Gregg's Nearly Interminable Adventures in Linux Land

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Yes. That's the list of sources looked in for possible updates.

Thanks. I saw there was a documentation page regarding that. I'll check into it.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The difference from the command line when creating links is that you create symlinks with "ln -s"

Yeah, I saw that in "Ubuntu Unleashed." I look forward to experimenting with it.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

See Eric S. Raymond and Rick Moen's How To Ask Questions The Smart Way for a comprehensive set of guidelines.

Not that I ask great questions (I don't) but I've come to appreciate streamlined questions. And, I must say, streamlined answers.

The people answering questions make two mistakes. (not you, of course!)
1) They assume you know a lot. (Even when you tell them you're a total noob.)
2) They leave a step (or two) out.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

You aren't that bad.
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Dennis

Ha ha. Thanks!

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Malware is a somewhat different story, but the attack vector in malware is the browser. It's why I run the NoScript addon in Firefox, along with the uBlock Origin addon that serves as an ad/malware blocker.

I have uBlock Origin and think it's awesome. I had NoScript but it ended up taking so much time to figure out what to allow and what not to allow, and then it seemed to lock up sites, I got rid of it.

As a next best option I got the Firefox add-on BitDefender Traffic Light, which gives a little green icon next to sites on Google search. However I just recently was recently re-directed to a porno site while searching 'what do do about a stiff back' on Google (and the site was green-lighted). So I'm not thrilled with the Bit Defender Traffic Light trustworthiness.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The Kingston RAM looks like it would do the job.
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Dennis

Thanks man. Have a good weekend.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Yeah, I saw that in "Ubuntu Unleashed." I look forward to experimenting with it.

The main difference between symlinks and hard links are the ability to span filesystems, and the fact that a symlink can become broken if you delete the file it points to. In use, the visible behavior is pretty much identical, and you likely want to use symlinks in normal practice.

Curiously, NTFS5 under Windows supports symlinks and hardlinks, but the functionality isn't exposed by default. I use William Schinagl's freeware Link Shell Extension to provide GUI entries for creating them.

Not that I ask great questions (I don't) but I've come to appreciate streamlined questions. And, I must say, streamlined answers.

The people answering questions make two mistakes. (not you, of course!)
1) They assume you know a lot. (Even when you tell them you're a total noob.)
2) They leave a step (or two) out.

I try to provide directions people can follow, and may Look Stuff Up and test to be sure my directions work as given.

The folks who annoy me post questions so ill-formed, I don't know what the question is, let alone what the answer ought to be. (And these are generally English speakers, not folks for whom English is a second language, who can be excused for infelicities with the language.)

I have uBlock Origin and think it's awesome. I had NoScript but it ended up taking so much time to figure out what to allow and what not to allow, and then it seemed to lock up sites, I got rid of it.

Figuring out what to block does require experimentation. In general, stuff I block will be ad servers, but those are generally identifiable by their names. And NoScript remembers settings, so it's a "get it right and forget it" operation for sites.

(NoScript keeps its config in the master prefs.js file Firefox uses to store preferences. Mine is about 600KB in size. I have thousands of bookmarks, so about 550KB of that is NoScript whitelist... )

uBlock Origin is not a NoScript replacement. uBlock blocks sites. NoScript blocks scripting used on sites. You may want to visit a site but not allow various things it links to to execute scripts.

As a next best option I got the Firefox add-on BitDefender Traffic Light, which gives a little green icon next to sites on Google search. However I just recently was recently re-directed to a porno site while searching 'what do do about a stiff back' on Google (and the site was green-lighted). So I'm not thrilled with the Bit Defender Traffic Light trustworthiness.

Haven't tried it, but not surprised. I believe what it tries to block are various potential exploits. It is not a content filter, and will not block a porn site just because it's a porn site. It's on you to be aware of what sites are and choose whether to go there.

(Years back, I was searching for an obscure Windows shell extension that would let the registry appear in My Computer and be searched like it was a drive. One link was to a hard-core gay porn site, where "extension" has a different meaning than the one I was using. My elderly gay neighbor down the hall was amused. So was I. )
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Dennis

[Dngrsone]

IIRC, symlinks created in Linux in an NTFS volume will be treated appropriately by Windows.

I'd prove it, but I'm too lazy to reboot my computer into Win at the moment to check.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

IIRC, symlinks created in Linux in an NTFS volume will be treated appropriately by Windows.

I'd prove it, but I'm too lazy to reboot my computer into Win at the moment to check.

I haven't tried to do that, but it sounds about right.

I dual-boot Windows and Ubuntu here, and Ubuntu is installed on a partition of the SSD boot drive formatted ext4.

Ubuntu can see/read/write the Windows partition using ntfs3g. Windows can see/read/write the Ubuntu filesystem using an open source driver called Ext2 Volume Manager

Works fine for what I do.
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Dennis

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I wasn't recommending he have only the current kernel. Current + previous is good practice.

He was talking about having more than one prior kernel, which strikes me as overkill. If the prior one works and the latest doesn't, you boot the prior one. Why do you need the one before that around too?

True enough. I guess I misread your post.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The main difference between symlinks and hard links are the ability to span filesystems, and the fact that a symlink can become broken if you delete the file it points to. In use, the visible behavior is pretty much identical, and you likely want to use symlinks in normal practice.

