[ale] Several questions

[Dan Newcombe]

> 1. My printer
> the printer in linux, it tries to finish printing it. It won't stop even
> after reboot and I would like to be able to print other things in linux.
> Any tips?

I don't print much, but take a look in the /var/spool/lp or /usr/spool/lp
and find the queue for that directory.  Perhaps that queue hasn't been
cleaned out even though the file printed.

> 2. Linux file system
> 	To my great delight, I received a "secret santa" gift of a 4.3G
> HD. Because so much of the stuff I have is Windows specific, I plan to
> run it dual boot Win95 and Linux. How much space do I need to give for
> linux? How should I set up the partitions? (How many partitions for
> linux?) Which directories are supposed to go on their own partition, and
> how do I set it up to know where they are? I plan to give linux around
> 2G, is that too much? Note that I am setting up a 'new' system for this
> drive. (New refers to 486DX4 100. ;)  )

Cool.  First...the partition you boot linux from needs to be in the first
512MB (due to bios issues...this is an old recommendation, but I think it
still stands.)   

Linux has no problem dealing with big partitons.  You can go with the
normal Unix method of setting aside a partition for every directory (okay,
the root directory, the /usr directory, /home, /tmp, etc...) or you can
just give it what you want for all of that...which is easier, especially
on a home system.  It's up to your individual style.  Depending on how
much you give to Win95, what you do with Linux can vary.

1) If you are gonna give 500MB or less to Win95, then I would do
	part 1 - win95
 	part 2 - linux
	part 3 - swap
2) if you want more than 500MB for win95, then I would do
	part 1 - linux (2-5 megs)
	part 2 - win95
	part 3 - linux
	part 4 - swap

The reasoning here is to make a seperate partition just for putting the
kernel info in.  This way, Lilo can point there to boot linux, and then
point to partition 3 for the root filesystem.  This way, your boot area is
within the 512MB area, and you don't have to allocate part of your linux
fs here, part there.

 
> 3. Multiple Hard drives
> 	Is there any way, with multiple hard drives, for linux to think
> they are one? For example, be able to split a file across both drives,

Yes...I think it is called multi-disk support or something like that.
Basically, it lets you chain a few disks together as if they were one, or
do several RAID types of things...there is a flag for it in the make
config of the kernel.

> 	I have downloaded several files, and save them to D:\ in Windows.
> When in linux, I access them from /DOS/ and use the mv filename
> ~/filename command. When I then issue a cd ~, the files are gone. They no
> longer exist anywhere. Yet, when I use cp filename ~/filename, and then
> delete the original, it works fine. Why does it do this, and can it be
> fixed?

Without seeing it first hand this one would be pretty hard to figure out.
In my mind when dealing with DOS, I generally do a cp and then a rm
myself, just to be safe.
 
> 	In some X windows games that I have had, when I would move the
> mouse off of the window, strange colors result. Others (less simple
> games) run with no problem. Coincidentally, the games I have run in X
> also have SVGALIB versions, which I run because of the problem in X. Any
> way to fix this?

This is because your colormap is full, or the game has decided to use a
certain visual or something like that.  The stange colors should only
affect that game and not the rest of your X apps.  This is pretty much
normal.  Keep the mouse in the game window, or set your window manager to
click-to-focus.
 
> 6. Dissappearing .gz 
> 	When I download programs for linux and successfully move them to
> an installation area, I gzip -d them. Where did the .gz file go when I
> did this? Also, where am I supposed to unzip these programs at? From what
> I have read, there is a specific place I am supposed to install programs,
> where is it?

The gzip -d decompresses the file.  When it is done decompessing the file,
the .gz version is replaced by the decompressed version.  That is where
the .gz is going.  As for where you are supposed to unarchive the files
at, it depends on your installation, preferences, distribution, etc...
There is no standard.  Some people prefer to make an /opt/something
directory for everything.  This can make for a huge PATH variable (for
instance, my machine at work has
/opt/gnu/bin:/opt/gnome/bin:/opt/local/bin:/opt/kde/bin:/opt/gimp/bin:/opt/e/bin
and a few more in the path...but with this method everything dealing with
one app is (hopefully) isolated in one directory tree.  Another method is
just to install everything into /usr/local, which makes things easy, but
harder to keep track of what belongs to what.  To me, this is like all
these windows programs putting everything into \windows\system32

	-Dan