Wished I had tried Linux long ago.

[steve_v]

Is it possible to have a copy of Windows and a copy of Ubuntu on the same machine that you can choose between on startup?

Most modern GNU/Linux installers will do this stuff for you You'll get a GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader) menu at startup & your windows install should appear as an option, along with any Linux distros you have installed.

Once upon a time all this was done manually - shrinking partitions, installing GRUB (or LILO), chainloading the windows bootloader etc. It still can be, but IIRC the *buntu installer will hold your hand pretty well these days.

Edited November 23, 2014 by steve_v

[White Owl]

Most modern GNU/Linux installers will do this stuff for you You'll get a GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader) menu at startup & your windows install should appear as an option, along with any Linux distros you have installed.

Once upon a time all this was done manually - shrinking partitions, installing GRUB (or LILO), chainloading the windows bootloader etc. It still can be, but IIRC the *buntu installer will hold your hand pretty well these days.

Having just run through this process an hour ago, I gotta say the installer is FAR from intuitive about exactly what the partitions are doing. If you don't already know Linux terminology and are nervous about losing all your stored data if you choose the wrong option... yeah. It could be a lot clearer about which option means "not going to change anything on this part of the disk" and which option means "all your stuff is gone and irretrievably overwritten by something you don't understand."

Edit: Thanks much for trying to help me. It still tells me "Permission denied" when I try to launch KSP. I'm going to go read some more.

Edited November 23, 2014 by White Owl

[steve_v]

Is your executable marked as executable? - do 'ls -l KSP.x86_64' to find out - look for 'x' in the permissions grouping at the start of the line. 'chmod +x KSP.x86_64' to make it so. *NIX uses permissions, rather than a filename extension (.exe) to denote files that can / should be executed.

Also worth mentioning, you may want to set some environment variables and/or create a launcher script - see The Linux Thread for details.

I gotta say the installer is FAR from intuitive about exactly what the partitions are doing.

Hmm, I'm fairly used to partitioning I guess. Partitions are really all the same whatever OS you're installing, the Windows installer just doesn't give you any options. I *guess* that makes it less confusing.

That said, anything that mucks with the partition table has the potential to nuke your stuff - The 'install alongside Windows' process actually involves moving _all_ your data around to make some space for the new partitions, so 'not going to change anything on this part of the disk' doesn't really make sense anyway. Proceed with caution, and a backup of anything really important

I still prefer to do this stuff manually, from a live disk - just so I know *exactly* what's going on

Edited November 23, 2014 by steve_v

[White Owl]

Troubleshooting that now... For some reason, when I change it to executable the change doesn't stick. I'm logged in as the administrator, I own the folder. (Which I personally find amusing because I recall exactly this feature being something Linux users mock Windows for.) With the command line, it wants my password. I type my password, and nothing tells me whether the executable is executable or not. I look at the properties - permissions menu and find the box that says "executable" isn't checked. I check it, close the menu, open the menu back up and it's unchecked again.

So I think I screwed up account permissions somehow, and need to fix that first.

[Kinglet]

Nothing would please me more than to see the world wake up to Linux! Windows needed to go YEARS AGO.

Blame the program developers.

[steve_v]

Administrator? is this a *user* account, or are you logged in as root? Ubuntu does funny things to be more like windows, hence the copying of *that* feature...

Who owns your KSP files, and who are you?

Mine says:

$ ls -l KSP.x86_64 
-rwxr-xr-x 1 steve users 20207816 Oct  8 05:36 KSP.x86_64

And I am:

$ whoami
steve

You shouldn't need to provide a password (I'm assuming you're using sudo from a normal user account) to change permissions on something owned by your user account, you shouldn't need to use sudo either, for that matter.

Edited November 23, 2014 by steve_v

[WinkAllKerb'']

I'm still a windows 7 fan... is there any Linux system similar to it?

hexa, binary, electric/ondulatory signals and there modulation top of each others ... all current systems are similars

[White Owl]

whoami
matt

ls -l KSP.x86_64
-rw------- 1 matt matt 20207816 Nov 23 00:49 KSP.x86_64

Reading up on Kubuntu, root, users, sudo... Looks like the root account is inaccesible by default, and lots of people warn against using it for casual everyday stuff... like getting a game to run, methinks. Everybody advises use sudo. But when I use sudo, it still asks for my password and denies permission anyway.

