Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

[keeney123]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

I think I going give up on this. Yea a found a way to install the restricted packages but that did not help. They talk about gstream and how that was outdated. I finally tried connecting my walkman player trying to download and even trying to sink it up. The only thing that happened was it copied the album cover and then deleted every song on my walkman. I recovered it through a flash drive and then used Windows to sink it up and now the albums are back. What I think needs to happen is someone needs to take Microsoft to court again so if one has music files in windows it can quickly transform on to another OS. If one own and I have bought a album they should not be restricted as to where it will play and on what. The only restriction needs to be that the album can not be reduplicated on someone else's machine. That way I can load any system on my computer and reproduce it on that computer with what ever operating system I am using. If I decide to play it another computer it would not duplicate. Also if I transfer all of my information from one computer to another then the computer I am transferring should be allowed to transfer the music and an option should given for the rights to the song be also transferred so that the rights to the song will be canceled on the original computer. In fact all the information on a computer should be treated in this fashion. Microsoft does not even do that. So to go down any of these computer roads that does not offer that is a waste of my time and ultimately my money in purchasing a hardware device.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

Update didn't work because my little 4 GB flash drive is to small for the updates.This is why I say that one has to program linux. I just want these programs to work I do really care how they work. If I want to run my music files I do not want to play around with codec. In the old days we put a vinyl record on the turntable and play it. If I wanted to play it on someone's else's player I took it off my player and played it on theirs. Real simple. It was made to enjoy not play around for hours hoping to get it to work. Same goes with simple games. One does not want to play around for hours trying to play a game. Computers that are suppose to make these enjoyments easier are actually making them more difficult. It is almost to a point that not having a computer is kind of looking good.

Keep in mind, Windows generally has more steps, but because most PCs come with Windows now-a-days, the manufacturers set it up for you. They've installed all the drivers, the codecs, the players. If you have a clean Windows 7 disc, for instance, and you go to install Windows on your PC, chances are, unlike with Linux, you're going to have to install a bunch of drivers. Then, depending on what you want to do, you might even have to spend some cash. I don't think Windows comes with any DVD codecs, so if you want to play video DVDs, you'll have to buy a program or (if the codec is free now), install it. Same with some of the other video / audio files.

I think one of the big things to remember is Linux isn't Windows. There are sooo many open source programs out there. Do you really want to play Windows Solitaire in Linux when you can just have your package manager download the Linux equivalent?

I think once you get the restricted packages installed and try out the graphical package manager, you might find things a bit less cumbersome.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

I do not know how you get the in Linux as the properties show this /media/ubuntu/Windows/Users/Ann as the file location. The songs are in .MP3 I do not want each individual song. I want the albums with the album art as I listen to the whole album at a time and I do not play individual songs.

Did you install the restricted packages? If so, it should be as simple as just double clicking on a song, or if you want to play a bunch, just highlighting them with the mouse, right clicking and going to open or play in <blah>.

[keeney123]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

so what 3 letter extension is on your music files?

I do not know how you get the in Linux as the properties show this /media/ubuntu/Windows/Users/Ann as the file location. The songs are in .MP3 I do not want each individual song. I want the albums with the album art as I listen to the whole album at a time and I do not play individual songs.

[stj]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

so what 3 letter extension is on your music files?

[keeney123]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

Update didn't work because my little 4 GB flash drive is to small for the updates.This is why I say that one has to program linux. I just want these programs to work I do really care how they work. If I want to run my music files I do not want to play around with codec. In the old days we put a vinyl record on the turntable and play it. If I wanted to play it on someone’s else’s player I took it off my player and played it on theirs. Real simple. It was made to enjoy not play around for hours hoping to get it to work. Same goes with simple games. One does not want to play around for hours trying to play a game. Computers that are suppose to make these enjoyments easier are actually making them more difficult. It is almost to a point that not having a computer is kind of looking good.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

keeney - just run the "top" command and see if apt-get is in the list.

top is a good program. There's multiple ways to do the same task in Linux, that's one of the things I've always kinda enjoyed. Sometimes, things for some people are more easily done one way versus another. I've always been able to find a way that works good for me, you know?

Keeney, don't forget about the man command. Linux comes with a lot of documentation. A lot of the documentation is in the man page format. You can just type something like man top and you'll get a text based display of the man program, along with everything you can do with it. info is another program that can display documentation. Play around with those if you can't remember some of the command line parameters.

[stj]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

keeney - just run the "top" command and see if apt-get is in the list.

