My problem with Ubuntu and Linux

you may get some power management when you install your nvidia drivers..

Hi Coolbeing,

I have posted a wlakthrough for Kubuntu (Flight 7 Dapper) on my XPS 1710:

http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=154136

I have an NVIdia card and the card runs cooler than under windows with Dell's default drivers. The installed NVidia drivers worked very well at managing fan speeds.

If you get hold of the NVidia drivers from NVidia.com and follow their step by step instructions you should not only get 3D but good fan management going.

PM me if you want some more help, or post here so others can help / learn as well


BTW, don't worry about being stuck - we were all noobs with linux at some stage - or still are

first of all keep in mind these flight CDs are well..... TESTING there is a reason they are not official releases. Furthermore, KUBUNTU is known to be more buggy than ubuntu. I am a long time ubuntu user (since Warty 4.10....although currently using Arch Gimmick) and it has never been as care free and easy to use as the latest Dapper (keep in mind final version is due out in just about a week...June 1). that said, i have ATi in my laptop and trust me, FGLRX is the biggest pain in the asshat you ever experienced in linux. Nvidia is so much easier (i have nvidia in my desktop and it took literally all of 2 minutes to set up). yes, although all it takes is run nvidia package, there is a certain way to do it. 1 - kill X 2 - make sure you're root 3 - make sure you have kernel source installed and its linked to /usr/src/linux alternatively you can do "uname -r" then fire up Synaptic and find a package called "restricted-modules-version" and make sure "version" matches your output on uname -r (if it doesnt match, it wont work. next fire up gedit (in ubuntu, or kate in kubuntu) and edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and in the section "Device" change driver to nvdia then you're going to reboot and pray to god it works. it should. (i know this is not necessarily a guide, much less a user friendly one, but it gives you generally what must be done and you can determine yourself if you did things the proper way). one last thing, DONT install the nvidia package and restricted modules at the same time, they will conflict. if you're installing nvidia package remove "apt-get remove restricted-modules-*version* because otherwise they will conflict and it will not work. Ubuntu is #1 because Kubuntu is more buggy like i said earlier. You know, you dont have to install Kubuntu if you want kde, hell, you dont need to install ubuntu if you want gnome. All you do is simply install a "server" and then install any desktop you like (lately i've been using xfce ... can be installed by "apt-get install xubuntu-desktop"), in fact many distros like sourcemage and arch for example are based on this priciple, install a server, and then setup the perfect system for you. and to resolve fan issues do install power management tools (cpufreq cpufreq-utils for starters). and lastly, dont give up on linux. its always a rocky start because of the learning curve, but once you get into it its pretty awesome, hell, i can't see myself not using linux right now (my desktop and laptop both run linux....took me 3-4 years to get to this point )

Perhaps you tried this already, but might be able to mount them from a terminal window. This thread shows how to get read and write access to an NTFS partition.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=142481

Personally, I don't care to tinker with writer permissions on an NTFS drive, particularly if it's got something important on it. If you only want read-only access, there are easier ways to do it.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MountingWindowsPartitions

The information in the wiki is usually reliable. If you run into problems, try asking for help on the Ubuntu forums.

And by the way, abf is right again ... XFCE is the only way to go!

WARNING: i am doing this largely from memory / ubuntuguide.org and cannot vouch for it as-is because i dont currently use ubuntu, nor have an NTFS partition on my hard drive so that i could double check my steps, however, i remember using this method way back and it works perfectly every time. i know one known problem with earlier beta relases (dont know if its true of flight 7) is that the fstab would be wrong and thus when you click the Windows link from the desktop, or /mnt/ folder, it wont mount it properly. so what you gotta do is fix it up a little. rather easy procedure: this is a 2 part deal, both very simple and fast. (i am assuming here your ntfs is /dev/hda1) part 1: prepare now fire up "gedit /etc/fstab" and delete the ilne that has to do with /dev/hda1 save and exit part 2: fix it Append the following line at the end of file Save the edited file it now should work, when you double click the Windows icon on the desktop, nautilus will load the contents of the partition. keeep in mind this is READ ONLY. it is highly discouraged to enable NTFS write support as its currently UNDER HEAVY DEVELOPMENT and probably wont be ready till kernel 3.0 or something. if you need to sahre files, i recommend creating a fat32 partition to keep your documents in such that both OSes can read and write just fine. however, be aware Fat32 can't deal with files larger than 4gb.

linux is already up and and away lightyears AHEAD of windows. its windows that has to do the catching up.

and for the love of god, please dont tell me you tried to install office 07 in linux.

i am not gonna battle you. you've made your choice, and good luck with that, but i just wanna make some things clear and take it step by step

ok. at least you're not as clueless as i thought. thats a good thing



my dad didn't learn to use computers till he was 45, he's 50 now, and he learned on windows, till a year ago i flopped him over to Vida Linux 1.1 (then to Mepis 2005, and finally currently to Mandriva 2005). he is the furthest thing from a "geek user" and seems to have absolutely no problem carrying out any simple office / internet / game related task. although i am the one who does all the administration work (which was like 2 hours initial setup for printer and nvidia video, and install extra programs that i use that didn't come out of the box, and to finally update all the programs to latest stable versions, so note a good 40% of those 2 hours were spent downloading, and a few minutes on top of that reading and googling).


