I've created this thread to talk to you guys when I'm doing my switch from Windows XP Professional to Linux.
My hardware

• Antec SONATA II Piano Black SmartPower 2.0 450W

• AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.2GHz Socket 939, 1MB, BOXED m/fläkt

• Point of View GeForce 7800GT 256Mb DDR3 TV-out DUAL DVI VIVO SLI-ready RETAIL PCI Express

• Thermaltake Big Typhoon CPU-Fläkt, For Socket 478/775/754/939/940

• Samsung SpinPoint P120S 250GB SATA2 8MB 7200RPM NCQ

• Abit KN8 SLI nForce4 SLI 4DDR-DIMM 2PCI 5PCIe SATA Raid Audio GB-LAN Firewire Socket939 ATX

• NEC ND-3550 Dual-Layer DVD +RW/R -RW/R 16X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 16X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 48X CDR 32X CDRW WHITE/VIT

• Corsair Value Select 2x512Mb (tot. 1024Mb/1Gb) Dual DDR PC3200 400MHz 184pin CL2.5

• Standard 1.44Mb 3.5" floppy BLACK/SVART

• 19" TFT-Monitor, Samsung 970P

The distribution
I want to use KDE as it's the best graphical desktop environment compatible with Linux which I've tried.

I'm not at all into waiting for everything to build, so I'm not using Gentoo or Vidalinux or any other similar distribution.

In the past I've used both Ubunutu and Kubuntu without problems (never on my current hardware though). This has lead me to the decision to use Kubunutu.

Questions at the moment

• Should I install the 64-bit version or the 32-bit version of Kubunutu? I do want to have the Macromedia Flash-player working for example.

• I'm not sure that my hardware will work immediately after an install. If I try the "Live Desktop" from the DVD first, and it fails. Is there still a way to get it going when I make the real install? Do you expect any problems with my hardware to occur?

I'd go with 32bit mode, there isn't much real benefit to be running in 64bit mode yet.

And as for the nforce4 drivers, you'll have to do some research to see if everything that you want to use on it is supported. Like LAN, audio, firewire, etc.

Otherthan that I don't see any problems. Except that case, linux despises that case, you'll have a tough time getting linux into that case.

If you are programming some software that benefits from extra registers and/or extra address space then 64bit version might be better. Of cource you can simply install both, 32 and 64bit versions to see if one is better than the other. You can share /home between those installations with ease.
I do want to have the Macromedia Flash-player working for example.
</quote>It should be possible by using 32bit programs but I haven't tried it so far because so far I haven't missed anything important by not seeing all those flash things.

As for hardware, it should be quite simple to get it working.

It is really easy to get working. I completely switched to Linux (Ubuntu) about two months ago and everything works. Recently I bought a scanner - Ubuntu = 10 minutes, uncommenting one line of SANE config file. Then I tried Windows XP - just for fun. 20 minutes, restart, few errors and BSOD when I tried to use the scanner. Now say what is easier and more user-friendly

On the other hand is laptop + wifi + Linux = way to hell.

Not if you choose a laptop with decent Linux support

I run Fedora on my laptop, and setting up the wireless was easy. Just point ndiswrapper to a set of Windows drivers and type a few commands. Of course you would put them in the startup files once you got it working. See:
http://www.geocities.com/trentgamblin/linux-on-v2575ca.html.
You should be able to cut and paste those commands, replacing everything in []'s with your own info.

If you don't have ndiswrapper, download the source, extract it, type "make && make install" and in 30 seconds you will.

I have 64-bit Fedora and to be honest I have no idea whether I see any benefit from that or not. To get flash working (and many other 32-bit only plugins!) I had to install 32 bit Firefox. It seems to work OK more or less, except that it takes a long time to start up (something like 20 seconds). I think most if not all 32 bit programs take longer to startup when you're running 64 bit OS...

Well they do have to load the entire 32 bit runtimes with them (since it isn't loaded by default), as well as having to run in the A64's compat mode...

The above replies combined convinced me that I want to install the 32-bit version instead of the 64-bit one. I've deleted the completed 64-bit BitTorrent download and started to download the 32-bit one instead.

I would like it all the work of course. But a top priority is LAN, Audio and USB 2.0. ABIT USA don't have any other drivers than Windows drivers at driver download site for my motherboard. Has anyone got any suggestions on where to look for Linux drivers for my motherboard?

Yes if the distribution comes with most/all of your needed drivers. But if I can't find the correct drivers (see above) I'm out of luck.

Theres two sources, the kernel (and 3rd party sites that may host drivers for nf4), and Nvidia. I think I recall hearing that Nvidia has released some linux drivers for nf4, but I can't be sure.

Well nvidia provides this driver at the moment. When do I install the driver (STEP 2) during the installation of Kubunutu? If I need to it access my SATA2 harddrive I guess it has to be pretty early.

I'm quite sure you don't need SATA drivers for installing Linux as you do for Windows with some certain motherboards. Those drivers will perhaps improve some things but it all should work fine withut them too.

If you have trouble with drivers or installing, I'd suggest MEPIS. It's designed for Newbies, so it's easy to use, BUT it doesn't hide anything from you, or even discourage you from playing around with stuff. I'm not new to Linux, but I use it because it's easy, i.e. configuring Wireless is K Menu->OS Centre->Networking->[Configure It]->OK->Start browsing, but it's also powerful. I can do what I like without it object, because I like to edit my startup scripts and generally play around with it. It comes with common programs already installed. The whole OOo suite, couple of browsers, KDE, java, flash, etc. and is based on Debian.

With ubuntu you should try this. http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/

I have 64-bit ubuntu (gnome and kde) but installed a firefox32 with flash and realplayer (yes tis evil but it was painless and its only for firefox32).

beware though, i'm not too happy with printer regressions in ubuntu (they dropped the ball by going against the grain).

