have to find it. Run lsusb in a shell (first letter is a lowercase L). This will enumerate all the USB devices attached to the system, by what it sees at the base firmware level. If it's in the list of USB devices, do    nmcli dev status    in the shell to see if Linux has added it to networking devices.

 

Xfce may have the GUI version of network manager installed by default. From the shell, try    nmtui    and you may see a rudimentary GUI you can use to enable/ configure the USB wifi. Xfce may also have a settings widget somewhere in its desktop environment that includes configuring network devices, display settings and more, kind of like Gnome and KDE, and many other window managers. For everyday use on the internet, you'll want all devices to have IP addresses assigned by DHCP, DNS server assignment set to auto, or bound to what the DHCP server assigned for DNS. DNS is what resolves website domain names to IP addresses on the internet.

 

?@?@?@?@?

 

Thanks, but ... I know YOU know what that all means, but I don't have a clue. It's not your fault -- I know people who know this [bleep] have touble remembering what it wass like before they knew how to do it. To be honest, you might as well be speaking Greek to me.

[Gojira94]

Ok, no problem. Open the shell (the Linux command line thing)

type    lsusb    and tell us what that says (there'll be a lot, maybe take a pic or two of the output)

type    nmtui    and let us know if it opens a networking config utility or says something like 'command not found.'

 

Look around in the point-and-click menus and try to find something akin to "settings" with a sub-menu for network stuff. Take a pic if you find it and post it.

 

If anything says "you must be root to do this" in the shell, type    su    and enter the password for the account root (the built-in Local Administrator account) and repeat the command/ proceed onward.

[Eagle]

According to TP-Link, the dongle I have is version 2.2 and, despite what it says on the box, versions 1 and 2 do NOT support Linux. Version 3 does.

 

I found a different dongle on Amazon that's plug-and-play for Linux kernel 4.4 and newer. My kernel is 5.1, so it should be good to go. I have ordered it (actually two, because I have another old machine I'm also setting up on Linux), and I expect delivery around Thursday.