Amiga.org
The "Not Quite Amiga but still computer related category" => Alternative Operating Systems => Topic started by: redrumloa on January 22, 2004, 12:09:13 AM
-
Well I have it up and running on 2 systems and have mixed feelings to say the least. Hardware that is directly supported mostly works with no hitches. Hardware that isn't directly supported in the kernal is a mess:-( Also the Radeon support certainly seems sub-par.
I'll tinker with her for a while. I need to see if I can get my All In Wonder going, and see how difficult it is to lern the fine art of rolling your own kernal to be able to use certain hardware.
I have also tried Knoppix, and it is *CUTE*, but only just that.. CUTE. I am being told to go SuSe by a few people, may try that.. Hmm.. Gotta try out that Pexlin on the Peggy, that's gotta work right out of the box i think..
Wee, Amigas are much easier..
-
It doesn't matter what Linux Distrobution you try, the Radeon will only have sub par drivers. This is because ATI don't let any one know how their GFX Chips work so some one has to try and hack their way through driver creation. If you actually install the ATI Linux drivers they will work much better.
Hardware that the kernel doesn't know about might seem a little confusing but you can't expect the kernel to know and drive every peice hardware in existance. This isn't a realistic expectation of any OS especially linux.
Some quick searching online will reveal many good guides for getting your hardware working. You just need to do some reading and all should be well.
Kernel creating isn't all that dificult. But there isn't any point in doing so unless there is some part of your existing kernel that is conflicting in some way or there is some feature that is switched off, that you need. RedHat Kernels are pretty liberal so you really shouldn't need to make your own with standard desktops.
-
I use Mandrake 9.2 with no problems I have a NVidia GeoForce card. But there are club members with Radeon cards, up to 9200 that work fine. There is an ATI Radeon (unidriver ) for OpenGL on there web page that works just fine for full 3D acceleration.
Also if you purchase Mandrake Discovery it comes with a Radeaon 3D and NVidia drivers fully accelerated.
With Linux it is a good Idea to check the Web pages of the Cards distributer as NVidia ATI and Matrox all have #D drivers on there sites.
S3 ,Trident and IBM 3D graphics chip support is built in to most dists.
-
I started out with Red Hat, but I eventually switched to Mandrake. I liked the (sometimes little) speed gain from things being compiled for the i586 instead of i386.
Eventually, I quit using Linux altogether. I just got tired of dealing with a lot of problems that were popping up at the time.
-
by redrumloa on 2004/1/21 19:09:13
Well I have it up and running on 2 systems and have mixed feelings to say the least. Hardware that is directly supported mostly works with no hitches. Hardware that isn't directly supported in the kernal is a mess Also the Radeon support certainly seems sub-par.
Radeon doesn't like Linux, so expect so-so performance. I still think you would be much happier with Fedora C1 then RH9. I know I am. ;)
Dammy
-
Hi Red
What exactly is the problem with your card? Is it a 3d issue? A display issue? Also, what is the precise model of the ATI card? It could be a simple config issue. :-)
-
@Dammy
I'll probably try Fedora on your recomendation, I am on a crash course in Linux all of a sudden:-)
Bodie wrote:
What exactly is the problem with your card? Is it a 3d issue? A display issue? Also, what is the precise model of the ATI card? It could be a simple config issue. :-)
Well first off I had a Radeon All In Wonder VE PCI installed. Setup had determined it was a 7500, and that was the closest driver it had so I tried it. No luck, it booted with no picture at all. After that I installed a Radeon 8500LE AGP. It detected properly and works, but the picture quality in 2D is poor to say the least and it flickers like hell.
-
@redrumloa
I have one suggestion for you:
Get Mandrake!!
It is the Linux-distro that is most likely to work straight out of the box.
Believe me, I have tried a few...
Mandrake really is good, even if it is French.. :-D
-
Linux will always be over-complicated, I don't think installing Mandrake is necessarily the best remedy, it's like painting over rising damp and pretending it's not there.
If you're going to use something like Linux, unfortunately you have to spend time learning to use it so you can fix it when things go wrong, instead of resorting to reinstalls and things - if you're going to be doing that you might as well use Windows. If you try to hide the inner workings away from the user, they will never have a true understanding of the OS and when it fails, they're lost.
It's a shame QNX doesn't have the support that Linux does, it's much cleaner and a better candidate for Desktop use.
