I've finally installed Linux on one of my hard drives, after realising that walking all the way to uni and back to do my linux-based coursework was too much of a hassle.

Many people have told me the benefits of using Linux and, indeed, the 'horrors' of Windows.

However, I have found Linux (I'm using SuSE 10.0 with KDE) to be rather un-userfriendly to say the least.

Problem 1: Mounting. No, not a marital problem - I'm trying to access my other hard disk from Linux. I type 'mount -t ntfs /dev/sda5 /mnt/win' and it says 'only root can do that'. So I type 'su' or log on as root and repeat the same command. It works. But when I log back on again as myself, I do not have access to the mounted drive, as only the owner (root) can. I don't want to use chmod, because I'd have to do it for every file on the disk, of which there are 100,000's and I don't want to risk corrupting any data.

This whole mounting business is a real pain.

Anyway help would be much appreciated.

On Mandriva Linux this is done automatically every time a hard drive is detected upon booting.

p.s. You can chown (change user) for the whole disk with a few clicks or one command.
For example, launch Konqueror as root (su root, konqueror), then click -properties- upon the disk, go to the permission tab, change owner to your user, tick apply to all files. No problem,
or you can do that with the chown command.

type -> chown --help

Sorry, can't help more, never really used SUSE

There's a file called /etc/fstab.

Rather than mounting the drive with specific permissions as root everytime, all you have to do is type 'mount /dev/sda5'... it looks in /etc/fstab and sees that even though you aren't the root user, you have permission to mount/read/write from the device.

In KDE, you can even make a desktop icon that does this for you when you click it. Just write the proper the line in /etc/fstab (google). There may even be a configuration utility that comes with SuSE. Best to learn though.

But it's strange that that drive is not detected and mounted when booting... no?
I didn't have such problems with Mandriva, Ubuntu, Knoppix, Kanotix and a few others.
Maybe there's a simple switch on suse somewhere for that :D

p.s. Don't forget to change the owner of the drive with chown!

The drive is a SATA drive with NTFS filesystem. Next-up, my mates SATA RAID set! I got around the situation by typing "su, mount -t ntfs -o uid=1000,gid=1000,owner,users /blah /blah".

There's no way I want to damage the files on my windows partition, so options like "apply to all files" will have me sh*tting my self instantly.

Yeah, /etc/fstab looks to be the beast, just need to google up the know-how so I don't have to mount each time.

God knows how I'm going to find mountable file for my usb drive. Or anything else for that matter. Prob end up accidentally mounting the RAM.

SuSE is cold porridge as you Brits might say.

Go download kubuntu. It is the most userfriendly distro out there (which Avatar will argue :D).

Take the time to learn linux and I think you'll LOVE it. Also, I recommend buying Linux in a Nutshell or the Linux pocketbook if you want to spend less money.

Ha! I figured out fstab early on. Good ol' vi and the command prompt.

What was really bad was trying to get Linux to jive with my LinkSys WMP54G.

Since my internet was over the wireless, I had to go for a dual boot (Win98SE, Debian 3.1), and then go back and forth between the two OS's. Windows to access the internet and get help, and then back to Linux to test it.

Took me a week to finally get ndiswrapper to work correctly. (Like all things, I can do the necessary futzing with my eyes closed now that I know how. Hindsight is always 20/20...) But it was worth it. I have exorcised Windows from my computer for the forseeable future.

'Ha!' to you too, this is my second day learning Linux and I've already made a multi-threaded network server application! :)

That only shows you know how to use a text editor/compiler ;)

heh... just like Torvalds :)