IIRC ubuntu does the right thing and doesn't use nvidia drivers for audio (only OSS) but uses similar intel something something for Alsa. (oss is run through emulation).

I have nforce4 and unlike the windows install every linux in recent years have had no problems with sata.

Well, laptop itself is not a problem, the problem is a PCMCIA wifi card. Ndiswrapper is installed but always tells me that 'invalid driver'. I think I'm gonna blow up Draytek for discriminating Linux users.

If you have 64 bit Linux you need a 64 bit windows driver (if there is one). Other than that I don't know what the problem could be.

I asked Abit's customer service for help but they don't support Linux and said that I needed to go to each individual chip manufacturer. As I'm not sure of exactly what to look for I posted a thread in their forum as well, let's see what happens.

It looks like I won't be reformatting the harddrive today, as it's soon time to sleep. If only the motherboard manufacturers would support Linux as well.

It sounds nice. I had some problems with drivers on the Windows machine. At first I got these wired CRC-errors and stuff due to a faulty driver.

It looks nice. So it's a script which helps me to set up a lot of common things, huh?

I've tried Kubuntu on two computers now, but the KDE configuration menus were pretty buggy. Switched to Ubuntu, haven't looked back. Everything (sound, wireless etc) worked out of the box, except configuring X for dualscreen.
Good luck with your transition!

I wouldn't install Kubuntu. Compared to Ubuntu it runs rather unstable, and compared to other KDE distributions it has not the best desktop integration.

When I last tried Kubuntu, I couldn't play videos at all, had to fix this myself. If you really want to go for KDE (GNOME is also not bad ), I would install Debian, or maybe SuSE (although I personally hate it). VectorLinux is also not bad, maybe the best for newbies, but there are not many people using it, so you maybe lack support for all your newbie questions.

What about PCLinuxOS?

I wouldn't use Ubuntu, KDE version or not. Last time I did a major reinstall, I decided to give Ubuntu a try, and things were broken all over the place. Nothing worked as it should have, firefox was some old patched version of 1.0.*. Its just not worth it to use a "me too" linux distro (afaik, the founder created it for the fame and ego boost "I have my own distro, isn't that 1337?").

Use 32-bit, because there is no real benefit, you only have 1GB of RAM. If you had 4GB or more, then 64-bit would have some benefit. But there's hardly any 64-bit drivers so some 32-bit emulation would be handy.

Oh, and yes, Windows does suck. It didn't used to, until Bill Gates stopped devvying Windows.

Actually, I think it got better once he stopped. And now that he isn't the head of the Software division, I expect GREAT things from MS.

I've now read that my motherboard should work with SuSe, but I don't want to use SuSe.

Well I have used both Ubuntu and Kubuntu in the past, and it seem to work fine. However I didn't use them very much or that often, when I've had dual boot it always results in me always booting into Windows after a while. But not this time as I won't have dual boot.

If I shouldn't use Kubuntu or Ubuntu, is it then Gentoo you are recommending? Waiting for those long compile times are rather tedious. At least it where on my previous hardware. But perhaps I should try it. Isn't it really really hard to install for a Linux-n00b like myself?

[EDIT]

Is it still that buggy? Perhaps they have corrected its faults?
[/EDIT]

Yes I will.

if some HW works with one distro it will work with everything else. Linux is just kernel and everything else is addon. As most drivers are in kernel you shouldn't have any problems.

You could use Gentoo. If you don't upgrade every time when programX_v2.3.4_beta1 gets a new version called programX_v2.3.4_beta2 then you rarely need to compile stuff. For installing Gentoo I would suggest downloading Kororaa livecd and install it from there. For basic KDE system you will not have to compile anything and since the kernel is set up exactly the same as on livecd it will most likely detect and activate all of your HW. Perhaps only you would need to install video card drivers but that should be relatively easy.

I did Kororaa install at work once when I accidentally removed my /bin directory. too about 1h from inserting CD and logging in to KDE.

[edit]
http://kororaa.org/
http://kororaa.org/static.php?page=static060318-181203

While you are at it you can check out XGL too. The livecd automagically sets up everything for you. When you install it on HDD you will have to install XGL separately but I wouldn't suggest that because KDE hasn't got very good support for it, or to be more precise KDE window manager (kwin) doesn't have and XGL one (compiz) doesn't support most of the nice features of kwin.

Kororaa's that XGL LiveCD, isn't it? I'd stay away from XGL. It may be fun to play around with, but for normal use I'd wait for AIGLX.

With Gentoo, doing a Stage 3 GRP install would get you up and running quickly (as it pulls precompiled packages off the CD), then you can use the computer (konqi for web, kopete for im, etc) while other additional packages need to be compiled.

Yes it is but it doesn't install XGL on HDD. It will install regular Gentoo with livecd kernel and no XGL.

If you want to be clever you can combine Kororaa and stage3 install:
do kororaa install first and install other packages from stage3 binaries. It should work and get you up and running in no time.

If I go for Gentoo should I then choose the AMD64-bit version or the x86 version? Remember that I want to use things like Macromedia Flash Player, Skype and the device drivers for my graphics card (see first post).

Combining Kororaa and stage3 install sounds hard, but perhaps its easier? Will I get an equally good system by using those two methods when installing?

amd64 is 64bit, x86 32bit. As you said you want to use 32bit version you should get the x86 version.

It certainly isn't easier, just you would skip compiling some stuff.

stage3 might give better end result (kernel with only neccesary stuff and wider selection of installable software) but it is a tiny bit harder to install. With kororaa you simply click next and choose some stuff but with stage3 you have to punch in some commands. Nothing too hard though and everything is written and explained in handbook: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/index.xml

If you have time to experient I would first try stage3. If that doesn't work well then Kororaa. With stage3 be sure to read the handbook. It should work if you do as it's written there.

Check!

I'll try a Stage 3 install then. Downloading the image now and I'm going to print the handbook as I only have one computer.

