Bloody hell. But then it's not all bad news according to that report. I dunno, I still think they'll make it with Ubuntu and surprise us.

At risk of reprising an earlier moan about Fedora...

Over the last couple of days openSUSE has decided to go directly to Bork Land. I'm using the Gnome edition, and since a recent Nvidia driver update it's...not been well. All sorts of glitches and display hiccups all over the place. To be honest I've said before that the latest openSUSE is layered with fail, and so it continues. In complete disillusionment and no small amount of reluctance I thought I'd give Korora and Fedora a go again.

Cue hours later, neither Korora nor Fedora will boot with an Nvidia driver installed. I've followed all sorts of guides and supposed fixes, but the reality is it just doesn't want to work. This calm post really plays down the fits of absolute rage I've gone through today attempting to get it to work. It's not really how I'd intended to spend a day off work, and isn't a great deal of fun when you get to the end of it only to find it just won't work and the day was wasted.

So, here I am, about 20 minutes later and Ubuntu (last release 13.10) is installed and running without a hitch. Nvidia is installed, desktop looks and runs smoothly and is a mile away from the RPM headache I've been having.

Is there anyone here successfully running an RPM based distro with the Nvidia driver? It just seems to me that the RPM distros just aren't meant for regular home users, choose how they might attempt to shoehorn them into place.

scroll to the conclusion at the end.
http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=article-rpm

just to clarify, as im knackered and not quite sure ive got youre post.

1 ) So you can get it to load, it runs then you load nvidia driver ... it crashes?

or
2 ) it just wont load/boot at all so you dont get to install it?

if option 1, why do you need to install the nvidia driver, ive never bothered, just leave it with whatever opensource version the OS loads.

If I stick with the open source driver, yes the desktop works OK (but for a little screen tearing I never get round to sorting) but you can't install Steam and enjoy any gaming if you use that. Plus there's a lot of reports of cards overheating with the open source driver.

But what was happening was I got the desktop setup OK, got all updates installed, then at the end I would install the Nvidia driver with fingers crossed. Next reboot it would hang at a rolling text screen. So then it's CTRL-Alt F2, attempt recovery using various means. I won't go into details but the net result is you just can't have the driver on these systems. I really really tried!

Ouch at that article. It's from 2002 but I think it is still relevant today. The missus has been running openSUSE 12.3 since launch and I fear it is going senile now. It constantly updates the same packages every day because they are duplicated in the Packman repo. It doesn't matter that I tell it to use only the Packamn packages, it still updates them all the time. Boot up is slower now too, which I have never seen on any Linux ever, and she gets frustrated that she can't plug her Android phone in to copy music over. The new one struggles with this too, I can attest.

She's having either Mint or Ubuntu next time.

Ah ok.
Cant help then, as ive always had issues with either ati/nvidia, so i just stick with open ones, never had any problems, but then i dont use steam.

For some reason im the opposite of you, Mint of any version just doesnt play well with my hardware. (open drivers or not)
Now anything Ubuntu based is fine (thats with open drivers)

Its been said for many a year, hence that article still being relevant today.
That Linux devs need to get together and all decide on a standard base, that all version of desktops can use.

Desktops can look like anything they want, but Linux Devs DEFO need to get together and unify some basic things.

its a start
http://www.zdnet.com/the-linux-found...rs-7000013695/
but a long way to go yet.

Its not helped by Canonical running off on there own mission
You would have thought Valve/Steam would be having a bit of a poke at the Linux devs, along with Ati + Nvidia.

Whats the point in them putting effort into Linux, if they arent getting support?

im presently still running, without any issues, Manjaro xfce
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=manjaro
with Kwin loaded, for some great bling looks and effects

ps...
its all basically using the same kernel so get a grip devs, bang some heads together

You can skip the first 30min if youre short on time...

http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/5...ed-las-s30e07/

watch in HD full screen.

Sorry Kal_El
thats not been posted to wind you up, honest.
But hes using both Ati and Nvidia without any problems.

I watched that live on Sunday night and then couldn't sleep because my brain kept coming up different ways of doing it.

You could have a Proxmox server with a VT-d capable processor, stick a graphics card into it and then have a virtualised Windows instance (or more than one if you stick multiple graphics cards into the server) with GPU passthrough to avoid having dedicated Windows machines.

Since the Steam streaming is just h.264 video with the controller commands passed back to the server this could actually run on a Raspberry Pi or similar if Valve came out with an ARM client. Certainly the streaming should work on a low-end atom machine or similar so long as it can decode 1080p60.

Yeah, the mind boggles

im not a steam user, but will be looking into starting to use it.

Feel like im missing out
http://www.linuxfederation.com/steam-linux/
http://www.gamingonlinux.com/article...ort-linux.2988

this is actual game play
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MefZfhxgpZE#t=66

I had to get a new laptop which came with Windows 8 installed. I fully intended on playing around with it for a couple of months to see if I could grow to like it. That lasted an hour.

And talk about a faff getting Linux installed. Had to go into the BIOS to disable Secure Boot. That was a chore by itself; because Windows 8 has Fastboot, it would not recognise the F2 keystroke at the POST. I had to boot into Windows, restart and press F2 as soon as I restarted. Then once I had Linux installed, I got a low graphics error message and had to boot into recovery to fix that.