[steve_v]

'chmod 0755 ./KSP.x86_64' (shorthand for chmod u+rwx,g+rx,o+rx) as your normal user, no sudo.

Then check 'ls -l ./KSP.x86_64' and see if the e(x)ecute bits are set.

Your KSP install's not on a read-only filesystem or something is it? can you write to your KSP install directory as your normal user?

As long as everything is in your home directory and you have _not_ used 'sudo' to put it there, you shouldn't need root priveliges at all.

Ubuntu's fetish for sudo has always perplexed me somewhat - the first thing I do on a new install is 'sudo passwd root', set a root password & disable remote root logins if they aren't already. Then I can 'su' to become root, and _stay_ root untill I am done doing 'administrative' things. IMO it's actually more secure than the Ubuntu setup as an attacker would need to know both a user password _and_ the root password to run anything as root - provided you set a good password for root of course.

Edited November 23, 2014 by steve_v

[White Owl]

As long as everything is in your home directory...

Aha! Here is what should have been obvious from the beginning! Thank you Steve.

I just assumed I could run an executable anywhere on my computer. Assumed that if Linux can see and read it, then Linux can run it. So I placed the KSP_linux folder in the same directory where I keep all my many many installs of KSP, on a separate hard drive from this Linux directory.

I moved the game to the home directory. The game is running now.

So I suppose I'll have to make duplicate installs of my recording software too. Sure hope I can get it to place the enormous video files in a separate hard drive...

[steve_v]

It's usually something simple like that

Does indicate that there's something funny about the disk you had it on to begin with though.

Is it by chance mounted with the noexec option, or read-only?

'mount' will tell you

If it's an external drive and Ubuntu helpfully automounted it for you, I would not be at all surprised if it's mounted noexec... More Ubuntu 'features'

Edited November 23, 2014 by steve_v
Too confusing, needless detail

[White Owl]

Yep, rw,nodev,noexec,nosuid. When I was choosing options in the installer, I told it not to do anything at all with this hard drive. Maybe that was a mistake, but I was and still am scared of all the big scary warnings about erasing data. Can Linux use executables outside the home directory?

This is stuff I need to search and read up on.

[steve_v]

Of course, most of the system is outside the home directory.

The noexec mount option just tells the kernel not to try to automatically execute files on that mountpoint using the 'magic number' (or the shebang, in the case of a script) to figure out the correct interpreter.

It's a feature of the automounter, or the installer put the option in /etc/fstab.

Either way, it's silly since it doesn't actually prevent you from executing the file - you just need to call an interpreter (in this case /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 for an x64 binary) directly.

It doesn't really help security either, except in a casual first-glance kind of way, and it's *really* annoying.

Note that calling ld-linux directly is a dirty, dirty, hack and may have been fixed by now

Edited November 23, 2014 by steve_v
Don't encourage circumventing security measures, however flimsy.

[steve_v]

Have a look in /etc/fstab, remove the offending mount option.

Like most configuration on Linux, it's a fairly readable text file, but if your disks are mounted by uuid you will need to get the uuid to find the right line.

Once again, you can get this with 'mount' (or 'blkid' on the partition in /dev - eg. blkid /dev/sda1 for disk 1, partiton 1)

Also, there is a manual for pretty much everything 'man fstab', 'man mount' etc.

'man' is possibly the most usefull command on the system.

Edited November 23, 2014 by steve_v

[tg626]

I think one of the biggest hurdles for new Linux users is all the options. With windows it's largely only one choice and if you get say home and later realize you need professional you can upgrade. With Linux it's Debian unbuntu red hat mint peppermint and on and on and on. And the what desktop? Kde gnome blah blah blah.

I'd LOVE to use Linux. But I don't have the time or the energy to install and eval distro after distro to figure out which one I want.

Probably sounds ridiculous. But there you have it.