Handbook is included on the cd and when printed out it takes roughly 125 pages

IIRC there is a text-based browser called links2 included on the livecd so if you have trouble you can use that to complain in a.cc. You can also use it to read the handbook.

[edit]

I checked and it seems they have done something with the manual. It's only 65 pages now. Perhaps the 125-pages is what I remember from printing out the non-pringer optimized version.

[edit2]

Actually, before you start installing you should read the handbook a bit. At least everything up to and including this page: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=2

So if I use "Gentoo's Installer LiveCD" for the installation process I won't have to print the manual? It sounds neat. I'm downloading it now.

[edit] I picked the "x86-livecd-2006.0"-torrent to download.

I recommend you not to use the graphical installer on the LiveCD, as it is often described as buggy, and I think you don't learn that much about Gentoo using it.

If you use the links browser to view the manual, you could use the graphical version, which is invoked by executing "links2 -g". I always found this to be useful.

oh, right. I totally forgot that Gentoo now has a graphical livecd. With that just boot up, open a terminal and web browser (firefox?) and simply copy-paste required comamnds to terminal. It can't get much simplier than that

As was said I wouldn't reccomend using the graphical installer. It just got out of alpha version.

Okey! So I'll continue my download of "x86-livecd-2006.0". When it's finished I'll burn it to a CD and boot up. I will then be able to see the Gentoo handbook through links, and I will be able to use the non-graphical installation right from the Live CD. Correct?

Yes, that is correct.

If by links you meant a browser then perhaps you like some other browser better. I think the livecd also has firefox on it.

There's probably some confusion here - I'll try to explain:

On the LiveCD you can start up a graphical environment (which is done by default): In this graphical environment, you could use the graphical installer I mentioned before (but you don't have to!). In the graphical environment, you could also use Firefox to view the manual and type the commands into a graphical terminal.

However, you can also switch to a REAL console, where you DON'T have a graphical environment, which means: no Firefox! Here you could use links.

Hope it helped!

You helped me understand that I don't understand anyway!

Can I use the non-graphical installer when I am in the graphical mode? So that I may use FireFox at the same time?

If not I guess I'll use "that key" (can't remember) to switch between consoles and have links in one of them during the installation phase?

Yes and yes.
Actually Gentoo has no non-graphical installer. You just type in some commands that do the same job as any graphical installer would, only you have better control over things.

"that key" is alt+ F1-F5 and yes, you can do that.

I would boot into graphical environment and use FF and graphical console. That way I don't have to retype the commands and I can simply copy-paste them.

It probably gets clearer once you boot the cd and start installing

Only if you like the controll and customization that Gentoo provides.

And the ease of use!
</opinion>

Oh and to add on to HoHo's post, my favorite tactic is to boot to KNOPPIX and install gentoo from that. That was I get a working system straight from the get-go

Dunno. I'm relatively new to the whole Linux thing. The last time I seriously used Linux was back when Caldera 2.3 was released O_o.

Any way, I booted up a Kubuntu 6.06 LiveCD on a desktop in the office and almost everything worked. I had to boot up in safe mode to get the video card working, unfortunately, but sound, LAN, and video playback seemed to work just fine right 'out of the box'. I had Konqueror up and running in a few seconds.

Spiffy.

I've thought about switching to Linux for a while, but to be honest, I'm not ready to give up my games.

Sirocco: Does this mean we will get a linux version of Cry Havoc?

Why not do as I did:
When I want to play games I go to windows, when I want to do something useful I go to Linux. In six months I almost never booted windows any more, two months after that I cleaned it out of my PC

As always, I make no promises... but the chances have improved substantially in the last few weeks ^.^

I suppose I could do that... maybe I'll look into installing Linux on my new MacBook Pro (if it ever comes...). I'll have a triple boot! MacOS X, Windows XP, and Linux. You can do that, right?

Whats a safe mode?

You talking passing init=/bin/sh to the kernel in the lilo/grub menu? Or booting to single user mode? (init runlevel 1 iirc, which is basically the same as init=/bin/sh except the distro gets to run some aditional setup in runlevel1, while nothing but a shell is run when passing init=/bin/sh in.)

Of course. And if you're feeling helpful, you can always try your Windows games in Wine, and if you have problems, provide as much detail in a bug report as you can (if not try to help fix the problem).

When you boot the current Kubuntu LiveCD it gives you the option to boot in "Safe Mode" in case your video card isn't detected properly. As I am not exactly what you would call a Linux guru, I have no idea what switches/options/whatnot this entails... but it works

Not right now, AFAIK. Windows XP support through bootcamp is only half there, and I dont think there is any easy way to install Linux yet. Remember boys and girls, the new intel macs don't use normal BIOS, which linux and windows rely on. They use EFI.

As far as the nForce4 sata drivers topic, you don't need them for windows either, just disable RAID in the bios setup. It makes things run faster as well. Of course if you are using RAID you can't turn them off, but normally you don't.

I tried Gentoo a while back on my nForce4/a64 (64 bit installation) and it worked well. The kernel played nice, except the sound didn't work right. One network interface (the nForce one) only worked at 100mbit because you had to use the forcedeth driver, which is only 100mbit so far (doesn't matter, my stuff is all 100mb anyway). The other interface on my board, a Marvall or something like that, had gigabit drivers.

Holy crap! My computer just came. They said it was going to get here July 5th. Is it July 5th yet? I don't remember hearing any fireworks... how did it get here from Alaska overnight? This is sooo cool. It's screen is like, huuuuge!

The keyboard lights up too.

Baf, you're stupid Linux has had EFI support for a while now. And it doesn't even need a BIOS to detect things. infact it doesn't normally touch the BIOS at all after the boot loader is done.

Not to mention that theres that Linux-BIOS project that boots linux AS the bios.

