Elementary questions!

T J Tulley · Post by **T J Tulley** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 1:24 pm

I've just been looking again at the release notes for the various versions of Cassandra available, and note that Cassandra 3.0 which I selected for installation is described as having Feisty innovations (but KDE isn't mentioned), while the KDE Community Edition comes with KDE and all Feisty repositories, but the earlier 2.6.20-15 kernel. I gather that Feisty Fawn was something of a landmark.

If I R-click Cassandra at bottom L of screen, and select About, I see that it is the Gnome-like mintMenu 2.3 - no mention of Cassandra!

So just what is the significance of KDE (presumably an acronym) and what part does Gnome play in the setup?

Obviously most people here are familiar with these things, but I've come in very green.

Currently I'm still failing to find the working Cassandra system in my media - it isn't where I thought I had put it. There are two aborted installations which Grub looks at and rejects, and Bianca which I can select to boot.

I'm trying to find the Bookmarks folder of Firefox - to see whether it's compatible with my old one, which is easily found in Program Files of my failed Windows system.

Yours hopefully, -

Theo Tulley.

Lolo Uila · Post by **Lolo Uila** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 2:41 pm

Linux Mint Cassandra is the underlying OS.

Linux = the Operating System
Mint = the distribution name
Cassandra = the release version of the distribution

The current release version "Cassandra" aka Linux Mint version 3.0, is based on Linux Ubuntu "Feisty Fawn" (version 7.04) with extra "Mint" packages designed to make it easier to use, and a lot more of the basic packages nearly everybody needs pre-installed (codecs, flash, etc.). Mint Menu is just one of the packages added to Ubuntu to make it Mint.

GNOME, KDE and XFCE are the desktop environments. The graphical user interface (GUI) that you see and interact with. There are others as well, but these are the ones that are available pre-installed at the moment. You can, however, install a different desktop yourself (if you are running the GNOME version, for example, you could install the XFCE desktop and choose which one you want to run at log-in).

KDE (the K Desktop Environment)
GNOME (GNu Object Model Environment)
XFCE (XForms Common Environment - although it no longer uses the XFroms toolkit and is now based on the GTK toolkit)

The 3 versions of Cassandra are all pretty similar. The main difference, of course, is which desktop environment you get with the install. There are also some differences in the software packages that come pre-installed. There are also "light" versions which have even less pre-installed to conform to distribution and copyright laws in some countries.

KDE is the most graphics and resource heavy. GNOME is a nice balance between looks and performance, XFCE is considered to be a "desktop light" that offers better performance on older systems or systems with limited resources.

Hope this helps a little.

Aloha, Tim

scorp123 · Post by **scorp123** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 3:00 pm

T J Tulley wrote: and note that Cassandra 3.0 which I selected for installation is described as having Feisty innovations (but KDE isn't mentioned)

Ubuntu "Feisty Fawn" 7.04 has GNOME as its default desktop, not KDE. The version with KDE as its default desktop would be Kubuntu 7.04 ... Nontheless you can e.g. install GNOME on Kubuntu and KDE on Ubuntu if you so wish. But the reason why KDE isn't mentioned is simply because KDE is not part of the Ubuntu default distro and Cassandra 3.0 (not to be mistaken with the "KDE Community Edition" of Mint) is GNOME-based too.

T J Tulley wrote: I gather that Feisty Fawn was something of a landmark.

It's kind of a tradition that e.g. Debian releases are named characters from the animated movie "Toy Story".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#Debian_releases
Canonical Ltd. selected similar fancy names for their Ubuntu releases (which are based on Debian).

T J Tulley wrote: If I R-click Cassandra at bottom L of screen, and select About, I see that it is the Gnome-like mintMenu 2.3 - no mention of Cassandra!

Why should Cassandra need to be mentioned everywhere?

T J Tulley wrote: So just what is the significance of KDE (presumably an acronym)

KDE and GNOME are desktop environments for UNIX-like operating systems. Some dislike GNOME and thus choose KDE, some dislike KDE and thus choose GNOME. Some dislike both of them and therefore choose XFCE or Enlightenment, or WindowMaker, or FluxBox, or something else ... De gustibus non est disputandum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kde
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xfce
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenm ... manager%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_Maker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxbox

T J Tulley wrote: Obviously most people here are familiar with these things, but I've come in very green.

Wikipedia is your friend

T J Tulley wrote: I'm trying to find the Bookmarks folder of Firefox

Bookmarks file ... not folder. It's usually called bookmarks.html on UNIX-like OS, maybe bookmarks.htm on Windows (not sure here). They are however compatible and can be exchanged and swapped at will. Just place them into the right folder. On UNIX-like OS such as Linux this would be e.g. underneath the ~/.mozilla/firefox/ folder structure in your $HOME directory.

T J Tulley · Post by **T J Tulley** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 3:02 pm

Many thanks, Lolo Ulla, for a clear and patient explanation. I probably ought to have looked at the Wiki.

I have a bad habit of asking too many questions at once - apologies.

With many thanks,

Yours sincerely, -

Theo Tulley.

T J Tulley · Post by **T J Tulley** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 4:00 pm

Yet again, many thanks Scorp123 - you have advised me before to look in $home but I can't see anything like it there.

I presume this means theo's Home on the desktop? My Username is theo - Cassandra insists on lower case.

Double-click on that folder reveals:
Desktop - 8 items - folder; [incomplete - there are actually 17 items]
Documents - 1 item - folder;
Downloads - 11 items - folder;
Musics, Pictures, Projects, Videos, vmware, all folders with 0 items, and Templates - 1 item - folder.

None of the items in these folders is related to Firefox, except that one of those in Desktop is a link to that program (here called a desktop configuration file). I put it there, as indeed I did most of the items listed above.

If I open Computer on the desktop, it includes a desktop configuration file called Filesystem, which is evidently Cassandra. Annoyingly, it doesn't reveal where it resides. Properties/Link shows: file:/// which isn't much help!

If I double-click on Filesystem, it shows the normal array of Ubuntu folders including home, which has 1 item - theo - which opens to be precisely the same as theo's Home on the desktop, described above. So - where is Bookmarks - and all the other things which in Windows I would find in Program Files?

Presumably some of them are in places like bin, sbin, etc, which are described in one of the references I've read - but none with informative names showing which programs they belong to.

Does this give you any further insight to the situation here?

With many thanks,

Yours still hopefully, -

Theo Tulley.

tucker4christ · Post by **tucker4christ** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 4:18 pm

All you need to do is unhide your hidden files and folders

Your home folder is the name of your login

Just simply hit ctrl h when viewing a folder and it will reveal all the hidden files and folders.

hidden folders always have a . in front of it.

scorp123 · Post by **scorp123** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 4:33 pm

Please consider using the terminal for verifying such stuff. You can't trust GUI tools.

Code: Select all

ls -al

Code: Select all

find . -name bookmarks.html -ls

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