Guida per i nuovi utenti

Da MEPIS Documentation Wiki.

Benvenuti in Mepis e nel mondo di Linux. Provando il LiveCD di Mepis comincerai una migliore esperienza al computer.

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Contents 1 Quale versione? 2 Verifica dell'md5sum 2.1 Md5sum: Windows 2.2 Md5sum: Linux 2.3 Md5sum: Mac 3 Masterizzare la distribuzione su un CD 4 Primo avvio 4.1 Grub 4.2 Login manager: kdm 4.3 Esplorando la LiveCD 5 Install Mepis 5.1 Mepis in italiano 6 Using MEPIS 6.1 Connecting to Internet 6.2 Configuring KDE 6.2.1 Kicker Panel (Taskbar Configuration) 6.2.2 Editing the Menu 6.2.3 Editing the toolbar 6.2.4 Setting a backgroud 6.2.5 Setting A Theme 6.2.6 Changing the fonts 6.3 Playing music 6.4 Watching videos 6.5 Browsing the internet 6.6 Kmail (an alternative to outlook) 6.7 Chat Programs 6.7.1 AIM/MSN/Yahoo/Jabber/GTalk/etc... 6.7.2 IRC 6.8 Installing and upgrading new programs

Quale versione?

Se sei un nuovo utente sarebbe una buona idea quella di prendere l'ultima versione stabile.

Verifica dell'md5sum

Quando il download dell'immagine iso del LiveCD e' conclusa, controlla, prima della masterizzazione, che tu abbia il file .md5sum scaricato dallo stessa directory del file .iso e controlla la corrispondenza tra i due file. Questo serve ad evitare di masterizzare copie che nel download sono risultate corrotte! Se così fosse riscarica la iso.

Md5sum: Windows

Gli utenti MS Windows devono scaricare un tool apposta: md5summer e a questo punto

1. Scarica selfextracting exe. Eseguilo e verranno estratti due file nella stessa directory: md5summer.exe e md5summer.md5
2. Esegui md5summer.exe, rispondi "yes" per associare l'estensione "md5" all'md5summer
3. Ora puoi scegliere di fare doppio clic sul file .md5 ed il programma lo testera' in automatico, oppure dall'md5summer puoi selezionare come "root folder" la cartella dove hai scaricato i files .md5 e .iso e quindi scegliere "verify sums" selezionando il .md5 che vuoi analizzare.

Md5sum: Linux

Gli utenti linux devono aprire una console/terminale ed entrare nella cartella dove hanno scaricato i files col comando cd /percorso/cartella e dare il seguente comando:

• md5sum -c filename.md5sum

Assicurandosi di sostituire a filename l'esatto file.

Md5sum: Mac

Gli utenti Mac devono aprire una console/terminale ed entrare nella cartella dove hanno scaricato i files col comando cd /percorso/cartella e dare il seguente comando:

• md5 -c filename.md5sum

Assicurandosi di sostituire a filename l'esatto file.

Masterizzare la distribuzione su un CD

E' necessario utilizzare un CD (ovviamente vuoto) da 700MB.

• Se usi Windows:

1. Download Cheetah CD Burner
2. Installa il programma.
3. Inserisci un CD vuoto da 700MB nel tuo masterizzatore. Lancia Cheetah CD Burner. In Cheetah CD Burner clicca Start e seleziona Burn ISO File.

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Puoi masterizzare la ISO anche senza Cheetah CD Burner, a patto che tu abbia un'altro programma di masterizzazione, usando la funzione "Masterizza file immagine" del tuo software di masterizzazione.

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• Se usi Linux: Lancia K3B

1. Go to Tools -> Burn CD Image -> Select the image.
2. It is advisable to check "Verify written data" check-box. Click Start.

• Using Mac : make sure you burn is as a CD Image (ISO) not as a data CD.

Primo avvio

Grub

La prima schermata che vedrai è la schermata di selezione del kernel. Essa è meglio conosciuta come Grub, e presenta tre opzioni:

• Kernel 2.6
• Kernel 2.4
• Kernel 2.4 Failsafe

N.B.: Il kernel 2.6 è quello raccomandato. Se non funziona usare quello immediatamente sotto.