[stj]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

you should avoid u.s. based distro's like redhat/fedora and ubuntu anyway.
they rip all the guts out of the media players to avoid lawsuits.

[keeney123]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

Yea I get tired and make mistakes. I copied and paste and got back
ubuntu 8629 0.0 0.0 21296 1020 pts/18 S+ 02:21 0:00 grep --color=auto --color=yes -i apt-get

I tried installing the restricted packages in it would not do that either.

Found that there are two updater's one for the software on for the graphic and the graphic also update all the software. this is updating right now. I selected Universe as this is what replaced synaptic

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

Here is the problem now it has changed some. Sorry I can't upload a .odt file. So I can save it as PDF So her you go.

Keeney, a couple things, it seems Synaptic might not be being used anymore with Ubuntu. It's been a while since I used it.

Also, with the ps aux command, you forgot to pipe it to grep. You pipe stuff by using the pipe, | , symbol.

So, you can copy and paste this into the terminal:

sudo ps aux | grep --color=yes -i "apt-get"

if you'd like to successfully run the command ps and pipe it to grep to search through all your running programs for apt-get to see if it's running.

Also, with grep, we're passing a dash eye, not dash one.

From the looks of it though, perhaps the package manager isn't running anymore and you should be able to install the restricted packages.


Maybe try clicking in the right hand corner and typing Software and see what happens. I think if you're able to run the GUI package manager, you might find things a bit easier to use at first. You can easily search for packages, just click to install, etc. They'll even give you descriptions of what the packages do.

If you still cannot start the GUI package manager because of some other package manager running, it might be time to try restarting the PC and seeing if you can start it then. Let me know how it goes.

[keeney123]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

Here is the problem now it has changed some. Sorry I can't upload a .odt file. So I can save it as PDF So her you go.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

This is probably what I'd try first, from a terminal window:

sudo ps aux | grep --color=yes -i "apt-get"

and if it showed something,

sudo killall -9 apt-get
sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock

Then try running the package manager again. I betcha anything apt-get is running in the background somewheres.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

[QUOTE=keeney123;670905]

Synaptic is just a front end I believe to the terminal program apt-get (or something similar), so if you're running a package manager, regardless of whether it's a graphical one or not, if you try starting another one, you'll get a message similar to that. This also goes when your system is downloading updates for programs, etc.

Maybe try running it again? You might find it a bit easier to use at first, compared to the terminal version of the package manager. If you feel comfortable and prefer using the terminal programs, you can always just stick with that. For me, I tend to do a lot of stuff from the terminal and that's where I feel most comfortable, but I think people just starting out might like the graphical version instead.[/QUOTE

So I read up on the Synaptic program and it did say the same thing that you are saying So I shut everything down except the Terminal and type the apt-get command string in and got the same message.

Hmmm, so something has the package manager running. It could be maybe updates....do you see any small icons in any corners or anything about updates / upgrades being available for download?

There's a few things you can do to try and resolve this issue. One is simply restart the PC and see if the package managers work (but only have one open / running at a time). The other is to try and find what program is actually running. In a terminal window, you can get a list of all programs running by typing:

sudo ps aux

That should ask for your root password, just type it and it should give you a list of all the programs currently running.

sudo is the Linux program that temporarily runs your program as root (the superuser). ps is the program that shows the processes. The a option tells ps to show all processes. The u option tells ps to display the output in a user oriented format (it looks pretty). The x option tells ps to lift the BSD-style "must have a tty" restriction, along with some other stuff. I don't fully understand it, I just always use the x when I use au. Perhaps someone with more experience (Stj?) could explain it better.

Now, if you want to search for a specific program and see if it's running (because there's probably a lot of them running), you can pipe the output of the ps program to a program like grep. grep is a nice program that searches for strings. You can do stuff like

sudo ps aux | grep --color=yes -i "apt-get"

or

sudo ps aux | grep --color=yes -i "synaptic"

or

sudo ps aux | grep --color=yes -i "software"

The --color=yes option tells grep that if it finds the string you're looking for, to display it in colour. The -i option tells grep you want to search for the string case-insensitive. Linux is case sensitive, so you can have a program called Grep that is different than grep, and a program called gRep, or grEP, they're all different program names, because capitalization matters. With grep, the -i says we don't care about the capitalization. grep --color=yes -i "synaptic" will find synaptic, Synaptic, SYNAPTIC, etc. Any variant.

