Six Things You Didn't Know About Linux: A Beginners' Guide

Information Week ^ | Jun 2, 2006 10:25 AM | Alexander Wolfe

[N3WBI3]

OSS PING

If you are interested in the OSS ping list please mail me

[Echo Talon]

At this point in time I like KDE better. :)

[N3WBI3]

I have kinda fallen for it too, especially as they say the next version (4) will run on Windows..

[Echo Talon]

hmm thanks for the info, never heard that B4 :), for some reason to me Gnome is a kinda funky..

[N3WBI3]

Whats weird is after CDE on Solaris (which is itself quite clunky) then FVWM on Linux I spent allot of time using gnome and it felt so much better than KDE but one day I wanted to try out some of the widgets KDE provides and I never looked back..

[Echo Talon]

I have tried Gnome only a few times and granted maybe I haven't given it its due trial time, but something about it seems foreign. KDE seems more "user friendly" or something, maybe because im so used to windows?

[N3WBI3]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1563930/posts

[Echo Talon]

thanks for the link noob! oops, N3WBI3 hehe

[Dumpster Baby]

Over the years I've bought four different versions of Linux, and only ONE version was capable of recognizing the video hardware I was using at the time. On all versions, I tried every combination of video card and motherboard that I had and never even got the basic 640x480 16-color VGA screens. Only the command line interface would work.

I managed to get SUSE 9 Linux installed on an old AMD K6 box a while back, but the old K6-500 doesn't have the horsepower to run Linux except at a crawl. I tried installing the SUSE version 9 Linux on my new Dell box, and again it didn't know what the video hardware in the Dell was.

Until the Linux propeller heads can manage to simply create a basic 640x480 16-color graphics screen for the GUI on ANY PC platform, Linux will never take off.

I never had ANY problems with getting good graphic screens on ANY version of Windows or OS/2. By contrast, I've had about a 90% or better failure rate getting a graphic screen on ALL versions of Linux on about five different motherboards and about seven or eight video cards or chipsets.

At the present time Linux resides on an unused drive in an old AMD K6-500 box because that's the ONLY PC I've ever seen it run the GUI on, period.

[amigatec]

I just changed my Motherboard from a Duron to an Socket 754, with built-in Video, sound, and LAN. Linux rebooted and after it found the new hardware, it was up and running. I was impressed!!!

Windows would never do this.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Decent article here:

The changing landscape of Linux users

[EricT.]

What graphics card are you using? I have tried several different distros in multiple systems, and I have never had any trouble with video. Try openSuSe 10.1 for free. If you can't get that to work, the problem is probably you (no offense meant).

[Dumpster Baby]

I'm not on the new Dell P4 system now, so don't know what the chipset is. During the CD install process I was just sitting back watching the status lines scrolling by, and the first time a graphics screen came up the video went haywire and couldn't be recovered. I ran into the exact same thing in years past trying to get the GUI running on earlier versions of Red Hat and the one with the little penguin logo. I even tried installing a couple of downloaded BSD distros, all with the same result - no matter what kind of video card or chipset I had I couldn't get a GUI to start up. I had Diamond and other VERY common brand name video cards - but - none of my cards appeared on the "supported video cards" lists in the docs. I've NEVER seen anything like a "supported video cards" list in any version of Windows or OS/2 - they don't need a "supported video cards" list.

When the info was available, I laboriously tried tweaking video settings and parameters after laboriously identifying each video chip, each clock chip, etc, etc. I fiddled with settings and parameters and downloaded drivers until I could scream. Nothing ever worked, and I never saw a Linux GUI screen until I installed SUSE version 9 on this old AMD K6 box. Everything went perfectly, but SUSE requires a lot more CPU than a K6-500. I used SUSE long enough to get comfortable with it, but the sluggish performance was agonizing. Sometimes I thought the computer had locked up, but it was just Linux churning and swapping, churning and swapping.

Then I got a new Dell with a P4-2.8 ghz and 1 gig ram. I added another hard drive and partitioned it. The SUSE CD install went perfectly until that first graphics screen and then couldn't go any further since I couldn't read the screen any more.

I'm not going to waste another penny or another second on Linux. The only way I'll ever have a fully functional Linux box is if I somehow acquire the buck$ to go to a computer store and buy a turnkey fast mover with Linux already installed and working like it should.

[Knitebane]

Over the years I've bought four different versions of Linux, and only ONE version was capable of recognizing the video hardware I was using at the time.

And I've bought several camper tops over the years and NONE of them fit on my motorcycle. /sarcasm

It's really simple, actually. The X.org folks put out a list of supported video cards. The major distros put out their own list of compatible cards. If you want it to work, buy one on the list. If it's not on the list you might get it to work by accident or by fooling around with it, but no guarantees.

Until the Linux propeller heads can manage to simply create a basic 640x480 16-color graphics screen for the GUI on ANY PC platform, Linux will never take off.

I've gotten X to work on Dell 1U servers, on ancient Sun SPARC hardware and on every laptop I've ovwned in the last 8 years. Some of them had to be whacked on for a bit first, but ALL of them worked. Most recently, I installed Ubuntu on a Dell Inspiron 9200. Not only did it find the video card, it even installed the proprietary ATI drivers for accelerated 3D.

The fact is, if it will do standard VGA and isn't the brand newest card from the vendor, X will run on it. If it's not doing it for you, you probably want to get some assistance.

