Ubuntu File Manager like XP's Windows Explorer?

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JAB Creations
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Re: Ubuntu File Manager like XP's Windows Explorer?

Post by JAB Creations »

Steve Wilkos? Either Alex is crying, LHAO or both by now. :lol: (Sorry Alex)

I'm doing the big update for Kubuntu right now (package fixes or whatever) that popped up and running everything on top of 32 bit XP each OS in VirtualBox gets 768MB which should be enough though I'll have to wait a few minutes to switch back over to Ubuntu if I don't want to crash anything. I don't run page files/virtual memory and even killed off the swap partitions and things run so much faster! When I finally do move to a Linux distro it'll be a 64-bit version (can't do 64 bit on top of a 32bit OS) so I'll have access to all 4GB of memory. They're slowly getting 4GB sticks out for DDR3 though they're still $200 a piece. I was happy with 2GB of RAM just a few short years ago before I started emulating operating systems.

Oh hey while typing all of that it finished...let's see here...Ubuntu...

Hey it's there! It wasn't intuitive though I did find the tree structure in a small menu nested in that same area.

Is there a way to customize the main menu bar so I can use the cut, copy, paste, and delete buttons? Yes I know about and constantly use keyboard shortcuts however by also having multiple ways of doing the same thing I minimize thought wasted upon lower level constructs of work so I can concentrate my concentration on the task at hand. I was able to set th icons to have text labels below on the previous install before it self-imploded though I remember that the options were scattered in some other menu for some strange reason.
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Re: Ubuntu File Manager like XP's Windows Explorer?

Post by VladSun »

JAB Creations wrote:I don't run page files/virtual memory and even killed off the swap partitions and things run so much faster!
You should know - it's NOT Windows! Do not try to play the same trick and tips you used to do in Windows ...
Linux will always try to use ALL of the memory available. Swap is a must - the recommended swap disk size is 2x(size of RAM). When Linux OS finds out it's short of memory it KILLs programs in order to free some ....
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Re: Ubuntu File Manager like XP's Windows Explorer?

Post by JAB Creations »

An OS does what you tell it to right? So if I'm not using something I will unload it from the memory. If I don't have enough memory I will buy more or since I'm emulating Linux I will increase the memory available to it though from the system monitors I've seen it's hardly using like a fifth of the memory.

Hard drives are not memory devices. You load something from the hard drove to the memory if it's to be used. If it's not to be used then it doesn't belong in the memory but there also is absolutely no sense of making copies of something on the hard drive when it already exists on the hard drive. Since the hard drive is the slowest component of a computer (unless you want to get overly specific and include floppy drives) it's important to only have it do what it's supposed to do.

Is Linux only designed to be used on crappy computers? There must be others who are running it with decent hardware I presume?

Any way can any one help me out with the administrative privileges in Kubuntu please?
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Re: Ubuntu File Manager like XP's Windows Explorer?

Post by VladSun »

JAB Creations wrote:An OS does what you tell it to right?
No - you are an END USER. You are (neither am I) not experienced enough to be in better position than the developers who have written the OS, right ?!? ;)
JAB Creations wrote:If I don't have enough memory I will buy more or since I'm emulating Linux I will increase the memory available to it though from the system monitors I've seen it's hardly using like a fifth of the memory.
You don't get it - Linux WILL USE ALL of the memory available if it needs it. It will alway prefer to use RAM instead of HDD.
RAM access time is in nanoseconds; hard disk access time is in milliseconds.
Now you tell me which is better to use ;)
JAB Creations wrote:Hard drives are not memory devices.
You are wrong - swap files, page file etc.
JAB Creations wrote:You load something from the hard drove to the memory if it's to be used. If it's not to be used then it doesn't belong in the memory but there also is absolutely no sense of making copies of something on the hard drive when it already exists on the hard drive.
You are wrong - it's not on you hard drive. Imagine a PHP script loaded in the memory - while, obviously it's not the same as it is on the HDD (because an interpreter has converted it to a bytecode), it have loaded SESSION variables, local variables, global variables and every single piece of data that has nothing to do with the PHP script HDD file!!!
JAB Creations wrote:Since the hard drive is the slowest component of a computer (unless you want to get overly specific and include floppy drives) it's important to only have it do what it's supposed to do.
Yes, but RAM is 50$ a giga, while HDD is 100$ a tera ;)
JAB Creations wrote:Is Linux only designed to be used on crappy computers? There must be others who are running it with decent hardware I presume?

What do you mean by "crappy computers"? Have you ever compiled a C program on a 20Mhz PC for half an hour? Is it a crappy PC?
WTH makes you think "Linux is only designed to be used on crappy computers"??? Google it! http://www.google.bg/search?client=oper ... 8&oe=utf-8
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Re: Ubuntu File Manager like XP's Windows Explorer?

Post by JAB Creations »

The swap is still on the same psychical device, the hard drive. Therefore it is still attempting to make copies of something on the slowest possible device in the necessary chain of load and execute.

If I run out of memory it will crash right? GOOD! Then I'll know I need more memory!

I was making a point of saying that Linux should have no problems with 4GB of memory available...and while emulating it (and thus not using as a full-fledged production environment) that 768MB (or more if I need) should be plenty.

...and no, Linux does not suck like Vista. It has not attempted to treat my RAM as a RAM drive. Vista will try to dump as much in to the RAM as possible though Kubuntu and Ubuntu don't appear to be doing that by a long shot.

So Linux seems to be much more performance oriented then you're giving it credit for. :P

Oh and DDR3 costs roughly $28+ for a 1GB stick of DDR3-1333 which even I can afford to buy more RAM if need be.

