Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

So I am writing from the Linux desktop. They have improved this a lot in the 4 years since I last tried it. It is running side by side with the Windows 7 64 bit. It can open my excel programs. The games are not able to open. I think I will see if I can find similar games.

How are you running Linux Keeney123? Is it from a live disc? If so, do you know what distribution (ie, Ubuntu for instance?) If memory serves me correctly, most distro's don't come with WINE installed by default. You can use your distro's package manager to download and install it. That might get some of your games (perhaps solitaire for instance?) working in Linux.

Personally, I don't really like emulating Windows software in Linux. I prefer to find open source equivalents, like Stj is talking about. Anyway, welcome aboard!

[keeney123]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

So I down loaded Ubuntu 16.04 LTS iso stored it on a newly formatted Fat 32 UBS Flash drive. The next step is to down load a program called Rufus. Then just follow the step on Ubuntu site. They explain how to get Rufus to format Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Then after that is done it is simply a matter of moving the UBS HD to number one boot. And the Ubuntu desktop appears with the Windows on it's desktop. The excel programs are converted to Ubuntu program excel. By going to computer, ones personal user file and then to what ever widows excel program one has. All that is OK. The problem I have is installing Wine to be able to run Window Game programs and the Music player on Ubuntu can not just convert ones Windows music files over to the music program they offer. Without being able to do that it causes me to question whether I will use Ubuntu. I sent 5 hours trying to do this. Using the Terminal. I even downloaded Wine 1.8 but was still unable to run these programs. I tried purging restrictions, etc. I tried updating. I tried I think downloading plug-in. I tried a lot of things.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

So I down loaded Ubuntu 16.04 LTS iso stored it on a newly formatted Fat 32 UBS Flash drive. The next step is to down load a program called Rufus. Then just follow the step on Ubuntu site. They explain how to get Rufus to format Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Then after that is done it is simply a matter of moving the UBS HD to number one boot. And the Ubuntu desktop appears with the Windows on it's desktop. The excel programs are converted to Ubuntu program excel. By going to computer, ones personal user file and then to what ever widows excel program one has. All that is OK. The problem I have is installing Wine to be able to run Window Game programs and the Music player on Ubuntu can not just convert ones Windows music files over to the music program they offer. Without being able to do that it causes me to question whether I will use Ubuntu. I sent 5 hours trying to do this. Using the Terminal. I even downloaded Wine 1.8 but was still unable to run these programs. I tried purging restrictions, etc. I tried updating. I tried I think downloading plug-in. I tried a lot of things.

Hello Keeney123,

Thanks for letting us know what distro you chose. You shouldn't have to do much through the actual terminal unless you want to. The stuff you're doing can all be done via the graphical user interface. I'm assuming you're probably running Gnome 3. In the graphical user interface (the desktop), you can click in the upper left I think and just type something like

synaptic

.

I believe that's the graphical package manager for Ubuntu. It's been a very long time since I've ran Ubuntu though so things might have changed. You should also be able to just click in the upper left corner and then type Package Manager and it should show you some icons, one should be Synaptic. Click that and you can search for various programs that are on the Ubuntu repositories.

If a program isn't in the repository, you can always install it manually, but if a new version comes out, your package manager won't be able to update that program automatically for you. There are some more advanced scenarios where people might have a private repository and you could add that but I think we'll burn that bridge if we ever get there.

Wine cannot run all Windows programs but it seems to do a good job. You might want to consider finding Linux alternatives and checking them out and maybe using Wine as a last resort though. For example, in Windows, you might have the Microsoft Office suite that comes with Word and Excel, etc. In Linux, you don't have that. You have suites like LibreOffice. It's an open source equivalent and through reverse engineering and some work, the developers were able to figure out the various Microsoft document formats, like the Excel file format, so you can open Microsoft Excel documents in Linux without using any Microsoft programs. You've kind of discovered that already from what you've been typing.

Now, there are some file formats that Microsoft own that they just don't want other people using. Sometimes, developers are not allowed to reverse engineer file formats. I think this is the case with some of the various Microsoft audio and video files. WMVs where one format for instance. Even if the Linux community knew how to write free software that would play WMV files, legally, they weren't allowed to. This now has changed. Microsoft released their "leash" on the codec. Linux is all about open source but some formats, they don't fall under the proper license or something and distro's like Ubuntu might not be able to provide this software by default.

I'm including a link that was written for Ubuntu users. It talks about how to install VLC (which is probably already installed on your Ubuntu system) and it talks about how to play certain "restricted" file formats in Ubuntu. Perhaps this could help you a bit?

http://www.wikihow.com/Play-Wmv-Files-in-Ubuntu

[Spork Schivago]

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.

[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?

[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.

[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.

[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.

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.

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!

[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.

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.

[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.

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.

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

[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.

[stj]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

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

[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.

[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.

[stj]

Re: Windows 10 and magically hidden files.

so what 3 letter extension is on your music files?