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| My Windows->Linux Switch |
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kentl
Member #2,905
November 2002
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I've created this thread to talk to you guys when I'm doing my switch from Windows XP Professional to Linux.
The distribution 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
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Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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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. -- |
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HoHo
Member #4,534
April 2004
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Quote: Should I install the 64-bit version or the 32-bit version of Kubunutu? 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. As for hardware, it should be quite simple to get it working. __________ |
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Karel Kohout
Member #5,968
June 2005
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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 |
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OICW
Member #4,069
November 2003
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On the other hand is laptop + wifi + Linux = way to hell. [My website][CppReference][Pixelate][Allegators worldwide][Who's online] |
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HoHo
Member #4,534
April 2004
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Not if you choose a laptop with decent Linux support __________ |
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Trent Gamblin
Member #261
April 2000
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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: If you don't have ndiswrapper, download the source, extract it, type "make && make install" and in 30 seconds you will.
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miran
Member #2,407
June 2002
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Quote: 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 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... -- |
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Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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Quote: 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... -- |
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kentl
Member #2,905
November 2002
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Thomas Fjellstrom said: I'd go with 32bit mode, there isn't much real benefit to be running in 64bit mode yet.
HoHo said: 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.
Miran said: 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...
Thomas Fjellstrom said: 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. Thomas Fjellstrom said: 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. 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? Karel Kohout said: It is really easy to get working. 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. |
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Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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Quote: Has anyone got any suggestions on where to look for Linux drivers for my motherboard? 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. -- |
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kentl
Member #2,905
November 2002
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Quote: 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. |
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HoHo
Member #4,534
April 2004
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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. __________ |
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James Stanley
Member #7,275
May 2006
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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. |
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Goalie Ca
Member #2,579
July 2002
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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. ------------- |
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OICW
Member #4,069
November 2003
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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. [My website][CppReference][Pixelate][Allegators worldwide][Who's online] |
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Trent Gamblin
Member #261
April 2000
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OICW said: 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.
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kentl
Member #2,905
November 2002
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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. Quote: 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. 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. Quote: With ubuntu you should try this. http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/ It looks nice. So it's a script which helps me to set up a lot of common things, huh? |
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jakerohs
Member #485
June 2000
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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. |
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Simon Parzer
Member #3,330
March 2003
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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 |
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HoHo
Member #4,534
April 2004
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What about PCLinuxOS? __________ |
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Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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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?"). -- |
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thematrixeatsyou
Member #6,183
September 2005
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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. good food is t3h pwn <-- if anyone can find out how old this sig is they win an ascii penguin |
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Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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Quote: 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. -- |
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kentl
Member #2,905
November 2002
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I've now read that my motherboard should work with SuSe, but I don't want to use SuSe. Jake Rohs said: I've tried Kubuntu on two computers now, but the KDE configuration menus were pretty buggy. Switched to Ubuntu, haven't looked back.
Simon Parzer said: 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.
Thomas Fjellstrom said: 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.
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. 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] Kubuntu 6.06 LTS Here for the Long Term said: Kubuntu 6.06 LTS has been released. It is available for download now or for the first time you can order free Kubuntu CDs through Shipit. This release comes with KDE 3.5.2 and includes a new installer which you can use direct from the live desktop CD. We have focused on stability and bugfixes, as our first Long Term Support release 6.06 will be supported for 3 years on the desktop and 5 years on the server.
Is it still that buggy? Perhaps they have corrected its faults? thematrixeatsyou said: Use 32-bit, Yes I will. |
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), I would install 
But not this time as I won't have dual boot.