Un errore comune è quello di vedere una finestra nera con scritto grub>. Se ottieni questo errore leggi la guida Avviare Mepis CD su computer che non lo supportano.

Login manager: kdm

Ura vedrai una schermata nera con testo bianco, seguita da una schermata colorata dove immettere nome utente e password. Questa schermata è nota come KDM ovvero K Desktop Manager

Troverai tre utenti:

• root
• onthego
• demo

root è l'utente amministratore ed ha tutti i poteri sul sistema. NON USATELO COME UTENTE ABITUALE O POTRESTE CREARE DANNI AL SISTEMA. Infatti root, avendo privilegi illimitati sui files, può distruggere o arrecare danni al sistema operativo che possono portare alla reinstallazione. Usatelo solo se l'utente non funziona per ripararlo, eccetera.
demo è l'utente che useremo. La sua password è demo, come il nome utente. Appena entrati nel sistema lo esploreremo.

N.B.:Se vedete scritto MEPIS Login: in bianco su sfondo nero la tua scheda video non è stata configurata correttamente all'avvio. Fate un post su uno dei nostri forum dicendo che xserver non è partito e dicendo che scheda grafica hai. Se non lo sai loggati con username:root e password:root e digita lspci | grep VGA e dicci sui forum le informazioni che escono.

Esplorando la LiveCD

Se non hai mai provato una LiveCD resterai sorpreso: non ti aspettano installazioni criptiche a linea di comando, ma un'ambiente totalmente grafico, come fosse già installato, poichè Mepis si è memorizzato sulla RAM. Puoi andare su internet, vedere la posta, chattare... E se ti piace, puoi installarlo sul disco fisso, e non è più difficile dell'installazione di un programma.

N-B.: Siccome la LiveCD si è caricata sulla ram, sarà un po' lentuccia. Si bloccherà spesso per 10-30 secondi. Ciò non vuol dire che dopo l'installazione sarà lenta in ugual modo poichè dall'hard disk sarà più veloce.

Once you've logged in and the desktop has loaded, it's time to look around a bit. Mepis uses the KDE desktop environment, so you'll probably notice a lot of programs begin with the letter "K" as well as references here and there to KDE. You'll also notice a large icon in the lower left-hand side of the screen with a "K" on it; this is the KDE menu, which is more or less analogous to the windows "start menu". Click on it to check out some of the software installed on the CD.

Install Mepis

In Windows:

1. Make sure you don't have anything on the disk that you might regret losing. Back up all important data!
2. Defragment the disk if you plan to resize the disk.

Installing Mepis:

1. Plug in and turn on all the hardware that you plan to use with MEPIS.
2. Boot up the MEPIS Live CD ( the computer should be set up to try to boot first from the CD).
3. Resolution should be autodetected, if you have problems or you want a specific resolution select the desired resolution and kernel from the GRUB menu. Example: Press F3 to choose resolution 1280x1024.
4. When you get the log in dialog use "root" for user name and "root" for password.
5. Click on "INSTALL ME" icon in the desktop.
6. Select Install MEPIS on Hard Drive and click "Next".
7. Choose "auto install using the entire disk" if you have an empty disk or you want to remove everything you have on that disk, if you choose this option skip the next steps to the GRUB installation, otherwise choose: "custom partitioning".
8. If you have a partition free for MEPIS go to the next step, otherwise repartition your hard drive
9. Click "Next" and select the partition for / (root) (if you created only one partition it should be already selected).
10. Chose the filesystem type (ext3 or ReiserFS) and click "Next". Respond "Yes" to format the partition.
11. .... get a coffee and relax.... depending on your system the installation should take between 15 and 45 minutes.
12. When that installation step is over you will be prompted with a dialog to install GRUB (Linux boot loader) choose to install GRUB on MBR (master boot record) of the system boot disk. (Alternative boot methods).
13. Choose the localized defaults. Example: Keyboard "us", Locale: "en_US". Click "Next". Confirm the GRUB installation.
14. Choose the username and password and the root password. Click "Next".
15. Choose computer name, domain, and workgroup. If you plan to network your MEPIS computer its domain and workgroup have to match your Windows machine's, otherwise it is not important what name you choose (cannot be left blank). Computer name should be unique on the network. Unselect "Samba server for MS networking" if you don't plan to network your computer with Windows computers. Click "Next".
16. Choose the services you need to start each time you bootup MEPIS. It's a good idea to leave Guarddog Firewall service on. Click "Next".
17. Select additional language support that you need. Click "Next"
18. That's it! Congratulations!