-
If you're going to use something like Linux, unfortunately you have to spend time learning to use it so you can fix it when things go wrong, instead of resorting to reinstalls and things - if you're going to be doing that you might as well use Windows.
Don't misread me, I will learn what makes it tick in due time, but certainly it's learning curve is not one that will be concured overnight :-o
-
redrumloa wrote:
Don't misread me, I will learn what makes it tick in due time, but certainly it's learning curve is not one that will be concured overnight :-o
Tell me about it...
-
that_punk_guy wrote:
Linux will always be over-complicated, I don't think installing Mandrake is necessarily the best remedy, it's like painting over rising damp and pretending it's not there.
Definitely true, I began an installation last week and have spent hours tearing ym hair out, but from what I hear it could have been worse, if I'd used another distribution.
-
If you try to hide the inner workings away from the user, they will never have a true understanding of the OS and when it fails, they're lost.
I recall, I haven't been 'lost' with Windows. Note that there’s are University courses that teaches the core of MS Windows NT.
-
Eventually, I quit using Linux altogether. I just got tired of dealing with a lot of problems that were popping up at the time.
Interesting. Isn't the point of open source to prevent bugs?
Unless you're using server components, Linux is rife with the same problems as every other OS: Lack of design, lack of testing... and if something goes wrong, the answer is always the same: "You can't expect it to be perfect when you're getting it for free!"
Linux will always be over-complicated, I don't think installing Mandrake is necessarily the best remedy, it's like painting over rising damp and pretending it's not there.
Linux is very clean and organized. It's the GNU OS tools and window managers that make up all the mess. So long as there's a complete lack of interface standardization, Linux will always be a hacker OS and will never break into the desktop market.
Maybe if people realized that Linux is just a kernel, and not a complete OS, the stigma of UNIX, X, and the slew of cranky desktop managers wouldn't plague it so much. The more I learn about OS architecture and hardware, the more I love Linux. But, distros like Gentoo and Red Hat make me sick. Mandrake has a great installation, but after that it's too slow, buggy, and just plain sucks.
It makes me wonder why when anyone makes a new OS, they tend to start from scratch, or end up using the higher-level portions of Linux instead of just the kernel. No wonder there's a hundred OS's out there, but only WIndows, Mac, and Linux show up on the radar.
If you try to hide the inner workings away from the user, they will never have a true understanding of the OS and when it fails, they're lost.
Unfortunatly, that's exactly what these distros are doing. When the Mandrake package installer destroys your Start menu, you have to open a Konsole and use Perl to start up the program that rebuilds the menu. They don't teach you THAT in the instructions, of course.
Why use a full-blown, full-featured 35+MB Perl interpreter and a script as a program launcher? I have no idea.
It's a shame QNX doesn't have the support that Linux does, it's much cleaner and a better candidate for Desktop use.
Well, you know how Linux people feel about microkernels. Linus Torvalds is a good programmer and knows his stuff, but he is definately a thouroughbred server developer and doesn't know beans about ordinary people.. :-)
-
The All In Wonder is listed as a 7500 card on ATI's site so that driver should be ok? For that one (blank screen) there is a thread here:
LinuxQuestions.org (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/archive/31/2003/12/1/87629)
Some people had no output on a DIGITAL output but did on the analogue VGA though, I assume you're using a CRT display?
For the other problem you may need to tinker with your /etc/XF86Config file.
Log in in text mode, by either changing runlevel to 3 (text mode) and restarting (1) or switching to runmode 3 from a console directly (2).
(1)To restart in runlevel 3 log in as root and edit /etc/inittab and change the id:5:initdefault line there to id:3:initdefault, save and restart.
If you need to switch to root at any time in a console use su - and enter the root password.
(2)To change immediately start a console and type
init 3
...
Make a copy of the working (even if flickery) config file:
cd /etc/X11
cp XF86Config XF86Config.works
(you can type part of a name and hit Tab to complete)
Then you can try a couple of automatic config utitilities.
