Hey all,

I've searched for solutions to a few problems i've been having online, but to no avail. Hopefully you guys can help me because you seem to talk about everything with acronyms - something that means you must know your stuff! =D

1 - EEEPC 901 running Xubuntu (latest release) - How do I combine both drives (one is 3.0GB and one is 7.0GB, but they're the same physical SSD) so that Linux reads it as one drive? I'm rapidly filling up the home drive with stuff. I've got a separate SD card for media/documents.

2 - EEEPC again - How do I get sound to work? It worked with Kubuntu, but doesn't with Xubuntu. Little bit annoying.

3 - So Linux is built on UNIX...? Hopefully i'm right about that - so is Mac OSX effectively just an Linux distro? Because it certainly feels like it ^_^

Linux is not UNIX - it's like UNIX, but it's not UNIX.

As to your first issue, are you sure it's the same drive? In my EeePC there were two SSDS - one for the OS and one for the /home directory.

When installing your distro, choose to set your partitions manually, then press "new", select a size (e.g. 3GB) for the OS and set the mount point for this partition as "/" (no quotes) and use ext4. Then set another partition for the remaining space, set the mount point as "/home" and again use ext4. You may or may not want to set aside a few hundred MB for "swap".

I can't help you with your sound issue, but have you looked in the sound preferences? Try changing from ALSA to pulseaudio or OSS etc.

GParted should allow you to combine your volumes into one.

Don't know about the sound drivers - hopefully someone else will be able to point you in the right direction.

No Mac OS is not a linux distribution.

Mac OS X is unix. This is because it uses some elements of BSD, which is also Unix.

Unix is not an operating system itself - it's a standard to which operating systems like BSD and Mac OS conform. I'm not too sure what the standard specifies, but I don't think the standard dictates the behaviour of anything higher than the kernel, although Forquare will probably be able to expand on my very limited knowledge of the Unix standard.

The Linux kernel does not conform to the Unix standard, but is very similar to systems like BSD and Mac OS which do.

Whoops, mis-read your post! As Nick says, GParted should allow you to use your disk as one drive (though I don't know why you'd want to).

Even if they are different drives, you can still combine them into one.

I'm sure you'll post back if that turns out to be the case, Angelic.

When System 6 (UNIX) was released, Andrew Tanenbaum created an OS called Minix. Minix was very much like UNIX, but designed as a teaching aid. Linus came along and demanded more from Minix, he added to it and gradually replaced the Minix code, creating Linux. (very brief history)
As Nick said, OS X takes parts from BSD. It doesn't (shouldn't?) contain any of the original UNIX code (as the code was released under different licenses).
Today UNIX is more of a standard, OS X (10.5 and up) is UNIX certified. The standard specifies programming interfaces (header files, etc), system calls and utilities (sh/vi/ed/awk/etc). I'm not quite sure how it differs from POSIX (an early version of Windows was POSIX compliant). The spec doesn't require any original UNIX code, so theoretically, MS could re-giggle Windows and make it UNIX compliant...
Because of the Minix link, Linux feels a lot like UNIX, they are designed similarly (but not the same).
There we go, I'm pretty sure that's why people turn me down when I invite them out for a quiet pint
If you have any questions, I'll happily send you a couple of PM's, I may bore you, but I'd have great fun

Ideally, you want to keep /home (and /var really) on separate partitions. If you need to combine, as the others have suggested, use GParted, or if you looking at reinstalling then do it then at install time.

As to the sound, why are you using Xubuntu as apposed to Kubuntu? If Kubuntu works and does everything you want, then I'd look at that (if I'm talking crazy, I apologise, I'm not sure of things when it comes to Linux)

Ben

Hey guys, sorry for not replying faster i've been at worked and just washed out infront of the xbox when I got home!

Anyways.. Ahem.

I'm using Xubuntu because I just don't like the Kubuntu interface... >.<

I can't find a way of getting GParted to combine volumes, maybe that's just me being a complete tit though. Might try a reinstall and see if I can do it then using Linux_User's technique. I want to combine them (even though I know now that they are separate drives) because i'm fed up of everything installing to the tiny 4GB drive (like when I had windows xp on it, it wouldn't let me update because the update downloads went to the C:/ drive!)

And deary me there's a lot more to the Mac OSX/UNIX thing than I thought! I only thought they were pretty much the same because they look the same and respond the same way when I plug in stuff... Lol. No worries, that was just a curiosity thing.

I don't think GParted will be able to combine two volumes on different drives.

What you need to do is setup RAID 0.

There is probably a GUI for that somewhere in Ubuntu. Someone familiar will probably be able to help more, or you could search for a tutorial online.

It might require a re-install.

Have a look at something called lvm (linux volume manager), I'm on a crappy mobile phone connection here, otherwise I'd do some Googleing for you.
lvm should be able to join the drives, you will probably find a GUI or a tutorial that will show you how to do it on the CLI...

Ben