Today we embark on the grand adventure of getting Firefox up and running...
startx, and...
Sweetness. It happily starts TWM. It's pathetically basic, but it's not the terminal, so that's a success!
I even have a functional mouse. What I *don't* have, though, is my Dvorak keyboard. This is really annoying. The terminal is set for Dvorak -- why is the graphical display using QWERTY? Dvorak still works in the terminal. TWM just doesn't know about it.
Okay, where's xorg.conf?
slocate xorg.conf
It replied: Could not find user database '/var/lib/slocate.db': no such file or directory.
Okay, make me a directory.
su -c updatedb (This takes a minute or so)
slocate xorg.conf
No such. Okay...
su -c xorgsetup
It replied: Only root can configure X
I thought I was root. Fine.
su xorgsetup
It replied: Only root can configure X
This is too weird.
logout
It replied: bash: logout: not login shell: use 'exit'
This might explain something.
exit
exit
(Login as root)
xorgconfig
logout
(Login as regular user)
startx
That broke it. My monitor says "Attention: Input Not Supported" Well, maybe there are drivers I can install.
This probably requires the Internet. No Firefox yet, but maybe I can get Lynx up.su -c "ifconfig -a" shows that my ethernet card is in good shape. So far, so good.
Let's see if it can see Google.
ping -c 1 www.google.com (The -c means count, so 'ping Google once' is what this one means. Leave off the -c and ping just continues forever. It sucks. Ctrl-z will get back to a prompt, but ping will still be harassing someone in the background until the poor thing is rebooted.)
It replies: unknown host www.google.com.
Perhaps DNS isn't working.
I used my XP computer to ping Google (open the command window, type ping www.google.com) and it said the ip address is 74.125.19.104 so...
ping -c 1 74.125.19.104
Worked just fine. 0% packet loss is a good thing, here.
Well, what about a reboot?
su -c reboot
Log back in and...
ping -c 1 www.google.com
success!
lynx
gets me on the internet. It's a web browser without pictures. I know, some of you have never even heard of such a thing. But it should be able to download the file I need.
I used my Windows computer to dig through NVidia's website and found that they have 32-bit and 64-bit Linux graphics drivers for my hardware. NVidia rocks!
The file downloaded to my home directory.
ls
It replies: NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-185.18.36-pkg2.run
su -c "sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-185.18.36-pkg2.run"
And...
It replies: This .run file is intended for the Linux-x86_64 platform, but you appear to be running on Linux-x86. Aborting installation.
Good to know. Wonder how you do get 64 to install. But a little more Googling leads me to believe I might be better off with 32 just on the grounds of ease of finding applications. Back to nvidia for another download, and then...
su -c "sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-185.18.36-pkg2.run"
Follow the menus, and everything seems happy.
startx
and...
It even looks better than it did. Beautiful. But Dvorak?
Rats. No Dvorak.
Let's try telling the HAL to use Dvorak...
su -c "cp /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-keymap.fdi /etc/hal/fdi/policy/"
su -c "vi /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-keymap.fdi"
Okay, in vi, now, change
<merge key="input.xkb.layout" type="string">us</merge>
to
<merge key="input.xkb.layout" type="string">us(dvorak)</merge>
Save, and
su -c reboot
Login and
startx
Joy! We have Dvorak in TWM. No quick way to switch to QWERTY this way, and you know, I don't care right now. Maybe some other time.
Still in TWM, in the bash window, type firefox
Beyond sweet! I have Dvorak in TWM, and Firefox is up and running!!! I love it!
2 comments:
To be fair, TWM was dreamt up long before anyone (or at least, anyone using Unix) thought that one would want to "point and click" to change keyboard layouts. It's much easier in environments like GNOME, KDE, and XFCE, which were built to bring the ease of use of systems like Windows, the Mac and the Common Desktop Environment (the later, standardised desktop for Unix) to Linux users.
Yes, I imagine that TWM probably can be used for some barely-not-console purposes, but it's just too awkward to use for a modern GUI. I moved on to blackbox, and then to fluxbox when I got annoyed with trying to implement keybindings in blackbox.
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