What I am looking for in a Linux distribution...

gballard

OSNN Senior Addict
Joined
12 Dec 2001
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549
I have gotten on a Linux kick again here lately and I have decided to ask for suggestions in regards to my PC and a Linux distro that will actually run well on it. My main PC is an Athlon XP 2600+ with a gig of DDR RAM, 2 x 80GB 7200RPM harddrives, NEC DVD Burner, ATI Radeon 9600 Pro, and a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card. In the past week I have installed Mandrake 10.0 Download Edition and Debian 3.0 installed via the netinstall iso image.

Pros and Cons of Mandrake 10.0 for me:
Pros
1. Easy installation
2. Most of my hardware was detected
3. X was actually configured at a decent resolution....1280 x 1024 which is the optimum resolution for my monitor.
Cons
1. Soundcard module was not loaded by default during the boot process. Had to load with modprobe each time for lack of a better way of doing it.
2. The process of installing RPMs and dealing with dependencies is just a pain.

Pros and Cons of Debian 3.0 via Netinstall
Pros
1. Easy installation...just booted off the cd...answered a few questions...and off it went.
2. Straight-forward package management with apt
Cons
1. Apparently my 9600 Pro was not detected correctly since X started up at a horrid resolution of 800 x 600.
2. The module for my soundcard was not loaded...in fact...my soundcard was not detected at all.

I hope this doesn't come off sounding like a rant...just looking for opinions, suggestions, or input in general...:)
 
Yoper if you want it to automatically do everything for you.

What kind of sound card do you have? Most distrobutions autoload the AC97 sound drivers.

As for your Ati 9600 Pro, they have propeirity drivers for them, since they are not under the GPL, Debian being Debian WILL not bundle them, causing low resolution. you could off course download them yourself and get them configured and settled in.

Try yoper, it does most of the things out of the box, small install as well, and i found it very fast. Dun know if it supports your Ati 9600 pro though (More distrobutions prefer Nvidia)

you could always try Slackware, or SuSe.
 
The soundcard is a Soundblaster Audigy 2...I think I will download the latest Slackware and give that a shot...
 
In that case you need non-standard drivers, not AC97 ones. Which means that most Linux distro's won't load it out of the box.

It is something you will have to live with.
 
welp...I decided to give Ubuntu a go. I installed it on my laptop with the D-Link 650+ wireless card in it and wow...I am impressed....it detected the 650+ and everything....I think I like this distro...:)...One question though. I am currently using the wireless connection but when I get back to work on Monday I will need to use the wired connection...eth0...on bootup...will it check and see what interfaces are there and activate the one it finds or what?

I just installed Ubuntu on my desktop...and WOW...it detected everything...I am hooked...:)
 
Yes, it should.

It runs DHCP on all the interfaces until it gets an IP address, it then sets the default route.

I think the one it finds first gets priority.
 
Yeah, I've heard very good reports on Ubuntu's hardware support.
 
I am having one issue now...I mounted my NTFS partitions at /mnt/win_c, /mnt/win_d, and /mnt/win_e...and I had to su to root to do this of course. I type in mount -t ntfs /dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c and it mounts the filesystem in the correct place but then throws up an error about me not having permission to access it as it tries to open a file browser of some type. I obviously would like to be able to access these directories as my normal user. I am guessing I need to set a permission on win_c, win_d, and win_e so my normal user can read the files and copy them into my home directory should I need to.
 
This should be useful:
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/ntfs.html#4.9
smile.gif
 
thanks for the input Netryder...the good folks at justlinux.com pointed me in the right direction as well....

mount -t ntfs -o user,umask=000 /dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c

that is the command that gives me access to the filesystem....I am guessing I just add that statement to /etc/fstab to have it mount on bootup right?
 
this is what I added to my /etc/fstab

/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c ntfs user,ro,umask=000 1 0
/dev/hda2 /mnt/win_d ntfs user,ro,umask=000 1 0
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/win_e ntfs user,ro,umask=000 1 0
 

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Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
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Impressed you have kept this alive this long EP! So many sites have come and gone. :(

Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
hello peeps... is been some time since i last came here.
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