Mepis in italiano

Ora Mepis è in inglese, ma come fare per tradurla in italiano? Avviate un terminale (konsole), digitate su e vi chiederà la password di root. Dopo averla digitata e dato invio, digitate apt-get install kde-i18n-it e aspettate. Poi digitate kcontrol e andate in Regional and Accessibility, Country/Region and Language e poi Add language > Other > Italian. Quindi cliccate su Inglese Us e poi su Rimuovi lingua. Quindi fate applica, chiudete, riavviate KDE ed eccolo in italiano!

Using MEPIS

Connecting to Internet

• Internet connection should work automatically in most of the cases if your computer is connected with a Ethernet card to a network that has access to Internet.
• Otherwise, start oscenter, type in the root password when prompted, and click on "network interfaces" . There you should be able to configure your network device(s). You can find more information about networking here
• If you want to establish a modem connection then start Kppp

Configuring KDE

Kicker Panel (Taskbar Configuration)

To change the appearance of your Kicker Panel you can either:

• Right click the "K" button at the left hand end of the kicker panel and follow the "Panel Menu" heading.
• Or right click in a clear area of the kicker panel and follow the menu headings.
• Install, Remove & Configuring Kicker Panel Applets:

To add or remove an applet (eg; weather, fish), follow the "Remove from Panel" > "Applet" menus

To set your location in the weather applet

Editing the Menu

When you install a package it usually but not always puts an entry in K Menu. You can add the package by editing Kmenu using the Menu Editor.

• Start Menu Editor by clicking K Menu > Settings > Menu Editor.
• Click File > New Item
• Enter a name for the application and click OK.
• On the right side fill in the appropriate information, in particular fill in the command box. Applications are usually installed in /usr/bin, so navigate to that folder using the open file dialog button next to the command box, and find the program.
• You can also change the icon by clicking the icon square.
• Once added you can move the application in the list by dragging and dropping.
• Save the configuration.

Editing the toolbar

Setting a backgroud

Right click on an empty area of your desktop and select 'Configure Desktop...'

The desktop configuration module allows you to control all aspects of your destop:

• Background image/colour/pattern/slide show or even display web page/content (click 'Advanced' to enable this)
• Behaviour - which icons to display, tooltips to show
• Number of desktops to use - up to 20 can be configured!
• Screensaver selection and configuration
• Display - it is possible to change the screen resolution and frequency here - but use this with care as it may be possible to select a setting your hardware cannot display - and if you have 'Apply settings on KDE startup' checked - will make it very difficult to recover from. Monitor power control (you need to have option DPMS enabled in your X-config file in: /etc/X11/ , to enable power down), gamma and colour balance can also be adjusted here.

A similar desktop configuration module can be found in the KDE Control Centre (from the command line: kcontrol)

Setting A Theme

To change the appearance of your KDE destop manager you can either:

• Changing the look yourself by:

Opening the KDE Control Centre (from the command line: kcontrol) and in 'Appearance & Themes' section - choose an aspect you would like to change - have a look around this section to familiarize youself with the possible choices and available options. You can change almost every aspect of KDE's appearance here - from desktop background to menu transparency to widget style. Remeber to click 'Apply' after making any changes you wish to keep.

• Install a Theme or Icon-set:

Simply download the theme or icon package - usually a compressed tar.gz type file - to your home directory,

a good site to for getting themes/icons:

www.kde-look.org/ - there is a link to this site in - Control Center - Appearance & Themes - Theme Manager

No need to extract the archive to install it - just open the KDE Control Centre (from the command line: kcontrol) - Click on 'Appearance & Themes' - then select either 'Icons' or 'Theme Manager' - and click 'Install New Theme' - it's the same process for both icons and themes - just browse to the downloaded theme/icon package - select it and click OK. To use the new theme or icons - select the newly added theme or icons from the list and click 'Apply'. Easy!

For a graphical 'how-to' see here

Note: There may be some themes that have a different install method - read the release notes from the download page to be sure.

