If I can afford to replace my graphics card, i'll certainly have another crack with Gnome 3 because I really do like it.

What card do you have Jason? From what I gather, Gnome 3 doesn't need much power at all, so even a Geforce 5200 should be OK. I know the missus has an internal Intel GMA thingie that seems to run it fine on the live disc. You probably don't need to upgrade at all to run it.

I've got an Nvidia 7300LE. What usually happens is that I'll invariably install Ubuntu and then upgrade it to Gnome 3. Everything goes without a hitch until I reboot. Then either it will boot up and completely freeze, with the mouse working but not being able to click anything or it'll let me click the 'Applications' button but take about 5 minutes to actually bring anything up.

Then it'll be so slow as to be completely unusable.

I even tried, I think, OpenSuse which came with Gnome3 as standard and the same thing happened.

Ah right. It seems Ubuntu 11.04 and Gnome 3 aren't the best of friends yet, but I'm hoping it's better with the next release. Only Fedora features Gnome 3 as standard, so it's likely that's the one you've tried. If you try it with Opensuse, you need to download the Gnome 2 version then stick Gnome 3 over it using their one-click installer. This worked perfectly for me, but ymmv.

I think your hardware should be up to it, so probably best for now to keep an eye on the alphas and betas upcoming, unless you feel adventurous with Opensuse...

Of course that's what I meant. Couldn't you translate my forgetful ramblings ?

I might try OpenSuse though - i've got no real problem re-formatting. Everything I need to keep is backed up seperately and also in my Dropbox, and all my music is on a seperate HDD as well so it's all good.

You never know it might work for you. I know some people here haven't had the same experience with it as me, but I love it. The only downside is there'll be a ton of updates to go through, but hey if you have a spare afternoon...

I have an 7300 LE in my old Dell E520 running Ubuntu 11.04 /10. There seems to be a bug in the Additional Hardware app that reports the driver for the card is available but not currently in use even though Unity loads & works perfectly fine.

If I update to the current nvidia driver & reboot the system, when I log back in the only thing that works is the mouse

The Same thing happens with the Emachines ER102 that I have.

Sticking with the nvidia 173 drivers is the only solution for now unless you want to rebuild the nvidia drivers for each new kernel release.

Yes this is true for Unity, but I'm not sure if this is what's causing the problems for those trying out Gnome 3 on Ubuntu. It's certainly one of the things that caused me big problems with it when trying out Unity. A pity, as I like Unity.

I'm actually trying out the next release at the moment at the Alpha 3 stage on a live disc. So far no problems at all. It seems to have utilised the Nouveau driver rather than the proprietary one. I'm fine with this for the most part as the driver apparently is coming along really well, though I hear heating control isn't so good at the moment. However if the open driver becomes better I would much rather use that than the proprietary one.

One really brilliant thing I notice though is that Ubuntu's Unity desktop is now based on top of Gnome 3 rather than Gnome 2. This is much, much better imho as I think Gnome 2 caused some users problems with Natty, and with no one developing it anymore, it would have become seriously deprecated. As it is, Unity sits nicely on top of Gnome 3 instead of the shell and works really well. Hopefully I'll be able to use this release.

I still prefer Gnome 3 with it's own shell, but Unity is very, very nice imho. I might even install this and see how I go.

A well known bug, its just reporting it is not in use, but if Unity is in use then it is in operation.

I have used both Gnome 3 and Unity, and I like the way things are going with them, I'm just glad everyone though has not rushed into using them yet as they are not quite ready for mass-use.

I can't see myself distro-hoping while Pinguy OS is this good at the moment, but I will be trying out and reviewing as many distros as I can in the near future. It'll be hard to find something that beats Pinguy I think as an all-round stable work-horse distro.

Mark

Unity worked fine for me when I installed the 173 driver.

The one launcher i did like though was the Rosa launcher on the latest release of Mandriva.

But once again, graphics "issues" prevented me from sticking with it.

Yeah I knew about the bug after reading about it online.


Updating my previous post as I forgot to mention that the latest drivers work fine with the classic desktop.

currently reformatted to opensuse 11.04 and guess what ?

YET AGAIN i'm going round in circles trying to get the NVidia driver installed.

Absolutely ridiculous.

you've the patience of a saint

As i have commented on in earlier posts, its seems Linux has taken a step backwards, and its pot luck again if the video drivers work or not
Cant understand it as up until about xmas this year i didn't have any problems with any Linux distro, and i used to distro hop quite a bit
But i and others i know, it seems to have gone back to how it was a few years ago, when i couldn't get a live cd to run

Its a real shame its such a lottery, as its stopping quite a few people from using Linux.
Im just glad Peppermint works for me as i was running out of ones to try

PS with nearly 12000 views for this thread now, there must be people interested

Don't be cross just yet. It's not too hard to add the driver. I can appreciate it's tricky at first if you've never used it before though. You just need to add the Nvidia repository. Pop into OpenSUSE's control centre YAST, and click Software Repositories on the left. At the bottom of the window that appears listing your current in-use repos, click the button marked "Add", then select Community Repositories and click next. From here you should be able to select which extra repositories you would like to add. Take care not to add too many, but you should be able to see the Nvidia repository to get your driver.

HOWEVER - there seems to be a bit of a problem with the openSUSE package manager today that will prevent you doing this. It's been reported on their forum and we're awaiting some feedback. Might be best hanging on a bit.

Have you guys got any time to write reviews on the OS you are currently using or to write guides on how to do things in Linux? As I said earlier, I got this blog and would more than welcome some guest writers.