XFree86 -configure
(note case)
This tells you how to test the generated config file after it runs. If it works (you get a great big X cursor and nothing else) kill the server with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace and copy the file to /etc/X11 with
cp /root/XF86Config.new /etc/X11/XF86Config
(assuming that's where it put the .new file, it will say)
Change the inittab entry back to 5 again if you changed it and restart. If you use vi to edit the file it starts up in command mode so DON'T PRESS ANY KEYS, any one you do may do something. Use cursor keys to move around, i puts you in insert (editing) mode, Esc exits editing mode, x in command mode deletes from the right (or usually the Delete key itself). To quit use : to get a command line at the bottom and use w to write the file. wq to write and quit, q to just quit. Some people find vi a PITA but it has always been there (like Kosh :-)) whereas nicer editors like nano and pico are not always, e.g. on Redhat . So restart and try that, if no joy go back to text mode again and try:
redhat-config-xfree86
which should bring up a graphical setup tool. When/if I had problems like this I just used one of these auto-generate config file tools and they worked.
It's interesting (?) to look through an XF86Config file to get to know where different sections are, all your resolutions, devices, modes and drivers are described in this text file.
To see whatever went wrong any time you get an error you can look at the X log file in: /var/log/XFree86..log i.e. :
cat /var/log/XFree86.0.log
This will tell you what went wrong with Error (EE) entries plus gives other info such as what config file it uses and so on.
As for Mandrake, I keep hearing people say it's great but it's the ONLY linux distro I have ever tried that failed spectacularly to install with terminal and unfixable problems with both my old motherboard AND my new one (different problem, newer version of Mandrake).
I presently use RH9 and Suse9, having tried Slackware, Knoppix, Redhat 8/9, Lycoris, two versions of Mandrake (well almost tried), Suse 8.2/9, Gentoo etc.
Suse 9 is really slick for a desktop, it seems way more responsive than others I have tried, you wouldn't know you were using X! There is a LiveEval CD you can try, you do have to go through just ONE install procedure but this just writes one file to your Windows partition.
Suse downloads (http://www.suse.com/us/private/download/suse_linux/index.html)
Unfortunately, they only offer a freebie as an FTP install/LiveEval CD, or you buy it. Doing the FTP install is a tale for another day :-)
-
I once tried Linux (RedHat 7.2). Hated it. It pissed me off because the stupid thing didn't recognize my NIC, which made it rather difficult to download the driver. When I did get a hold of the driver, it was a .c file. Tried compiling it, and that failed, something about missing include files. Grrr... That's when I FDisked it to NTFS and never looked back!
- Mike
-
Also the Radeon support certainly seems sub-par.
DId you install the official radeon drivers??
The default are only usable with 2d gfx.
I really think you should have gone for Fedora or mandrake 9.2 though"i say go for mdk:P", as rh9 is getting kinda old.
Suse is supposed to be really great and userfriendly, but sadly the isos is not free for download. :-(
-
Hi,
@redrumloa
I really do not like Red Hat Linux, they were big about 2 to 3 years ago and then they fell behind, I like Mandrake the best, then I would go with SUSE (just go it about 4 months ago really haven't had time to get associated with it, but from what I see it is good).
The easiest Linux system though for loading and such is Lindows at www.lindows.com, this will load onto your system in about 7 - 10 minutes and is just about automatic, on the three systems I put it on the only place I had to interrupt was to put my password in.
Don't listen to any of those canadian guys about Linux, you have to know computers to use it.
the silent one
-
Well the thing is I have used the following dists for Linux, RedHat 7.2-9.0. Caldera 2.8=3.2, TorboLinux and Debian all have some great features, but all lack one thing, simple no nonsence install that recognizes your hardware and works. But that is where Mandrake 9.2 is different it does solve your problems, I purchased the cheapest dist from Mandrake the 9.2 Discovery Disks ( 39.00 US). ALL ATI and NVidia 2D and 3D accelerated modes are supported and work and configure automaticlly, even OpenGL is set up and working perfectly. You do not even have to set up network connections they work perfectly. Mandrake is the only dist I will suggest to newbies, it does what it says it will. Mandrake even includes recovery tools on CD and Uninstall program in Mandrake Control Centre.
Not all linux dists are the same Mandrake is the closest to usable Desktop out of the box. It install sets up and configures as good as Windows. It comes with OpenOffice 1.1 for Office2000 Word Exel and Powerpoint compatability that works 100% you can even set it to only save files as .doc .xls or what ever.
You can download a free version from there web site but the graphics drivers are what you pay for so they are not included (3D OpenGL compatability that is, the 2D driver works great.