Now that I've finally built (most of) my PC, I kind of forgot you need an operating system to actually use it!

The last copy of Windows I bought was Win98, mainly because one desktop or laptop has been upgraded within the past few years and came with a copy of XP installed already. However, no discs so I can't get it onto this desktop

Seeing as I now have a 64bit processor, I thought I'd give the trial version of WinXP 64bit a go. All I can say is I'm glad I didn't fork out for the full version!

It's a nice OS and is fast and pretty much just like XP, but unfortunately you need 64bit drivers for just about everything - luckily most stuff I've got drivers for, but something pretty important (my network laser printer) doesn't have any 64bit drivers for it, and to complicate things needs its own port drivers in order to function Not very good for my work when I need to print out copies of stuff!

Soo...I'm not going to buy a new version of Windows with Longhorn/Vista supposedly due out this year, and I don't think I can cope with Win98 again (although hellooo Syndicate Wars! Not been able to play that for years due to it being too old for XP to handle!), which leaves me with...Linux, seeing as it's free.

I've used Linuxes in the past, but never really like it. But I have no choice at the moment it appears, and things have moved on since my last ventures into the penguin land, so here's hoping it's a nice experience!

My last Linux, I think, was United Linux...so much for that lasting! Seems the download I got was the only release they made!

Anyway, I tried Gentoo previously but couldn't get it to install on my laptop (graphics problems - screen faded to white and this made it somewhat hard to see what to do). I can't be bothered with spending hours compling it but came across RR4/RR64 linux (http://www.lxnaydesign.net/) which seems to be a live dvd version of it

Going to give it a whirl in the hope of being able to print something, will give an update on how I get on with it! 

Anyone else had experience with Linux, and if so, which versions? I was going to go for SUSE, and in fact tried installing it over the network, but unfortunately I just encountered a lot of trouble with it not finding servers and stuff so gave up.

I've tried:

Gentoo, Mandrake (now mandriva), Suse, Red Hat, debian and various other distros.

I've used Suse the most, although for some reason it doesn't like most of my new hardware so I've not used it for a while.

I use red hat all the time at work but it's purely command line based server stuff. I find Linux nicer than windows sometimes when you know a few of the tricks ,it's also pretty damn powerful in that respect.

Haven't found a distro that has tempted me to give up on windows yet (and doubt I will do for some time). Dunno what it is about some distros, there always seems to be something missing that makes me think "windows aint so bad after all......"

I'm using SUSE, mandriva just did not like my machine

Well RR64 seems very nice indeed, only problem is, it refuses to install to my harddrives, and it won't recognise my lan card or sound card!

Bah.

Suppose i'll give SUSE a try next, but might try Gentoo properly quickly seeing as the download is only 390mb compared with about 9000GB for SUSE...

Well strike gentoo off the list... Couldn't get the network card working again so didn't even bother trying to progress with the install. I must say it looks much nicer to install compared with the first version i tried when it was still a new distro years ago!

Downloading SUSE now -  my theory is that both rr64 and gentoo were based on the older linux kernel, whereas suse is more recent. Seeing as my mobo has only been out a few months, i presume the older kernels don't recognise it properly seeing as none of the onboard stuff works. If that fails, i'm not sure what else to try!

I don't have the time to read up properly on the subject, but is there an easy way to install like a driver or something for it? It seems to find a device, but after giving it the right settings with net-setup it can't even ping my router My printer had better work after all this too!!

Posted via WAP (http:///forum/index.php/topic,494.0.html) - Nokia6230i

SUSE does have 64-bit support

Indeed it does, but you still need to find 64-bit drivers for most of your hardware which is a bit of a bugger.

Yup that's what the problem is Maybe I should've stuck with 32bit versions, but just seems a waste when I've got a 64bit processor

I tired the 64-bit version of Suse but I gave up with it in the end. For some reason Suse didn't like the 64-bit drivers for some of my hardware and it's too much messing around searching the internet for them.