Curiously, NTFS5 under Windows supports symlinks and hardlinks, but the functionality isn't exposed by default. I use William Schinagl's freeware Link Shell Extension to provide GUI entries for creating them.

OMG! There is so much information in that link! Do people actually learn and master all that stuff?

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Figuring out what to block does require experimentation. In general, stuff I block will be ad servers, but those are generally identifiable by their names. And NoScript remembers settings, so it's a "get it right and forget it" operation for sites.

(NoScript keeps its config in the master prefs.js file Firefox uses to store preferences. Mine is about 600KB in size. I have thousands of bookmarks, so about 550KB of that is NoScript whitelist... )

uBlock Origin is not a NoScript replacement. uBlock blocks sites. NoScript blocks scripting used on sites. You may want to visit a site but not allow various things it links to to execute scripts.


Haven't tried it, but not surprised. I believe what it tries to block are various potential exploits. It is not a content filter, and will not block a porn site just because it's a porn site. It's on you to be aware of what sites are and choose whether to go there.
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Dennis

Thing is it wasn't a porn site. It was a medical site offering information about how to recover from low back pain. Then you could see it was a re-direct and it sent me to the porn site.

I think No-Script is cool. A brilliant idea. But a PITA, as well.

[Gregg Bell]

Hey, And how about it--let's hear it for Linux! Microsoft is trying to force its crappy Windows 10 on Windows 7 and Windows 8 users by trickery and malware. http://www.computerworld.com/article...indows-10.html Thank God for Linux! (And this latest M$ low-life action is going to send a lot of people to Linux.)

[Gregg Bell]

Hey, Linux Mavens, I posted this is another forum for days and no one responded so here I am. (Besides, I miss you guys. I learn a TON from you!)

Anyway here it is. I think I know which way to go but confirmation will be appreciated. Thanks!

I'm putting an ebook into this company called Book Funnel. So they want an epub and a mobi. But they have this check box about KF8. Well, I make my mobi from Kindlegen and those are KF8s so I would need to check the box, right? And although the html cover file has been removed to avoid the "double cover" the cover is still embedded. So all I need to do is take the mobi from KDP, upload it and check the box, right? Thanks.

[Glorfindel]

I'd say yes.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Glorfindel

I'd say yes.

Thanks Glorfindel. I was leaning toward 'yes' but a little confirmation really helps.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Thanks Glorfindel. I was leaning toward 'yes' but a little confirmation really helps.

My guess would be yes, too.

My question is why you're asking here? MR has an assortment of forums devoted to eBook development and construction, including eBooks intended for reading with Kindles and Kindle apps.

A thread devoted to adventures in Linux land isn't the best place to get that sort of answer.
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Dennis

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

My guess would be yes, too.

My question is why you're asking here? MR has an assortment of forums devoted to eBook development and construction, including eBooks intended for reading with Kindles and Kindle apps.

A thread devoted to adventures in Linux land isn't the best place to get that sort of answer.
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Dennis

Thanks Dennis. I posted the same in the "Workshop" forum four days ago and no one responded.

[Gregg Bell]

Okay, Linux gurus. Latest issue: converting .epub to .docx. I'm making a paperback from my ebook and the standard way of doing it is getting the .docx (remember I'm all Linux and LibreOffice) perfect. Then you export the .docx to a .pdf. Then you upload to Createspace. Well, I don't even have a .docx. And my .odt has been modified in Sigil so that my finished mss. is in .epub.

So I converted the .epub to .docx in Calibre, but in four or five instances (in a 70K document) Calibre added italics. (Always in a small paragraph that already had some italics. Calibre made that small paragraph all italics.) So what I've been doing is hunting down all the italics (in Sigil) and then making sure the italics are the same in the .docx.

Is there a better way of getting a .docx (that preserves the formatting and doesn't add any) from a .epub?

Thanks.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Is there a better way of getting a .docx (that preserves the formatting and doesn't add any) from a .epub?

What was the source text that was used to create the ePub?

If you used OpenOffice/LibreOffice Writer, it should be able to Save As a .docx file. I don't understand why you're trying to do it from ePub,

And you might want to investigate Pandoc, a cross platform toolkit for format conversions.
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Dennis

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

What was the source text that was used to create the ePub?

If you used OpenOffice/LibreOffice Writer, it should be able to Save As a .docx file. I don't understand why you're trying to do it from ePub,

And you might want to investigate Pandoc, a cross platform toolkit for format conversions.
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Dennis

Hi Dennis. Good to see you. I started in .odt in LibreOffice. I converted it there to a .html. Then I put the html into Kate text editor and cleaned it up. From there I put the .html into Sigil. I could use the .odt but the thing is over the course of going over the mss. in Sigil I made changes that would not be in the .odt. So I must start with the .epub. And yes, the LibreOffice will save as a .docx.

I will investigate the Pandoc. Thanks.

One last thought. It seems Calibre preserves the formatting (and doesn't add to it) in a .html>.docx conversion, but to do that I'd have to convert 33 chapters (33 .html files) and then copy and paste into a .docx file. In other words, a lot of work. Whereas when I just do the .epub>.docx I'm done.