At the present time Linux resides on an unused drive in an old AMD K6-500 box because that's the ONLY PC I've ever seen it run the GUI on, period.

The answer is simple. You're doing it wrong.

[Knitebane]

I've NEVER seen anything like a "supported video cards" list in any version of Windows or OS/2 - they don't need a "supported video cards" list.

Windows certified video cards. And here's the OS/2 list. That took 5 minutes to find on Google.

Strangely enough, I've had more trouble getting OS/2 to function properly with certain video cards that I've ever had with Linux. I had a Headland Technologies card that would stubbornly refuse to use anything higher than 640x480 at 16 colors under Warp. The Diamonds and Tsengs seemed to work okay, but the 3dfx cards and some of the S3s were particularly difficult to get running at higher resolutions. Likewise, Windows 98SE completely refused to run on a machine with a nVidia 6600GT. Linux, FreeBSD and even Plan9 all came up fine, but Windows booted, the screen went black and never returned.

I'm not going to waste another penny or another second on Linux.

I think we've found the problem here.

Linux is free. If you've been paying for it, you've been paying not for the OS, but for support. Yet in all of your ranting, not once did I see you mention that you had contacted your support organization for help.

Additionally, earlier versions of RedHat didn't have a GUI installer. They had a text-based installer. In face, the most recent version of Fedora and RHAS that I installed (less than a month ago) both had options to use a text-based installer. It would have to, since we often install RH Advanced Server using only a serial console.

This process is devilishly hard to use since one must type the word "text" at the installer prompt.

[ol painless]

That is strange. I have a new Dell e1705 with 1920 x 1200 resolution and Ubuntu makes a very nice 1920 x 1200 screen by default. I have a Nvidia 7800 go video card.

[ShadowAce]

Thanks for the ping. I've been using Xfce4 for several months now. I used to use KDE exclusively, but I found I wasn't using the full functionality, so I started looking for a lighter-weight desktop. I experiemented with Fluxbox for a while, but found it kinda klunky to use.

Xfce4 manages a good balance between functionality and bloat. Also, it uses (or can use) a lot of KDE's widgets, so the ones I was using I can still use.

I agree with both of you that Gnome just seems weird. I've never figured out why I don't like--I just don't.

[Dumpster Baby]

"You're doing it wrong...."

How the F is it possible to do it wrong when you stick in the install CD, it runs for while, and crashes the very first time a graphic screen is displayed? The install process is automated, no questions are asked, no place to type in parameters or anything, and the video goes haywire at the very first graphic screen DURING THE INITIAL AUTOMATED HANDS OFF INSTALL. If and only if the video hardware is recognized will the automated install continue normally. The install of SUSE 9 went 100% perfect on an old K6 box, but crashed the video very quickly trying to install it on a new Dell Dimension 1100 with an Intel 82865G video chipset.

All the previous versions of Red Hat, BSD, Slackware, etc would install on any PC I tried them on - but - no GUI on any of them because they couldn't recognize my EXACT PARTICULAR VERSION of a Diamond, Cirrus, Creative, whatever major brand video card. As for finding video card lists using Google - doesn't the PC have to have an operating system installed first, before you can Google for video card lists??? Every single version of Windows I've used, starting with Windows 286, never had a single problem with ANY video hardware I've seen, and I've installed many versions of Windows on dozens of different PC's over the years. I've installed several versions of OS/2 and Warp on about a dozen different boxes over the years without ever having a video problem. I've had exactly ONE Linux install come up with a GUI in dozens of tries on every combination of motherboard and video card I've ever had my hands on.

I'm not spending any more money or time on trying to get Linux to run on a fast, modern PC. There's no straightforward way to determine in advance if the video will go into graphics modes properly. Sure, you can Google for video card lists for each and every version of Linux you have or might like to try, and THEN go shopping for compatible hardware. You don't have to do that with Windows. You don't have to do that with OS/2. You have a 99% or better chance of perfectly successful GUI operation. With Linux it's a crapshoot.

I started out back in the CP/M days with S-100 boxes and Z-80's. I've got most of the 8- and 16-bit computers, about 2 dozen of them, and about a dozen 32-bit PC's. I usually have 5 or 6 PC's set up all the time at home, each dedicated to a specific purpose, and spares for all of them. I'm neck deep in computers and have been for a long time. The single biggest computer related problem I've had in nearly 30 years of this stuff is simply getting any version of Linux to recognize very very very common video cards.

If a commercial software package will not install properly and come up running as advertised, it's not something you can sell to the general public. Most of the Linux distros I have are commercial packages bought in a store. They sorta, kinda, almost worked as advertised, and no amount of tweaking would get the GUI's to come up running. Joe Blow off the street runs into this kind of thing, and he's totally screwed. Someone like us can hack at it for hours and days and maybe get something to work, maybe not. Linux authors very badly need to get the "maybe" out of the picture. Everyone else does, don't they?

[ExDemSince92]

Gnome started out as a lightweight, stable and Windows-like desktop. Back then, KDE was *definitely* not ready for prime time.

No clue what happened, but, the Gnome guys decided to take what, in my opinion, were the worst features of existing GUIs and throw them in a pile and call it a release. The KDE guys, on the other hand, kept improving.

Long story short, I've totally abandoned Gnome in the in-house Linux distribution I maintain. Once I let people play around with KDE, no-one really missed it.