Well scrap SUSE off the list too

It seems nothing connected to the mobo (except the cd drive) works I couldn't partition the HD or create anything for it to install onto

http://www.linuxiso.org/

Well SUSE not only didn't install, but it destroyed my HD

Anyone know of any tools to completely wipe out every trace of a partition? NTFS seems to think it's now got bad boot sectors all over the place rendering the drive useless

no idea, i'm running a full mandriva 2006 install.

Well SUSE not only didn't install, but it destroyed my HD

Anyone know of any tools to completely wipe out every trace of a partition? NTFS seems to think it's now got bad boot sectors all over the place rendering the drive useless

Similar thing happened to me recently (although not Linux releated). I had to shove an old IDE drive in just so I could nuke all of the partitions and format my SATA drive

doh! Well I think I've luckily got a spare somewhere - I'll give it a try.

What did you use to fix it? Just normal windows stuff to format, or a special prog? I've got into the recovery console using a boot disk, but none of the format commands work

I ended up installing XP on the IDE drive because I wanted to preserve some of the data on the SATA drive. For some reason it let me do so, even though it had dodgy sectors. Then I used the old windows format tool and wiped the SATA drive clean.

Well the spare drive just spewed out errors, something about "Disk I/O error : Status=0008020 Failed to arcread the boot partition to check for a disk signature."

So that got me no-where. Maybe I just hadn't got the dvd drive and harddrive setup properly (ie slave/master jumpers etc).

Stuck the drives into another desktop, recognised one without a problem and I was able to access and save the major stuff, which is just as well because I accidentally wiped out the whole thing when I pressed a button in a recovery program I had! Bye bye Windows As it was a demo version I'd activated, I hope reinstalling it from scratch doesn't mean I can't use it still

Stuck the other HD into the other desktop too, some weeeeird partitions on there thanks to Linux Sorted that out too fairly easily with the HD prog I had

Now...why was it impossible to format them using the boot cds/recovery programs/linux stuff I was able to access, yet a simple program was able to sort it in a few seconds?!

I'm wondering if Partition Magic and XP64 didn't mix too meaning I couldn't restore my partitions before it went absolutely wrong.

So back to square one, just waiting for the rest of XP64 to install...then I might give linux another go on the spare HD...! Bit scared now but as long as I leave the XP disk alone, I should be able to fix it again...hopefully!

just completely hacked suse 10.0

this page helped, suse now flies

http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/178/42/

Yay - I'm on SUSE!

Problem was...faulty HD Hope I can get it exchanged

Must say I'm not bowled over by Linux, considering it's the 64bit version I expected things to load a little faster than it does. Ah well, I'll apply some tweaks and see how it goes - it's definitely come on a LOT since I last tried; you could actually use it as a proper OS now, which is just as well seeing as I can't find my XP disk!

http://www.pclinuxos.com/

I like the look of this.

http://waxborg.servepics.com/mobile/articles/vmware.html

throw this in?

well, I'm not sure if mounting the drive will allow you to see you XP's drive (or probably you will). If you seriously want to run XP on Linux, you'll likely use WINE or any Windows emulator prorgams for linux. 

Why not just dual-boot? Is it just to save time logging out of Linux or something?

I've always found wine to be fairly poor at emulation.

vmware is quite good though, I've always found it runs Linux better under windows, rather than windows under Linux.

http://www.novell.com/linux/xglrelease/ Looks interesting, 3d-a-fies the interface a bit more. Although seeing as I can't even get my graphics card working properly as is it in Linux, i'm not sure how useful it'd be to me!

suse screensaver kill me graphics card, everything wnet so slow i reached for win2k and wiped linux out

At least Windows works, and works well. Certainly not something Linux can claim just quite yet from all the trouble in this thread!

Just downloading the latest SUSE beta in the hope of being able to get sound working, but i'm not holding my breath.

Not as fast as Windows either (how long does FireFox/yast/etc need to load?!) but i guess it's just nice to have a change once in a while. Might even try that mac os thing again now i have a computer with a cd drive!

Posted via WAP (http:///forum/index.php/topic,494.0.html) - Nokia6230i

Update:

I have sound working finally I also have my resolution working properly now!