When I was playing World of Warcraft years ago disabling virtual memory fixed issues with lag dramatically especially in Iron Forge where there would be hundreds of people standing around I guess leaving their computer and WOW on in place of buying a fish tank. :lol: But I've never had any issues with disabling swap/page/virtual memory or whatever you want to call it.

Yes I'm an end user and the OS does what I tell it to do. If I'm not using something I'll remove it from memory by exiting it myself. :wink:

I found where I had to go to get the text labels back on the icons for the Ubuntu "Explorer"...what is it called btw? Now how do I customize what icons are there?
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Re: Ubuntu File Manager like XP's Windows Explorer?

Post by VladSun »

Jab ... Tuning swap file (it can be a separate physical device though - even a RAM disk ;) ) is NOT the only thing you can tune in a Linux OS.
Take a look at the /proc directory for example.
Google for
1) http://www.google.bg/search?hl=bg&clien ... ss&spell=1
2) http://www.google.bg/search?hl=bg&clien ... ty&spell=1
3) http://www.google.bg/search?client=oper ... 8&oe=utf-8

There are many things to tune on a Linux system.

PS: Going out of memory doesn't crash the system - it will kill the most "unused" process ... It won't tell you the famous "system out of memory. Try to close some applications." Going out of memory means that something is really crashed - e.g. you don't have a swap partition ;)
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Re: Ubuntu File Manager like XP's Windows Explorer?

Post by Benjamin »

This is a moot point. There really isn't a lot that needs to be done to a clean installation of linux to "performance tune" it. On the other hand, tuning a webserver is an entirely different game.

If you really want to maximize every signal cpu cycle don't use the GUI and use the system from a terminal.

DO NOT disable swap. The kernel is intelligent enough to know when it needs to use the swap partition and you will not have a stable system without one, regardless of the amount of RAM you have.

JAB, you are approaching Linux from what you have learned from Windows. Linux and Windows are two different things. You don't need to spend hour after hour after hour getting the OS to work correctly. It already does.
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Re: Ubuntu File Manager like XP's Windows Explorer?

Post by VladSun »

astions++
VladSun wrote:There are many things to tune on a Linux system.
should be read as
VladSun wrote:There are many things that may be tune on a Linux system.
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Re: Ubuntu File Manager like XP's Windows Explorer?

Post by JAB Creations »

astions wrote:JAB, you are approaching Linux from what you have learned from Windows.
Everyone says not to disable the swap file on XP so that makes me right. :lol: JK, but I've had absolutely no issues and I'm sure I can repartition the drive later or use another device to create a swap later any way right?

Can any one please tell me how to set administrative privileges in Kubuntu so I can install VirtualBox's Guest Editions? I tried authenticating via the su command in the terminal and it still didn't like it. :?
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Re: Ubuntu File Manager like XP's Windows Explorer?

Post by VladSun »

Code: Select all

sudo su
?
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Re: Ubuntu File Manager like XP's Windows Explorer?

Post by JAB Creations »

Sweet! That worked! I restarted Kubuntu and I'm now at 1360x768 which is way better then 800x600.

I'm going to take Konqueror for a spin and hopefully it they've made vast improvements with it. There are a few things I've already fixed with Firefox on Ubuntu and I can't cross test my stuff unless I'm at a decent resolution especially since all my layouts are dynamic (stretching regardless of resolution).

Plus WebKit forked from KHTML so one way or another (base OS or emulated) I'll need to run a KDE based OS (or have it installed along Gnome though I'm not that far along just yet heh) to test KHTML. I love cross-testing rendering engines! :mrgreen: I hope they've added some CSS3 properties...that's the best part of web design really. :mrgreen:
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Re: Ubuntu File Manager like XP's Windows Explorer?

Post by Benjamin »

The first time your system goes down because of the lack of a swap partition will be your last, because it WILL happen when you are doing something important.
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Re: Ubuntu File Manager like XP's Windows Explorer?

Post by JAB Creations »

I'm tempted to install another copy of Kubuntu just to test that theory out. :P Actually I think I will and then set the memory to like 192MB and load Firefox up with tons of tabs. A well designed OS will crash the application requesting the memory and give an out-of-memory error message. I wonder what Kubuntu will do? :mrgreen:
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Re: Ubuntu File Manager like XP's Windows Explorer?

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So I installed another copy of Kubuntu and only gave it 256MB of RAM (like what PC manufacturers expect an OS and Firefox to run off of somehow). It ran slow after loading about a dozen or more tabs in Konqueror. I couldn't find any kind of memory/CPU monitor though when I returned I guess it crashed and rebooted to some sort of terminal login screen. I logged in and I was still at the terminal...okay? I rebooted the the GUI/KDE returned. I'd rather do this with a monitor so I know it was actually RAM related. Any way I'm honestly not very impressed that using all the memory crashed the entire OS as that's my initial impression. The OS should have killed the app to free up memory instead of crashing altogether.

Any way I have 4GB of RAM and a couple open slots for more if I ever really needed any more so when I finally switch to Linux I don't think I'll have many issues with RAM. In fact XP uses very little memory until you start actually trying to use it (550MB on startup for me after everything is loaded and it's sitting there waiting for me) however it uses roughly 100MB if you don't add anything so testing IE in the future won't be so taxing especially since I'll use a 64 bit version where I won't be constrained by the x86's 32 bit memory issue.
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Re: Ubuntu File Manager like XP's Windows Explorer?

Post by Benjamin »

JAB Creations wrote:In fact XP uses very little memory until you start actually trying to use it
That's funny. My car doesn't use much gas till I actually drive it :)

http://www.linux.com/news/software/appl ... swap-space
http://kerneltrap.org/node/3202
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