Mageia forum

Hey all, new user just installed today.

I'm relatively new to GNU/Linux, and have been using Ubuntu for about a year. After 11.04 was a huge disappointment, I tried a bunch of other distros, and decided to switch to Mageia 1 with Gnome as I am running a slower and older laptop and every distro I have tried with KDE seemed to overtax it and was very buggy. The largest factor in me sticking with GNU/Linux is my utter love of using the command line terminal. However, every distro I have used thoroughly has used the "sudo" and "apt-get" command lines, and Mageia doesn't seem to recognize it.

I was wondering if anyone could help me out with listing/linking to some of the basic commands to help me get started, or is there (fingers crossed) perhaps a way to set up Mageia to run the commands I am used to?

Thanks in advance.

Hello Bokonism101,
welcome to the forum.
You have chosen a great distro.
In Mageia type su
then it will ask for a root password
and your prompt will look like this:
[root@localhost]#
notice the # sign as root and not the $ for user.
This will stay as root until you close the terminal or type exit.
It is a good idea to close or exit after you are done with your
root commands.



There are some other things in Mageia that might be different from the 'bunto distros.
One is the repositories, check out this excellent tutorial https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=528&p=3498#p3498.
Then to install packages, check out rpmdrake, Mageia's package management tool.
You can also install packages with urpmi, from the command line. Check out this urpmi tutorial: https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=528&p=3498#p3498

Also check out the control center where you can change your system settings.
It will prompt you for a root password.

Hope this helps.

Enjoy Mageia

If you need any help, you know where to come.

is there (fingers crossed) perhaps a way to set up Mageia to run the commands I am used to?

sudo is available in Mageia but is not installed as standard and would have to be configured once installed see http://linux.die.net/man/5/sudoers

The use of sudo seems to be frowned upon in Mageia/Mandriva circles I think because of security concerns. Maybe someone who understands it better could elaborate.
What I do know is having to prefix every command with 'sudo' is a pain in the rear end when as jmjlinux586 says you can just become root user with the su command.

Tip: If you add a '-' to the end of the su command as in :

Code: Select all

su -

Then you can start up graphical applications as root user, so for example

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su -
dolphin

will start up a copy of dolphin file manager as root so you can edit system files easily.

As for apt-get and aptitude, sorry, but they are not available for Mageia. Apt-get is for .deb packages while Mageia uses the .rpm package format. Urpmi is just as easy to use as apt-get enter 'man urpmi' in a terminal to read the manual.

Thanks so much for the info guys. I'm looking forward to playing around and exploring this new Linux experience. It's good to know I'll have some support along the way. Absolutely loving Mageia so far. The same processes that took 5 minutes on my outdated laptop with Ubuntu seems to take about 30 seconds.

Hello,
Here is an "edit" to my previous post.
I posted the wrong link in the "check out this urpmi tutorial".
It should be: http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Tools/urpmi.
Sorry for the wrong link.

Hey there, the guys answered your question pretty well, but I'd like to throw in something that I learned from when I used Fedora

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su -c 'blahblahblah'

which I use somewhat in Mageia. It allows you to perform a task as root with one line entry. I'm not too advanced with the terminal though, so I don't know of any quirks with this method. :-\

kraynowitz wrote:Hey there, the guys answered your question pretty well, but I'd like to throw in something that I learned from when I used Fedora

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su -c 'blahblahblah'

which I use somewhat in Mageia. It allows you to perform a task as root with one line entry. I'm not too advanced with the terminal though, so I don't know of any quirks with this method. :-\

There are no quirks that I know of (as long as you place the ESC chars proper in your command line when needed. But actually you do not save any key strokes, you add 3 more instead

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su - [Enter]  ---> 5 (all lines including the Enter key)
geheim [Enter] ---> 7
foo [Enter] 4


and

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su -c 'foo' [Enter] ---> 12
geheim [Enter] ---> 7


PS: Pls don't take this serious, everybody is free to do it the way he wants!

Haha no offense taken at all. To each their own, that is the saying, right?

Hello,
Here is a super fast su command

jmjlinux586 wrote:Hello,
Here is a super fast su command

Ok, this is almost the same as the way we talked about in the previous 2 posts!
I went to YouTube and watched a video where somebody uses minutes to explain something which is as well explained in 1 line of text.

See! I make mistakes, too! I'm just too curious

wobo wrote:But actually you do not save any key strokes, you add 3 more instead

Code: Select all

su - [Enter]  ---> 5 (all lines including the Enter key)
geheim [Enter] ---> 7
foo [Enter] 4


and

Code: Select all

su -c 'foo' [Enter] ---> 12
geheim [Enter] ---> 7


PS: Pls don't take this serious, everybody is free to do it the way he wants!

/me uses

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sudo foo

and uses only 9 strokes at all, without a password. Don't get a stroke from that! (pun intendend)

doktor5000 wrote:/me uses

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sudo foo

and uses only 8 strokes, without a password. Don't get a stroke from that! (pun intendend)

Ah, of course that works for all commands because you have setup sudo accordingly for you on your machine.
I'm constantly using different machines, so I prefer not to get accustomed to sudo which would only be available on my own machine. But if you stick with one machine all the time it's an enhancement, sure.