Udev, gnome-volume-manager, hotplug, coldplug, ...anything else i am missing

For PALM: from newsforge: Various open source projects offer handheld synchronization. GNOME Pilot aims at GNOME users, KPilot fits the KDE crowd, and ColdSync is for non-GUI enthusiasts. Among the earliest such software are J-Pilot and PilotManager. For PPC/SmartPhone: synce project.

In many distros such as ARCH and Ubuntu (speaking from experience) all it takes is use their package manager (for example in arch pacman -S ati-fglrx) and reboot. thats it. in most other distros, to install ati all you do is download the .run installer. run that. change xorg.conf device from "ati" or "radeon" to "fglrx" and then reboot... just one extra step. Rarely you do run into difficulties, but those are very easily resolved with some google / forums (linuxquestions.org or the distro-specific forum, for example ubuntuforums.org)

you can always get crossover office and install MS Office if you wish as well as other programs, but lets see linux native apps
scanning: xsane or kooalla
word processing: openoffice writer, gnome-office, koffice, abiworld
spreadsheets: koffice, openoffice calc
equations: openoffice math, (i know there are more, cant think of name)
powerpoint: openoffice impress
photo editing: gimp

Take a look at slogans used by SuSe, Fedora, Mandriva, Ubuntu, Mepis, and especially Linspire... they all label themselves user friendly, and to some degree i agree all of them are (suse, and fedora being dogs, though have fancy tools, mandriva has fancy drax tools but is pretty good actually, mepis, ubuntu and linspire have their own way to get things done). again, ease of use is really, and i mean REALLY subjective. at one time i went 1 month using exclusively linux (no mac, no windows) and when i had to switch over to windows for a short while, i was lost and confused, but maybe its just me. also keep in mind if you're familiar with linux (and for some reason the gnome desktop) you'll feel more comfortable on a mac, and vice versa.

lets hear it.

for many linux users its not about virsues and spyware, although it helps, its about flexibility. unlike windows, linux gives you the choice to change every single bit and piece you want about the os, so if there is something you dont like, get rid of it, if there is something you'd like to see, make it happen, and if its something good share it with the community. linux is a lot like communism, if you want it to prosper, you have to share. (lol wait...i am trying to make a case FOR linux here...right?)

like i said, this post wasn't meant to flame you or anything like that, simply trying to inform and educate, as well as point out some flaws that your thread had. if you feel you're happy with windows, stick with it, but i hope you do come back to linux. it improves every single day (unlike windows). i remember linux even a year ago, Ubuntu Hoary was my distro, fantastic, but no match to what Dapper (the current release) can do.

Heh you asked if you forgot anything on the plug and play list abf? How about missing IVMan

Aside from that though, I will ask the initial poster to remember that not all of that post was directed at you personally, but was meant for informatiive reasons to let you and others know those solutions do exist. I do agree user friendliness in many linux distros(Possibly all) still leaves much to be desired, however in as far as capabilities abf makes a very strong point that most general use capabilities are quite well covered on Linux, and even some more specific ones(Digital Graphics, 3D modeling and animation, Digital Audio, etc)

Seablade

At risk of sounding rude, I don't think you tried hard enough.

It always surprises me to hear people say this about Windows.

On my old XPS M170 I could install XP SP2 in under than an hour (which I thought speedy). But when it was done, there was no native resolution. My network was inaccessible. I had no sound, except the PC speaker beep. I couldn't even burn a DVD.

In other words, I still needed two more hours to configure the network, reboot, download drivers, reboot, download Windows updates, reboot, reboot, reboot, reboot, and then install software.

Compare that to Ubuntu, which installed in less than 40 minutes on the same machine, configured the wireless, downloaded security updates, set the screen to native resolution (which was 1920x1200 -- no easy trick), set up stereo sound and a DVD burning utility and gave me free office and photo management software. And only two reboots.

So again, how can Linux be behind?

You overlooked an enormous amount of software if you managed to miss the gargantuan OpenOffice.org suite ... which, by the way is 100 percent cheaper than every Microsoft product ever sold.

If you want a machine that arrives from Dell with the entire bloatware suite installed, then sure, I'll agree. Linux isn't as easy as that.

If you want a complete machine automagically configured and ready to go with Linux, it's not impossible.

Good luck, then. Keeping a Windows system clean is completely the responsibility of the person who uses it, and it sounds like you'll do well.

Next time you try Linux (and there will be a next time), try to dig a little deeper. You'll be quite happy with what you find.

What do you mean by 'mound problem'?

Seablade

coolbeing, instead of just purely ignoring the problem based on what the kenrel of one distro can't do, maybe you should put in some tiem to resolve this issue, maybe even help the community and file it as a bug report, or try yet a different distro (ARCH!) that will get everything going for you reletivelly easy and comfortably.

or...granted this is not the easiest way out, but to make sure as much as possible that everything works the way it should, gentoo is a good friend.

http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

^^ by far more well stated than I could come up with. basically, easy to use, and easy to learn are not the same thing. Windows: easy to learn. Linux: easy to use.

so... gentoo is a pack of lego bricks, each of them sold separetely... nice...

that really tells a lot about the personality... who here liked lego while a kid? never thought about that... interesting...

Legos rock...

Plus I know colleges that teach robotics on them

Seablade

or given away, just packaged separetely.

To answer your question: I never played with them much, I just tinkered with all the crap in my dad's garage.