All because of Microshaft and their monopolistic tendencies.

Yeah, they are heavily in investment mode at the moment so I guess losses are to be expected. Here's hoping that once they get a hardware vendor for Ubuntu Touch, it will all work out.

Yes, it would be easier if there were actual Linux laptops easily available. I had a similar set of issues with the missus' Samsung.


I sincerely hope so too. It's cool to hate on them (Canonical), but there wouldn't even be a landscape to talk about without them. And not only Ubuntu itself, but so many other great distros based on it. I don't need to list them as many of you are probably running them. But to me, Ubuntu itself is still the premier Linux OS.

Absolutely, love or hate Canonical, there is no denying what they have done for Linux. They have put it on the map as a stable, secure, user friendly operating systems. Purists will always hate that but the rest of us rejoice.

I don't want to mess up my Windows XP system as although it needs replacing it is running out of space.

If I run, say, Linux Mint from a rewriteable CD (or a USB hard disk) can I add programs and updates such as Firefox versions as and when the updates are released?

This may sound like having one's cake and eating it but I seldom do anything the easy way!!

TVMIA!

I think the rewritable CD (or DVD) is a non-starter? At least for Mint.
Puppy Linux can be run from a CD, because you can save files and settings to your hard drive, and Puppy picks them up when you boot from the CD again.
These files just sit in the root of your C: drive, and don't affect Windows.

It is possible to run OSs from USB flash drives, although they don't automatically retain progs and settings from one boot to the next, but they can be set up that way.
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

An external USB Hard drive is another thing again, and you should be able to run an OS on that as if it was just another internal drive. Haven't tried it myself though, so can't say you wouldn't have some issues with grub or other things.

You can't make a Live CD persistent AFAIK, even a rewritable one but it's possible to make an updateable and persistent USB thumb drive at pendrivelinux.com and several other sites.

Not often I can help in this thread, but the answer is as easy as 123.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/univers...easy-as-1-2-3/

Set the Persistence to retain data when exiting/shutting down the distro. (CD boot won't do this)

You could do it with a 4GB Flash drive/card, but I would recommend 8GB or more.

Edit: crossed in post

A Puppy Linux Live CD runs at full speed because it loads into RAM. You can even eject the CD once it has booted. You can even save your settings, programs and updates BACK ON TO THE SAME CD or DVD (it is called "Multi-session").

Alternatively you can save stuff to your hard disk or a flash drive (you do this by creating a save-file at first shutdown), or you can install to USB flash drive or USB hard drive and boot from that. There are all sorts of options for having a play with it which will not disturb Windows at all.

http://puppylinux.com

Thanks all for info re pendrive. Anything to avoid Windows 8!!

TVM!

I have just installed OBUNTU as a dual boot on my old XP machine.

It happily boots up and gets an internet connection.

But it has installed without any browser and I cannot see how to get one. At the risk of asking a really stupid question is there one I can download via XP and then boot to Linux to pick it up; or is there much more obvious way which i am missing

Never heard of OBUNTU and a quick google doesn't give any relevant hits so i'm going to assume you mean Ubuntu (despite knowing the saying about assumptions ).

Ubuntu ships with a web browser called Firefox.

I'm not a big fan of Ubuntu so am not too familiar with how it works, but if it's not already in the left-hand dock then i think you should be able to hit the Windows key on your keyboard and start typing "Firefox" and it'll show up in the results. Once launched i think you can add it as a shortcut on the dock.

Yeah Ubuntu has Firefox installed and automatically updated by default. If it's not on the bar on the left then click on the Ubuntu logo at the top of the bar, and it should be there. Otherwise you can drag and drop it from there and put it onto the bar yourself as a shortcut.

You can add Chrome manually as you would on Windows too. Just download from here, and be sure to select which version you want. Ubuntu will take care of the rest. Easy.

why not just tell killjoy about the software ctr?

and as we are presuming its ubuntu not kubuntu etc, some links.

http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/features/web-browsing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnGeqfe-nsY

and some more videos with ubuntu guides.
http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...0tutorial&sm=1

Trying to put puppy linux onto a old Packard bell machine, but failing, but then I tried other distros and failed. At the moment it is stuck on "making the file system usable- Depmod"

Been like it for a while now, works fine on my own machine.
this Packard bell is a pain in the neck, it got a P4 mobile processor in, why I have no idea and i can't get into the bios either, reset bios and it still comes up asking for a password. I tried bell9, which is what i have seen to be defualt on some PB machines.

The machine have got windows7 on, and the video card will not work with windows 7 as there is no drivers available, so I thought I would try linux, but getting nowhere with that.

so i mayhave to stick windows XP on it for it to be any use, only going to be used for You tube and a bit of browsing, maybe it is just too old to bother with, and maybe that is what I should tell the person who owns it.

That processor was designed to address the problem of putting a full desktop Pentium 4 processor into a laptop. Quite a number of manufacturers used them.
Are you running Puppy Linux via usb? It works very well like that on older kit I have tested.

Have you pulled out the cmos battery on that laptop for 10-15 mins, that may reset it?

That step in the boot sequence should only take a second or two at the most. Sounds like something in the BIOS is preventing Puppy from loading all the needed kernel modules properly so it is just freezing there. Try the battery idea or hopefully you will find some other way in. Puppy is usually very good on those P4 era machines.