Last I read while researching the whole Intel mac windows thing was that Linux still used something from the BIOS which had to replaced. It has EFI support but it isn't complete and still uses some BIOS, is what I read. Doesn't mean it's true though.

If you disable things like PNP and force the kernel to not use the BIOS method of getting disk info, I think that should make linux not use the BIOS at all once it hits Protected mode.

There are Linux ports to other platforms than PCs, none of which have a PC-style BIOS (the PowerPC comes to mind). Surely it would be straightforward to get Linux to boot on an Intel-based Mac starting from there, even if normal Intel-based Linux needs a BIOS.

Linux should load fine on both Intel and PPC Mac's afaik.

Back on topic please!

When I boot using the Gentoo Live CD I'm presented with two choices for installation. One command line version and one graphical.

The command line version is either a wizard or a menu based (where I choose the steps in order myself). I have a problem when it comes to the partitioning program, as it is not fdisk. I've chosen "clear partition table" and then set it up as I want to, but there isn't any option like "Ok! Commit changes!". In fact I don't think that the "Gentoo handbook" is documenting the install processes available on the Gentoo Live CD. Help?

Also, why should the latest Kubuntu 6.06 be a bad choice? It's one of their long-term-commitment releases, so patches and bug fixes will come out for several years. Ubuntu 6.06 got the rating 9/10 in Linux Format.

Gentoo's installer is known to be kinda broken still. You should still use the standard method of installing gentoo (follow the hand book).

I installed Kubuntu, some version a few months ago, and it was just plain broken. I can't recall exactly what all was wrong, besides that Firefox was stuck at some ancient 1.0.* release. (and here I thought ubuntu was supposed to be more up to date than Debian. HAH I say.) Within hours of installing it, I downloaded the latest Gentoo Live CD, and went back to good ole gentoo.

I've now installed Kubunutu 6.06, it seems to have detected most of my hardware during the installation. I still need the specific hardware driver for my graphics card etc, but I have a fairly working system at the moment.

The latest release of Kubuntu/Ubunutu (Dapper v6.06) is a bit special as they promise long term support for it. They've focused on bug fixes and security which they seem to have done well, but I'm not the best person to judge being a Linux newbie.

It comes with KDE 3.5.2. The first thing I did was uninstall a bunch of applications using Adept:

• Kooka

• Kmail

• KPPP

• KPPPLogview

• KAddressbook

• KOrganizer

• Sony Vaio Laptop

• IBM Thinkpad Laptop

• PCMCIA

• Laptop Battery

• KjobViewer

• KdeprintFax

• Printers

• Splash Screen

• KDE Wallet

• Wallet Management Tool

• File Sharing

• Samba

• Plugins

• KNotes

• KArm

• KDE Groupware wizard

The I installed FireFox 1.5.0.4 (the latest stable version) using Adept as well. No problems so far.

[edit] Removed this part as I found the solution :-)

If anything, I've learned that YMMV when working with various Linux distros. I will say that thus far my experience has mirrored Kent's using Kubuntu 6.06. It came up and everything worked properly.

Hehe.. Removing Konquerer seems to have messed up something, is it like Internet Explorer except it's for KDE? (That is, I need it and don't get to uninstall it and use FireFox instead?)

After I removed its package I get these errors: (amongst others)

• When I click my Home icon (the little house) besides the K Menu I get the error: "Service '/usr/share/applications/kde/Home.desktop' is malformatted"

• When I run the package manager Adept and choose Help / About Adept installer and get the About Adept Installer dialog there is a web address. When I click that web address i get: "Could not launch the browser: Could not find service kfmclient"

• When I run the package manager Adept and choose Help / Adept installer Handbook nothing happens.

In System Settings / KDE Components / Default Applications / Web Browser I have "Open http and https URLs in an application based on the contents of the URL" selected. I'm not sure it's correct?

Konqueror is not only the web browser, but also the file and desktop manager for KDE. Uninstalling it is like deleting explorer.exe from Windows.

I re-installed Konqueror and I am able to use it. I'm afraid I broke my system this early, because now I have these problems instead of the previous ones:

• I have no Home icon (the little house) besides the K Menu. And I did not right-click and remove it or something similar. It got to be related to my removal of Konqueror (which is back now but the problems persist).

• When I run the package manager Adept and choose Help / About Adept installer and get the About Adept Installer dialog there is a web address. When I click that web address i get: Nothing happens at all

• When I run the package manager Adept and choose Help / Adept installer Handbook nothing happens. (perhaps this is "as it should be", does it work for you guys?)

Did you remove or purge Konqueror? Purge means that the configuration also is deleted.

I think you have to set up the things again. The icon besides your K-Menu should be no problem, just drag and drop..
Other two problems: you probably need to set up Konqueror again as your default HTML and help browser (I think the Handbook should be displayed in Konqueror). About the link: Normally it should open in your default browser...

Heh, suck-ay. If it makes you feel any better, the last time (and only time) I uninstalled IE it b0rked Windows so badly I was forced to reinstall. Not surprisingly, the OS didn't give me any warning that this was going to fubar everything.

You'll just LOVE Vista then, it warns about changing any setting, at least 2 or 3 times.

Well I'm back on my feet! (I've re-installed Kubuntu and I'm not removing Konquerer again[if I knew more about Linux fixing the problem would hopefully have been pretty easy].)

Update
I ran EasyUbuntu and checked that I wanted the Flash player. And indeed I have it, but the sound from it doesn't work. Any ideas on this?

Firefox needs exclusive access to the audio device. So if there are other applications using sound at the time you start up Firefox, it won't work. You could try to kill the arts daemon if it's running (terminal: sudo killall artsd).

Why would anyone want to run arts in the first place?

Nobody wants it, but all people using KDE will have it by default.

not me under Gentoo, though that probably doesn't count as default installation

So I can't have XMMS running when I start FireFox, for example? Also if I do the "sudo killall artsd" I just shut down the deamon for that specific time? Should I uninstall it?