I'm looking forward to Ubuntu 11.10, will be nice to see what they do to improve the already very nice Unity. Don't know if it'll shift me from Pinguy though as I'm getting best of all worlds a minute. Be interesting to see what direction distros using Gnome 2.x take when Unity and Gnome 3 get to the next level.

Mark

Too late - i'm back on windows

I've reformatted so many times over the years, I can re-load windows and get back to this point in about 30-40 minutes

I downloaded the latest Nvidia driver from Nvidia's website. Inserted the command into the modprobe file to stop nouveau and then rebooted to runlevel 3 to install the driver.

Told me the header was missing so updated the desktop kernel. ran the installer again and it installed.

rebooted to find a screen with the opensuse background, but no menu or icons. mouse worked fine, but nothing else.

booted into 'failsafe' mode, which worked, and swapped out the xorg.conf file just to try it with my one that has 1440x900 in it - didn't work.

So i gave up . One of the few times actually, as i'd likely re-format and re-install all over again and try again. again.

just wound me up no end it's such a chore to get it installed when it's so absurdly easy on ubuntu-based systems.

Shame! It's just as easy to do on OpenSUSE as it is on Ubuntu. It's as easy as adding the Nvidia repo, just as you would on Ubuntu with Medibuntu for example, but it's finding out how. I've never installed the Nvidia driver the manual way, as it's tricky to maintain what with the kernel updates to consider. Much easier to let the OS do its updating. I'm a lazy Linux user.

This is what often annoys me about Linux forums though. On the one hand you have a team of operating system developers trying to make the system easy to use for everyone, but then on the forums you've got people telling beginners how to do things using manual techniques. It's a crazy conflict. It's all well and good saying "oh the terminal is the quickest way to do things", but frankly the new user is having to deal with a whole new graphical environment as the first priority. Why not help them do that first? No use telling people how to install the Nvidia driver the "Windows way". Just end up with pissed off potential users that way imho.

I'm lucky because I worked in I.T. for 13 years using Unix systems so I'm relatively comfortable (ish..) in the terminal, but you do make a good point about new users.

I might have another go tomorrow if it really is as simple as adding the nvidia repo - I just wanted to get back on to something stable as I was meant to be meeting an old friend online tonight for a natter (although that doesn't look like it's going to happen any time soon!)

Better fish the DVD out of the bin then ..

well i tried it again...

I got the nvidia driver installed and working.

fired up the one-click gnome 3 install. nearly an hour later it completed. rebooted and.....

nothing. screen comes up, mouse works but nothing is clickable. so I'm going to bed.

If you press the Windows key or move the mouse right to the top left, the shell appears (just in case you didn't know, though I expect you did). If it's not that then I don't know what happened. I can only say that it worked perfectly for me, which is why I recommended it. Did you run all the regular updates before installing Gnome 3? Maybe something went awry there if you didn't? Either way it's no use to you. Sorry dude.

I won't recommend any more Linuxes to you, I promise.

don't be daft

I like linux and I think if i found *the* distro, i'd probably abandon windows forever.

I've got my eyes on this as a possible upgrade to my 7300LE

http://www.maplin.co.uk/asus-nvidia-...-low-pr-528743

Falls within what I could potentially afford at the moment.

Or there's this, which I think i'd certainly consider if it was recommended

http://www.maplin.co.uk/nvidia-gefor...cs-card-352095

Anyone think they're any good ?

If I get the chance I'll write you something up, reviews and such. I was thinking if I get the time I'll perhaps put up a simple guide to openSUSE. Considering how some new users find it tricky adding things like extra repos on the distro, it might be a good idea if I start there.

I'm usually a bit cautious writing help though. I don't consider myself a technical user or an expert, just someone who enjoys using Linux. Usually if I have problems I just do what everyone else does - Google (or DuckDuckGo as I use now). But the simple stuff I can help with.

Well in other news whatever was going off with the openSUSE repos is fine now. I gather from their forum that it was a Virgin Broadband only related issue, which is what I'm on too, so that would explain it.

A shot from the live default KDE Desktop from the Gentoo dvd

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...811185835.png/

Just download and burn it, boot it, no compilling etc it just runs

http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=06830

Its not too often they release the live dvd like this.

BUT be warned, as you can see (or not ) the 'install to hd' icon is missing from the desktop so if you want to do that, you have to do it the hard way! so its not for newbies to Linux.

Im sure a few regulars to this thread will not be able to resist a download and burn

edit... when you have booted to the default KDE, if you LOG OUT not SHUT DOWN you can select from

''Desktop environments and window managers include KDE 4.7.0, GNOME 3.0.0, Xfce 4.8, Enlightenment 1.0.8, Openbox 3.5.0, Fluxbox 1.3.1, XBMC 10.1 Awesome 3.4.10 and LXDE-Meta 0.5.5'' to log back into without restarting your pc all your Gentoo desktops on one dvd

Saw the release announcement on Distrowatch, 1Saintly. I've never tried Gentoo, but I was really pleased to see that they've decided to use Gnome 3 as a main desktop environment alongside KDE4.

I always thought Gentoo didn't have live discs, and you had to download an install disc instead...

They don't as a rule, this is only the 2nd one i've seen in years.
So get it and keep it safe whilst you can, even if you don't use it.

But the down side is there isn't a install from live dvd icon, (im sure the last one did have, i will have to dig it out) so you still have to do it the hard way.

I will repeat again, as this thread has so many viewers to this thread, the live dvd is great for anyone used to live Linux dvds, but the install and maintaining it is not for newbies to Linux!

its got all the latest of everything on it
http://www.gentoo.org/
As i said just log out, select another desktop, log in