Basically, when i put it into the native resolution of my monitor (1680x1050), it didn't look right and my monitor OSD reported it being in 1280x1024 or something along those lines, and with an incorrect refresh rate.

Anyway this fixed it for me:

sax2 -r -m 0=nvidia -V 0:1680x1050@60

Well, technically the refresh rate is being reported at 58Hz, so I might fiddle more later, but at least everything is looking nice and sharp and in the right proportions now!

Seeing as this is the only OS I can print from, I'd better try not to break anything else

http://www.novell.com/linux/xglrelease/ Looks interesting, 3d-a-fies the interface a bit more. Although seeing as I can't even get my graphics card working properly as is it in Linux, i'm not sure how useful it'd be to me!

You have GOT to see this in action! I've still not purchased a graphics card yet, so it's using the old GeForce2 MX 200/400 (no idea which) I raped from an old pc which had been laid to rest many years ago, and even on an old card like that, the effects which can be produced are stunning

Think OSX but waaaay better - switching between desktops is certainly something I wouldn't have done before, but will start using it purely so I can use this feature more!

Argh 4 posts in a row, hate it when that happens, but here's a small and quick video clip of XGL in action:

http://www.mobmms.com/view/2784.html

Can you make it out ok?

That is very cool. very impressive indeed.  just a bit O/T but what phone did you use for the video?  it was pretty clear recording.  6230?

I might've cheated with the recording a little I took it on a digital camera, then converted it to 3gp format so i could stick it on mobmms

Posted via WAP (http:///forum/index.php/topic,494.0.html) - Nokia6230i

I've finally got my ethernet working in Gentoo!! I've not been able to try it out on my desktop since i've had it cos of the problem - kind of useless having a computer with no net connection - but apart from suse, gentoo was the only other linux i was really interested in.

Left the install running as it should be downloading kde (live cd only came with gnome and i really don't like it) but unfortunately i didn't bother doing the setup properly as wasn't sure if it was going to work, so i'll probably have to start all over again in the morning if it installs successfully Ah well, it wasn't the 64bit version anyway so i'd just end up doing it again.

I'll be sticking xgl onto whichever linux i get working next tho for definite as i love the effects! Makes the text clearer too.

Will be interesting to see what Windows Vista does with it's interface.

Posted via WAP (http://www.mob453.com/forum/index.php/topic,494.0.html) - Nokia6230i

edit: omg it's still installing!!! That's over 11 hours so far!!

edit2: it's only just finished! Over 12 hours Hmm, it says install complete, but has two errors as the last steps of the install so not sure if it's worked... I'll paste them here incase I need them later:

GLI: March 11 2006 03:23:19 - Config files updated using etc-update.  make.conf/fstab/rc.conf restored.
GLI: March 11 2006 13:52:06 - xorg.conf copied to new system.  X should be ready to roll!
GLI: March 11 2006 13:52:07 - Added xdm to runlevel default
GLI: March 11 2006 13:52:07 - ERROR! Failure addingxfs to runlevel default because it was not found!
GLI: March 11 2006 13:52:07 - ERROR! Could not add xfs to runlevel default. returned a bad status code.

----

>>> Regenerating /etc/ld.so.cache...
  ...done!
>>> emerge (1 of 1) kde-base/kde-3.4.3 to /
>>> md5 files    kde-3.5.0.ebuild
>>> md5 files    kde-3.4.2.ebuild
>>> md5 files    kde-3.3.2.ebuild
>>> md5 files    kde-3.4.3.ebuild
>>> md5 files    kde-3.4.1.ebuild
>>> md5 files    files/digest-kde-3.4.3
>>> md5 files    files/digest-kde-3.4.2
>>> md5 files    files/digest-kde-3.4.1
>>> md5 files    files/digest-kde-3.5.0
>>> md5 files    files/digest-kde-3.3.2
>>> Merging kde-base/kde-3.4.3 to /
>>> kde-base/kde-3.4.3 merged.

>>> clean: No packages selected for removal.

>>> Auto-cleaning packages ...

>>> No outdated packages were found on your system.


 * GNU info directory index is up-to-date.

