Excuse me for being ignorant, but I'm completely new to this Linux stuff. I have Ubuntu and XP dual-booted on one drive right now, and while I'm surprised at how nice Ubuntu is in terms of functionality, I'm also frustrated with it because I don't have a real foundation to grasp it all, and many things seem overly complicated.
For example, I would like to access my hda1 so I can share with my fat32 partition, but it tells me I don't have permissions. So I right click to grant permissions and it's greyed out. Apparently I need to be root to access it, but when I try to log in as root through the startup login screen it says I can't change users through it. Why in God's name can't I?! Why can't I access my hard-drive partitions? These are basic things which for some reason aren't common sense on this os.
Some more questions:
How do I apply folder settings properties to ALL folders?
Is there a way to configure mouse buttons through the OS, or is this driver related?
I downloaded a tar file of firefox 1.5 off the main site. I want to install it as I would with Windows (double click setup.exe or the like, then select where to install it) but I don't think I can. I understand you're supposed to use apt-get (or senap {sp}) but I feel like I don't have control. I don't even know where these programs I'm downloading are being installed!
I can proabably ask questions all day but I'll leave it at that.
Full Version: Ubuntu: Really Frustrated.
Ubuntu locks you out from actually becoming root, so you can't ever log in as root. You can elevate your privilages though, but in that situation I don't know how to do it. Ubuntu is really weird in how it tries to shiel the user from the system. I could tell you exactly how to edit the config files to allow you access to your fat32 drive but my experience with Ubuntu is that editing the config files yourself causes major problems.
Try this though. Open up a terminal and run the command sudo mount /dev/hda1 and put in your user password when it prompts you for a password. That should mount the drive to default location.
Other Questions:
What settings are you talking about? And how are you applying them now? From the command line -R works with any of the mods to make it recursive, I don't know from the GUI but I would only guess there is a check box for it somewhere.
Tar files (.tar, .tar.gz .tar.bz) are generally source code. You don't "install it" in the same way you to with windows. You need to run a series of commands to compile the program. However, since you are using Ubuntu you don't need to use source files for most programs.
Ubuntu uses a binary package system to install programs. There is a new GUI front end in the latest builds of Ubuntu that I know nothing about. From the command line though, you use the apt-get and apt-cache function. To learn more about these run man apt-get and man apt-cache but here is a quick ounce over.
To search for a program you want to install run sudo apt-cache search firefox this will return a list of packages with the word "firefox" in the title, scroll though untill you see the one you want, in this case its called "mozilla-firefox"
Then you can run sudo apt-get install mozilla-firefox and that will install firefox to your system. You should be able to do all this with the GUI too, but I don't have any experience with it. I am sure somebody with more Ubuntu experience can give you some more specific answers but I thought I would just throw up some stuff for you quick.
Try this though. Open up a terminal and run the command sudo mount /dev/hda1 and put in your user password when it prompts you for a password. That should mount the drive to default location.
Other Questions:
What settings are you talking about? And how are you applying them now? From the command line -R works with any of the mods to make it recursive, I don't know from the GUI but I would only guess there is a check box for it somewhere.
Tar files (.tar, .tar.gz .tar.bz) are generally source code. You don't "install it" in the same way you to with windows. You need to run a series of commands to compile the program. However, since you are using Ubuntu you don't need to use source files for most programs.
Ubuntu uses a binary package system to install programs. There is a new GUI front end in the latest builds of Ubuntu that I know nothing about. From the command line though, you use the apt-get and apt-cache function. To learn more about these run man apt-get and man apt-cache but here is a quick ounce over.
To search for a program you want to install run sudo apt-cache search firefox this will return a list of packages with the word "firefox" in the title, scroll though untill you see the one you want, in this case its called "mozilla-firefox"
Then you can run sudo apt-get install mozilla-firefox and that will install firefox to your system. You should be able to do all this with the GUI too, but I don't have any experience with it. I am sure somebody with more Ubuntu experience can give you some more specific answers but I thought I would just throw up some stuff for you quick.
Hi i have recently intalled ubuntu and i hate it for the same reason, infact i want to kick it in the shin with boots if i could 
it keeps saying crap like "permission denied" even though i have granted my user full permission to everything. is there a distro that is like knoppix, but installable? i just seriusly hate the fact you cant log in as superuser rrrrrg (stupid ubuntu!!!!) thank you 
for example of a permission denied thing is, i was trying to install a new media player and i followed the instructions using ./configure, make, make install. and when i used ""make" it got nearly to the end and said "error permission denied" thank you
it keeps saying crap like "permission denied" even though i have granted my user full permission to everything. is there a distro that is like knoppix, but installable? i just seriusly hate the fact you cant log in as superuser rrrrrg (stupid ubuntu!!!!) thank you for example of a permission denied thing is, i was trying to install a new media player and i followed the instructions using ./configure, make, make install. and when i used ""make" it got nearly to the end and said "error permission denied" thank you
Never used Knoppix - But Mandriva rocks. (Perhaps the frequency of my saying that reflects my belief that Mandriva is good. I don't think i'm trying to convince myself of the fact...)
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