It depends on your sound card. If you only have one hardware voice, you'll want programs to use ALSA with the 'dmix' device (this will give you software mixing and allow multiple programs to share the sound card). If you have multiple hardware voices, just switching as many thing s to use ALSA as possible would be your best bet.

To properly kill aRTs, open Control Center, and go to Sound & Multimedia->Sound System, and click to disable the sound system. This will effectively stop KDE itself (eg. notifications, KDE apps that use notifications, etc) from making any sound.

Another option might be to just turn down the auto-suspend idle time (which will cause aRTs to release the sound card after a period of inactivity).

Because KDE doesn't really like using anything else. Although you could tell it to use an external app, you'd need to find one that can play an array of multiple formats (from .wav, to .ogg, to .flac, etc), is fast, and can be invoked multiple times at once.

It sounds a bit hard to. I need to switch each individual program to "use ALSA with the 'dmix' device"? There isn't any global setting? Any tip on how to do this for XMMS, mplayer and FireFox? Will I also need to do this for "the system" so that the KDE notifications also work this way?

Well I like the notifications I use today and wish to keep them. It sounds like uninstalling aRTs would seriously screw up my system. (To me who don't know much.)

Is this a real solution? What if I play an mp3 using XMMS and KDE wants to sound a notification at the same time?

Apparently for ALSA 1.0.9rc2 and higher you don't need to setup dmix. Assuming that's right, you can make XMMS use ALSA from the preferences (output plugin). mplayer might choose ALSA automatically, but you can force it by putting this in ~/.mplayer/config:

ao=alsa

And Firefox has sound? I guess you mean flash.

Well.. theoretically, you could create a ~/.asoundrc file to map the default device to dmix automatically, then you can just switch the programs to use ALSA, and it should Just Work(tm). This page should help (ignore the part about setting applications to use the sound server/aRTs if you have it; aRTs isn't something you really want to use if you can help it).

For XMMS, it should have an ALSA output plugin. Been a while since I used XMMS though, so I'm not sure of the exact process. For mplayer, edit/create ~/.mplayer/config and put in the line:
ao=alsa:device=dmix (if you have an older version of mplayer, you may need to use 'alsa1x' instead of 'alsa')
For FireFox, I'm not so sure. I don't believe it itself will try to access the card, but its plugins may. If you're still having trouble with Flash at this point, try starting FireFox with the aoss script (eg. 'aoss firefox').

You'll need to tell aRTs to use ALSA too, yes. The option for that is in the Sound System setup (Control Center->Sound & Multimedia), in the Hardware tab. Select 'Advanced Linux Sound Architecture' as the audio device, and Override device location with 'dmix'.

First of all, I really appreciate all the help guys!

I would guess that my sound card ( ALC850 ) has hardware mixing. It says on the specification page that it has "flexible mixing" anyway. This means that I don't need to / shouldn't specify the dmix device?

Kubuntu comes with an open source-driver for my sound. RealTek provides proprietary sound drivers for my card in Linux. Perhaps I should switch to using their driver? Is it hard to change from the default driver to theirs?

What I have at the moment:

• XMMS was already set to use the ALSA output plugin. I saw it by checking its preferences. Is there a way to be 100% that it's the sound system it actually uses? (I'm paranoid.)

• I have told aRTs to use ALSA. Accrording to your instructions in your post!

• When I start XMMS (no FireFox running) and play an mp3, then start FireFox and go to this game I get no sound in the Flash-game.

• When I start FireFox (no XMMS running) and go to the game I get sound. When I then start XMMS and try to play an mp3 I get a dialog saying: "Please check that: Your sound card is properly configured. You have the correct output plugin selected. No other program is blocking the sound card.".

What if you start XMMS to play an MP3, and try to play a sound through KDE? The sound system setup has a button to test digital audio. If that works, then try starting FireFox with the aoss script and see if that fixes it.

It works great now! I made FireFox use alsa by installing the alsa-oss and setting FIREFOX_DSP="aoss" in /etc/firefox/firefoxrc. You've really helped me! Big thanks!

I'm sure I'll run into another problem pretty soon though. :-) So far it's going pretty smooth and I'm really liking KDE. I'm documenting everything using Zim (which I recommend you trying, it's not magical but nice) so that I have a structured installation documentation.

Also. What do you all think about using the proprietary sound drivers which RealTek provides for Linux here. Is it possible that I would get better sound output using their driver? Is it hard to change from the default driver to theirs without messing everything up? (I'm on my third install, hopefully my last for a while. )

I looked at alsaa-project.org's driver list and didn't see Realtek or your card in it, so it seems like you wouldn't have much choice. Though if your sound's working, you may want to rethink playing around with it, for now. It could help with your OSS sound issue, or it might make things worse if they conflict with anything.

My sound works at the moment. However I'm not 100% happy with the sound quality, especially when I play loud sounds. It might be as simple as configuring ALSA mixer (I think it's called that anyway. ) though.

If it was simple to try I would do it. But if I risk messing up the system and having possibly another re-installed then it doesn't feel that important anymore.

If sounds distort when they're full volume, even if your speakers are quiet, then run alsamixer and play with the Master and PCM volume settings. If you have powered speakers, turn them up to compensate, and use them to adjust the volume afterwards, instead of the hardware mixer (and make sure programs are configured to use software volume control when possible). If they're not powered, then you'll just have to find a comfort zone between possible distortion, and being able to hear it.

This is one of my main gripes with linux... it's sound system sucks. Requires too much hacking to get working

It should be more like windows, something provides universal sound stuff and all the apps use it. Not all this chose the right mixer and (try to) configure everything to use it.

Yeah, that is true. Fortunately, everything is moving towards that, although due to API incompatibility it still doesn't quite work that way.

This is why you need a good API/Architecture at the start, that way later on you don't have to deal with crap like that.

A case where the Cathedral method wins...