For further documentation on all aspects of theme install in the KDE environment see kde-look help - although some of the info appears to be more relevant to older versions of KDE.

Changing the fonts

1. Press Kmenu icon
2. Select "Control Center"
3. Select "Appearance & Themes"
4. Select "Fonts"

From this window you can select the fonts for various KDE tool bars, window titles etc.

Additional fonts can be installed using Synaptic

Playing music

Provided with the cd is a top notch music system called amarok. Amarok is database driven and somewhat similar to musicmatch on windows. Simply start the application and it will walk you through the setup.

Watching videos

You will find several applications at your disposal for watching videos and DVDs already avaliable for you. However, many of these will not run without the packages w32codecs and/or libdvdcss you will need to install these, please refer to the Installing and upgrading new programs section below. Currently MEPIS ships with mplayer and kaffeine.

Browsing the internet

Mepis comes with two very good Internet browsers: Firefox and Konqueror. Make sure you are connected to Internet, start either browser from K Menu > Internet.

Kmail (an alternative to outlook)

The following will help you with basic setup to be able to send and receive email.
Starting Kmail

• From the Kmenu icon, goto Internet and select the Kmail icon
  

The Interface

• There are nine drop down menus that are fairly standard among email clients.
• Under that are a series of icons. Move your mouse over them to see what they are.
• There are three different panes showing. The one on the left contains your mailboxes. The one at the top right is where your message headers are listed and below that is where the message body is displayed.
  

Setting up your Mail Server Settings

1. From the drop downs select SETTINGS\CONFIGURE KMAIL The configure window will now be open. For now we'll worry about only the Identities and Accounts sections.
2. Highlight the "Identities" icon. On the right you'll see add,modify and rename buttons. From here you can add a new identity or modify an existing one. If there's default identity listed already, lets click the Modify button.
3. Enter your Name "or whatever you want to be shown on your email" and your email address in the appropriate boxes, then hit ok.
4. Now click the "Accounts" button. From here you'll set up your Receiving and Sending options. Click the Receiving tab at the top. If there's a default account showing in the middle window, highlight it and click the "Modify" button on the right, otherwise click "Add" and highlight pop3 and click ok.
5. In the menu that pops up, you enter the name you want your account to be. The "Login" and "Password" boxes are for your mail username and password that you get from your isp. The "Host" box is for the pop address ie. "pop.isp.com". Don't worry about the rest of the boxes and buttons for now. Just press OK
6. Now it's time to click the "Sending" tab at the top.
7. Again, if there's a default account listed, click "Modify" otherwise click "Add" This time you'll select SMTP and press OK.
8. In the Name box, enter the same name you used in the pop setup. The "Host" will be "smtp.isp.com" or whatever your isp tells you.
9. Depending on your isp you'll probably have to click the "Server requires Authentification" box to make sure there's an X shown.
10. Enter your isp mail server Username and password. Click to X the Store SMTP Password button if you want the password to be saved.
11. Now click OK and then APPLY and OK on the next window.
    

You should have a basic setup for sending and receiving email with Kmail. You can add more accounts, following the above if you have more than one email address that you want to use.

Chat Programs

AIM/MSN/Yahoo/Jabber/GTalk/etc...

• One easy way to start chatting is to go to http://www.meebo.com in Firefox.
• If you prefer a specialized program for chatting, Mepis comes with GAIM a multi-protocol client. Start it from KMenu -> Internet -> GAIM or just type "gaim" in Konsole or "run program".
• Kopete (KDE multi-proticol IM client) is also available in Synaptic.

IRC

• You can use GAIM or Kopete for IRC chats too. However, Mepis comes with as specialized: applications "XChat IRC", Start XChat from K Menu > Internet.

Installing and upgrading new programs

To install a program follow these steps:

1. Reload -- this command updates the list of packages available from Ubuntu and Mepis servers. There is no need to run this command more than once a day.
2. Search for the packages.
3. Right-click on package name and select "Mark packages for install"
4. Click "Apply"

To upgrade a program you need to right-click on the package and select "Mark package for upgrade"

To upgrade all programs after you do a "Reload" select "Mark All Upgrades" and then click "Apply"

Be sure to look at all messages when installing or upgrading programs. If packages will be removed that you do not want removed, it is best to cancel the process.