The Day, Or Year, The Linux Desktop Died - InformationWeek

[nicholas]

KDE 3.x was OK, but 4 is an abortion. Never had any issues with Gnome's performance though. Fast as fury on this machine and no slouch on the box at work, which is a single core P4 with Radeon X300.

If you want a window manager that's both extremely fast out of the box but at the same time highly customisable, then fvwm is for you. The initial desktop it gives you is very spartan and configuring it takes time, but it is the veritable Intuition of the linux world. It is fast even on 10 year old machines.

Use LXDE but replace the WM with IceWM and use the OS4 theme.

It makes my missus' poxy Aspire One seem responsive.

[nicholas]

I prefer KDevelop as an editor environment but gnome as a window manager. Ergo, I have the base libraries for KDE installed, but not the actual desktop. KDE 4 just put me off completely.

Serves you right for using Feckdora bro!

I've had enough of fannying about these days, so after 10+ years Linux is now relegated to my servers only.

Leopard + Path Finder + Macports does me fine for the desktop now.

Though if the mother-in-law hadn't so kindly bought me the MBP I'd still be endlessly fannying around with Linux on my desktop as I really don't see the point in wasting even more time fannying around with a Hackintosh installation.

What is wrong with you freaks that do that?

[nicholas]

I use the drivers directly from nVidia as they provide all the various libraries I need to write software for the GPU.

Installing them is actually fairly easy, but as it's not from the repository you need to rebuild them every time you have a kernel update.

Installing just amounts to running the downloaded file in a root shell. You need to not have the X server running too:

1) Boot into "safe" mode, then select "root shell"
2) change to runlevel 3 (type: telinit 3)
3) log in as yourself
4) sudo as root
5) run the installer package (sh .run)
6) agree that nVidia isn't liable for the unexpected end of the universe
7) let it try to download a kernel module, if that fails let it build it
let it install the legacy 32-bit opengl stuff if you have a 64-bit driver
9) let it backup and replace your xorg.conf
10) restart

if all has gone well, you now have drivers that support your hardware properly. One downside is, you also have a tainted kernel, if you care about such things.

What's wrong with adding the RPMFusion repo and 'yum install kmod-nvidia'?

Is it missing the CUDA stuff?

[nicholas]

I can't really be ersed with "pimping" linux GUI, to be honest. gnome works fine for me

Yeah but you do have umpteen bazillion cpu cores.  Even Slowlaris would seem fast on that box!

[nicholas]

I believe the recommended number from the open source nv drivers is something like "96" - this off the top of my head.

If I recall correctly i think I tried it once, rebooted to a black screen and had to bring my laptop to a friends place who connected the laptop to a monitor which could see the screen. as there was no time for tweaking we just removed the offending drivers.

someday when I have the time I'll try this again.

Ubuntu works fine even without this added stuff. and yes, it's not perfect, but so far it works for me.

If you have no need for hardware 3D then the standard 'nv' driver is more than adequate for your needs Cecilia.

There is the 'nouveau' xorg driver (Which comes as the default driver in Fedora 11) but I can't see you having any use for that either.

If you really need the hardware 3D stuff then it's simple to switch to that using the 'Hardware Drivers' program in Ubuntu.  No fannying around with the command line needed.

You can find it on the GNOME menu bar under 'System->Administration->Hardware Drivers'.

Just click to enable the binary NVIDIA driver and reboot.

[nicholas]

Other linux fans will probably burn me for this but as I said, there's still plenty wrong with linux as a desktop OS from a novice user point of view. It is getting better but it has some way to go.

However, I'll take it over windows for my day to day needs any day.

I know this 'Disinherited demi-Geordie' that used to swear by Win2K and didn't see any use for Linux on the desktop!