My current mission is to disable / uninstall the IPV6 module, as the network I'm on uses V4. I'm not there yet, but I've asked for help on the Ubuntu forums. There are already a lot of threads on the forum dealing with this, but the suggestions given are often different and users report locked up systems etc after following advice. So I am tryíng to sort of which method to use.

Next things on my to do list (at the moment) are:

• Check if I should use the properiatey driver for my sound card. And if so, how.

• Make .torrent-files open in KTorrent when I click on them in FireFox.

• Install Thunderbird and restore all my previous mail. (easy)

• I'm using mplayer with its FireFox plugin. It works for almost all files except certain WMV-files, check if that is solvable. I have installed the windows codecs using this advice, some WMV-files do work. It's also annoying that when I've played a file using the mplayer plugin the tab isn't "normal" efter finishing playing the video clip. Which makes All-in-one-gestures not work so I can't close the tab using mouse gestures.

As for the Linux audio quality thing, just start up alsamixer (console: "alsamixer") and set all the volumes to 71. Anything above 71 will distort the sound (except for the global volume control).

Recompile the kernel. It's not anything big to worry about... it doesn't really affect anything.

Unless something is really bothering you, I would leave it enabled or installed.
While you can tailor Linux specifically for your hardware (making it load very fast and possibly use less resources), that also makes it unflexible, which means that plugging in new hardware won't work as it otherwise would.
This can become annoying, for instance, when you replace hardware or upgrade your computer (I tend to keep my old harddisk and OS installation on the new machine personally).

If your sound is anything like mine, you actually have two sound devices, one plain old CRAPPY 2.0 (stereo) codec, and one fancy new awesome surround codec, and its the surround one that sounds the best, I have to make sure that everything is using the surround device, especially since it supports multiple stereo hardware voices (yay for hardware mixing \o/).

So make sure you chcek.

Oh, and to explain what I mean by "crappy", the 2.0 codec distorts and sounds really really bad, even at low volume. Its completely unusable, and what you'd expect from onboard sound.

I'd just use kmix and I find 80% or 85% is a good number. I think it depends on your card/chip though. If I put my stereo codec above 50% is sounds even worse

What I have heard is: Applications try to connect using IPV6 first when it's installed, then IPV4. This makes a new connection a bit slower. And it's the reason I would like to get rid of it.

I'll do it ASAP then! As it's a module, do I need to recompile the kernel?

Good to know! I'll check it out. Reading up a lot on ALSA will give me the relevant knowledge I guess?

It sounds much better since I set them to 71. I'll keep fiddling with them when I get some free time and also check out that other codec Thomas is mentioning. (And also check out the proprietary driver for my sound card.)

Side project
Is there a way to map a path like /haha/boho/mysite to an FTP-directory? This would be nice and make it easier for me to work with Bluefish / SciTE on my new web page design "live" (it's in a secret path though ). (I use KDE if it's of importance.)

I just have my new laptop with Windows XP (where I do most of my work) and my desktop is Debian Linux where I do most of nothing on lately due to college.

If IPv6 is a module, just have it not load at boot, which it probably isn't doing already.

To answer the side project question:
ln -sf /haha/boho/mysite /ftp/directory

if its just a module, just don't load it then you dont have ipv6 support but yeah, just disable it, make, and make modules_install, and you have no more ipv6 support.

You can install an ftp server and just have it export that dir, or if you already have an ftp server you want to use, and just want to make that path mirror it, there is a file system driver for ftp, but I've never used it. Also, all KDE applications support the ftp:// proto. so any kde editor can open documents on an ftp server.

Maybe a little, the first thing to check is if you have more than one /proc/asound/card0/pcm*p directory.

Check this out:

moose@natasha ~ $ ls /proc/asound/card0/pcm*p
/proc/asound/card0/pcm0p:
info  oss  sub0  sub1  sub2  sub3

/proc/asound/card0/pcm1p:
info  oss  sub0

pcm0p on my card is the surround codec, which sounds very nice, especially since its an integrated sound chip, and pcm1p is the crappy stereo codec that I never use.

The number of subN files in the pcmNp folders is the number of individual hardware stereo devices you can use. And to use one in an app, youd use a device name something like: plughw:0,0,0 (first digit is the card number, if you have only one card, like most normal people, its always 0, second digit is the pcm number, here I have 0, and 1, I only use 0 though, and the third is the subN device, if you don't supply a digit for this one, alsa should just use any available subN device, but I usually make artsd use sub3 all the time, and leave the rest for other things.)

Note that I have a via82xx based sound system, these devices support something called "VIA DXS", which lets the surround codec be used as multiple separate stereo devices. I'm not sure if other sound board support the same sort of thing.

What's your point? (I guess you wrote in the wrong thread.)

Well it seems like it is: (I've been told that it is indeed activated by default in (K)Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper)

kent@kent-desktop:~$ lsmod | grep ipv6
ipv6                  265728  6

kent@kent-desktop:~$ ip a | grep inet6
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host
    inet6 fe80::250:8dff:fed9:b88/64 scope link

Now I just need to find out how to disable a module from loading in the best way. I've heard of editing /etc/modprobe.d/aliases but also that the changes made can be undone if you upgrade. Adding a bad_list was one suggestion in a thread, I tried it without any success though.
[append]

Gosh! make.. It sounds like I need to recompile then, eh?

one easy way is to do something like this:

# ifdown eth0
# rmmod ipv6
# ifup eth0
# rm /path/to/modules/ipv6.ko

where ifup and ifdown are your distro's specific network interface scripts (mine is /etc/init.d/net.eth0 stop/start)

oh, I know a sure fire way to get it to disable loading automatically!
First, find your modules alias file (mine happens to be /etc/modules.d/aliases)
make an entry like: alias ipv6 off, update your modules (on gentoo update-modules), and restart (or go the long way and kill your interface, unload the module, and restart the interface).

edit: I really need to not skip parts of posts, I just found this in yours:

Tee hee.