 * xdm added to runlevel default
 * rc-update complete.
 * /sbin/rc-update: /etc/init.d/xfs not found; aborting.

pclinuxos, try it you may like it

and now on to ubuntu. clean fast, not complicated. sudo instead of root, that mac computer uses sudo too. it's so pretty. bars on top and bottom of screen.

Posted via WAP (http:///forum/index.php/topic,494.0.html) - NokiaE60-1

clean install mandrivaone.

Posted via WAP (http:///forum/index.php/topic,494.0.html) - NokiaE60-1

sod that done a full kubuntu install with automatix2

all drivers accepted, wireless cards accepted,

boot first time and whats the real killer

cpu usage is next to zero

windows was 100% permanently

kubuntu's the KDE version of ubuntu if i remember correctly isn't it? Always preferred KDE to Gnome.

100% windows CPU usage is slightly worrying!

kubuntu just works, and has very good support on 64-bit versions

okay why is it upgrading linux can cause spectacular crashes? downloaded minime pclinuxos only 300mb. installed, nice simple and no useless applications. pointed the repository at an ftp closer to home, simply because ibiblio is slow and bloated. six times faster download speed obtained. updated to latest kde and dkms dynamic kernel management system.

Posted via WAP (http:///forum/index.php/topic,494.0.html) - NokiaE60-1

I installed a variant of Gentoo yesterday, worked better than before as now, ooh...10months after building my PC, they've finally gotten round to supporting some of it!

Sound finally works, and the XGL runs nicely at 1680x1050.

I must say I think i prefer the effects in XGL over Vista - makes Vista look kinda safe and static - eg in XGL the windows are kind of elasticy so wobble when you move them. (see http://www.mobmms.com/view/6922.html for an eg). Although Vista does look better and the themes are more polished.

However, it's still waaay too slow, takes ages to start up compared with Windows, applications are slow to load, the font system is still pretty poor, and (dunno if it's XGL or what) overheats my PC as either the mobo fan or graphics card fan is on nearly all the time, compared with hardly ever (except during a game perhaps) with Windows.

Don't think I'll be switching still, but tempted to leave it on my HD for some handy command line utils and stuff

http://www.pclinuxos.com/page.php?7

i started with minime and built up my apps

thought i forgot to mention. gentoo never installs on my pc and repeatedly hangs with the graphics card.

Posted via WAP (http:///forum/index.php/topic,494.0.html) - NokiaE60-1

kde 3.5.5

what about it?

pretty, very pretty.

what's different from 3.5.4?

http://www.mobmms.com/view/14396-0.html

I'm wiping off the Linux partition to make way for XP so I can finally run stuff I can't currently on Vista of Linux, so thought I'd take a quick vid on my phone of the purdyness for those who've not seen it.

Soz about the quality, just phone video clip (I need a new phone! )

update

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2006/09/19/all-in-one-usb-pclinuxos-minimezip/

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2006/09/27/slaxminime/

top link is pclinuxos on a usb pendrive (512mb or greater)

bottom link is both pclinuxos and slax on a usbpendrive (1gb or greater)

both boot from usb, both let you test linux out.

now running pclinuxos 0.93a big daddy release, got a ralink rt2500 wireless pci, configured straight away.

Just installing PCLinuxOS MiniMe onto my laptop - it's got no CD drive so USB key only way to install a new OS onto it (something went very wrong with my old XP Pro installation and I can't reinstall XP as it didn't come with a rescue disc! )

I've only got a 512mb flash key drive too so bit more limited to choices of OS - tried fitting XP onto the key but couldn't quite get it to boot off it for some reason, so only left Linux!

But...having tried the PCLinuxOS MiniMe from just the USB key before installing it to the harddrive, I must say it looks pretty decent and boots up at a good speed too (my broken XP installation ended up taking an age, but mainly due to broken programs loading once Windows was logged in). Just need to find out if it supports the more advanced power-management features of my laptop, so fingers crossed as it'll be a keeper if so!

desktop pc on windows 2k.

Pentium mmx 266mhz 64mb ram 4gb hdd on Damn Small Linux for time being.