Linux Magazine / July 1999 / TECH SUPPORT

Top Five Tech Support Questions

 

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Welcome back to my Top Five Tech Support Questions for Linux. Many thanks to everyone who submitted questions for this issue. New inquiries can be sent to . com. Whoever has the toughest question -- the stumper -- gets a mug!

I was dismayed to boot Linux for the first time and be greeted by a full-screen command line. What's this about Linux "window managers"?

Window managers are desktop utilities running on top of your X Windows System server. Basically, they do just what their name implies -- manage windows for running applications and console sessions. They also provide their own menuing, startup functions, and graphical themes. I'll discuss one popular window manager -- WindowMaker -- as an example of what the whole class can do.

There are a few ways you can get WindowMaker. You can install a recent RPM file for your distribution or visit http//www.windowmaker.org and get the compressed file. If you have never installed WindowMaker before, you will also need the "libPropList" library. The version of WindowMaker which comes on installation CDs may not be the most recent so you may want to download the sources and try your hand at compiling them.

Now, either do anrpm -Uvh for each RPM file or unpack each tarball archive into its own directory and run theconfigure,make, andmake install scripts. This will create both a WindowMaker configuration and install the libs that WindowMaker needs. Again, be sure to build the "libPropList" library first, since WindowMaker looks for this library when it runs.

Next, go to the directory of the user for whom you want to install WindowMaker and typewmaker.inst. This will create a default WindowMaker directory structure and make it ready for use. WindowMaker will offer to edit your.xinitrc file and insert a command to start itself. You can either agree or edit the file yourself by addingexec wmaker as the very last line. If your distribution includes a line which loads its own default window manager application, you can comment that line out with a hash mark and addexec wmaker below it.

Now, simply typestartx and you should see WindowMaker running.

WindowMaker's configuration tools give you control over your entire windowed environment. The tools can be found in the upper right corner of the screen under the WindowMaker dock icon. You are looking for the little dock icon with the red line going through it. This is the overall system configuration tool.

You can now right click on the desktop to define wallpaper, themes, and to save your new options. Additionally, you can download themes and "dock applications" -- tiny applets which run in the docker on the right side of your screen. Theme files can be stored either in the system configuration file area for WindowMaker or in your home directory beneath~/ GNUSTEP/Library/WindowMaker. Note that if you place themes in your home directory, they will be unavailable to other users. The stored themes appear as archive files, which you must decompress before either issuing the commandtouch* in the themes directory or simply restarting WindowMaker.

I already have NT Workstation 4.0 installed in its own partition and I would like to add Linux. Is this possible?

Not only is this possible, it's easier than it sounds. I've done it myself a few times. I'll boil down a few pertinent ideas from the mini NT/Linux Howto.

First, I assume that you have NT Workstation installed on a primary NTFS partition as the C drive, and that NT is booting using the NT boot loader without problems. Note that there is some misconception about this approach; some say that booting Linux with NT boot loader will not work with NTFS partitions present on the disk. Au contraire! Dual boot will work quite well with NTFS.

My second assumption is that you have an available hard disk, or at least a free partition, for installing Linux. You should be familiar with how Linux identifies your particular hardware. In Linux, your first IDE hard disk is called/dev/hda, the second is/dev/hdb, etc. Partitions within each disk are given a number.

Now, just follow the rather detailed directions in the NT + LILO HOWTO athttp//www.nbs.at/linux/mini/ Linux+NT-Loader-1.html. Be sure you understand all the concepts in the HOWTO before trying this at home, folks! I am not responsible if you lose the ability to boot NT, although that may not be entirely a bad thing!