They don't. With my SB Live, if I set apps to use, say, surround51, then it will only work if it sets a 6 channel mode. Trying to set a stereo mode will fail with that device. Really annoying since devices that use fewer channels sound louder.

However, by default AFAIK, ALSA comes with a 'front' and 'back' device, which sets a 4-channel output mode and maps stereo to the front two or back two speakers.

Interesting, since I can use surround51 as well as the "default", "plughw:", and "hw:" devices.

The general rule is "amp as late as possible". For me, I can turn my speakers to max volume without any static sounds, so I do that, then my Front channel is the one I adjust since all my applications use it as the master, but it normally sits at 50 for normal listening. Finally the actual application volume which I set so that they interact nicely with one another (gaim should be loud but not obnoxious). This involves amaroK being at 72%... But yeah, by amping as late as possible, you prevent distortion in the lines from the devices peaking out.

I should note this is why I like xine-lib apps. The configuration lets you select different devices for the different speaker counts, lets you select your speaker configuration, then it Just Works(tm).

I ended up doing it this way anyway. And I feel the difference when browsing. Or at least I think I do.

kent@kent-desktop:~$ ls /proc/asound/card0/pcm*p
/proc/asound/card0/pcm0p:
info  oss  sub0

/proc/asound/card0/pcm2p:
info  sub0

This is a bit above my head for the time being. I'll have to look more into how ALSA works. I'm also not sure if I should look for another sound card driver. I think I'll postpone it for a rainy day.

I want to edit text files "live" (the editor uploads the file through FTP after each change).

I've tried SciTE but it only wants to open a file from my file system (I guess it's not built for KDE).

And I've tried Bluefish, it has "Support for remote files using gnome-vfs (depending on your gnome-vfs setup, you'll have FTP, SFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, WebDAV, Samba and more)". But I don't know how to setup gnome-vfs. And even if it's a nice solution as I run KDE. But perhaps it's the best way?

I'll fine tune it later, remembering to amp as late as possible.

This is an in-application configurable setting I guess (like in Windows)? Or is it possible to use some operative system setting (an ALSA setting I guess) to force an individual application to use a certain max volume (like in Windows VISTA)?

My troubled thoughts at the moments

• Sound configuration is pretty close to hell in Linux.

• Playing media isn't as easy/nice as in Windows. I've yet to find an application which can play all media I could play from Windows. And I've yet to find an equally nice method to play media in FireFox as in Windows.

I'll continue to struggle with this of course. And I appreciate all the help!

Eh? I've never had a quality problem with onboard sound with Windows. Ironically, the onboard sound on this board sounds like utter shit on Linux (reminds me of a radio station with okay reception).

That happens anyway if IPv6 is anywhere near the kernel (possibly even without it, but prolly not). Those ips are just default non routable ones... and it's not affecting a thing, so what's the big deal?

[edit]
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:IEcSotMWtxQJ:www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux%2BIPv6-HOWTO/systemcheck-kernel.html+disable+ipv6+linux&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2

^ Check the section on automatically loading. It tells you how to alias it in modules.conf to disable auto-loading.
[/edit]

Yup. Use windows.

See, I'm the opposite. I have to go and get mplayer/win32 so I can watch all my media

- For sound, I'd look into using dmix (I assume the latest ALSA installs all enable it by default), you should just beable to use "plughw:dmix" or something similar as the device your audio applications are using. dmix is ALSA's software mixer.

- Turning off ipv6 probably does help response times.

- I use Amarok and Xine for Audio, and Video repectively. Theres also mplayer, VLC, kaffiene and other you can try out, for video. I highly suggest Amarok using the xine-lib backend for audio, nothing beats it.

- Scite is a GTK app, and doesn't use KDE's API. For web development in KDE, you can be hard core, and use Kate (the "advanced" texteditor) or Quanta Plus.

- ALL KDE applications from Amarok, Kate, to Konqueror, use KDE's API. All of which can use KDE's "io" plugins, supporting just about every protocol that exists, fish:// for ssh file access, ftp:// for ftp, and many more you can install for things like svn+ssh access via any kde app.

- It looks like you have two separate hardware voices \o/ plughw:0,0 and plughw:0,2

God you're a retard.

Well now that I've had the module not loading this is the result: (So it seemed to work fine as an indicator. But you are the Linux expert. )

kent@kent-desktop:~$ lsmod | grep ipv6
kent@kent-desktop:~$ ip a | grep inet6
kent@kent-desktop:~$

And also it does affect something to have IPV6 enabled, if what I've heard is correct. What I have heard is that if it's enabled a new connection first tries to do an AAAA DNS lookup (IPV6, which will fail), then an A lookup (IPV4). This causes it to take a longer time. It might be wrong, but it sounds right.

No, I thought I would give this a serious try. To identify something bad is the first step towards correcting it, or nagging on someone else to correct it.

[append1]

I've already disabled it. Didn't you read my post?

(Time for some sleep, I'll answer below tomorrow...)

Ignore baf, he hasn't got a clue.

But do see my last post

This is the problem with binary distros. They prebuild packages for you, but you're then stuck using the configuration they set at build time. And since things like win32codecs and such are legally dubious packages, I'd be su rprised if most distros have support for them by default. For things like mplayer, it needs to be compiled with support for specific codec libs (win32codecs is considered a single package in this regard), so if they didn't configure it with support for those codecs, you're SOL.

I don't really have these problems, except for general volume issues which isn't too bad. My sound card supports multiple hardware voices though, so I have more leeway on apps using audio at the same time. Just needed to set the audio volumes through alsamixer, then set apps to use software volume control. Kaffeine (which uses xine-lib) and mplayer have no problems playing whatever videos I throw at it, either.