[nukeboyt]

I started out with Kubuntu and after a week, I'm now experimenting with Ubuntu. I plan on giving a lot of the flavors a try. After only an hour or so with Ubuntu, I miss the Kommand-line option on the right-click, and the ability to have the window buttons on the right. KSP is still phenomenal though.

Primary reason for switching was that I really dorked-up my xorg.conf so bad I couldn't boot.

[sal_vager]

Should have tried deleting it, usually Linux will make another

The various flavours of Ubuntu are really just desktop environments and different selections of packages, I'm pretty sure there's a package to put a link to the terminal in the right click menu, actually I think it's built in now, it just has to be enabled.

[mike9606]

Well, I have decided to try out Kubuntu as soon as I manage to find a USB flash drive that will work. I may end up using my normal Windows 7 stuff for other games and Kubuntu for KSP.

Edited November 23, 2014 by mike9606

[LordFerret]

... I still prefer to do this stuff manually, from a live disk - just so I know *exactly* what's going on

That's something I forgot to mention... you can try out nearly all of the distros via a live disk (burnt to DVD for example). I would suggest that. KNOPPIX comes to mind lol.

[LordFerret]

Something else I forgot to mention with regard to the conversation between steve_v and White Owl...

I've had this happen to me a number of times in Debian, and I always seem to forget about it. For example, opening a root terminal or Synaptic / updater (especially), the root password is required (naturally) and you're prompted for it... but I then must run/issue the command again a SECOND time because that first go around only opened the privileges allowing me access. (am I explaining that right?)

What I usually do if I'm to be tinkering with my system, is to start off opening a root terminal right from the git-go, allowing my user root privs - to remain effective for the rest of that session. Problem solved.

Also, I seem to recall that if a user is to be allowed to 'sudo', they must previously been allowed such privileges in(?) /etc/sudoers file? Bah... it's been a while, my bad. Without such permissions, that might be what was causing your chmod change to not go through.

[Nuke]

linux is definitely getting to the point where i could use it, and my skills with it are slowly catching up to my skills with windows. but what im really looking forward to is reactos, which is an open source windows clone which is meant to work natively with windows drivers and applications.

[steve_v]

I seem to recall that if a user is to be allowed to 'sudo', they must previously been allowed such privileges in(?) /etc/sudoers file? Bah... it's been a while, my bad. Without such permissions, that might be what was causing your chmod change to not go through.

All true, IIRC the Ubuntu installer gives the first user you create ALL:ALL in /etc/sudoers.

Anyone in the sudoers group also has ALL:ALL.

The problem in this case, however, was that it was on a partition mounted noexec. - something I always forget about.

[steve_v]

I've been keeping an eye on ReactOS for years now, I'm not overly optimistic TBH.

It doesn't appear to have come very far in that time - not surprising considering everything must be reverse engineered without help from MS.

Re-inventing a square wheel doesn't make much sense to me anyhow.

[LordFerret]

All true, IIRC the Ubuntu installer gives the first user you create ALL:ALL in /etc/sudoers.

Anyone in the sudoers group also has ALL:ALL.

The problem in this case, however, was that it was on a partition mounted noexec. - something I always forget about.

Another, different, issue...

In using Debian, at various times I noticed unnecessary hashing of my drive with certain software I was using (Celestia being one). After a bit of research I ran into an answer... wondering if you've ever run across the same or knew of this already. I suspect that KSP might be impacted by this.

In having to do with the way your drive(s) are mounted, using 'relatime' as a mount option. It is NOT used by default (unless they've finally changed it in current kernels). A simple edit of your static drives in /etc/fstab solves the problem. Good explanation found here: http://linux.koolsolutions.com/2009/01/30/installing-linux-on-usb-part-4-noatime-and-relatime-mount-options/

I apologize if I'm a bit out of date on this.

Ferret

[LordFerret]

I started out with Kubuntu and after a week, I'm now experimenting with Ubuntu. I plan on giving a lot of the flavors a try. After only an hour or so with Ubuntu, I miss the Kommand-line option on the right-click, and the ability to have the window buttons on the right. KSP is still phenomenal though.

Primary reason for switching was that I really dorked-up my xorg.conf so bad I couldn't boot.

Just curious... why were you meddling with your xorg.conf? Graphics drivers?