When you run ps aux and pipe it to grep, you'll notice that grep always finds at least occurrence, that's because ps is showing that the program grep is running with the options that you're searching for. You're looking for a program besides grep that has that occurrence. If you find one, you can try killing it. The very first item in the response should be the Process ID (or PID). It's a unique number that each process gets.

So, if you run ps aux | grep --color=yes -i "synaptic" and it shows you something besides grep, you can kill it with something like

kill -9 1437

1437 would be the PID that our ps aux | grep --color=yes -i "synaptic" program returned for the synaptic program. If that's confusing, I can try explaining it better. If you get stuck, just copy and paste (preferable in code tags) the output of your ps aux command and I can give ya the command syntax for the kill program.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

So in Windows one has a file called Music. This is not the Media Player but the files for the Media Player. The music player for Linux has an error code that says something like the MP3 codec aren't installed. With future research on the Linux Music Play it seems it uses an altogether different codec. I got tired of looking for a converter program.

You don't want to look for a converter program. You just want to install the MP3 codecs. I falsely assumed because you were using Windows that your music files were in WMA (Windows Media Audio) file format.

The link I had posted, if you followed it, should have installed the MP3 codecs along with some other "restricted extras". If you'd like a graphical version of the steps, you can go here:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/19043...lay-mp3-files/

It's the same, for the most part, just using the Software Center instead of Synaptic or the terminal. It all involves installing the "restricted extras".

Again, I believe the reason these things don't come by default is because of legal reasons. Like playing DVDs. If they're encoded (like most retail DVDs are), I think it's illegal to decrypt the movie and play it, without paying money to someone like the MPAA or some crap like that. Linux is all about open source, so when someone writes a free open source program to play DVDs and they're told hey, even though you're giving this program away for free, you gotta pay x amount of dollars every year in order to legally give it away for free, most programmers say screw that!

I think installing the "restricted extras" will even allow you to play encoded DVDs, but don't quote me on that.

Another option (and one you might want to do ALONG with the "restricted extras") is to install a program through your package manager called VLC Media Player. I believe, unlike a lot of the other players out there, VLC has the codecs built in, so I don't think you need to rely on installing 3rd party programs. However, you should still work on installing those "restricted extras" so the other media programs can play your files. That way, you can try a bunch of different programs and see what you like best.

You're so close to getting this working, please don't give up!

[keeney123]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

Synaptic is just a front end I believe to the terminal program apt-get (or something similar), so if you're running a package manager, regardless of whether it's a graphical one or not, if you try starting another one, you'll get a message similar to that. This also goes when your system is downloading updates for programs, etc.

Maybe try running it again? You might find it a bit easier to use at first, compared to the terminal version of the package manager. If you feel comfortable and prefer using the terminal programs, you can always just stick with that. For me, I tend to do a lot of stuff from the terminal and that's where I feel most comfortable, but I think people just starting out might like the graphical version instead.

So I read up on the Synaptic program and it did say the same thing that you are saying So I shut everything down except the Terminal and type the apt-get command string in and got the same message.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

I tried to use Synaptic before, but it said it was being used by another program. I think Microsoft used this also. The Linus programs will open my excel program perfectly.

Synaptic is just a front end I believe to the terminal program apt-get (or something similar), so if you're running a package manager, regardless of whether it's a graphical one or not, if you try starting another one, you'll get a message similar to that. This also goes when your system is downloading updates for programs, etc.

Maybe try running it again? You might find it a bit easier to use at first, compared to the terminal version of the package manager. If you feel comfortable and prefer using the terminal programs, you can always just stick with that. For me, I tend to do a lot of stuff from the terminal and that's where I feel most comfortable, but I think people just starting out might like the graphical version instead.

[keeney123]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

i dont understand a word of that post about "music files"

care to explain what music files?

So in Windows one has a file called Music. This is not the Media Player but the files for the Media Player. The music player for Linux has an error code that says something like the MP3 codec aren't installed. With future research on the Linux Music Play it seems it uses an altogether different codec. I got tired of looking for a converter program.

[keeney123]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

I wanted to add the link I provided has you doing stuff through the terminal. Because you already have some experience with the terminal and the instructions appear to be pretty basic, I figured that was okay. There's more than likely a way to do this in Synaptic, I just didn't look too hard. Let me know if these instructions help play your various Microsoft media files.

I tried to use Synaptic before, but it said it was being used by another program. I think Microsoft used this also. The Linux programs will open my excel program perfectly.

[stj]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

i dont understand a word of that post about "music files"

care to explain what music files?