Many years ago I looked at switching, but the software just wasn't up to it. The two b its of software I use that I need on a system are:

- A development IDE to match MSVC. With that I mean interactive GUI driven debugger, intellisense, e.g. for class methods (press . or -> and the list appears), expansion of function parameters), jumping to function declarations quickly, etc.

- Something like Quicken/Money to manage my bank account/credit cards, consolidate statements, etc.

Is there anything like this?

The only other thing that confuses me is (assuming you are using KDE/Gnome), if you run KDE apps in gnome (or the other way round) it runs slower (or so I read), but what happens with programs that do not target a specific desktop environment, e.g. Firefox. Does that run inherently slower because it doesn't use the optimised graphics library?

And you don't need to set up PCMCIA wifi card that's a real hell, and that's why I'm here under Windows. I folowed all steps from NDISWrapper manual (the one included) and I screwed up badly - when I force Network Manager to connect to my wireless network the card doesn't even blink, same for WpaSupplicant and I cannot even find /etc/net.eht1 to set it up using iwconfig and starting it manually like under Gentoo.

Quicken has an online web service that I have heard about and know nothing about myself. You may be interested in looking at it. It costs as much yearly as a Quicken license.

They don't run slower. It's like this: when I run a GNOME app on my KDE desktop, it runs slower because it's a GNOME app and those inherently suck. But when a GNOME user runs a KDE app on his computer, it runs slower because it's a KDE app and those inherently suck.

The only actual slow down is the load time for the libraries, but that is a 1-time-per-session overhead.

I've never seen a speed difference between GNOME and KDE applications; it's just that they look different because both use a different configuration. Then again, programmes using other widget sets look completely different again.
As long as something isn't using Motif, it should run reasonably fast.

Firefox uses gtk, as far as I know(the GIMP toolkit, which is also used by GNOME).

http://thisistheurl.com/file/ktorrent.png
When I download files using KTorrent I get the above type of errors. The error message is "Error: Cannot open index file /*/*/index : To many open files". Is there a maximum setting I need to change? And is it files really? (It might be network connections.)

It is files, a bunch of large batch torrents will eat up a ton of files. A normal user has a limit of 1024 concurrent files open at any one time.

It can be a real bitch to actually change that. If I can recall how I got it to increase mine, I'll let you know

edit: Also, the latest actual release of Ktorrent is a wee buggy. The SVN version also has been crashing on me, so you might want to stick with your version for now. but hopefully ktorrent 2 will be released "soon".

Thanks Thomas! I'll look into how to change that number to something higher than 1024.

Latest issue

I follow this advice earlier which said:

sudo apt-get install xmms
sudo apt-get install xmms-skins
wget -c http://easylinux.info/uploads/xmms-wma_1.0.4-2_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i xmms-wma_1.0.4-2_i386.deb

Now I got this advice instead, which seems more promising. Therefore I want to remove the installed package from the first advice. However I do not know which package name it had, I tried:

kent@kent-desktop:~/$ sudo dpkg -r xmms-wma_1.0.4-2_i386.deb
dpkg: you must specify packages by their own names, not by quoting the names of the files they come in...

How would I get the package name from the file xmms-wma_1.0.4-2_i386.deb so that I can remove it? Or is it possible to search amongst the installed packages and somehow locate that the package came in a file called "xmms-wma_1.0.4-2_i386.deb"?

the package name is likely just "xmms-wma"

It was! You are brilliant! You solve my problems like superman! But yes, that was pretty dumb of me. It's starting to feel like a pretty good installation. I've do cumented everything I've done which I'm sure I'll find useful later on.

FireFox + Flash issue
I have FireFox 1.5.0.4 installed through the firefox package. And I have Flash Player 7 installed through the flashplugin-nonfree package. I've then followed this advice to get sound through ALSA.

My issue is that FireFox has become unstable when it comes to Flash pages. For example the Grow games always freezes up FireFox for me. At the same time they work fine when I'm using Konqueror which is strange.

When I replaced FIREFOX_DSP="aoss" with FIREFOX_DSP="none" it seems stable again (I can play Grow now which freezed up on every attempt before), but I have no sound.

How is it for you guys? Can you play "Grow" (link is above) using FireFox? And if so, how do you have it set up? (Especially of interest if you are using [K]Ubuntu.)

Yes.
Not that I understand what I'm supposed to do...

Nothing fancy: vanilla Firefox (but it's a 1.0 version, not 1.5) and vanilla Flash player. Never changed any settings related to audio playback.

I'm not though. Running KDE 3.4 on Gentoo.

:FireFox + Flash:

Thanks. The game freezes during the initial loading if I'm using aoss (see above), so I just wanted to see if someone else has it working. As you're using a 1.0 version it might not tell that much. Has anyone else got sound working (preferably through ALSA) with Flash + latest (stable) version of FireFox?

:Konqueror fonts:

Is there a way to get the text to the same size in Konqueror as I have in FireFox? The text tends to be smaller in size when I use Konqueror. I have the Microsoft fonts installed, if that is relevant. Example of how it looks:
http://thisistheurl.com/file/firefox-konqueror.png
I would like the text to be as large using Konqueror as it is in FireFox. I have the minimum (which is 8) and medium font size (which is 10) to play with in the Konqueror settings. But how do they relate to FireFox's default font size (which is 16). Are they both measured in pixels even?

:Camera problem:

I also have a problem with KDE not detecting my Canon PowerShot A520. I've got some help and have a rough idea of what the problem is. But I still don't know how to solve it.

:Time to increase the number of concurrently open files:

I've also been told how to increase the number of concurrently open files. To what number do you guys suggest I change it? What could be any potential problems? My line of thought is that 1024 is an old maximum which isn't motivated anymore due to better hardware and more file intensive applications (BitTorrent clients for example).

I have it set to 8k.

They should be measured in Point sizes (pt).

Thanks to all for the help! I'm finishing off the thread now, if I have more questions in the future I'll create a new thread or post in some other relevant thread.