10 FAQ After one Week on Linux

There are many cases when after looking at some of the FAQ on the web you ask yourself: “Are they for real? Who asks those questions anyway?” Questions like: “How Does Linux Kernel Versioning Work?” or “How much does Ubuntu cost?” don’t really provide you with the information you need. Mainly because they target a very specific kind of users.

On the other hand there are many really helpful FAQ, some of them were used in preparing this article. I also wondered around many forums collecting questions that real people ask frequently. The target of those questions are mainly Ubuntu users, who came from a Windows world and use it for about a week or two. Here are some of my findings. I hope they will actually help someone.

1. I know that Linux is case sensitive, but WHY???

The truth: Having it as case sensitive always made sense to me.. I always wondered why Windows wasn’t case sensitive..
The reason: case sensitive file names and options give you much more functionality and consistency. For example using ls in a script will always be ls and not LS, lS or Ls. Options like -u and -U will have different functionality, allowing you to do more. Also ls sorting is case sensitive too, that is why file names like Readme will come before readme.

2. Where is the ‘Program Files‘ folder? In which directory can I find my programs now???

You’ve got several… take your pick 🙂
Seriously, the are several places where programs typically reside

/bin – essential system commands
/usr/bin – general commands

Local application installs usually go in /opt or /usr/local (one
location came from BSD, the other from System V)

In addition there is /sbin, /usr/sbin and /usr/local/sbin which appear to
be for Linux/distro specific admin tools

If its a package with its own directory tree I would suggest /opt.

3. OK, I heard about scripts, I added ls /home to script.bat… Why doesn’t it run???

Unlike in windows, in Linux scripts don’t require any particular extension like .bat in order to run, but usually .sh is used. When you want to make it execute you have to make it ‘executable’:

(1)After writing shell script set execute permission for your script as follows
syntax:
chmod permission your-script-name

Examples:

$ chmod +x your-script-name
$ chmod 755 your-script-name

Note: This will set read write execute(7) permission for owner, for group and other permission is read and execute only(5).

(2) Execute your script as
syntax:
bash your-script-name
sh your-script-name
./your-script-name

Examples:

$ bash bar
$ sh bar
$ ./bar

4. I heard something about Windows Emulator – Wine, Vodka or something like that, how do I run windows apps with it???

You are lucky Wine folks didn’t hear you saying that, since Wine stands for Wine Is NOT an Emulator.
About running some windows software with it, it’s as simple as:

$wine sol.exe &

For list of applications supported by wine and much more visit here.

5. Some Linux “Guru” told me to use & (ampersand) at the end of the command when I want to continue using the CLI. I forgot to add it, what do I do???

Relax, buddy! 🙂 Use ctrl+z to suspend the job, this will bring the CLI back and right after that run:
$bg
to resume the suspended job, but this time in the background.

6. OK I know about the apt-get remove, but what if I want to uninstall something that was installed with this make thingy???

Go to that particular directory you installed from, the one in which you ran make install, and run:

$make uninstall

in some cases it is:

$make deinstall

if that doesn’t work, there is probably no rule for uninstall in the makefile (check the README and INSTALL files for more info).
Unfortunately not all (very few) packages or packagers, to be more to the point, go to the trouble of giving you a target ‘uninstall’….

So if make uninstall doesn’t work you have to do it by hand. A trick that can be used sometimes is to run make install again and carefully examine the output (if it’s comprehensible) to find all the files to remove or at least get some clue.
Another trick if you think you might want to whack something later is to do -prefix=/opt/someplace/unique
when you configure it so at least you can find some of it (not all of it) in one directory later for whacking.

7. When I boot up Linux, according to System Monitor, Linux almost immediately starts using 100% of my memory. Is this a bug?

Your computer is using all of your memory to optimize the performance of Linux. It caches or stores pieces of applications on your memory so that when you need them, it will not have to hunt around the hard drive to find the application. Now IF you bring up a program, and your memory is “full” Linux automatically kicks some of the cache out to make room. It is a fast-as-lightening operation that does nothing but make Linux optimized and faster. Hey you paid for all this RAM – it better be used!

8. I heard here and there about how great vim is. Decided to give it a try, but now I can’t even quit it!!! What the hell is this thing???

Among many other, vim is two things:
(1) amazingly powerful text editor
(2) difficult to get used to text editor

Now to the point, when there is nothing more to explore in Linux and ‘nano’ becomes too limited for you start watching some vim tutorials on YouTube and later go here, for now all you have to know is: Esc->q!->Enter or Esc->wq->Enter when you actually done with it something.

9. OK, I tried CLI, I know what TAB is for, but I am getting tired of seeing the file name there and not being able to click it!

If you absolutely can’t live without a mouse here is a little trick for you: double click (or select) the file (or any other string) and then click the middle button. Now you are probably asking yourself why no one thought of this before… But wait, there is more – it works everywhere, not only CLI. Try not to forget ctrl+c, ctrl+v now! 🙂

10. There are those words Foo and Bar that Linux geeks use everywhere. Where do they come from?

Foo and bar paired together are apparently derived from FUBAR. FUBAR is an acronym that commonly means “Fucked Up Beyond All Repair” (used to describe the state of some equipment) or “Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition” (used to describe a situation or scenario), which now exists in many variations. Although it originated in the US Armed Forces, its usage has spread to civilian environments.

Source: Foo

Of course there is much more than can be asked and lots of things that can be said. In this article I tried to sum the most frequent questions I hear around me and the ones I see people asking on the web. I would like to hear from you about all those questions you are being asked again and again, but actually have a very simple answer.

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